No company has the power to "ruin" gamers, because games dont ruin players.
Players ruin themselves with choices they make.
Games only have power if you give them power to control your life - so the fault is always with the player.
A game can't turn itself on and make you play.
A company can't make you play their games.
The choice is always squarely in player's hands.
While i agree with you, especially on the personal responsibility, the game absolutely has the "ability" to ruin players.
When they knowingly pray on psychological or physiological traits there is something wrong with that. Governments have traditionally regulated this kind of activity, like when cigarette companies had ad's targetting kids because they knew they would get them hooked on it for life, due to its addictive nature.
The issue comes down to where do you draw the line between personal responsibility and predatory practices?
Some people have ridiculous assertions (I.e. bloomberg and his limiting soda sizes BS), and others are on the opposite end of the spectrum, almost anarchist, etc.
I definitely think that modern MMO's, particularly a lot of the F2P games, and ESPECIALLY things like farmville, don't even try to hide the fact that they're preying on these traits of humanity, and to me thats predatory and should be regulated. At least to the point that maybe there is a warning of some sort so that people can't say they weren't aware of it. (i.e. cigarettes).
I would never support the gov't stepping in to the point of banning these acitivities, but i do think there is some room for improvement as far as educating people, etc.
The government regulates enough. I wouldn't invite them to regulate anything. Soon as they start, where do they stop. Thats always the problem with those types of issues. Its up to people to make the right decisions, or suffer the consequences. Honestly, restrictions only make things more appealing.
"Did BLIZZARD ruin . . .?" is probably the wrong question.
At the risk of pointing a finger at one individual, which often times isn't accurate, in this case I'm forced to say: Look rather at a Bobby Kotick.
Blizzard is "just a company". It is WHO is running that company that establishes reality for that company, it's priorities, direction, and philosophy for as long as they are in power.
Do a little research on Bobby Kotick, look over some of his presentations and public speaking. Look at how he viewed (his philosophy) Game Development . . . . and a playerbase . . . . and what he decided he was going to encourage, both in a product and what he was going to cater to in a customer base.
Then put 2 + 2 together.
In the end he did promote financial success for Blizzard if we strictly look at numbers, but at the expense of Gaming overall IMO.
"Did BLIZZARD ruin . . .?" is probably the wrong question.
At the risk of pointing a finger at one individual, which often times isn't accurate, in this case I'm forced to say: Look rather at a Bobby Kotick.
Blizzard is "just a company". It is WHO is running that company that establishes reality for that company, it's priorities, direction, and philosophy for as long as they are in power.
Do a little research on Bobby Kotick, look over some of his presentations and public speaking. Look at how he viewed (his philosophy) Game Development . . . . and a playerbase . . . . and what he decided he was going to encourage, both in a product and what he was going to cater to in a customer base.
Then put 2 + 2 together.
In the end he did promote financial success for Blizzard if we strictly look at numbers, but at the expense of Gaming overall IMO.
Tell me more about how one man (Kotick) is able to force players to play games they don't like.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
MMO gaming has been "ruined" by players and their unrealistic expectations, not by Blizzard.
Seriously, if you're really an MMO fan you should be on your knees kissing Blizzard's behind - and no, I don't play WoW, and no, I'm not some fanboi. Blizzard is far from perfect. But if it weren't for the enormous success of WoW, you might not have all of the MMO options you have today, and that includes ALL payment models.
Blizzard has, over time, created the game that I believe they themselves want to play, and lo and behold, it has appealed to millions of people - whether you like the game or not is inconsequential. WoW has high challenge levels for those who seek it out (mythic/heroic stuff), yet the core of the game is easily accessible to just about anyone, and has multiple layers of content. Again, whether you like the content or not doesn't matter; WoW still has more of it than anyone else, which is a large part of the reason why just about every other sub game in existence has failed except ARR: they don't have enough to do.
Really not sure why it's become so "cool" to blame WoW or its devs for the awful current state of MMOs. You should be thanking them for all of their hard work, even if you hate the game; I know I do, and I don't ever plan to return to WoW. Doesn't matter though. Their juggernaut has paved the way for what you're playing now, including well-done excellence like ARR and Guild Wars and Eve, all the way down to the latest cookie-cutter, ffa pvp f2p piece of crap.
"Why would I want to loose a religion upon my people? Religions wreck from within - Empires and individuals alike! It's all the same." - God Emperor of Dune
I played EVE while going full-time to college and raiding full-time in WoW.
Eve skills train in real time. You can play a little or a lot and the character training will be at the same speed.
conveniently everyone leaves this aspect out.
Also, unless you're flying with Rooks and Kings, you don't need 2 years to "fly with the big guys". I was in nullsec in 3 months and without battleship skills.
What you just spewed out in your post is the result of people trying to play EVE like WoW and realizing "this isn't gonna work." then judging the game through themepark lenses.
For example...gearing. In most MMOs you aim for that Best-in-Slot and cant wait to go smash face with it once you got it. In eve? you take the best "off-the-shelf, cheap, affordable, replaceable" item and fit it in your PvP ship. Why? because you know fully well by the time you go to bed tonight you may not have it anymore.
Don't judge EVE so narrowly. Plenty of pilots join nullsec corps every day with 1-2 weeks of "life" and grow to be just fine. By comparison in a themepark it takes at least that long to join a raiding or pvp guild because of Leveling.
I've never owned WoW. I did a trial, twice. It was fine enough but I never had any urge to buy it and absorb myself in it.
EVE on the other hand, I played for 10+ years. I'd still call myself an EVE Online player and I can say that EVE DID ruin most games for me. The passive SP system removed my willingness to grind in other games, to level in other games. Even income in EVE. most of mine is from market and PI. I don't grind ISK.
EVE Online made me a lazy gamer. When that is combined with my first MMO, SWG and the sand box OW level system, most games are DOA for me. If I can't just run around and kill stuff, gather stuff, build stuff until I get bored and log out for the day, I lose interest fast. Anything forced is instant death for that game and me.
WoW? From what I see, it built up gaming. It defined it. Destroy it? No. 2000 WoW clones might have hurt the industry but saturation is frequent in everything.
