There was a reason everyone looked down and mocked EQ players, as they were seen as basement dwellers. And that was mostly true.
Oh ffs. EQ had every type of player, college kids, people with full time jobs, stay-at-home moms.
I don't know of anyone who actually mocked EQ players, you seem to be trying your best though. Nothing better to do in your basement or something? I guess it's easy to stereotype people when you sit comfortably behind a PC.
And all the apologists come out of the woodwork who want to bury their head in the sand and pretend the MMO genre has never been better, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
OP never claimed WoW actively did this, but the current market is absolutely a response to WoW's success.
Oh yeah, WoW greatly participated in the fact that MMORPGs, or at least their "end game" content, is no longer doable just by no life hardcore teenage/jobless nerds but also by adult people with a job, a family, and other leisure activities than just sitting in front of a screen.
WoW is definitely the devil.
No one is saying WoW is the devil?
No one is even talking directly about WoW. You seem to actively attempt to troll and derail every conversation.
But for the record, your point is nonsense, because WoW's raiding was almost identical to EQ's raiding, except that in many pre WoW MMOs, many casual gamers could hop into massive raids with a lot of other players and do a one off.
With EQ/WoW's tierred style raiding, you needed a static group of players, usually a guild, and you needed to regularly grind the same raid over and over to memorize it, then grind it more to get all the loot for everyone in your static group, so you can have the gear to move on to the next raid.
It was the most exclusionary raiding system I ever saw, and my so called "casual" friend spent almost every night for years raiding just to participate. Whereas in those "old hokey MMOs" like DAoC, I could decide "I want to do a raid tonight" and hop into a random raid group, and have an equal shot at the loot.
You make the assumption that it is all about raiding. WoW's levelling experience during vanilla was the most casual friendly at the time. EQ was for no lifers, everyone knew that. It took thousands of hours to get max level. EQ raiding was even more hardcore than WOW raiding and WoW raiding became even more casual as time went on to a point where they have the most casual friendly raiding at the moment.
But yeah for people like me who loved the levelling and PvP in WoW, the game was quite casual friendly. Something you can never say about EQ. Casuals had no place in EQ. People in EQ spent more than half of their waking hours or even all of their waking hours playing the game. There was a reason everyone looked down and mocked EQ players, as they were seen as basement dwellers. And that was mostly true.
EQ raiding was not hard. The game was a joke all about numbers. There is a reason that so few in WoW have beaten the higher level raids outside of LFR with is like any game on easy mode.
EQ raiding was not hard. The game was a joke all about numbers. There is a reason that so few in WoW have beaten the higher level raids outside of LFR with is like any game on easy mode.
By the time WoW came out, EQ had the Gates of Discord expansion. It took another EQ expansion, and another level cap before any of the tacvi raid were cleared. By that time, WoW's raids had long been beaten. By the time WoW's raids were beaten, most guilds in EQ hadn't even made it past Uqua, they were either still clearing PoTime from 2 expansions prior to OOW, or were struggling with Ikkinz trials.
Not only was WoW's content much easier, the amount of people who participated in WoW in raids was much higher than in EQ. Up till WoW, raiding in the latest expansion was pretty much for the 1%, WoW allowed anyone to participate in raids, they made them more accessible, and smaller.
And all the apologists come out of the woodwork who want to bury their head in the sand and pretend the MMO genre has never been better, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
OP never claimed WoW actively did this, but the current market is absolutely a response to WoW's success.
Oh yeah, WoW greatly participated in the fact that MMORPGs, or at least their "end game" content, is no longer doable just by no life hardcore teenage/jobless nerds but also by adult people with a job, a family, and other leisure activities than just sitting in front of a screen.
WoW is definitely the devil.
No one is saying WoW is the devil?
No one is even talking directly about WoW. You seem to actively attempt to troll and derail every conversation.
But for the record, your point is nonsense, because WoW's raiding was almost identical to EQ's raiding, except that in many pre WoW MMOs, many casual gamers could hop into massive raids with a lot of other players and do a one off.
With EQ/WoW's tierred style raiding, you needed a static group of players, usually a guild, and you needed to regularly grind the same raid over and over to memorize it, then grind it more to get all the loot for everyone in your static group, so you can have the gear to move on to the next raid.
It was the most exclusionary raiding system I ever saw, and my so called "casual" friend spent almost every night for years raiding just to participate. Whereas in those "old hokey MMOs" like DAoC, I could decide "I want to do a raid tonight" and hop into a random raid group, and have an equal shot at the loot.
