I have never in my life agreed with an article more.

Hrimnir

http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/lamenting-the-lack-of-purposeful-choices-in-the-mmorpg-genre/

Long before MMORPGs became a homogenized cultural phenomenon thanks to World of Warcraft, pioneering virtual world players felt they were embarking on a journey in a genre that had no boundaries or limits. It was only natural to believe that this unique participatory virtual existence — only possible in fantasy MMORPGs — was the start of something special. Even though the first MMORPGs were very basic, we had a sense of anticipation that more exciting, immersive, living and breathing virtual worlds were ahead on the horizon.

It never happened.  Instead, it got worse.

If you had told me in 1999 that in 17 years the MMORPG genre had devolved into an anti-social, massively multiplayer solo video game experience, I would have laughed at you.

We were dead wrong.

Maurgrim

MMOs are mainstream gaming now, that whats happend

General-Zod

DMKano said:

If you told people in 1999 that 17 years later people would obsess with their smart phones even when sitting in the same room glued to their screen instead of talking face to face - people would laugh at you.

True

Games follow the changing preference of the players, not the other way around. Games do not drive change of the behavior in society. 

False

jesteralways

General-Zod said:

DMKano said:

Games follow the changing preference of the players, not the other way around. Games do not drive change of the behavior in society. 

False

Can you show us one country where culture and behavior of people are dictated by the norm of a game?

General-Zod

jesteralways said:

General-Zod said:

DMKano said:

Games follow the changing preference of the players, not the other way around. 

False

Can you show us one country where culture and behavior of people are dictated by the norm of a game?

I was a bit vague... fixed it.

Convenience isn't a trend and MMO's have been following the same formula up until 2004. It was the break through of WoW's success that started the snow ball.

SpottyGekko

Maurgrim said:

MMOs are mainstream gaming now, that whats happend

^^Agreed.

MMORPG's are now being played by the "average gamer", i.e. those that were playing Super Mario and Sonic on consoles back when the hardcore DnD nerds were discovering UO and EQ...

Since those ancient times, internet access has become almost universal in the western world, and everyone is now playing MMO's (even if half of them are playing on toasters)...

The vast majority of gamers prefer instant action, match-based game play, which is the exact opposite of a "virtual world".

fivoroth

What that articles fails to understand is that world of Warcraft was one of those so called virtual worlds and it felt extremely immersive more so than the zoned mmorpgs filled with loading screens before it. 

Now the shity MMOs that followed is the fault of the developers who made those games.

jesteralways

General-Zod said:

jesteralways said:

General-Zod said:

DMKano said:

Games follow the changing preference of the players, not the other way around. 

False

Can you show us one country where culture and behavior of people are dictated by the norm of a game?

I was a bit vague... fixed it.

Convenience isn't a trend and MMO's have been following the same formula up until 2004. It was the break through of WoW's success that started the snow ball.

I agree but still @DMKano is still right that games follow the changing preference of the players. If you talk to players currently playing more than 90% of them want instant action or more shinies rather than taking their time and enjoying the game world, immerse themselves in lore or to even communicate with others. Why do you think games these days even monetize chat? to stop goldselling? nope, it is because the more people who have access to chat the more people will talk about real life shit in game, completely ignoring why the communication feature exists. The reason why the mmorpg market and games are the way they are now is because that is how money spending players want them to be. "Real mmorpg players" as some like to claim in these forums are nothing but minority who still live in the era where they could play a game for 15$ month only, when companies used server that cost 100$ and internet service that cost 1000$ a month, thus in this age most companies no longer want to make games for them.

iixviiiix

There are some part i don't agree with him . specially Art of virtual world creation . He understand it wrong .

Gaming.Rocks2

DMKano said:

Games follow the changing preference of the players, not the other way around. Games do not drive change of the behavior in society. 

Game developers choose to follow the preference of the players. That's not a rule. You can have this discussion in any given industry. Taste is developed and acquired. You have an obligation to train your audience taste, elevate it. Selling people junk is not okay no matter how bad they want it. 

Many a thing affect behavior in society. Games aren't alone true, but they have a radical effect. All sorts of media have great influence over behavior of people. I'm not sure following what logic you believe video games are an exception here. 

Kyleran

Some of the things he laments such as the inability of dwarves to defend their home city (meaningful impact on the world) are inherent to theme park design, and his example of EQ1 is the grand daddy of theme parks. He is also incorrectly expecting NPCs to take on the players role of attacking the cities, or even building them.

Had he played Lineage 1, DAOC or better Shadowbane he would have found players taking and defending castles and territories (or even building cities) and others trying to burn it all to the ground.

These are the virtual world designs I expected to be built upon but except for a few poorly made and mismanaged titles such as DFO/DFUW and MO, advancement along these lines basically ceased with EVEs release in 2003.

