Been away so long, what's new?

ProfRed

Hey all!  I used to be a pretty regular member around here and played MMO's pretty heavily.  I burned out somewhere around the line where pretty much every title was a pretty big disappointment.  I think I went in on every game I could, supported it, bought it, defended it here, and played it but every game after a month or two ended up being pretty shallow and the same recycled things over and over so I quit playing MMO's in hope that if I stepped away a while I could come back and there would be a hidden gem coming out that would bring it all back.

It is funny looking back with how everyone was hating on Age of Conan and that is the last MMO I can remember that really gave me that addictive immersive experience with a nice blend of PvP and PvE.  A sense of real adventure and exploration.  

So what is the landscape looking like now?  What are some big up and comers?  

    

ProfRed

Sorry don't see how to edit my post, but in just browsing around I am very interested in Camelot Unchained and Gloria Victis.  How is GV compared to Darkfall?  Do they have enough money/manpower to deliver?  Any chance for Camelot Unchained coming out this year?

Sid_Vicious

It seems that they plan to release CU this year but in all honesty I hope they don't because what I have seen of the game so far looks very uhh... unfinished.

Gloria Victis looks cool!! I didn't know of it until coming across this post, so thanks! It looks tons better than CU but we will see.

Darkfall is still going and well worth the money. Until Unholy Wars dies there will be PVP and group PVE until the end of the game, they designed it that way, and if there isn't a good population, it just means that you get to own more. 2 more Darkfall games are being worked on and one will be launching before the other and I think its worth it to experience both launches and get a good feel on all of these games until a real home is found.

scorpex-x

The mmorpg market has stalled almost completely and developers have moved onto making games like Overwatch, Destiny and the like, pretty much because of players like you (going off you saying you were defending a game you never played and bailing on it in a month).  The type of bandwagon mmorpg gamer who hyped themselves up into a fervor and became rabid arguing fanboys who thought they needed to defend the honor of the a game that hadn't even released yet (and in their fanboy ways managed to turn other mmorpg players against the new game by association), these poisonous players then burned out in a month and bailed to leave this new game with an army of people who despised it.

The publishers aren't making new mmorpg titles anymore, best you're getting now is just low budget stuff and a few korean re-releases.  There is pretty much nothing at all in production and the ones that were midway have been canned, the mmorpg games that will be around in 2 years are the ones that are running now. 

There is nothing in production, no big name titles.  The mmorpg genre is what you see on the game list to the left, there is nothing new and that's how it will stay for the foreseeable future.

Thankfully the publishers have learned their lessons and the new mmo fps games won't suffer the fate of this genre.

On the positive side, we have a wealth of current titles all getting regular updates..and we lost a lot of the band wagon cancerous players.  Win win I say.

Scot

As I am still unable to do a Quote I can but agree with scorpex-x. We still have some top quality MMOs, but expecting new AAA every year is a thing of the past. Gaming houses have moved on even if many gamers have not.

The locusts and butterfly's destroyed that age of MMOs, doubt we will ever see the likes again.

Not sure that with the new MMOFPS games that any lessons have been learnt. They are a different genre, so only take some design from MMORPG's. Plus there is plenty of time for them to fall into their own pit of doom.

No doubt the next iteration of MMOs will be even more simpler, and more one gameplay model fits all.

Kyleran

Some folks will tell you things are the best they've ever been, but those would be the game hopping tourists who can have 3, 4 or even 10 "MMOs" in their "rotation"

But titles where you can largely spend most of your time in are no longer being made, and we're now in an era where many players consider a month or two of "fun" an acceptable game.

So the MMORPG purists have either retreated for the long haul to a few titles on the market they enjoy or left the genre while perhaps waiting on something to arise from the indie/Kickstarter pile such as CU. (not a chance it launches this year)

For everyone else there us a plethora of "games" to play, but new, large budget MMORPGs are pretty much a thing of the past, which is probably a good thing actually, time to rid the genre of those who never should have been catered to in the first place.

Naw, I'm not bitter...just vindicated. 

Phaserlight

scorpex-x said:

The mmorpg genre is what you see on the game list to the left

Nope.

There are some titles that are quietly chugging along, as they have been, making subtle, continuous improvements without generating "hype comets", that for whatever reason mmorpg.com has chosen not to feature (for the sake of "hits", I would imagine).

Example 1: Ryzom (see it "to the left"? Neither do I)

Example 2: See my signature.

The list goes on.

On the other hand, several games prominently featured "to the left" are clearly not mmorpgs.

Example 1: Star Citizen (not an mmorpg, no matter what you say; it's following a peer to peer architecture)

Example 2: Guild Wars 2 (even the creators of this game chose to go with the term "CORPG" while this game was in development)

Some games have even been canceled and yet they remain featured "to the left".

For example: Everquest Next

It seems mmorpg.com is having trouble staying up to date on the shifting, nebulous "market" the games press would have us believe, whilst giving relatively little attention to (I'm tempted to say "ignoring") a number of old standards that are still going strong.  Although the shift to Vanilla forums has been a net positive, it came with some regrettable design choices, in my opinion.

Theocritus

It seems like alot of these kind of sites like to leave the shutdown/cancelled games on the list because it makes it look like their site has more games.