You make the assumption that it is all about raiding. WoW's levelling experience during vanilla was the most casual friendly at the time. EQ was for no lifers, everyone knew that. It took thousands of hours to get max level. EQ raiding was even more hardcore than WOW raiding and WoW raiding became even more casual as time went on to a point where they have the most casual friendly raiding at the moment.
But yeah for people like me who loved the levelling and PvP in WoW, the game was quite casual friendly. Something you can never say about EQ. Casuals had no place in EQ. People in EQ spent more than half of their waking hours or even all of their waking hours playing the game. There was a reason everyone looked down and mocked EQ players, as they were seen as basement dwellers. And that was mostly true.
EQ, was definitely a time intensive game, in all the years i played, i never actually got a single one of my characters to max level, levelling was an extremely lengthy process, for most of the time, you had to queue to join a group camping the spawns, it most certainly was not a casual friendly game, and if you didn't have 3 or 4 hours to spend playing then, you really were at a disadvantage, definitely an aspect of MMO's that is best left far in the past tbh, as personally i much prefer the casual friendly option, and if there is one thing that WoW did, it was open up MMO's to casual players, and brought Online gaming, out of the dark ages, and made them accessible to all, certainly levelling became a much more fun experience instead of an ordeal. Yeah, EQ was great in it's time, but, after WoW, EQ1's time was up.
The argument that EQ wasn't casual friendly, is only true if you value progression to such a degree, that you tie enjoyment to progress. Progression was slow in Everquest, a lot of your time you were required to socialize, to make friends, to build groups. If that is anti-casual or not, is a matter of opinion.
If you can't enjoy a game at your own pace, if you feel like the goal is not to have fun or to socialize, but the goal when you log in is to level to XX, or getting item X,Y,Z, then older games weren't for you. But plenty of casual players could enjoy a game merely by playing, and their enjoyment wasn't measured by the amount of progress they made. Their enjoyment was measured by how many friends they made, the people they talked to, and the adventures they had, that's why many casuals had no problem in EQ, the time they spent with people they liked, was more valuable to them than getting that rare item.
Casual & Hardcore are play styles, not game features.
It's all about investment and effort.
How much time am I going to invest into the game, and how serious do I take it?
That, to me, is the difference between casual and hardcore.
Sure, there are certain in-game systems that lend themselves towards one end of the spectrum - for example:
1. Raiding generally requires a larger time commitment and effort, but there are plenty of casual raiders out there
2. Quest based progression certainly can be played casually in smaller doses, but there are plenty who power-play through an entire games worth of quests for achievement and such, or on a dozen alts, which is quite hardcore
I think once people finally start to understand what casual and hardcore really mean, our conversations about MMOs will be a little more intelligent.
The point?
WoW was/is as successful as it is because they really, really, really nailed this concept. People on these boards always say that games that "try to be everything to everybody" will fail - and in almost all cases that is very true. For Blizzard with WoW, they somehow figured it out and actually achieved this lofty goal. WoW is certainly the outlier though.
I doubt we'll see another MMO pull off the same feat.
SWG would have survived well if they fixed their game and kept to the vision - a sandbox Star Wars world.
EQ2 would have done better if it stuck to it's Everquest roots (more hardcore party based PvE).
WAR would have been good if they focused on the RvR and left the quests/dungeons/raids to WoW.
AoC would have been good if they embraced the brutality of the IP with open world FFA PvP (with consequence) instead of trying to appease the masses with generic quest driven PvE.
SWTOR would have been good if they embraced the story and character building in true Bioware fashion rather than watering everything down to include WoW-like elements.
Rift could have risen further if they had focused on the public event/rift/invasions and more unique class building system then trying to chase the WoW-model of dungeons/raids and instanced PvP.
etc. etc. etc.
None of these games "failed" or under-performed directly because of WoW - they did the damage to themselves by trying to be like "that other guy" and simply not doing a very good job at it.
You can't blame WoW for its success, you can definitely blame the fools trying to break off their piece of it and failing.
It amazes me that you think it was that simply. It is impossible to link any 1 thing to the success or failure of a game. This type of thinking is asinine at best. There are so many more things: such as release date, server loads, game difficulty, game replay-ability, cost, customer support, economy and so many other things that contribute to the outcome of a game.
As to the OP original points. Most are valid. In the end the whole genre has degraded, much the way the entire internet society has. Anonymity breeds behavior that wouldn't be tolerated if no such anonymity existed.
Of course I don't think it is actually that simple. I'm not an idiot.