WoW didn't ruin anything. It merely popularized an otherwise niche genre. The problem is that developers have failed repeatedly to "listen" to MMORPG gamers. By listen, I mean they must try to understand the conditions that prompted the demands and eventual disinterest of thousands of gamers who traditionally invested large swathes of their free time in virtual worlds. The long development time of MMORPGs combined with the desire of publishers to fund copycats plunged us into a dark age we're still trying to claw out of, but to blame a landmark game that brought light to a genre many were not aware of is to put the blame on the shoulders of people who instead deserve praise.
MMORPGs are still RPGs, and the reason people complain is that they can see there are wonderful experiences to be had in the genre of RPGs elsewhere. Yet they love the interpersonal interaction they get in MMOs, so of course they stick with them despite grumbling out their ears. The popularity of the sub genre is waning more due to distrust in publishers than a lack of love.
"Did BLIZZARD ruin . . .?" is probably the wrong question.
At the risk of pointing a finger at one individual, which often times isn't accurate, in this case I'm forced to say: Look rather at a Bobby Kotick.
Blizzard is "just a company". It is WHO is running that company that establishes reality for that company, it's priorities, direction, and philosophy for as long as they are in power.
Do a little research on Bobby Kotick, look over some of his presentations and public speaking. Look at how he viewed (his philosophy) Game Development . . . . and a playerbase . . . . and what he decided he was going to encourage, both in a product and what he was going to cater to in a customer base.
Then put 2 + 2 together.
In the end he did promote financial success for Blizzard if we strictly look at numbers, but at the expense of Gaming overall IMO.
Tell me more about how one man (Kotick) is able to force players to play games they don't like.
I knew some parents once who fed their kid anything he wanted.
Didn't work out so well for the kid.
Back to what the OP was getting at, I believe, generally, the paradigm established by the bottom-line only driven, recycle-recycle-recycle . . . . avoid "new" because that costs more . . . model established by the Bobby Koticks of Dev Houses have had a degrading influence on both the quality of offerings out there as well as the quality of gamers.
"In the Day" (defined here as pre-Burning Crusades WoW) I recall a much higher percentage of gamers who knew how to:
Pull
Offpull . . . meaning a true, surgical, "peel" of a selected mob.
CC
Tank . . . meaning knowing when to face mobs AWAY from the party/raid, when to move the mob, etc., not just stand there and take a pounding.
etc.
And I mean the above in the true senses of each, not what I see on display 99% of the time nowadays, and for the past several years. "Pulling" is viewed as nothing more than poking a mob with a ranged shot nowadays. So, of course, that's ALL that anyone does: Zap something, yell out 'Imma Pull it ever-bodies" . . . ZAP . . . then run the bastich right back INTO the raid and the healers and the clothies.
No coordination between the Tank and Puller, just zappity-zap chicken-heading.
"Peeling"? No one knows what your are talking about anymore, they think you're talking about peeling a potato. My brother and I were playing Archeage together for a while, the Crimson Rift event. Tons of mobs spawn up in three waves, 3rd wave the worst. people chicken-heading zapping mobs, elites all rush over and crush the raid. I ask if anyone would like some single mob pulls/peeling and what do I get? GTFO, you can't single pull these nub.
Right up until my brother and I stepped to the side and single pulled selected quest target mobs out from under their attendant "posses" . . . . every time. Basic pull / offpull-peel technique you'd see all the time prior to the recycle-kiddification of MMOs took hold.
It's not that everything was perfect "in the day". You had people that knew what to do, and people who didn't and did it anyway. It's the RATIO, the frequency and prevalence that's way higher nowadays.
In that respect, because MMO's nowadays simplifying everything . . . . you lose the "training grounds" if you will that actually DID test human beings. Tested their ability to work as teams, practiced and coordinated.
Simply giving the lowest common denominators what they want, just like that miserable fat kid given whatever he wanted, you end up, in the end, with something that doesn't really progress the genre no matter it lines the pockets of the Bobby Koticks.
I knew some parents once who fed their kid anything he wanted.
Didn't work out so well for the kid.
Back to what the OP was getting at, I believe, generally, the paradigm established by the bottom-line only driven, recycle-recycle-recycle . . . . avoid "new" because that costs more . . . model established by the Bobby Koticks of Dev Houses have had a degrading influence on both the quality of offerings out there as well as the quality of gamers.
"In the Day" (defined here as pre-Burning Crusades WoW) I recall a much higher percentage of gamers who knew how to:
Pull
Offpull . . . meaning a true, surgical, "peel" of a selected mob.
CC
Tank . . . meaning knowing when to face mobs AWAY from the party/raid, when to move the mob, etc., not just stand there and take a pounding.
etc.
And I mean the above in the true senses of each, not what I see on display 99% of the time nowadays, and for the past several years. "Pulling" is viewed as nothing more than poking a mob with a ranged shot nowadays. So, of course, that's ALL that anyone does: Zap something, yell out 'Imma Pull it ever-bodies" . . . ZAP . . . then run the bastich right back INTO the raid and the healers and the clothies.
No coordination between the Tank and Puller, just zappity-zap chicken-heading.
"Peeling"? No one knows what your are talking about anymore, they think you're talking about peeling a potato. My brother and I were playing Archeage together for a while, the Crimson Rift event. Tons of mobs spawn up in three waves, 3rd wave the worst. people chicken-heading zapping mobs, elites all rush over and crush the raid. I ask if anyone would like some single mob pulls/peeling and what do I get? GTFO, you can't single pull these nub.
Right up until my brother and I stepped to the side and single pulled selected quest target mobs out from under their attendant "posses" . . . . every time. Basic pull / offpull-peel technique you'd see all the time prior to the recycle-kiddification of MMOs took hold.
It's not that everything was perfect "in the day". You had people that knew what to do, and people who didn't and did it anyway. It's the RATIO, the frequency and prevalence that's way higher nowadays.
In that respect, because MMO's nowadays simplifying everything . . . . you lose the "training grounds" if you will that actually DID test human beings. Tested their ability to work as teams, practiced and coordinated.
Simply giving the lowest common denominators what they want, just like that miserable fat kid given whatever he wanted, you end up, in the end, with something that doesn't really progress the genre no matter it lines the pockets of the Bobby Koticks.
My .02 anyway. /shrug
Do you, or don't you like change? Your post starts complaining that nothing changes, then shifts into complaining about all the changes.
