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The Decline of MMORPG Culture
Consuetudo
Member UncommonPosts: 191
I will apply Oswald Spengler's cultural analysis to MMORPGs.
At the beginning, there was a naive MMORPG culture fresh in its prime. There was a uniformity between MMO players, and most were confined within about 3-4 games. This was all very natural, and the current, or the core essence that flows through the games, was strong.
However, this MMORPG cultural prime lasted for an extremely limited time, and now we have entered Hellenism: dozens of games will spring up, all lacking that current or core essence which once flowed through the genre. The players have become experts: rather than embracing the living present and experiencing excellent games, we reflect on what has already past. I'm sure that during the time when Ultima Online and vanilla WoW were things, nobody was speculating on MMORPG mechanics or conceiving of what makes a great game: people at that time played the great games. And it does not matter if those games appear as primitive now, what matters is that in their present, when those games were on the table, they were legitimately enjoyed without any analysis required. People did not have to ask themselves "what is so fun about what I am playing? What makes it so great?" They did not tell themselves "what I want from an MMO is . . . " --no! They just played them because they were there. The greatness of the MMORPG was learned from these games. The idea of the greatness of the MMORPG is not a priori knowledge, but it was gained through playing a great MMORPG.
However, that fire simply died. For whatever reason, the current that flowed through the genre simply ceased flowing. Developers, formerly innovative, now for the first time looked backward for their ideas. They deliberated upon what it takes to make a great MMORPG, and therefore the innovation ceased to be. What was presented was merely what had already occurred. We were disillusioned, as within us, that current still existed. The success of an MMORPG revolves around the expectation of the playerbase being met by the developer, and the developer fell short: the demands of the player eclipsed what the developer was willing to provide.
Thus, the MMORPG culture died. Romanticism and realism emerge, and the unifying force that seemed to be a so necessary, and which now a so absent, aspect of MMORPGs became lost. And now, as if scholars, we look back, and recount what it was that made those MMORPGs so great. Surely, we can never have another great MMORPG again--the current that flowed through the genre has passed. We can have revivals, we can have something that seems inspirational in its brief period of time, but these are just flukes: the vital current has evaporated.
The fact that we now engage in these intense debates about petty mechanical concerns, that we provide our unfulfilled romantic longings, only articulates the fact that we are dealing with a dead construct. MMORPGs are a thing that happened, and all we can muster now are revivals of the MMORPG.
Comments
I think it's more of an evolution of online gaming. In the beginning the online games that existed were large mmorpgs with very deep and fairly steep learning curve. We didn't have a choice but to play these and like them.
Later on when the internet became more mainstream games like diablo and star craft appeared. This brought a whole knew type of gamer to online play. They will hop in and out of games willy nilly and do whatever they wanted, be it trolling or helping or scamming. These types of games had very little consequence for screwing people over. In EQ or UO you lost MONTHS of grinding, in Diablo you lost a few hours at most.
Now let's time skip to broadband. EVERYONE and EVERYTHING has the internet now. Online gaming MUST cater to the markets. Now we have much more choice in terms of online gaming.
Slow relaxing teamwork? Minecraft or Starbound
Fast paced fantasy action? Vindictus or Tera
Slower paced traditional? Everquest is still around you know? WoW could be here too.
Modern Day fantasy? The Secret World
Modern Day? APB Reloaded
Steampunk? Pirate? Kung Fu? Ponies? Social? Fishing? I just can't be bothered naming them.
The difference is now people have different windows of playtime available to them. It would be nice if everyone had too many hours in the day and go farming for hours. In reality however older gamers (The guys who owned super nintendo and game boy original) now lack the time to play those.
I like being able to play something for 20 minutes or 1 and a half hours and be done with it. I also like having a large MMO i can slowly progress through. MMORPGs are waning that is for certain, however MMOGs are far more abundant and accommodating for a larger audience.
The MMORPGs that come out aren't even bad by most standards. We're just picky.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
Which metropolitan population would that be? Oh wait, their weren't any.
No cavemen were too busy learning how to survive and exploring the world. They had meaningful deaths, distance limitations, and they could only possess things that they acquired or found. Cave men were the original men, and they learned things the hard way.
MMORPGs have advanced to be efficient money making machines. OP has it right, MMORPGs went down a shitty road in evolution. The species survived, but only the dumb reproduced.
The only thing missing from MMO's for me is the teamwork. In my younger years, I used to be a table top roleplayer - AD&D, Champions, Rolemaster, etc. What was emphasised in them all was teamwork, because without your friends standing at your side you were pretty much guaranteed to die alone.
This is what pulled me in so much with original EverQuest - it was a group of people travelling out into the wilds, working as a team against all the various content, delving into dungeons and gathering more friends to take on Gods and great Evils. You had your clerics keeping people alive, warriors controlling the combat, enchanters controlling the flow of enemies, and so on.. It all worked perfectly.