However, as I said "to sum up" implies pretty clearly (at least I thought it does) that when speaking only in generalities, as in more high level "10 thousand foot view" scope of things, the points I made would have strengthened each games unique identity, thus allowing it to "stand out" in a crowded field.
But when games are just "WoW clone + twist" it's like playing Where's Waldo-
Everything looks exactly the same until you find that one point of difference, tell yourself "oh hey that's cool" and move on to the next one. I believe the massive hype + launch numbers + mass exodus trend can be blamed almost wholly on these games failing to carve out a solid identity for themselves.
People who hate corpse runs and losing XP, are looking for an easier game with less challenge and risk. I don't think it's related to casual or not. Plenty of casuals don't mind these things.
Originally posted by CalmOceans People who hate corpse runs and losing XP, are looking for an easier game with less challenge and risk. I don't think it's related to casual or not. Plenty of casuals don't mind these things.
Corpse runs and losing XP are certainly related to risk, but have nothing to do with challenge.
Challenge does NOT equal unforgiving or unfair.
For example, I believe in Bloodborne for PS4 if you die you drop your currency, and can go back to your corpse and retrieve it or kill the monster that killed you to get it back or something.
That is pretty much a corpse run / XP loss. Right?
If they removed that aspect of the game - would it make the fights themselves any less challenging?
Not one bit.
It would make the game a little more forgiving, and would encourage players to take more risks as the penalty for failure isn't as high, but the actual challenge of the mechanics of the game would be unaffected.
It's the "kicking you while you are down" attitude.
Getting into the ring with Pacquiao wouldn't be any more/less challenging of a fight if he was allowed to steal your shoes when you were lying on the mat drooling.
Originally posted by CalmOceans People who hate corpse runs and losing XP, are looking for an easier game with less challenge and risk. I don't think it's related to casual or not. Plenty of casuals don't mind these things.
Challenge is how much skill is required to avoid failure.
Penalty is what happens if you fail.
Corpse runs and losing XP are penalty, not challenge.
Note that the only skill involved here is before penalty happens, so penalties have no bearing on challenge.
Which is why penalty-heavy games sort of are more casual in nature (if we define casual vs. hardcore in terms of the level of skill gamers need to perform well in these games), because the penalties end up taking up a significant portion of time -- time which isn't spent seeking new challenges, which therefore reduces the number of genuine skill challenges involved.
The greatest trick is to slap the word "HARDCORE!" on a perma-death button to make players feel cool for choosing that option, despite the fact that they'll inevitably play more cautiously and so not experience skill challenges as intensely, and by extension it's going to be experienced as a more casual game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Originally posted by CalmOceans People who hate corpse runs and losing XP, are looking for an easier game with less challenge and risk. I don't think it's related to casual or not. Plenty of casuals don't mind these things.
Challenge is how much skill is required to avoid failure.
Penalty is what happens if you fail.
Corpse runs and losing XP are penalty, not challenge.
Note that the only skill involved here is before penalty happens, so penalties have no bearing on challenge.
Which is why penalty-heavy games sort of are more casual in nature (if we define casual vs. hardcore in terms of the level of skill gamers need to perform well in these games), because the penalties end up taking up a significant portion of time -- time which isn't spent seeking new challenges, which therefore reduces the number of genuine skill challenges involved.
The greatest trick is to slap the word "HARDCORE!" on a perma-death button to make players feel cool for choosing that option, despite the fact that they'll inevitably play more cautiously and so not experience skill challenges as intensely, and by extension it's going to be experienced as a more casual game.
I would disagree with that sentiment to an extent.
You look at most games that are considered hardcore or hard and they require a large amount of time investment to overcome. I feel that anyone can beat a boss in game regardless of the game. Not everyone can persevere through trails that are not always fun and require a lot of commitment to get through. There are different kinds of challenge. The first you mention is pure skill it takes to beat an opponent strategically. That is a skill most people can accomplish as the games are designed for you to beat the bosses eventually. The first one is not something everyone can do. Some people don't have large attention spans. Some consider x a waste of time. Some thing it's not enjoyable to have to repeat something or figure it out with no help. There is more to it than then and they are all valid points. The problem is that is the only true challenge in game that prevents everyone from reaching the top and getting every item. Anything that can be done quickly just about anyone can and will accomplish. Even the raids don't take that long anymore. Time investment is really the only thing that gives these games any type of meaning since time is valuable and patience is hard to come bye.
That is pretty much a corpse run / XP loss. Right?
If they removed that aspect of the game - would it make the fights themselves any less challenging?
Not one bit.