You should settle on what you really want. Do you want all the old MMORPG mechanics exactly as they used to be (no change) or do you want change (which has clearly happened)?
As for the rest, certainly a lot of developers have failed to copy WOW's design philosophy (instead focusing on WOW's skin-deep featureset) and that has created some mediocre experiences. But that's definitely not what the OP is saying -- he's implying gamers changed (and the only way they changed is having their standards set higher than the drudgery of bad early MMORPGs.)
The skillset of modern WOW players is different from launch because WOW itself has changed.
Previously you would CC everything and kill-one-mob-at-a-time. Nowadays instead of a shallow one-at-a-time fight, you must deal with a group of enemies at once.
Pulling was an occasionally deep skill which (when performed right) meant that everyone else was waiting on the pull (so everyone else is experiencing less depth than if they went straight into the next combat puzzle.) So little was lost, and slightly more gained.
Tanks still do face mobs away from the raid. But not all mobs. Because change and variation are good, like you sort of imply, and having to do the same thing for every pull (like CC) would be too boring and predictable.
Tanks still peel. It's probably a bit generous to imply peeling was ever "surgical".
So not everything has changed out of your list, but much of it has (and even the stuff that's stayed the same is used periodically so that it's varied.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I knew some parents once who fed their kid anything he wanted.
Didn't work out so well for the kid.
Back to what the OP was getting at, I believe, generally, the paradigm established by the bottom-line only driven, recycle-recycle-recycle . . . . avoid "new" because that costs more . . . model established by the Bobby Koticks of Dev Houses have had a degrading influence on both the quality of offerings out there as well as the quality of gamers.
"In the Day" (defined here as pre-Burning Crusades WoW) I recall a much higher percentage of gamers who knew how to:
Pull
Offpull . . . meaning a true, surgical, "peel" of a selected mob.
CC
Tank . . . meaning knowing when to face mobs AWAY from the party/raid, when to move the mob, etc., not just stand there and take a pounding.
etc.
And I mean the above in the true senses of each, not what I see on display 99% of the time nowadays, and for the past several years. "Pulling" is viewed as nothing more than poking a mob with a ranged shot nowadays. So, of course, that's ALL that anyone does: Zap something, yell out 'Imma Pull it ever-bodies" . . . ZAP . . . then run the bastich right back INTO the raid and the healers and the clothies.
No coordination between the Tank and Puller, just zappity-zap chicken-heading.
"Peeling"? No one knows what your are talking about anymore, they think you're talking about peeling a potato. My brother and I were playing Archeage together for a while, the Crimson Rift event. Tons of mobs spawn up in three waves, 3rd wave the worst. people chicken-heading zapping mobs, elites all rush over and crush the raid. I ask if anyone would like some single mob pulls/peeling and what do I get? GTFO, you can't single pull these nub.
Right up until my brother and I stepped to the side and single pulled selected quest target mobs out from under their attendant "posses" . . . . every time. Basic pull / offpull-peel technique you'd see all the time prior to the recycle-kiddification of MMOs took hold.
It's not that everything was perfect "in the day". You had people that knew what to do, and people who didn't and did it anyway. It's the RATIO, the frequency and prevalence that's way higher nowadays.
In that respect, because MMO's nowadays simplifying everything . . . . you lose the "training grounds" if you will that actually DID test human beings. Tested their ability to work as teams, practiced and coordinated.
Simply giving the lowest common denominators what they want, just like that miserable fat kid given whatever he wanted, you end up, in the end, with something that doesn't really progress the genre no matter it lines the pockets of the Bobby Koticks.
My .02 anyway. /shrug
Do you, or don't you like change? Your post starts complaining that nothing changes, then shifts into complaining about all the changes.
You should settle on what you really want. Do you want all the old MMORPG mechanics exactly as they used to be (no change) or do you want change (which has clearly happened)?
As for the rest, certainly a lot of developers have failed to copy WOW's design philosophy (instead focusing on WOW's skin-deep featureset) and that has created some mediocre experiences. But that's definitely not what the OP is saying -- he's implying gamers changed (and the only way they changed is having their standards set higher than the drudgery of bad early MMORPGs.)
The skillset of modern WOW players is different from launch because WOW itself has changed.
Previously you would CC everything and kill-one-mob-at-a-time. Nowadays instead of a shallow one-at-a-time fight, you must deal with a group of enemies at once.
Pulling was an occasionally deep skill which (when performed right) meant that everyone else was waiting on the pull (so everyone else is experiencing less depth than if they went straight into the next combat puzzle.) So little was lost, and slightly more gained.
Tanks still do face mobs away from the raid. But not all mobs. Because change and variation are good, like you sort of imply, and having to do the same thing for every pull (like CC) would be too boring and predictable.
Tanks still peel. It's probably a bit generous to imply peeling was ever "surgical".
So not everything has changed out of your list, but much of it has (and even the stuff that's stayed the same is used periodically so that it's varied.)
You've overthought a reaction.
I responded to the spirit of the question by the OP. You are of course free to disagree.
In your enthusiasm for reaction however, you've gone too far afield into the woods.
WOW, in comparison to other games, is addictiveness built into design.
Not wanting to burst your bubble, but Everquest was nicknamed "Evercrack" years before WoW was even in the projects of Blizzard. WoW is way more accessible to everyone and way less demanding time wise than EQ has ever been.
Wow didn't ruin anything... it improved the whole genre, by making it accessible instead of being a second job if you wanted to experience all the content.
Actually, Blizzard hired Vegas experts to specifically help them build addictiveness into the game back in the day... The original reward systems were built off of the same structures as casinos...
I call bullshit. And it's up to you to prove that the stuff you just made out of the blue is real.
Please, be my guest, give us any semi-valid proof that what you posted is true.
Or are you confusing with all the F2P games which were released since then, and which indeed use a gambling model as basis for their cash shops ?
I'm too tired to search to hard, but on searching Blizzard entertainment works with vegas gaming to bring addictive design to World Of warcraft..I found quite a few interesting articles, mostly from important publications. Here's just one.
(from article) That some online games are addictive is no secret to anyone who has played a good one. They are the golf of electronic sports. The game designer Bill Roper, whose new project, Hellgate: London, is to be released next Wednesday, knows just why that is.