Now everyone is their own person. Everyone can self heal, deal damage, take on multiple mobs, there's very little coordination required until the occasional dungeon appears. It's a big change that I really don't like. Don't get me wrong, some of the games are still fun, I've been playing The Secret World every night for the past 3 months, but they have lost that original spark that made the genre so appealing to me.
EQ released 1999
Starcraft released 1998
UO released 1997
Diablo released 1996
There were plenty of online multiplayer games around before EQ emerged, including Diablo, it didn't come along later. You actually have this the wrong way around. The whole point of EQ and UO and other MMORPG's back then was to provide you with a deeper experience than the typical hack and slash like Diablo. They went that bit further, demanded more from the player and provided a world to live in while you experienced this journey.
The change came when MMO's went from being niche products, with maybe 500k subs, to being mainstream when WoW blew the lid off. Then, as the OP points out quite rightly, the devs started to look backwards. They saw the success of WoW, compared it to other MMO's to see what made it different and then tried to emulate it.
That's when the soul went out of the genre.
I'll ignore the fact that a larger number of people are playing MMORPGs then the Ultima days and I'll try to answer in such a way that won't devolve into "The fact that we now engage in these intense debates about petty mechanical concerns, that we provide our unfulfilled romantic longings, only articulates the fact that we are dealing with a dead construct. " but I can't do that by talking specifically about the various positive changes. If I argue there has been progress someone will challenge it and I will need to qualify it more and they will respond in kind and it will all come down to personal taste.
I will say this, if it be the great civilizations of antiquity, if it be MMORPGs or if it be anything at all, nothing stays the same forever. Time is simply the measurement of change and without change there would be nothing, atleast nothing distinguishable. No blood moving to your heart to your brain, no consciousness and certainly no MMORPG "innovation". The presumption is they died (or the flame went out as you put it) as they changed and I find that highly unlikely. I would argue the flame started to die before they changed.
I'll concede there appears to be more people on forums such as these who find themselves disillusioned but I would argue it would be worse still if there was absolutely no effort to change and update the genre. How many people are playing the original Ultimta Online via an emulator? It's a small amount but there are some but it becomes even smaller (I would think non existent even) if they weren't modifying the original client. All the Ultima Online emulators I've seen mod or change some aspects of the game. I think what this goes to show you is people won't be content with the same thing for too long. It was a new and exciting idea and so the flame burned and many still hold a torch for it but it was inevitable that it wouldn't last, atleast not without change.
So if people find themselves disillusioned from the resulting change then I think it is only natural to ask themselves what change would have they preferred? From here it all comes down to taste and opinion. For example, if your opinion is graphics are the most important thing in an MMO then you would hardly decry them as not progressing or being innovative, likewise for many aspects. But as I said I won't go into specifics because I think that would be akin to conceding you are right and they are a dead construct which I'm not prepared to do. It was a good read though.
Very good story but wrong !
MMO's now are shallow shells, it's not the players, its the developers. We now have SHORT carrot-on-a-stick games with auto everything to group the players. PLAYERS HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO PLAY AS THE GAME WERE DESIGNED. And the design is not made for social interaction, leaving us with just another video game that will keep our attention for maybe 30 days if its an OK video game ( not an mmo ).
Now we level for each quest.....This is how shallow games are made !
mmo's became popular ,and people who like to be "in or hip" started to play these games even if they dont like mmorpg and then developers started to make products for this pop crowd and the rest is history.
mmorpg culture is very much live and doing just fine,it just doesnt exists on forums like this.
So, did ESO have a successful launch? Yes, yes it did.By Ryan Getchell on April 02, 2014.
**On the radar: http://www.cyberpunk.net/ **
My thoughts:
The competition for the mmog entertainment dollar intensified. Budgets grew larger to enable ever higher production values.Now large sums of money were at risk of being lost. Those risking the money demanded more safety as they saw some game failures and significant capital losses. This causes the game creators to look back to the game formulas that returned a nice profit. Players played games and got more experienced.They demanded new....better gaming experiences.This demand for new experiences...better experiences was exactly what game investors want to avoid. RISK.Uncertainty. More failures and loss of investment money by investors resulted when the same game with new lipstick was produced and failed.. The gaming population became more disillusioned and increased their demands for "better" games.
Some game designers(not the lemmings who designed what the big corporations insisted they design) are now trying to break out from the conflict between mega gaming production companies and gaming consumers. They have decided to go directly to gamers and ask for money to fund their design ideas. CROWD FUNDING was born. The stunning thing is people gave money and never demanded a piece of the pie(profits) if / when the game makes profits.(this could be the next crowdfunding iteration)
So now we have some developers who are trying to break of the cookie cutter corporate mentality on one side.....and on the other mega gaming companies who continue to follow their "safe" development formulas while using all manner of devices to disguise the warmed over dog food they are really selling. Add to this consumers new to the mmog genera who think warmed over dog food is normal,and they keep buying it while growing ever more dissatisfied as they begin to awaken to what they have been consuming.
and the beat goes on.....