Course it would, you would get many more chances and many more tries within the same period of time. If the game removed the ability to die, you'd just be able to try 20 times more than if you did die, that means you could learn the fight much sooner than if you were allowed to make many more mistakes.
How is getting the fight done in 1 try not more challenging than in 20? It's far easier if you get 20 chances instead of 1.
Of course dying in MMO makes them more challenging, you get less time to learn the fight, you need higher motivation, it just makes everything more difficult.
I dunno, lots of people who play Hardcore in Diablo focus almost entirely on defensive and healing stats so the risk of death is a lot lower, which just makes everything take longer to kill.
I think challenge comes from going in over your head, trying something more difficult than you think you can beat, moving up to the "next level" of gameplay - not being cautious and careful and avoiding anything that could possibly defeat you.
Challenge is playing against someone you know is as good or better than you.
Death penalty just makes you more adverse to risk.
In the end, if you have to try over and over and over again to beat something, it really doesn't matter if you have 5 minutes between attempts or 5 seconds.
Victory is not determined by the time in between, it will be determined by the time actually executing the challenging task.
Anything that makes it actually HARDER on successive attempts is poorly designed, as there is really no reason to put in a negative feedback loop for your players.
I also don't think it is wise to make it easier on successive attempts either - kind of takes away from the challenge if you can just fail your way to victory.
I dunno, lots of people who play Hardcore in Diablo focus almost entirely on defensive and healing stats so the risk of death is a lot lower, which just makes everything take longer to kill.
I think challenge comes from going in over your head, trying something more difficult than you think you can beat, moving up to the "next level" of gameplay - not being cautious and careful and avoiding anything that could possibly defeat you.
Challenge is playing against someone you know is as good or better than you.
Death penalty just makes you more adverse to risk.
In the end, if you have to try over and over and over again to beat something, it really doesn't matter if you have 5 minutes between attempts or 5 seconds.
Victory is not determined by the time in between, it will be determined by the time actually executing the challenging task.
Anything that makes it actually HARDER on successive attempts is poorly designed, as there is really no reason to put in a negative feedback loop for your players.
I also don't think it is wise to make it easier on successive attempts either - kind of takes away from the challenge if you can just fail your way to victory.
I think that is part of the challenge. Not many people are willing to risk taking something down if there is something to lose by dying. That means only the ones that are will succeed in advancing.
If you take time out of the equation, then you are able to argue that corpse runs or death penalties or XP loss don't make a game more challengine. But the reality is that MMO, and our world, revolve around time.
That's why EQ's betas were so successful, the ability to have corpse runs no longer affect you. the few weeks a year we could play in easymode if we got accpeted into a beta, the ability to learn a raid at a very fast pace. That's why MMO have these boss practice mode in some game, the ability to have deaths no longer affect you. The less time is required for recover, the faster you learn a boss. Certainly, when the corpse recovery was cumbersome and time consuming such as in EQ, it made everything more challenging as a result, expansions didn't wait until you learned the raid.
Awe, that mean old Blizzard turned the pile of garbage that was EQ1 into something that more than few fringe nerds want to play and all these years later you nerds are still consumed with bitterness about it... so sad... so very very sad...
The market has spoken and no one with any money to invest is remotely interested in risking their own money to make a game anything like EQ1. Maybe you guys should be working more hours rather than coming here as you'll need it to "crowdfund" a "spiritual successor" to your beloved EQ1... or give more money to Pantheon... that works too...
The only concept of any real merit brought up in the OP's article was the loss of social gamers. Which in turn is hilarious to me because the oldschool game I remember with by far the highest percentage of social gamers was Ragnarok Online which ironically had none of the the EQ1 combat elements the author lauded as creating a pro-social environment.
In reality no one is willing to risk any money on anything in this genre. Every year the money going towards new MMOs has gotten smaller until for the first time ever we are at a place where not a single AAA mmo is on the upcoming games list from the west. Pretending that there was something wrong with EQ1 or that style of game is undesirable is fallacy and reveals your own bitterness.
There hasn't been a game like classic mmorpgs since prior to WoW, so theres no statistics of how many people would want to play them or how well they would do in the modern market. Comparing their modernized versions does not apply.
If you take time out of the equation, then you are able to argue that corpse runs or death penalties or XP loss don't make a game more challengine. But the reality is that MMO, and our world, revolve around time.