'It’s because of the power of what psychologists call intermittent rewards,” Mr. Roper said
“We want the player to be experiencing something new every 8 to 10 seconds,” Mr. Roper said, “whether that’s killing a monster, a barrel exploding or a piece of loot dropping. But it’s the randomization that’s key. You don’t know the exact layout, you don’t know exactly what kinds of monsters there are each time, and you don’t know what loot will drop.
“And that plays into the slot-machine mentality, where every time you kill something you’re pulling that handle. And just like with a slot machine there are the lights flashing and the sounds going, the constant bing-bing-bing, and every once in a while the siren goes off and you’ve gotten the triple bars straight across — the jackpot. That’s a very powerful psychological attraction there.”
Honestly the more I'm reading the more it's apparent I'm not far off the mark, All these old Blizzard devs seem to focus on these psychologically stimulating mechanics heavily, both when they worked there and after they moved on. Bright colors flashing, randomization, etc... it's a staple of these folks, we see it in everything they've done since Diablo. Many Asian studios are heavily into this stuff as well, as are the environments they game in, which basically look like casinos.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Originally posted by BeansnBread You're far off the mark because you think it's primarily Blizzard.
What I think of Blizzard is that they were masters of such design, no more.. no less. Not that it's bad to be good at that in anyway, people put too much stock into a title, rather than the substance of a thread (IE you're hung up on a sensational statement created to draw the reader in)..
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Originally posted by BeansnBread You're far off the mark because you think it's primarily Blizzard.
What I think of Blizzard is that they were masters of such design, no more.. no less. Not that it's bad to be good at that in anyway, people put too much stock into a title, rather than the substance of a thread (IE you're hung up on a sensational statement created to draw the reader in)..
Then you agree that Blizzard did not ruin gamers?
What i mean by that is, has their mastery of addictive design (psychology more or less) set gamers into a perpetual need for rewards?
This is what led me to believe that you actually believe that. You just miss entirely that it's not Blizzard that set gamers into a perpetual need for rewards - that is fundamental to human psychology.
Originally posted by BeansnBread You're far off the mark because you think it's primarily Blizzard.
What I think of Blizzard is that they were masters of such design, no more.. no less. Not that it's bad to be good at that in anyway, people put too much stock into a title, rather than the substance of a thread (IE you're hung up on a sensational statement created to draw the reader in)..
Then you agree that Blizzard did not ruin gamers?
What i mean by that is, has their mastery of addictive design (psychology more or less) set gamers into a perpetual need for rewards?
This is what led me to believe that you actually believe that. You just miss entirely that it's not Blizzard that set gamers into a perpetual need for rewards - that is fundamental to human psychology.
Do I believe Blizzard literally "ruined" anyone? No. However, have they conditioned certain groups into an expectation of constant reward? IMO for sure. Are they the only company doing that? Nope. They're just the best at it. They've sold more pinatas than anyone else. You see the result all over today, so many with the idea that X without a reward is just not fun, anything slowing down the flow of those rewards is a waste of development. Be it cut scenes, NPC conversation/dialogue, story in general... RP systems in these types of designs are always lacking as again, it's irrelevant to most of those taking part, it's all about pulling that lever again and again. That is conditioning.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Originally posted by BeansnBread You're far off the mark because you think it's primarily Blizzard.
What I think of Blizzard is that they were masters of such design, no more.. no less. Not that it's bad to be good at that in anyway, people put too much stock into a title, rather than the substance of a thread (IE you're hung up on a sensational statement created to draw the reader in)..
Then you agree that Blizzard did not ruin gamers?
What i mean by that is, has their mastery of addictive design (psychology more or less) set gamers into a perpetual need for rewards?
This is what led me to believe that you actually believe that. You just miss entirely that it's not Blizzard that set gamers into a perpetual need for rewards - that is fundamental to human psychology.
Do I believe Blizzard literally "ruined" anyone? No. However, have they conditioned certain groups into an expectation of constant reward? IMO for sure. Are they the only company doing that? Nope. They're just the best at it. They've sold more pinatas than anyone else. You see the result all over today, so many with the idea that X without a reward is just not fun, anything slowing down the flow of those rewards is a waste of development. Be it cut scenes, NPC conversation/dialogue, story in general... RP systems in these types of designs are always lacking as again, it's irrelevant to most of those taking part, it's all about pulling that lever again and again. That is conditioning.
And yet people buy and play games like Mass Effect, Skyrim and the Witcher in the 10's of millions. Those games not only have the levers to pull, but they also have the story and the "RP" - and people love them to death for it.
One thing that bothers me is that you seem to think Blizzard games like WoW and Diablo have little or no redeeming qualities and that the main thing they depend on to attract customers is addiction. When WoW released, it had by far the smoothest and most responsive gameplay in the MMORPG space. It had a more coherent and focused story (although puerile) than previous games. It had higher production values. It focused more on balance than games before it. It's world was huge and detailed. It had character.
Does Blizzard use random reward scheduling in it's design? Yes - along with every other MMORPG/game that came before and after it. Were they perhaps better at it than anyone else? Maybe, I don't really know. But the idea that they are the ones that conditioned people to enjoy random reward scheduling is giving Blizzard far, far too much credit.
Anyone that played EQ 16 yrs ago and didn't realize random spawns and rare drops are almost exactly like slot machines and other forms of gambling just isn't paying attention. Similar system in all MMOs to some varying degree.
@beansnbread 'Does Blizzard use random reward scheduling in it's design? Yes - along with every other MMORPG/game that came before and after it.''
Your missing the point, blizzard changed the cadance of the reward model to something that is way beyond any other game, which would be tolerable perhaps, but when they fail to produce content and instead release ilevels on gear what you have is a cynical operation to keep you paying (the ever present rush to keep ahead). good games release content for their customers money - why do you think blizzard feel safe eneough to not release any content for years at a time.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
I responded to the spirit of the question by the OP. You are of course free to disagree.
In your enthusiasm for reaction however, you've gone too far afield into the woods.
I'm not sure the OP's question had the spirit of ignoring logic though. He at least poses an opinion within the bounds of possibility.