Speaking of EVE, it actually has many of the features the author laments, but as many who make his same complaint, won't acknowledge or play it because its "not fantasy", "don't want to be a spaceship", or some other nonsensical reasoning for not really sticking with it since there are so few good options out there if this is really the gameplay designs you favor.

Instead the author keeps returning to EQ1 and lamenting what's missing in it's design, which it can't help but being what it was designed to be, the first theme park.  (and yes, I realize it gives players more freedom than modern titles, but at its core, the developers create most of the content, which is the very definition of theme park.)

Quirhid

Kyleran said:

Speaking of EVE, it actually has many of the features the author laments, but as many who make his same complaint, won't acknowledge or play it because its "not fantasy", "don't want to be a spaceship", or some other nonsensical reasoning for not really sticking with it since there are so few good options out there if this is really the gameplay designs you favor.

Those are not the reasons why people don't like Eve. Eve's gameplay is arcaic. Its nowhere near acceptable in today's standards. There's no real collision detection, no checks for line of sight, you don't have direct control over your ship, damage dealing revolves almost solely around auto attack... its horrible. If you take a look at Fractured Space you see how space combat should be done in an MMORPGs today.

Vermillion_Raventhal

Aori said:

There were plenty of anti social solo players in the early days, I was one of them. I very much enjoyed going lone wolf.

Yes, but the games weren't designed for anti social players.  You had solo combat players but there is a different level to being solo player MMORPG. 

Gaming.Rocks2

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

Aori said:

There were plenty of anti social solo players in the early days, I was one of them. I very much enjoyed going lone wolf.

Yes, but the games weren't designed for anti social players.  You had solo combat players but there is a different level to being solo player MMORPG. 

Being "social" doesn't mean "grouping with others to kill mobs". That's not social, that's using others to achieve your own goals.

But there is still a possibility of positive social interaction but there is none in solo content. 

Vermillion_Raventhal

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

Aori said:

There were plenty of anti social solo players in the early days, I was one of them. I very much enjoyed going lone wolf.

Yes, but the games weren't designed for anti social players.  You had solo combat players but there is a different level to being solo player MMORPG. 

Being "social" doesn't mean "grouping with others to kill mobs". That's not social, that's using others to achieve your own goals.

Well, that can be social.  My point was more that there was always solo combat MMORPG.  Its quite a different thing to have a game designed and encouraged single player style gaming like we have now.

Abuz0r

Wow I really agree with this article too.  I wonder how much Crowfall paid to have it written.  I'm in business I've paid money to have people write articles like this too. It goes, a really good blog post that's really true and mildly entertaining, with your company solely mentioned as a potential solution, the hero (Complete of course with a 1 way link to your website, this is called Search Engine Optimization, raising your sites relevance on the internet).   Anyhow, yes, I will try Crowfall, and yes I agree that MMOs have gone down the tube.

cheyane

I recall in the Beta of Rift that the rifts would take over whole towns and made it impossible for people to go to the town until they were cleared out or reset. People complained about quest givers being inaccessible and their reset time got reduced.

Yes games like Shadowbane actually had city sieges and such and that the author is only looking at the development of the genre through Everquest and WoW it seems. He also forgets that players evolve and the information on the internet is instant and no wonder will ever be as wondrous again.

I played Everquest from 1999 and my guild the guild that was top on Bertoxxulous were spending time killing dragons and basically taking over good camps 24 hours a day on rotation. Even then I thought it was unfair to a lot of the smaller guilds. Sounds very antisocial to me. Although yes my best memories came from the friends I met and played with but it was a pretty cut-throat  even then.

Also I had to gear up and pay an enchanter money for my resists jewellery or else I would not be in the main loot list DKP and all that. Seems pretty much how WoW was too. This was in 1999 and in Kunark and by Velious even worse. 

I'd say his rose coloured glasses are pretty opaque by now.

holdenhamlet

DMKano said:

If you told people in 1999 that 17 years later people would obsess with their smart phones even when sitting in the same room glued to their screen instead of talking face to face - people would laugh at you.

Games follow the changing preference of the players, not the other way around. Games do not drive change of the behavior in society. 

Nah.  Video games are a kind of art, and people don't know good art until they see it.

Take for example Darkest Dungeon.  I don't think many people were thinking there was a big demand for a 2-D turn-based hardmode disturbing RPG, but some guy came up with it, kickstarted it and now it's a big success.

There's no doubt that "most" MMO devs have tried to mimic WoW in the hopes of mimicing its insane profits.  None of them have succeeded.  If all we wanted was more WoW, all the WoW-clones would've done incredibly well.

It's like looking at Candy Crush and making a game called Sugar Burst with all the same mechanics.  Sure it might make a little money but it won't do much and it won't advance the industry.