That's why EQ's betas were so successful, the ability to have corpse runs no longer affect you. the few weeks a year we could play in easymode if we got accpeted into a beta, the ability to learn a raid at a very fast pace. That's why MMO have these boss practice mode in some game, the ability to have deaths no longer affect you. The less time is required for recover, the faster you learn a boss. Certainly, when the corpse recovery was cumbersome and time consuming such as in EQ, it made everything more challenging as a result, expansions didn't wait until you learned the raid.
It wasn't even only death penalty.
Having no tutorials/GPS/Maps, content that was not always available due to spawn times/day night cycles, and content that was contested.
This all went towards making sure not everyone was easily able to get everything in game.
Of course it wasn't all time sync that made it difficult to advance. That was a large part of it, but the encounters were also pretty challenging to the extent you could still easily be killed camping mobs 20 to 30 levels below you.
I dunno, lots of people who play Hardcore in Diablo focus almost entirely on defensive and healing stats so the risk of death is a lot lower, which just makes everything take longer to kill.
I think challenge comes from going in over your head, trying something more difficult than you think you can beat, moving up to the "next level" of gameplay - not being cautious and careful and avoiding anything that could possibly defeat you.
Challenge is playing against someone you know is as good or better than you.
Death penalty just makes you more adverse to risk.
In the end, if you have to try over and over and over again to beat something, it really doesn't matter if you have 5 minutes between attempts or 5 seconds.
Victory is not determined by the time in between, it will be determined by the time actually executing the challenging task.
Anything that makes it actually HARDER on successive attempts is poorly designed, as there is really no reason to put in a negative feedback loop for your players.
I also don't think it is wise to make it easier on successive attempts either - kind of takes away from the challenge if you can just fail your way to victory.
I have to agree with you, adding huge penalties to death rarely creates more PvP for example, it has the opposite effect actually. Like full loot for example, these games just never get any traction, it just creates wider and wider margins between players, then the game slowly withers and dies. There are no modern successful examples. EVE cant be used since you can play risk free in that game indefinitely and never run out of stuff to do. I'm referring to games where every scenario involving contact with other players is high risk. DF though I love the game and still play is a perfect example. All the combat in that game involves ultra high risk and massive down time.
Originally posted by CalmOceans Not dying in EQ was certainly part of the challenge in EQ. Dying and corpse runs made the game more challenging.
Not at all.
Unicycling across a tightrope while juggling involves the exact same amount of skill to do successfully whether there's a net under the tightrope or a lava flow. The penalty doesn't change the skill required by the challenge.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Awe, that mean old Blizzard turned the pile of garbage that was EQ1 into something that more than few fringe nerds want to play and all these years later you nerds are still consumed with bitterness about it... so sad... so very very sad...
The market has spoken and no one with any money to invest is remotely interested in risking their own money to make a game anything like EQ1. Maybe you guys should be working more hours rather than coming here as you'll need it to "crowdfund" a "spiritual successor" to your beloved EQ1... or give more money to Pantheon... that works too...
The only concept of any real merit brought up in the OP's article was the loss of social gamers. Which in turn is hilarious to me because the oldschool game I remember with by far the highest percentage of social gamers was Ragnarok Online which ironically had none of the the EQ1 combat elements the author lauded as creating a pro-social environment.
In reality no one is willing to risk any money on anything in this genre. Every year the money going towards new MMOs has gotten smaller until for the first time ever we are at a place where not a single AAA mmo is on the upcoming games list from the west. Pretending that there was something wrong with EQ1 or that style of game is undesirable is fallacy and reveals your own bitterness.
There hasn't been a game like classic mmorpgs since prior to WoW, so theres no statistics of how many people would want to play them or how well they would do in the modern market. Comparing their modernized versions does not apply.
What about Vanguard? I would agree that there really aren't great stats to show whether the spiritual successor to EQ1 would be a success today or not. The reality, though, is that MMORPGs were a niche at one point. That's MMORPGs in their purest form were a niche. Probably still ARE a niche. Problem is that, over time, there has been very little data to support that this niche could even support a game these days. One game we can look at is EVE. It's, arguably, the MOST successful sandbox MMORPG right now. Not fantasy, but it's the most popular sandbox.
EVE reported 500K subscribers in 2013. That's been their high water mark. Since then they haven't reported anything, but some people with lots of time (Love these people btw!! I'm one!) estimate that they've lost approximately 18% of their subscribers in the past 2 years, which would suggest a downturn, plus they've been cracking down on botters, so that could also account for a lot of it.
Unfortunately that's not really motivating for a developer. WoW is anomalous, every genre they enter, they create an accessible format which is geared towards mass appeal and they, essentially, lead the market in every genre they've entered, IMO. So if EVE is the watermark for a successful subscriber-based game, that's scary as hell! It also tells us that the genre itself hasn't really grown that much, and when I say genre I mean those who really enjoy the high-fantasy EQ1 style games. Those who who have actually played a table-top RPG, lol.
