I would recommend looking into Pantheon, the developers are seriously trying to get back to the social and group interaction ideals that originally made mmo's great
I have my doubts about Pantheon's success, but let's not forget that "the social and group interaction ideals that originally made mmo's great" wasn't anything the games really did. A chat interface, a few classes with rudimentary dependence on others, and a few emotes. The games themselves really had no mechanisms beyond these the basic group functions (and basic guild management). That was the implementation of those ideals.
Rather, the success of EQ and UO (and AC) was more about the lack of a competitive alternative game. Loads of people had outgrown their weekly face-to-face D&D campaign and wanted the visual feedback of something beyond a MUD to continue their habit. MMORPGs allowed people to game together for the first time, continuing those fantasy driven exploits of the D&D craze. Pantheon won't be entering the same waters that DAoC, EQ2 and WoW jumped into. There's a lot of competition these days, including the same EQ1 that Pantheon seems to be recreating. No matter what Pantheon delivers (or doesn't deliver), the gaming community has experienced communal gaming before. It won't be new, or even unique.
The first gen MMORPGs managed to convert a large number of pen-and-paper gamers and CRPG devotees to mass connectivity, allowing communities to form. There doesn't appear to be any large group of people who haven't experienced a communal MMORPG before, so they won't be appealing to new customers with the same innocence as we approached the genre in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The first gen games stumbled onto this large population of players who wanted something new, and those first generation MMORPGs were close enough to what the players wanted to play. That isn't going to happen again, for Pantheon, Crowfall, Camelot Unchained, or any other upcoming games that are trying to recapture those old "ideals" again.
You hit the nail on the head. This is the thing that many people seem to forget. Old school mmos did absolutely nothing special outside of existing. The original three (UO/EQ/AC) had success because of the nerdy legions of tabletop fans that wanted more interactions outside of their weekly group. MUDs scratched the itch for awhile, but we wanted more, and we got it.
Much of the interdependence that was generated in the old school mmos came from basically lack of overall design in a digital world. These games were created to be mostly MUDs with actual graphics than traditional videogames. These games also had some super glaring design flaws that worked for awhile, but would absolutely flop in this day and age. There's far too much competition in the digital space to really go back to the classic mmo.
The other thing I think many forget is that mmos didn't evolve into a largely single player experience because no one wanted it. On the contrary. There were calls for more solo friendly activities in mmos for as long as I can remember. Hell, Asheron's Call was extremely solo friendly. If the mostly silent majority didn't want what was being offered, an mmo like WoW would've crashed and burned long ago, but nope it still has extreme success despite being 12 years old.
The original days of the MMO were absolutely magical for anyone that was present. We were witnesses to the birth of an entirely new genre of gaming. Now that the genre has been around for 20 years, it's lost the magic since it's literally just another genre of videogames.
Ironically, singleplayer and multiplayer survival games have more in common with the classic mmo than modern mmos do.
+ 2 ( one for each of you ) I agree with both of you. There is no need for me to really write anything further than that because you two expressed my thoughts exactly.
I've been playing FFXI for years. I've tried other games but always go back and imo FFXI is better than it's ever been but people won't give it a try or get past a UI that is different than the Wows.
For me, the key is so much to do with my linkshell, while also being able to enjoy soloing lesser content on my own whenever I want. It's all about the people you play with. A great group to play with in a game that offers a large variety of group content is the perfect MMO experience. You need both the fun kindred spirit friends and right MMO to enjoy.
Everybody seems to be forgetting the demographic basics of MMOs. Yet there are many studies (http://quanticfoundry.com/ an example) analyzing MMORPG demographics and motivations. Much non sense would be avoided if posters had a clue about this issue .
Fact 1 : True MMORPG started in 98/99 . Fact 2 : At that time the demographics was young in majority (students) . Fact 3 : At that time the biggest cost was not the sub to an MMORPG but the phone bill Fact 4 : Today the number of people playing MMO (including MMORPG) vastly increased mainly because the phone/internet costs went down . In Europe Internet is basically F2P . Fact 5 : The average age of gamers strongly increased too (35 years today) Fact 6 : Guess what motivation decreases the most with age ? Action and PvP . Fact 7 : There are significant gender differences in motivations to play an MMORPG .