The biggest problem is Devs do what you suggest and try to create a game based on statistics of what sells- instead of just setting out to make a GOOD game, with something new that will hook people.

GeezerGamer

I couldn't DISAGREE more.
"thanks to World of Warcraft," 
Stopped reading there.
Blizzard did what Blizzard did.  They created a very successful and fun game that I personally enjoyed and spent more time in than any other game in total. Blizzard didn't create WoWClone1 Online, WoWClone2 Online,.........WoWClone378 Online. Everyone else who tried to steal from WoW did this to the genre. 

Trion created Rift and said "We're Not In Azeroth Anymore"
Bioware decided Jedi need Purple gear
SOE chose to turn SWG into a class based experience
Carbine......Oh we won't even go there.
Anet said "We won't be satisfied until we're no.1"

And the list goes on. The problem is.....They didn't actually create very high quality games. They created obvious cheap knockoffs. And I know some of you are thinking "GW2" But that game was more influenced by WoW than some of the other cheap knock-offs. Everything ANET did was an attempt to create "Not-WoW Online" When they should have been making GW2.

Why?!? Why did they try to do this? There were other concepts available at the time. Concepts that, in their own way, were successful.......just not AS successful. No, Rather than baking their own cake, they all wanted a slice of someone else's pie.

Colt47

What caused the collapse of socially oriented MMORPG experiences is the fear of, and general niche appeal of, grouping together regularly to tackle challenges that far surpass the capabilities of any one person.  We live in a MMO world where a player can expect to take his lone warrior and face a T-Rex without worry of dieing and this doesn't so much as bat an eyelash, where as back in olden times the expectation is that if you see a big giant dinosaur walking towards you, you run the hell away unless you brought your best buddies with you. 

This also leads into another missing piece to the current experience: The feeling of actually conquering a zone.  It's something that got lost in the translation to the mass market MMORPG we see today and Developers have feverishly been trying to claw it back in somehow with phasing and other systems.  Basically, when we first come to a new zone in older MMORPGs where we had to grind levels, we were generally quite weak and were coming there to train.  As we got stronger, we could proceed further into the zone and see bits and bobs of new places, which is sort of what the Dark Souls series does.  This also made exploration a lot of fun, since brave explorers are almost always out classed combat wise by the creatures of the zone.  It made it an achievement to rush all the way from, say, Kazham in FFXI, to the Grotto so you could get the ninja class unlocked.

I don't know why we can't combine group finder with the olden way of doing things, while still having relatively safe zones to wonder about in for a good solo experience.  We don't need raids and non-persistent dungeon crawls to make a world feel alive.  We just need persistent ruins, forests, mountains, etc, that have a strong story to their existence.  Let us stand on the shoulders of giants, struggle to find the best materials, and team up to take on the most dangerous challenges common to the world again, but let us also learn  from what works now.  Have zones that everyone can wonder around and defeat enemies in that is the domain of our civilization, and let people progress in those zones in their own way.

Edit: Holy crap did that take more words to express than I was expecting.   O.o

Nitth

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

Aori said:

There were plenty of anti social solo players in the early days, I was one of them. I very much enjoyed going lone wolf.

Yes, but the games weren't designed for anti social players.  You had solo combat players but there is a different level to being solo player MMORPG. 

Being "social" doesn't mean "grouping with others to kill mobs". That's not social, that's using others to achieve your own goals.

I disagree. Its a group of people working towards a common goal or mutual reward.

Vorthanion

jesteralways said:

General-Zod said:

jesteralways said:

General-Zod said:

DMKano said:

Games follow the changing preference of the players, not the other way around. 

False

Can you show us one country where culture and behavior of people are dictated by the norm of a game?

I was a bit vague... fixed it.

Convenience isn't a trend and MMO's have been following the same formula up until 2004. It was the break through of WoW's success that started the snow ball.

I agree but still @DMKano is still right that games follow the changing preference of the players. If you talk to players currently playing more than 90% of them want instant action or more shinies rather than taking their time and enjoying the game world, immerse themselves in lore or to even communicate with others. Why do you think games these days even monetize chat? to stop goldselling? nope, it is because the more people who have access to chat the more people will talk about real life shit in game, completely ignoring why the communication feature exists. The reason why the mmorpg market and games are the way they are now is because that is how money spending players want them to be. "Real mmorpg players" as some like to claim in these forums are nothing but minority who still live in the era where they could play a game for 15$ month only, when companies used server that cost 100$ and internet service that cost 1000$ a month, thus in this age most companies no longer want to make games for them.

There is plenty of money to be made by catering to non-mainstream gaming.  It's up to the developers to get off their lazy asses and do it.

Vermillion_Raventhal

jesteralways said:

General-Zod said:

jesteralways said:

General-Zod said:

DMKano said:

Games follow the changing preference of the players, not the other way around. 

False

Can you show us one country where culture and behavior of people are dictated by the norm of a game?