Originally posted by CalmOceans Not dying in EQ was certainly part of the challenge in EQ. Dying and corpse runs made the game more challenging.
Not at all.
Unicycling across a tightrope while juggling involves the exact same amount of skill to do successfully whether there's a net under the tightrope or a lava flow. The penalty doesn't change the skill required by the challenge.
It's not the same thing, since that's permadeath, which EQ didn't have. Getting 20 chances to cycle over that rope is less challenging than getting 1.
The player who can jump onto the rope instantly again, will learn to ride accross it much faster than the person having to waste 2 hours climbing back on it. A death penalty impacts how fast you can learn something. Since our world revolves around time, being able to recover instantly, makes thing easier.
Where your argument makes sense, is in a world without time, in some kind of vacuum where you don't account for the time cost of corpse recovery and XP loss, that's not a world we live in.
Originally posted by CalmOceans Not dying in EQ was certainly part of the challenge in EQ. Dying and corpse runs made the game more challenging.
Not at all.
Unicycling across a tightrope while juggling involves the exact same amount of skill to do successfully whether there's a net under the tightrope or a lava flow. The penalty doesn't change the skill required by the challenge.
I think you miss their point.
More risk means less people are going to take the risk. In reality when someone has gone out to explore in history few people are willing to do it because it's a risk. There are only a few people who are willing to go into and unknown and risk their life.
The same thing applies when you have a penalty. The risk is greater so not many people will be willing to take the risk. This mimics the real world and is more interesting. It creates a scenario where not everyone is going to be able to do everything in the game. That makes everything that is done in the game more valuable.
Weather or not the actual act of what you are doing is more difficult or not is irrelevant. It's how much you are risking that is important and the deciding factor on weather it means something or not.
Comments
Oh ffs. EQ had every type of player, college kids, people with full time jobs, stay-at-home moms.
I don't know of anyone who actually mocked EQ players, you seem to be trying your best though. Nothing better to do in your basement or something? I guess it's easy to stereotype people when you sit comfortably behind a PC.
EQ raiding was not hard. The game was a joke all about numbers. There is a reason that so few in WoW have beaten the higher level raids outside of LFR with is like any game on easy mode.
By the time WoW came out, EQ had the Gates of Discord expansion. It took another EQ expansion, and another level cap before any of the tacvi raid were cleared. By that time, WoW's raids had long been beaten. By the time WoW's raids were beaten, most guilds in EQ hadn't even made it past Uqua, they were either still clearing PoTime from 2 expansions prior to OOW, or were struggling with Ikkinz trials.
Not only was WoW's content much easier, the amount of people who participated in WoW in raids was much higher than in EQ. Up till WoW, raiding in the latest expansion was pretty much for the 1%, WoW allowed anyone to participate in raids, they made them more accessible, and smaller.
EQ, was definitely a time intensive game, in all the years i played, i never actually got a single one of my characters to max level, levelling was an extremely lengthy process, for most of the time, you had to queue to join a group camping the spawns, it most certainly was not a casual friendly game, and if you didn't have 3 or 4 hours to spend playing then, you really were at a disadvantage, definitely an aspect of MMO's that is best left far in the past tbh, as personally i much prefer the casual friendly option, and if there is one thing that WoW did, it was open up MMO's to casual players, and brought Online gaming, out of the dark ages, and made them accessible to all, certainly levelling became a much more fun experience instead of an ordeal. Yeah, EQ was great in it's time, but, after WoW, EQ1's time was up.
The argument that EQ wasn't casual friendly, is only true if you value progression to such a degree, that you tie enjoyment to progress. Progression was slow in Everquest, a lot of your time you were required to socialize, to make friends, to build groups. If that is anti-casual or not, is a matter of opinion.
If you can't enjoy a game at your own pace, if you feel like the goal is not to have fun or to socialize, but the goal when you log in is to level to XX, or getting item X,Y,Z, then older games weren't for you. But plenty of casual players could enjoy a game merely by playing, and their enjoyment wasn't measured by the amount of progress they made. Their enjoyment was measured by how many friends they made, the people they talked to, and the adventures they had, that's why many casuals had no problem in EQ, the time they spent with people they liked, was more valuable to them than getting that rare item.
Casual & Hardcore are play styles, not game features.
It's all about investment and effort.
How much time am I going to invest into the game, and how serious do I take it?