So if we "come back home" to your original implication that Kotick somehow forced millions of players to play a game they dislike (or that good game design is somehow "unhealthy" for us,) then that still leaves us at a place where what you said makes no sense whatsoever.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You just miss entirely that it's not Blizzard that set gamers into a perpetual need for rewards - that is fundamental to human psychology.
Exactly.
People forget (or fail to realize in the first place) that Skinner's experiment didn't create a psychological need, it simply revealed a natural trait of human psychology. The same is true of games, whether they're called Skinner Boxes or not. Because every single successful game is built upon some kind of rewards, whether or not they're discrete items/weapons you can acquire and use.
"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 Bladestrom @beansnbread 'Does Blizzard use random reward scheduling in it's design? Yes - along with every other MMORPG/game that came before and after it.''
Your missing the point, blizzard changed the cadance of the reward model to something that is way beyond any other game, which would be tolerable perhaps, but when they fail to produce content and instead release ilevels on gear what you have is a cynical operation to keep you paying (the ever present rush to keep ahead). good games release content for their customers money - why do you think blizzard feel safe eneough to not release any content for years at a time.
You're missing the larger picture:
Before MMORPGs, genres used reasonably paced rewards.
Early MMORPGs used extremely slow-paced rewards (largely to sell more subscription time.)
WOW, and post-WOW MMORPGs used reasonably paced rewards.
WOW wasn't the aberration. Early MMORPGs were.
"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 Bladestrom @beansnbread 'Does Blizzard use random reward scheduling in it's design? Yes - along with every other MMORPG/game that came before and after it.''
Your missing the point, blizzard changed the cadance of the reward model to something that is way beyond any other game, which would be tolerable perhaps, but when they fail to produce content and instead release ilevels on gear what you have is a cynical operation to keep you paying (the ever present rush to keep ahead). good games release content for their customers money - why do you think blizzard feel safe eneough to not release any content for years at a time.
You're missing the larger picture:
Before MMORPGs, genres used reasonably paced rewards.
Early MMORPGs used extremely slow-paced rewards (largely to sell more subscription time.)
WOW, and post-WOW MMORPGs used reasonably paced rewards.
WOW wasn't the aberration. Early MMORPGs were.
I guess it depends on the game.
Most old RPGs were fairly slow to progress.
You would have to do random battles for hours in one spot often times to gather the money to buy new equipment and the needed level to progress.
I'm not saying this was a great design, but it was different.
MMOs just took it to another level.
Not many people want to spend entire days playing games at the expense of their health.
There is also the problem of it being very repetitive and nothing new being learned from it.
It was a good alternative to real life in some cases though.
Games in general used to leave a lot more up to the player. That was the good part if you wanted to learn how to do things via practice instead of going through a tutorial. Games also expected players to have a lot more patience in terms of learning how to play the game, where to go, and what to do. That is no longer the case due to large amounts of competition.
I guess it all depends on what you are playing the game for. If you are just playing it to relax you probably want to be guided around and shown what to do so that you don't have to think much. If you are playing the game to try and challenge your intellect a small amount most games these days would likely fail as they generally show you exactly what to do. I know this topic of weather learning something via intuition or relying on someone to show you how is actually a measure of intellect in some way or if it's just a matter of time. I think it's a matter of intellect as you need to be able to problem solve to figure things out without help and it also requires patience which I have read is an important part of intelligence.
I'm not really looking for a game that challenges my intelligence these days. I usually look for something that will entertain me like a movie might.
The main problem is that if you work during the game and get stressed out from that you need some time to just relax as a part of maintaining your health. At this point you don't always want something that is potentially make you more uptight by having to concentrate a lot. You kind of just want things to flow along.
MMORPGs don't seem to give this relaxation to me. They are always like work. They the most simple tasks you can think of and then it's repeated over and over again a million times. On top of it the story is usually fairly dull and not presented to the player in a way that is pleasant to view.
I still don't understand the purpose of modern day MMORPGs. The defining characteristic of MMORPGs was always that it was a virtual world to live in with others. Now everything in instanced off and they are like bad single player games with a few multiplayer events you can partake in. They also have a much worse payment system where pay walls are often set up to get you to buy things in a cash shop. It's not really filling a niche IMO. Most single player games offer the same thing, do it better, have no pay wall, offer multiplayer, and make more money for the companies to boot.
If I roll my eyes any harder they might get stuck there. Jesus Christ. You're no better than anyone else because you like to explore virtual worlds as some sort of humble joe. You're neither an explorer nor a dreamer, you're a man playing a video game. The first two tend to have a real life impact on their communities and environment. You piss around with polygons and pixels that other people have made.
Originally posted by Bladestrom @beansnbread 'Does Blizzard use random reward scheduling in it's design? Yes - along with every other MMORPG/game that came before and after it.''
Your missing the point, blizzard changed the cadance of the reward model to something that is way beyond any other game, which would be tolerable perhaps, but when they fail to produce content and instead release ilevels on gear what you have is a cynical operation to keep you paying (the ever present rush to keep ahead). good games release content for their customers money - why do you think blizzard feel safe eneough to not release any content for years at a time.
You're missing the larger picture:
Before MMORPGs, genres used reasonably paced rewards.
Early MMORPGs used extremely slow-paced rewards (largely to sell more subscription time.)
WOW, and post-WOW MMORPGs used reasonably paced rewards.
WOW wasn't the aberration. Early MMORPGs were.
1, agree 2 largely agree.
3 WOW ( vanilla, tbc) and other mmo agree.
However since wotlk and in fact more or less in line with activision involvement the cadance increased significantly in WOW to a point far far beyond early WOW, Older mmo and all other modern AAA MMO.
Imagine you stopped playing ESO, GW2, WOW, LOTR for 6 months then return and join a battleground. Note the difference in playability in WOW compared to any other of the titles i.e unplayable because the power level differential. Worse, then consider the amount of content that caused that power gain, was it real content, or was it just increases in ilevel boosts to items. That is the Blizzard legacy, vaporware masked with ilevel and achievement points, all for the pricely sum of 1 billion a year.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
You would have to do random battles for hours in one spot often times to gather the money to buy new equipment and the needed level to progress.
I'm not saying this was a great design, but it was different.
MMOs just took it to another level.