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
It's more than that. One has to include the quality argument with the quantity one.
Single player MMOs, community killing cross server lfg, cash shops, paid alphas, paid betas, charging for unfinished games, crowdfunding, dumbing down, no player left behind, instancing, lobby games, 1v1 games like hearthstone being called MMOs, copy paste, paid advantages, pre-leveled characters, and on and on...
Now maybe your someone who doesn't love MMOs think hearthstone is a MMO because superdata called it that and don't care about the community, while playing MMOs as single player games and think everything is great. For the rest of us who want a virtual world, or who see some of the changes as a negative (like killing community, cash shops) the genre is in a horrible state. In fact most MMOs the first M doesn't even apply when describing them. That's how much the genre has changed.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/Nah .. it is more like preferences instead of quality.
For example ... hearthstone is a "quality" game for many (quality is subjective) ... and if people like it to be included in MMOs ... that is just what people like.
and yes, i don't love MMOs and think it is great. More choices, more kinds of gameplay, more convenient.
The quality mmo's are still available, they didn't disappear. It's most of the community out looking for something better, or that trying to find that first warm fuzzy they got from playing them. I'm not arguing the point of quality completely, it is part of it!
Your second paragraph all falls into my main point. Just because it isn't quality doesn't mean over saturation and thinning out players doesn't exist. Face it, not everyone in the world likes computer games, not everyone likes mmos, and very few probably like mmorpgs. There is a finite number of players who enjoy it and when you are given hundreds of roads to follow it thins out the masses, even if they are quality or clone type titles.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
I really don't think that the OP is right at all. You're assuming that there is a decline of any sort in the MMORPG culture when you're adjusting your "control group". So back in "the day" you've got, maybe, 500k people playing these games. Now there are tens of millions. The only way you can actually determine change is to check that original 500K people. Has their core beliefs or thoughts or play style in these games changed? Probably not.
You're assumption is basically like taking a can of yellow paint, leaving it for a couple years, then adding a can of blue paint, then leaving it again for a couple years, then opening it up after all that time and saying "HEY!! If you leave yellow paint long enough, it'll turn green!!" Simply not the case.
Overall, the industry is diluted with people who don't really "care" what's going on around them in the game and are singularly focused (on chewing through content). This particular behaviour is not something that is sustainable, and we hear all the time how the industry is "dying". Well, that's a good reason. At the end of things, though, I can say with some certainty that the people who were there at the beginning will still be there at the end, happily carrying on the way they always have.
Crazkanuk
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For these modern MMORPGS with their weekly progression caps like in FFXIV, ArchAge or Destiny, 2.5 hours a week are good enough. That is the ultimate goal of the developers. Make people play more games because that means they buy more games, more subscriptions, more cash shop items, more DLC and expansion packs. FFXIV even taking the whole thing one step further by releasing a patch every couple of months and just renaming the tokens you grind for 2-3h a week, it's hilarious.
MMORPG culture ruined by, simply answer, new MOBILE golden age.
Mobile is seen as future, mobile introduced the concepts of: FAST, OCCASIONAL, BIG REWARDING WITH LOW EFFORT, BIG EARNINGS WITH LOW EFFORT for Companies. This is the era of Candy Crush, Cip & Ciop and Facebook, big companies migrated their strategies and mind to produce easy games.
Peoples are different too, their mind is changed, new generations are mobile, fast, empty minded, easy, light.
Times are different too, crisis, no times, no money.
PC's are in second place now, pc MMORPG will be something niche, only to blame and remember just like the golden age we left 10+ years ago, future will be MOBILE believe or not ( who said Lineage to start with?? )
No I would argue that it's quality. Sure there are preferences like art style or something but the actual MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER part of MMORPGs has been compromised. The community has been killed for the sake of convenience. Calling a 1v1 card game an MMO is just idiotic. How is that massive in any way, shape, or form? It isn't. I already know your going to say some common language all these sites on the internet say hearthstone is an MMO response. Guess what those sites are wrong. Anyone able to understand the basic meaning of massive can tell you 1 versus 1 is not it.
Removing the Massively from MMOs doesn't just affect the quality it isn't even honestly describing the type of games it's labeling.
Anyway I'm going to go play this MMO called Solitaire... /eyeroll
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/Haven't you heard? It costs $10 million dollars to add a cash shop.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/"I don't give a sh*t what other people say. I play what I like and I'll pay to do it too!" - SerialMMOist
Some truth in the OP.
One thing I will say, is its not emulating things from the past that's the problem, its emulating the wrong things.
Many people are tired of solo player mmorpgs designed around convenience. The complaints are more common every day. There's an ever-growing number of people who'd like to return to MMORPGs that felt more like virtual worlds than simply games, and where challenge and risk were the norm rather than the exception.