From these facts follows an important conclusion . The gamer segment (older players with balanced male/female proportion) has strongly increased in the last 20 years . Yet the number of MMORPG fitting with their principal motivations (socialisation, RP, difficult content ...) has decreased . Actually there are probably none anymore . This thread is anecdotical evidence of this conclusion because I would bet that a large majority of posters belongs probably exactly to this growing demographic segment and they are saying that they can't find an MMORPG "right for them" ..
So as in every market if there is a demand there will be sooner or later an offer satisfying the demand, it is for me only a matter of time untill a developper produces a game strongly oriented to social interaction, with little to no PvP, difficult and challenging content, large reward only for large risk and/or large time Investment . Obviously the MOBA crowd will have no interest in such a game because its demographics is 90% male,average age 24, strong preference for PvP and short gaming session . But the orphaned segment will play it and be ready to pay for it because they hardly play any "modern" MMORPG anyway, regardless whether it is P2P or F2P .
So I wouldn't say that this kind of game (for the sake of simplicity let's call it EQ like) is the future of MMORPGs . But it is definitely a kind of game that answers an unsatisfied demand of a large and increasing segment of the gamers' population . It is also definitely a kind of game that differentiates in a strongest way from MOBA and insta satisfaction/easy/solo MMORPGs (like WoW) what suggests that the first who does such a game has quite a good chance to score a financial success .
Comments
+ 2 ( one for each of you
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
New boy indeed.
And TBH, MOBA's suck monkey testes. I'll stick with the MMORPG genre.
For me, the key is so much to do with my linkshell, while also being able to enjoy soloing lesser content on my own whenever I want. It's all about the people you play with. A great group to play with in a game that offers a large variety of group content is the perfect MMO experience. You need both the fun kindred spirit friends and right MMO to enjoy.
Yet there are many studies (http://quanticfoundry.com/ an example) analyzing MMORPG demographics and motivations.
Much non sense would be avoided if posters had a clue about this issue .
Fact 1 : True MMORPG started in 98/99 .
Fact 2 : At that time the demographics was young in majority (students) .
Fact 3 : At that time the biggest cost was not the sub to an MMORPG but the phone bill
Fact 4 : Today the number of people playing MMO (including MMORPG) vastly increased mainly because the phone/internet costs went down . In Europe Internet is basically F2P .
Fact 5 : The average age of gamers strongly increased too (35 years today)
Fact 6 : Guess what motivation decreases the most with age ? Action and PvP .
Fact 7 : There are significant gender differences in motivations to play an MMORPG .
From these facts follows an important conclusion .
The gamer segment (older players with balanced male/female proportion) has strongly increased in the last 20 years .
Yet the number of MMORPG fitting with their principal motivations (socialisation, RP, difficult content ...) has decreased . Actually there are probably none anymore .
This thread is anecdotical evidence of this conclusion because I would bet that a large majority of posters belongs probably exactly to this growing demographic segment and they are saying that they can't find an MMORPG "right for them" ..
So as in every market if there is a demand there will be sooner or later an offer satisfying the demand, it is for me only a matter of time untill a developper produces a game strongly oriented to social interaction, with little to no PvP, difficult and challenging content, large reward only for large risk and/or large time Investment .
Obviously the MOBA crowd will have no interest in such a game because its demographics is 90% male,average age 24, strong preference for PvP and short gaming session .
But the orphaned segment will play it and be ready to pay for it because they hardly play any "modern" MMORPG anyway, regardless whether it is P2P or F2P .
So I wouldn't say that this kind of game (for the sake of simplicity let's call it EQ like) is the future of MMORPGs .
But it is definitely a kind of game that answers an unsatisfied demand of a large and increasing segment of the gamers' population .
It is also definitely a kind of game that differentiates in a strongest way from MOBA and insta satisfaction/easy/solo MMORPGs (like WoW) what suggests that the first who does such a game has quite a good chance to score a financial success .