That, to me, is the difference between casual and hardcore.
Sure, there are certain in-game systems that lend themselves towards one end of the spectrum - for example:
1. Raiding generally requires a larger time commitment and effort, but there are plenty of casual raiders out there
2. Quest based progression certainly can be played casually in smaller doses, but there are plenty who power-play through an entire games worth of quests for achievement and such, or on a dozen alts, which is quite hardcore
I think once people finally start to understand what casual and hardcore really mean, our conversations about MMOs will be a little more intelligent.
The point?
WoW was/is as successful as it is because they really, really, really nailed this concept. People on these boards always say that games that "try to be everything to everybody" will fail - and in almost all cases that is very true. For Blizzard with WoW, they somehow figured it out and actually achieved this lofty goal. WoW is certainly the outlier though.
I doubt we'll see another MMO pull off the same feat.
Of course I don't think it is actually that simple. I'm not an idiot.
However, as I said "to sum up" implies pretty clearly (at least I thought it does) that when speaking only in generalities, as in more high level "10 thousand foot view" scope of things, the points I made would have strengthened each games unique identity, thus allowing it to "stand out" in a crowded field.
But when games are just "WoW clone + twist" it's like playing Where's Waldo-
Everything looks exactly the same until you find that one point of difference, tell yourself "oh hey that's cool" and move on to the next one. I believe the massive hype + launch numbers + mass exodus trend can be blamed almost wholly on these games failing to carve out a solid identity for themselves.
Corpse runs and losing XP are certainly related to risk, but have nothing to do with challenge.
Challenge does NOT equal unforgiving or unfair.
For example, I believe in Bloodborne for PS4 if you die you drop your currency, and can go back to your corpse and retrieve it or kill the monster that killed you to get it back or something.
That is pretty much a corpse run / XP loss. Right?
If they removed that aspect of the game - would it make the fights themselves any less challenging?
Not one bit.
It would make the game a little more forgiving, and would encourage players to take more risks as the penalty for failure isn't as high, but the actual challenge of the mechanics of the game would be unaffected.
It's the "kicking you while you are down" attitude.
Getting into the ring with Pacquiao wouldn't be any more/less challenging of a fight if he was allowed to steal your shoes when you were lying on the mat drooling.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I would disagree with that sentiment to an extent.
You look at most games that are considered hardcore or hard and they require a large amount of time investment to overcome. I feel that anyone can beat a boss in game regardless of the game. Not everyone can persevere through trails that are not always fun and require a lot of commitment to get through. There are different kinds of challenge. The first you mention is pure skill it takes to beat an opponent strategically. That is a skill most people can accomplish as the games are designed for you to beat the bosses eventually. The first one is not something everyone can do. Some people don't have large attention spans. Some consider x a waste of time. Some thing it's not enjoyable to have to repeat something or figure it out with no help. There is more to it than then and they are all valid points. The problem is that is the only true challenge in game that prevents everyone from reaching the top and getting every item. Anything that can be done quickly just about anyone can and will accomplish. Even the raids don't take that long anymore. Time investment is really the only thing that gives these games any type of meaning since time is valuable and patience is hard to come bye.
Course it would, you would get many more chances and many more tries within the same period of time. If the game removed the ability to die, you'd just be able to try 20 times more than if you did die, that means you could learn the fight much sooner than if you were allowed to make many more mistakes.
How is getting the fight done in 1 try not more challenging than in 20? It's far easier if you get 20 chances instead of 1.
Of course dying in MMO makes them more challenging, you get less time to learn the fight, you need higher motivation, it just makes everything more difficult.
I dunno, lots of people who play Hardcore in Diablo focus almost entirely on defensive and healing stats so the risk of death is a lot lower, which just makes everything take longer to kill.
I think challenge comes from going in over your head, trying something more difficult than you think you can beat, moving up to the "next level" of gameplay - not being cautious and careful and avoiding anything that could possibly defeat you.
Challenge is playing against someone you know is as good or better than you.
Death penalty just makes you more adverse to risk.
In the end, if you have to try over and over and over again to beat something, it really doesn't matter if you have 5 minutes between attempts or 5 seconds.
Victory is not determined by the time in between, it will be determined by the time actually executing the challenging task.
Anything that makes it actually HARDER on successive attempts is poorly designed, as there is really no reason to put in a negative feedback loop for your players.
I also don't think it is wise to make it easier on successive attempts either - kind of takes away from the challenge if you can just fail your way to victory.
I think that is part of the challenge. Not many people are willing to risk taking something down if there is something to lose by dying. That means only the ones that are will succeed in advancing.