Not many people want to spend entire days playing games at the expense of their health.
There is also the problem of it being very repetitive and nothing new being learned from it.
It was a good alternative to real life in some cases though.
Games in general used to leave a lot more up to the player. That was the good part if you wanted to learn how to do things via practice instead of going through a tutorial. Games also expected players to have a lot more patience in terms of learning how to play the game, where to go, and what to do. That is no longer the case due to large amounts of competition.
I guess it all depends on what you are playing the game for. If you are just playing it to relax you probably want to be guided around and shown what to do so that you don't have to think much. If you are playing the game to try and challenge your intellect a small amount most games these days would likely fail as they generally show you exactly what to do. I know this topic of weather learning something via intuition or relying on someone to show you how is actually a measure of intellect in some way or if it's just a matter of time. I think it's a matter of intellect as you need to be able to problem solve to figure things out without help and it also requires patience which I have read is an important part of intelligence.
I'm not really looking for a game that challenges my intelligence these days. I usually look for something that will entertain me like a movie might.
The main problem is that if you work during the game and get stressed out from that you need some time to just relax as a part of maintaining your health. At this point you don't always want something that is potentially make you more uptight by having to concentrate a lot. You kind of just want things to flow along.
MMORPGs don't seem to give this relaxation to me. They are always like work. They the most simple tasks you can think of and then it's repeated over and over again a million times. On top of it the story is usually fairly dull and not presented to the player in a way that is pleasant to view.
I still don't understand the purpose of modern day MMORPGs. The defining characteristic of MMORPGs was always that it was a virtual world to live in with others. Now everything in instanced off and they are like bad single player games with a few multiplayer events you can partake in. They also have a much worse payment system where pay walls are often set up to get you to buy things in a cash shop. It's not really filling a niche IMO. Most single player games offer the same thing, do it better, have no pay wall, offer multiplayer, and make more money for the companies to boot.
The period where early RPGs offered Dragon Warrior / Final Fantasy 1 style grinds didn't last all that long. Eventually the genre realized that FF4/6 style content was better, and by Bioware's early offerings (BG onward) there wasn't grind at all. So we can't say most RPGs were like that. A handful early on, but not most.
The reason it died in early RPGs is the same reason it died in MMORPGs: more repetition means shorter-lived fun.
Being led around or not isn't really on-topic, nor is it why WOW dominated the genre and hasn't become unseated (notably by many MMORPG attempts which also led players around.)
The purpose of modern MMORPGs is fun. That's the purpose of gaming in general. Modern MMORPGs have tighter rules which generate superior gameplay to older MMORPGs (most of which were endless mob-grinds and far more repetitive than modern MMORPGs.) 80% of everything is crap of course and that holds true of both old and new MMORPGs, but the best modern MMORPG was better than the best oldschool MMORPGs.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comments
The government regulates enough. I wouldn't invite them to regulate anything. Soon as they start, where do they stop. Thats always the problem with those types of issues. Its up to people to make the right decisions, or suffer the consequences. Honestly, restrictions only make things more appealing.
"Did BLIZZARD ruin . . .?" is probably the wrong question.
At the risk of pointing a finger at one individual, which often times isn't accurate, in this case I'm forced to say: Look rather at a Bobby Kotick.
Blizzard is "just a company". It is WHO is running that company that establishes reality for that company, it's priorities, direction, and philosophy for as long as they are in power.
Do a little research on Bobby Kotick, look over some of his presentations and public speaking. Look at how he viewed (his philosophy) Game Development . . . . and a playerbase . . . . and what he decided he was going to encourage, both in a product and what he was going to cater to in a customer base.
Then put 2 + 2 together.
In the end he did promote financial success for Blizzard if we strictly look at numbers, but at the expense of Gaming overall IMO.
Wherever you go, there you are.
Tell me more about how one man (Kotick) is able to force players to play games they don't like.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
MMO gaming has been "ruined" by players and their unrealistic expectations, not by Blizzard.
Seriously, if you're really an MMO fan you should be on your knees kissing Blizzard's behind - and no, I don't play WoW, and no, I'm not some fanboi. Blizzard is far from perfect. But if it weren't for the enormous success of WoW, you might not have all of the MMO options you have today, and that includes ALL payment models.
Blizzard has, over time, created the game that I believe they themselves want to play, and lo and behold, it has appealed to millions of people - whether you like the game or not is inconsequential. WoW has high challenge levels for those who seek it out (mythic/heroic stuff), yet the core of the game is easily accessible to just about anyone, and has multiple layers of content. Again, whether you like the content or not doesn't matter; WoW still has more of it than anyone else, which is a large part of the reason why just about every other sub game in existence has failed except ARR: they don't have enough to do.
Really not sure why it's become so "cool" to blame WoW or its devs for the awful current state of MMOs. You should be thanking them for all of their hard work, even if you hate the game; I know I do, and I don't ever plan to return to WoW. Doesn't matter though. Their juggernaut has paved the way for what you're playing now, including well-done excellence like ARR and Guild Wars and Eve, all the way down to the latest cookie-cutter, ffa pvp f2p piece of crap.
"Why would I want to loose a religion upon my people? Religions wreck from within - Empires and individuals alike! It's all the same." - God Emperor of Dune
I've never owned WoW. I did a trial, twice. It was fine enough but I never had any urge to buy it and absorb myself in it.
EVE on the other hand, I played for 10+ years. I'd still call myself an EVE Online player and I can say that EVE DID ruin most games for me. The passive SP system removed my willingness to grind in other games, to level in other games. Even income in EVE. most of mine is from market and PI. I don't grind ISK.
EVE Online made me a lazy gamer. When that is combined with my first MMO, SWG and the sand box OW level system, most games are DOA for me. If I can't just run around and kill stuff, gather stuff, build stuff until I get bored and log out for the day, I lose interest fast. Anything forced is instant death for that game and me.
WoW? From what I see, it built up gaming. It defined it. Destroy it? No. 2000 WoW clones might have hurt the industry but saturation is frequent in everything.