I was a bit vague... fixed it.

Convenience isn't a trend and MMO's have been following the same formula up until 2004. It was the break through of WoW's success that started the snow ball.

I agree but still @DMKano is still right that games follow the changing preference of the players. If you talk to players currently playing more than 90% of them want instant action or more shinies rather than taking their time and enjoying the game world, immerse themselves in lore or to even communicate with others. Why do you think games these days even monetize chat? to stop goldselling? nope, it is because the more people who have access to chat the more people will talk about real life shit in game, completely ignoring why the communication feature exists. The reason why the mmorpg market and games are the way they are now is because that is how money spending players want them to be. "Real mmorpg players" as some like to claim in these forums are nothing but minority who still live in the era where they could play a game for 15$ month only, when companies used server that cost 100$ and internet service that cost 1000$ a month, thus in this age most companies no longer want to make games for them.

Not always true.  The people to be involved in charting the course of MMORPG as a genre were thrown a curveball.  WOW changed the bell curve of the genre's audience.  WOW was the first MMORPG with high playability, huge online IP, huge online base (Battlenet) and fanatical fans.  

So now you have unprecedented number of gamers playing WOW.  The old market leaders peak is 26 times smaller than WOW.  That certainly had an effect on the genre's course.  You had the genre over night change into themepark only genre.  

Vorthanion

Colt47 said:

What caused the collapse of socially oriented MMORPG experiences is the fear of, and general niche appeal of, grouping together regularly to tackle challenges that far surpass the capabilities of any one person.  We live in a MMO world where a player can expect to take his lone warrior and face a T-Rex without worry of dieing and this doesn't so much as bat an eyelash, where as back in olden times the expectation is that if you see a big giant dinosaur walking towards you, you run the hell away unless you brought your best buddies with you. 

This also leads into another missing piece to the current experience: The feeling of actually conquering a zone.  It's something that got lost in the translation to the mass market MMORPG we see today and Developers have feverishly been trying to claw it back in somehow with phasing and other systems.  Basically, when we first come to a new zone in older MMORPGs where we had to grind levels, we were generally quite weak and were coming there to train.  As we got stronger, we could proceed further into the zone and see bits and bobs of new places, which is sort of what the Dark Souls series does.  This also made exploration a lot of fun, since brave explorers are almost always out classed combat wise by the creatures of the zone.  It made it an achievement to rush all the way from, say, Kazham in FFXI, to the Grotto so you could get the ninja class unlocked.

I don't know why we can't combine group finder with the olden way of doing things, while still having relatively safe zones to wonder about in for a good solo experience.  We don't need raids and non-persistent dungeon crawls to make a world feel alive.  We just need persistent ruins, forests, mountains, etc, that have a strong story to their existence.  Let us stand on the shoulders of giants, struggle to find the best materials, and team up to take on the most dangerous challenges common to the world again, but let us also learn  from what works now.  Have zones that everyone can wonder around and defeat enemies in that is the domain of our civilization, and let people progress in those zones in their own way.

Edit: Holy crap did that take more words to express than I was expecting.   O.o

I enjoy grouping when it suits my mood, but it was never my central reason for playing MMORPGs from EQ 1999 till now.  It was the virtual world simulation, populated by live players with their own agendas that gave the virtual world it's flavor and life.  It was the ever evolving content design and expansions.  It was the slower paced, cerebral combat and the non-combat systems like crafting, exploring, housing, mini-games, guilds, chatting...etc.  It was also the hope that down the road we would get MMORPGs with consequential decision trees, destructible terrain, changing content based on player behavior and decisions, political structures, diplomacy, greater involvement by GMs with more evolved events of the non-scripted variety....etc.

Like any content, I don't want to be forced down any singular path.  I want options where I can choose what to do and when to do it when I want to.  I want solo, I want group, I want overland, I want dungeons, I want easy peasy, I want challenge, I want roleplaying, I want casual, I want hardcore, I want puzzles, I want platforming, I want riddles, I want GM events, I want scripted events and most of all, I want meaningful and rewarding exploration of a vast world that developers have so lovingly crafted.

Franciscourant

DMKano said:

... Games do not drive change of the behavior in society. 

I think games also drive change of the behaviour in society, to a certain extent.

Righteous_Rock

When I first played a mmorpg, my curiosity spiked, I thought about all the potential, and as the article eludes to, that just hasn't happened. My curiosity has deminished to a level that when an mmorpg comes out, I don't even bother downloading it, or when one is announced, I don't bother reading about it to much. Black Desert for example, I can't tell you one thing about the game and quite frankly, I just don't care to know anything about it, blade and soul came and went, it's free I didn't even bother to download and get a feel for it. Cash shops , a lack of innovation, and a loss of my own curiosity has been the death knell of mmorpgs for me.