If you take time out of the equation, then you are able to argue that corpse runs or death penalties or XP loss don't make a game more challengine. But the reality is that MMO, and our world, revolve around time.
That's why EQ's betas were so successful, the ability to have corpse runs no longer affect you. the few weeks a year we could play in easymode if we got accpeted into a beta, the ability to learn a raid at a very fast pace. That's why MMO have these boss practice mode in some game, the ability to have deaths no longer affect you. The less time is required for recover, the faster you learn a boss. Certainly, when the corpse recovery was cumbersome and time consuming such as in EQ, it made everything more challenging as a result, expansions didn't wait until you learned the raid.
In reality no one is willing to risk any money on anything in this genre. Every year the money going towards new MMOs has gotten smaller until for the first time ever we are at a place where not a single AAA mmo is on the upcoming games list from the west. Pretending that there was something wrong with EQ1 or that style of game is undesirable is fallacy and reveals your own bitterness.
There hasn't been a game like classic mmorpgs since prior to WoW, so theres no statistics of how many people would want to play them or how well they would do in the modern market. Comparing their modernized versions does not apply.
It wasn't even only death penalty.
Having no tutorials/GPS/Maps, content that was not always available due to spawn times/day night cycles, and content that was contested.
This all went towards making sure not everyone was easily able to get everything in game.
Of course it wasn't all time sync that made it difficult to advance. That was a large part of it, but the encounters were also pretty challenging to the extent you could still easily be killed camping mobs 20 to 30 levels below you.
I have to agree with you, adding huge penalties to death rarely creates more PvP for example, it has the opposite effect actually. Like full loot for example, these games just never get any traction, it just creates wider and wider margins between players, then the game slowly withers and dies. There are no modern successful examples. EVE cant be used since you can play risk free in that game indefinitely and never run out of stuff to do. I'm referring to games where every scenario involving contact with other players is high risk. DF though I love the game and still play is a perfect example. All the combat in that game involves ultra high risk and massive down time.
Not at all.
Unicycling across a tightrope while juggling involves the exact same amount of skill to do successfully whether there's a net under the tightrope or a lava flow. The penalty doesn't change the skill required by the challenge.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
What about Vanguard? I would agree that there really aren't great stats to show whether the spiritual successor to EQ1 would be a success today or not. The reality, though, is that MMORPGs were a niche at one point. That's MMORPGs in their purest form were a niche. Probably still ARE a niche. Problem is that, over time, there has been very little data to support that this niche could even support a game these days. One game we can look at is EVE. It's, arguably, the MOST successful sandbox MMORPG right now. Not fantasy, but it's the most popular sandbox.
EVE reported 500K subscribers in 2013. That's been their high water mark. Since then they haven't reported anything, but some people with lots of time (Love these people btw!! I'm one!) estimate that they've lost approximately 18% of their subscribers in the past 2 years, which would suggest a downturn, plus they've been cracking down on botters, so that could also account for a lot of it.
Unfortunately that's not really motivating for a developer. WoW is anomalous, every genre they enter, they create an accessible format which is geared towards mass appeal and they, essentially, lead the market in every genre they've entered, IMO. So if EVE is the watermark for a successful subscriber-based game, that's scary as hell! It also tells us that the genre itself hasn't really grown that much, and when I say genre I mean those who really enjoy the high-fantasy EQ1 style games. Those who who have actually played a table-top RPG, lol.
Crazkanuk
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It's not the same thing, since that's permadeath, which EQ didn't have. Getting 20 chances to cycle over that rope is less challenging than getting 1.
The player who can jump onto the rope instantly again, will learn to ride accross it much faster than the person having to waste 2 hours climbing back on it. A death penalty impacts how fast you can learn something. Since our world revolves around time, being able to recover instantly, makes thing easier.
Where your argument makes sense, is in a world without time, in some kind of vacuum where you don't account for the time cost of corpse recovery and XP loss, that's not a world we live in.
I think you miss their point.
More risk means less people are going to take the risk. In reality when someone has gone out to explore in history few people are willing to do it because it's a risk. There are only a few people who are willing to go into and unknown and risk their life.
The same thing applies when you have a penalty. The risk is greater so not many people will be willing to take the risk. This mimics the real world and is more interesting. It creates a scenario where not everyone is going to be able to do everything in the game. That makes everything that is done in the game more valuable.
Weather or not the actual act of what you are doing is more difficult or not is irrelevant. It's how much you are risking that is important and the deciding factor on weather it means something or not.