WoW didn't ruin anything. It merely popularized an otherwise niche genre. The problem is that developers have failed repeatedly to "listen" to MMORPG gamers. By listen, I mean they must try to understand the conditions that prompted the demands and eventual disinterest of thousands of gamers who traditionally invested large swathes of their free time in virtual worlds. The long development time of MMORPGs combined with the desire of publishers to fund copycats plunged us into a dark age we're still trying to claw out of, but to blame a landmark game that brought light to a genre many were not aware of is to put the blame on the shoulders of people who instead deserve praise.
MMORPGs are still RPGs, and the reason people complain is that they can see there are wonderful experiences to be had in the genre of RPGs elsewhere. Yet they love the interpersonal interaction they get in MMOs, so of course they stick with them despite grumbling out their ears. The popularity of the sub genre is waning more due to distrust in publishers than a lack of love.
I knew some parents once who fed their kid anything he wanted.
Didn't work out so well for the kid.
Back to what the OP was getting at, I believe, generally, the paradigm established by the bottom-line only driven, recycle-recycle-recycle . . . . avoid "new" because that costs more . . . model established by the Bobby Koticks of Dev Houses have had a degrading influence on both the quality of offerings out there as well as the quality of gamers.
"In the Day" (defined here as pre-Burning Crusades WoW) I recall a much higher percentage of gamers who knew how to:
Pull
Offpull . . . meaning a true, surgical, "peel" of a selected mob.
CC
Tank . . . meaning knowing when to face mobs AWAY from the party/raid, when to move the mob, etc., not just stand there and take a pounding.
etc.
And I mean the above in the true senses of each, not what I see on display 99% of the time nowadays, and for the past several years. "Pulling" is viewed as nothing more than poking a mob with a ranged shot nowadays. So, of course, that's ALL that anyone does: Zap something, yell out 'Imma Pull it ever-bodies" . . . ZAP . . . then run the bastich right back INTO the raid and the healers and the clothies.
No coordination between the Tank and Puller, just zappity-zap chicken-heading.
"Peeling"? No one knows what your are talking about anymore, they think you're talking about peeling a potato. My brother and I were playing Archeage together for a while, the Crimson Rift event. Tons of mobs spawn up in three waves, 3rd wave the worst. people chicken-heading zapping mobs, elites all rush over and crush the raid. I ask if anyone would like some single mob pulls/peeling and what do I get? GTFO, you can't single pull these nub.
Right up until my brother and I stepped to the side and single pulled selected quest target mobs out from under their attendant "posses" . . . . every time. Basic pull / offpull-peel technique you'd see all the time prior to the recycle-kiddification of MMOs took hold.
It's not that everything was perfect "in the day". You had people that knew what to do, and people who didn't and did it anyway. It's the RATIO, the frequency and prevalence that's way higher nowadays.
In that respect, because MMO's nowadays simplifying everything . . . . you lose the "training grounds" if you will that actually DID test human beings. Tested their ability to work as teams, practiced and coordinated.
Simply giving the lowest common denominators what they want, just like that miserable fat kid given whatever he wanted, you end up, in the end, with something that doesn't really progress the genre no matter it lines the pockets of the Bobby Koticks.
My .02 anyway. /shrug
Wherever you go, there you are.
Do you, or don't you like change? Your post starts complaining that nothing changes, then shifts into complaining about all the changes.
You should settle on what you really want. Do you want all the old MMORPG mechanics exactly as they used to be (no change) or do you want change (which has clearly happened)?
As for the rest, certainly a lot of developers have failed to copy WOW's design philosophy (instead focusing on WOW's skin-deep featureset) and that has created some mediocre experiences. But that's definitely not what the OP is saying -- he's implying gamers changed (and the only way they changed is having their standards set higher than the drudgery of bad early MMORPGs.)
The skillset of modern WOW players is different from launch because WOW itself has changed.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You've overthought a reaction.
I responded to the spirit of the question by the OP. You are of course free to disagree.
In your enthusiasm for reaction however, you've gone too far afield into the woods.
Wherever you go, there you are.
I'm too tired to search to hard, but on searching Blizzard entertainment works with vegas gaming to bring addictive design to World Of warcraft..I found quite a few interesting articles, mostly from important publications. Here's just one.
According to Bill roper They've been doing this for a while....this is him being interviewed about Hellgate, but he explains the psychology at play at length through out. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/27/arts/television/27hell.html?_r=0
(from article) That some online games are addictive is no secret to anyone who has played a good one. They are the golf of electronic sports. The game designer Bill Roper, whose new project, Hellgate: London, is to be released next Wednesday, knows just why that is.
'It’s because of the power of what psychologists call intermittent rewards,” Mr. Roper said
“We want the player to be experiencing something new every 8 to 10 seconds,” Mr. Roper said, “whether that’s killing a monster, a barrel exploding or a piece of loot dropping. But it’s the randomization that’s key. You don’t know the exact layout, you don’t know exactly what kinds of monsters there are each time, and you don’t know what loot will drop.
“And that plays into the slot-machine mentality, where every time you kill something you’re pulling that handle. And just like with a slot machine there are the lights flashing and the sounds going, the constant bing-bing-bing, and every once in a while the siren goes off and you’ve gotten the triple bars straight across — the jackpot. That’s a very powerful psychological attraction there.”
Honestly the more I'm reading the more it's apparent I'm not far off the mark, All these old Blizzard devs seem to focus on these psychologically stimulating mechanics heavily, both when they worked there and after they moved on. Bright colors flashing, randomization, etc... it's a staple of these folks, we see it in everything they've done since Diablo. Many Asian studios are heavily into this stuff as well, as are the environments they game in, which basically look like casinos.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
What I think of Blizzard is that they were masters of such design, no more.. no less. Not that it's bad to be good at that in anyway, people put too much stock into a title, rather than the substance of a thread (IE you're hung up on a sensational statement created to draw the reader in)..
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Then you agree that Blizzard did not ruin gamers?
What i mean by that is, has their mastery of addictive design (psychology more or less) set gamers into a perpetual need for rewards?
This is what led me to believe that you actually believe that. You just miss entirely that it's not Blizzard that set gamers into a perpetual need for rewards - that is fundamental to human psychology.
