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The rise and fall of MMORPG.com
TheJudge666
Member UncommonPosts: 14
From 2003-2016 I've been part of this site and I've seen where it used to be and where it is now. There was a time when there was thousand+ of concurrent, active community on these forums and now there is barely a hundred. As a MMORPG fan I am disappointed when any community/site is going downhill but usually these things are caused by bad decisions within those in charge of either their games or in this case their site/forums.
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The switch from being a mmorpg-centered webpage to a more rounded, general games-news website is not an easy one.
You just can't compete with the big pages that are owned and backed up by multimillion-dollar media conglomerates.
That's not to say that no bad decisions have been made. You saw the downfall of the affiliates like "FPSGuru" (sp?), the effort with the new website that became a pitiful running gag over years and the amateurish story of the forum change.You saw the site's general setup and layout catering more and more to ads and less to actual content.
So there is alot of room for improvement, there always is. Maybe someone from the staff will chime in and PR-assure you that "we are always trying to improve" and in some aspects you can also see that -while elsewhere they just don't do anything. We've seen loads of reasonable suggestions made by veterans mostly going unheard in recent years. I'm hitting 10 years here (incl. a previous account) and i have yet to see a giveaway posted by Craig that isn't crapped up in one or another way, like wrong links, invalid keys, no deliveries or such. We still miss basic forum features like underscore or text colors. What happened to premium/sub ad-free membership? The official poll was started on 2nd of August, that's quite some month ago now.
I guess nowadays it's rather about getting the costs covered and ship along somehow....and they seem to be ok with that.
There's a whirlwind of problems at work. Obviously, money being the primary... hence, the obnoxious adverts. The site/forum redesign was basically them writing the community off entirely(what's actually left of it). All of that was really just monetary.
Then, of course, you have the other major problem that Volgore brought: the genre has grown stagnant and lost popularity. Also, people migrated to MOBAs and card games and the millions of other online game-types. People can't even remember what MMORPGs actually were at this point with all the offshoot genres and the fact that they call everything MMO these days.
Most of the community regulars here were players of old-school, staple MMOs, imo. I think many of those have simply given up and left during the MMO dry-spell.
It's just all a vicious cycle really -- popularity declines > income drops > spam ads to make money > regulars are disgusted and move elsewhere > income drops > gut the forums and site to save money > lose more people.
I've been around here for a long while, also, and I'm completely there with you. This place was a thriving hub, at one point, and now it's a desert. They built this beloved city in a niche area(the desert), then eventually ran out of water(yes, that's a Las Vegas reference) and declined.
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Today there are more news happening than ever on upcoming, newly released or many dating decade+ ago MMO's. In fact EVE recently announced it's going F2P which is huge news (not that I care) but just one example.
This site was one of the best to keep up on all on what's happening MMO related, not so much because of the news you covered, but because of the big community that participated here.
@Lokero, you mention Kopogero who was in fact one of the most informative, helpful and experienced members here. He was one great example that MMO's did need a change from how they were build for the last 5+ years. He was one of the few here who consistently informed the community how we can bring a better age and yes we might be experiencing drought of quality products right now, but that's because players like Kopogero have grown in numbers that are simply not willing to blow their $ on whatever product came with popular IP or massive hype and marketing. So, change is coming and that can be finally seen in what is coming in late 2017 and beyond.
The absence of Kopogero and many others should be something the staff here should re-examine and why such popular individuals are no longer participating here. Kopogero made these forums far more entertaining than I can think of most in this community and as you know that's what draws individuals to participate on forums. As far as I remember Kopogero choose to be banned from here due to the approach the staff had toward those who were breaking the terms of service around here.
The staff should've choose to be far more lax toward its community like many other communities or if they intended to be strict to keep up that level of moderation consistently. He flagged some individual twice for clearly breaking the TOS, trolling/flaming him and his post still remained weeks later. In fact even after he brought that attention and choosing to get banned for heavily criticizing the staff the person who trolled him his post was never removed afterwards.
1. YOU sponsor some contests to get the community involved. How about a contest where we submit video of the stupidest things we have done in a game? I have some clips of things I have done that will make you wonder if I had fallen asleep at the keyboard and my dog was playing my toon.
2. I like your top 10 and best 5 lists but how about running polls and let us vote for stuff? How about a poll that involves the community? (worst poster, most informed poster, poster most likely to be working as a shill for a game company, poster most likely to get arrested, LOL)
3. Pick a game each week or so and start a thread where players post screenies of their toons. Best male and best female categories. Winner gets to pick the next game you do or gets a new forum title...
4. Each month do a thread with helpful tips and guides to a game. At the end of each month format it into a nice downloadable PDF that new players of that game can download and use.
5. How about posting some critical topic and having people voice which side of the argument they are on? What is the definition of pay 2 win? Which games objectify women? Instead of avoiding critical topics like all the other sites, how about diving into them? Maybe make people vote for one side or the other before they can post in those threads? Something like, should games do this or that, pick a side before posting.
At the end of the day, you folks have access to the community. We are here to be bent to your will. Stop being a slave to game companies and start being the site that gets the community involved and those game companies will come begging to have ads here.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On top of that devs are far more secretive about there games than they were 10-15 years ago. I would rather the status quo than pointless news. Yes they could be a bit more inclusive.
It's also not something that could be addressed with better/more moderator presence as this is the consequence of the state of the MMORPG industry today. There is a growing unhapiness aimed at the overall lack of innovation from the developers and or their inability to deliver on their promises. MMORPG players are slowly moving away from the genre, not to play another MMO, but to play other genres entirely until a better MMO catches their eyes. Even MMORPG.com has, for a while now, begun covering non-MMO news that can be relevant to this community. But overall, it puts websites like MMORPG.com in a tough spot that's for sure, but I don't believe it's the fault of the website itself.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
With the mainstream evolution of online gaming and MMO-types in general, I think pretty much all gaming news sites have at least general coverage of MMO titles and news these days. Point being, you really don't have to go to MMO-centric news sites to find the basic MMO news anymore.
While they still try to take a more in-depth approach to MMOs around here, they really had no choice but to branch out. You can't just offer A when everyone else is offering both A and B.
FPS shooters, 10v10, 15v15, co-op dungeon crawlers of 4-6 players, all being called MMO's when they clearly are not, just so the game devs/publishers can try and justify a cash shop. What happened to the days when you bought a game and it was yours, lock, stock and barrel?
Now we get these cut down versions of games with day 1 DLC and cash shops to unlock additional content, for a price.
It's not the genre, it's gaming in general, that has been perverted and reduced to "the bottom line" and how much the suits can bleed cash from their customers. Is it any wonder people like Kopo refuse to hand over cash for a half finished game that will then try and extract the maximum amount of cash from your wallet to see the rest of the game?
I used to buy a new game every month or two, now I'm lucky if I see two a year worth buying. Then again I've been playing computer games since I first bought a C64 in 1982 and, for me personally, the standard of games has been dropping steadily over the last 10 years or so.
Who wants to read about crap games that will rip you off for as much as they can? I know I don't.
What killed this site for me:
1) Political Correctness.
Too much moderation, you have to pretend talking to 12 y/o kids to avoid being banned, I've always considered this site as an adult site where people can speak their mind freely, but the last 4-5 years the amount of effort it takes to write a post which doesn't offend someone for one reason or another is not worth the hassle.
2) Game Criticism Censorship.
This site now looks like any of the Games Official Forum.
People used to come here to talk about things they were not allowed to talk on official forums (mainly criticism) not anymore.
Now it looks like the official Blizzard Forums (or any other game), you can make as many positive threads as you like but negative threads are consolidated (see next) as a damage control measure, like they do in the Official Forums.
3) Threads consolidation.
Sorry but bad idea. I can't be bothered to reply to a thread that counts hundreds of posts, most of which are merged from other threads, they are confusing and it's easy to get lost.
I prefer to reply to smaller different threads on the same subject than one single thread with hundreds of posts.
But I understand that frustrating critics is the whole point of it (see point 2)
4) The Forum is not as interesting as it used to be.
This site has always been about the Forums (I hope you are aware of it), and because reasons 1, 2 and 3 the Forum is not attractive to me as it used to be.
Maybe it's my forum warrior in me talking but the controversy and the passion of some threads/posts was what attracted me to this site.
In short this forum used to be entertaining and informative at the same time, now it's just plain boring and mundane.
The fact that MMORPGs are in decline is just an excuse in my opinion.
I still like MMORPGs and I like to discuss about them, I just do it on another site, where Moderation policies are more relaxed, and I can criticize a game as much as I like with hundreds of similar posts if I feel like it.
My suggestion is for this site to revert back to be the place where people can say the things about a game they are not allowed to say in the official forums.
Not many people are interested in a boring forum..........and of course that's my personal opinion.
Feel free to blame the MMO decline though, if it makes you feel better.
people come to a gaming site...why?To converse about gaming,easy right.
What is the main goal of a website?To make money,already you have conflicting reasons for the site's existence.
Usually what happens is in the infancy/early years a site operates under a small veil of deception and exploitation and a lot more of the reason it exists,example gaming/news/chit chat.After a while,greed sets in and i /we see it everyday ,everywhere.How can we make more money,how can we create a shroud of protection to our advertisers and how can we APPEAR to be honest while still catering to our sponsors?
It is like gaming itself and streaming.At one time people thought it cool to just stream your game to others,NOW it is all about making money,greed,selfishness.It just seems like gaming and business are too big a contradiction of each other to ever work in a fair honest manner,it is nearly impossible.
Solution,answer?It is all about the people in charge,how honest,fair are they ,do they treat others like people or like bait,people to exploit,the answer and results are usually easy to see,for many it is however a flash before their eyes.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I'm sure Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, Mumble, RaidCall, GuildPortal, GuildLaunch, Wordpress, Twitter, Reddit, and the 3-5" screens of mobile devices have absolutely nothing to do with diminishing forum communities.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Current forum activity. Even late at night it would be filled with posts that were withing a few minutes and the list was much longer.
IMO, I feel like public forums isn't as popular and has been replaced by social media for the most part. Anyone who, back in the 80s, remember usenet or even bbs, might related to this. I am down to a much smaller number of places that I post to these days.
I believe there was a time when the reputation for the site was also seen as a Mos Eisley. Not much they could have done about it. They could change forum moderation a bit but I don't think it would help drive customers here.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I can agree with that. Too much clicking around.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"