Do I believe Blizzard literally "ruined" anyone? No. However, have they conditioned certain groups into an expectation of constant reward? IMO for sure. Are they the only company doing that? Nope. They're just the best at it. They've sold more pinatas than anyone else. You see the result all over today, so many with the idea that X without a reward is just not fun, anything slowing down the flow of those rewards is a waste of development. Be it cut scenes, NPC conversation/dialogue, story in general... RP systems in these types of designs are always lacking as again, it's irrelevant to most of those taking part, it's all about pulling that lever again and again. That is conditioning.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
And yet people buy and play games like Mass Effect, Skyrim and the Witcher in the 10's of millions. Those games not only have the levers to pull, but they also have the story and the "RP" - and people love them to death for it.
One thing that bothers me is that you seem to think Blizzard games like WoW and Diablo have little or no redeeming qualities and that the main thing they depend on to attract customers is addiction. When WoW released, it had by far the smoothest and most responsive gameplay in the MMORPG space. It had a more coherent and focused story (although puerile) than previous games. It had higher production values. It focused more on balance than games before it. It's world was huge and detailed. It had character.
Does Blizzard use random reward scheduling in it's design? Yes - along with every other MMORPG/game that came before and after it. Were they perhaps better at it than anyone else? Maybe, I don't really know. But the idea that they are the ones that conditioned people to enjoy random reward scheduling is giving Blizzard far, far too much credit.
Your missing the point, blizzard changed the cadance of the reward model to something that is way beyond any other game, which would be tolerable perhaps, but when they fail to produce content and instead release ilevels on gear what you have is a cynical operation to keep you paying (the ever present rush to keep ahead). good games release content for their customers money - why do you think blizzard feel safe eneough to not release any content for years at a time.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I'm not sure the OP's question had the spirit of ignoring logic though. He at least poses an opinion within the bounds of possibility.
So if we "come back home" to your original implication that Kotick somehow forced millions of players to play a game they dislike (or that good game design is somehow "unhealthy" for us,) then that still leaves us at a place where what you said makes no sense whatsoever.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
No, never played and never wanted to.
The only way they might have ruinned anything is by the other gaming companies trying to copy their success.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
Exactly.
People forget (or fail to realize in the first place) that Skinner's experiment didn't create a psychological need, it simply revealed a natural trait of human psychology. The same is true of games, whether they're called Skinner Boxes or not. Because every single successful game is built upon some kind of rewards, whether or not they're discrete items/weapons you can acquire and use.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You're missing the larger picture:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I guess it depends on the game.
Most old RPGs were fairly slow to progress.
You would have to do random battles for hours in one spot often times to gather the money to buy new equipment and the needed level to progress.
I'm not saying this was a great design, but it was different.
MMOs just took it to another level.
Not many people want to spend entire days playing games at the expense of their health.
There is also the problem of it being very repetitive and nothing new being learned from it.
It was a good alternative to real life in some cases though.
Games in general used to leave a lot more up to the player. That was the good part if you wanted to learn how to do things via practice instead of going through a tutorial. Games also expected players to have a lot more patience in terms of learning how to play the game, where to go, and what to do. That is no longer the case due to large amounts of competition.
I guess it all depends on what you are playing the game for. If you are just playing it to relax you probably want to be guided around and shown what to do so that you don't have to think much. If you are playing the game to try and challenge your intellect a small amount most games these days would likely fail as they generally show you exactly what to do. I know this topic of weather learning something via intuition or relying on someone to show you how is actually a measure of intellect in some way or if it's just a matter of time. I think it's a matter of intellect as you need to be able to problem solve to figure things out without help and it also requires patience which I have read is an important part of intelligence.
I'm not really looking for a game that challenges my intelligence these days. I usually look for something that will entertain me like a movie might.
The main problem is that if you work during the game and get stressed out from that you need some time to just relax as a part of maintaining your health. At this point you don't always want something that is potentially make you more uptight by having to concentrate a lot. You kind of just want things to flow along.
MMORPGs don't seem to give this relaxation to me. They are always like work. They the most simple tasks you can think of and then it's repeated over and over again a million times. On top of it the story is usually fairly dull and not presented to the player in a way that is pleasant to view.
I still don't understand the purpose of modern day MMORPGs. The defining characteristic of MMORPGs was always that it was a virtual world to live in with others. Now everything in instanced off and they are like bad single player games with a few multiplayer events you can partake in. They also have a much worse payment system where pay walls are often set up to get you to buy things in a cash shop. It's not really filling a niche IMO. Most single player games offer the same thing, do it better, have no pay wall, offer multiplayer, and make more money for the companies to boot.
If I roll my eyes any harder they might get stuck there. Jesus Christ. You're no better than anyone else because you like to explore virtual worlds as some sort of humble joe. You're neither an explorer nor a dreamer, you're a man playing a video game. The first two tend to have a real life impact on their communities and environment. You piss around with polygons and pixels that other people have made.
1, agree 2 largely agree.
3 WOW ( vanilla, tbc) and other mmo agree.
However since wotlk and in fact more or less in line with activision involvement the cadance increased significantly in WOW to a point far far beyond early WOW, Older mmo and all other modern AAA MMO.
Imagine you stopped playing ESO, GW2, WOW, LOTR for 6 months then return and join a battleground. Note the difference in playability in WOW compared to any other of the titles i.e unplayable because the power level differential. Worse, then consider the amount of content that caused that power gain, was it real content, or was it just increases in ilevel boosts to items. That is the Blizzard legacy, vaporware masked with ilevel and achievement points, all for the pricely sum of 1 billion a year.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
The period where early RPGs offered Dragon Warrior / Final Fantasy 1 style grinds didn't last all that long. Eventually the genre realized that FF4/6 style content was better, and by Bioware's early offerings (BG onward) there wasn't grind at all. So we can't say most RPGs were like that. A handful early on, but not most.
The reason it died in early RPGs is the same reason it died in MMORPGs: more repetition means shorter-lived fun.
Being led around or not isn't really on-topic, nor is it why WOW dominated the genre and hasn't become unseated (notably by many MMORPG attempts which also led players around.)
The purpose of modern MMORPGs is fun. That's the purpose of gaming in general. Modern MMORPGs have tighter rules which generate superior gameplay to older MMORPGs (most of which were endless mob-grinds and far more repetitive than modern MMORPGs.) 80% of everything is crap of course and that holds true of both old and new MMORPGs, but the best modern MMORPG was better than the best oldschool MMORPGs.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver