MMORPG Acronym: Conjured up by the industry as a measure to facilitate the D&D Nerds (including myself) as roleplaying in social culture refers to a form of therapy, while the word for "roleplaying" in the public eye is called "acting" as part of Performance Arts.
PvP vs PvE: Game Design becomes important if a hybrid game flows in one way or another. Look at how GW1 was changed to have PvP version of PvE skills. Look at what happens when PvP-Based Combat is fought over using PvE Skills and the chaos it creates. Its important to know the kind of orientation a game has PRIOR to investing in it and not after.
Sandbox vs Themepark: Again! Game Design is extremely different for Sandbox vs Themepark. Know what you are getting into.
Group vs Solo: Which one is the Ying and which one is the Yang? Either way you choose, one more Solo-Exclusive player means one less Group-Exclusive Player and vice versa. Pick your poison on what form you prefer and watch the majority and minority get seriously disappointed when a middle-ground is chosen and everyone serious leaves your game by next tuesday.
F2P vs Subscription: The model used to generate revenue goes into the design of the product itself. Either within the product itself, or through direct purchase. This is part of business classes and even Software Engineering programming courses. So yes, its kind of a big deal how model determines how the playerbase generally expects money to be made, and the hurdles it appears.
I like how this starts with "Get over it!" and to that I say "I would much rather see people get over making convoluted arguments over the grand being portrayed as trivial stuff when such issues make all the difference. Perhaps we should just Blindly jump into the next game that appears, and ignore everything about it, but gladly give the developer our money without question.
In my opinion, it is what thoughts like this represent.
For, how else would one perceive such manner if we view these five points satisfied in a logical argument? It translates to "Don't care, Just Play" and that would be great and cool, if and only if such action didn't involve us being monetized during gameplay and not before or afterwards.
The MMORPG genre was defined by UO, EQ ,DAOC, AO, AC and a few others ..
All these games that DEFINED the Genre and industry have one thing in common ..
They all supported Thousands of players at the SAME time in the SAME persistent world ..
Now if these games literrally defined the genre and set the standards for what an MMOPRG is .. Why would anyone think Destiny 1 or 2 is an MMO ... .. its just not .. its multi player coop game and there is nothing wrong with that ..
But Destiny 2 will have the same effect on the MMO industry as Destiny 1 did ..
None , Zero...not a factor just like its predesccessor
so .... UO------EQ------DAOC-----AO-----AC-----Destiny
one of these things is not like the others ..........Which is it ?
I agree completely with you and if they want to put a genre on titles like Destiny then just remove the first M, so make it MORPG.
... ohh i have a easy solution for this website ... change your name into www.MORPG.com so you can keep up the reviews on those other MORPGs as well that arent "Massively" .... hell change the name to www.MO.com then you can have reviews on all the online games.
But when www.mmorpg.com changes its coarse of reviews from only mmorpgs to all games it doesnt mean MMORPG as a genre need to take the same coarse, they didnt invent the genre at all.
So what is anyone going to do when the rest of the world doesn't care about pedantic rules and calls them mmos anyway? Nothing. That's why it doesn't matter whether someone calls it someone, or not, or whether people like it called that, or not. It won't change what it is. It won't change studios making games for people that like them, no matter what they're tagged as.
You can sell me grapejuice instead of wine. I enjoy grapejuice but doesn't change the fact that I am having a different experience. Also doesn't change the fact that I have been deceived. No one said you can't find fun in denial.
Not tagging games correctly is a step backwards. And it is unrelated to the amount of fun you're having. So why not stop there? Let's call all games RPG as well. You are taking over a roll right? Call anything on a computer a virtual world. Let's even call singleplayer games that force you to stay online mmorpgs as well, afterall millions are connected to a server, eh?
Correct definions--or tags--help us understand and review things better. Of course many people don't care the music they are listening to is Baroque or speed thrash. But just want to enjoy and have fun. But they can't do that and critic at the same time.
My comment isn't about Destiny or @BillMurphy point which I understand. It's about your last comment only
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
Only last week in ESO someone said something in chat as though it was written in stone and curse anyone who disagrees, and yes it was me who dared to disagree, there wasn't just a few shots fired in my direction, there was an all out nuclear strike, but they gave up in the end when I let them know I won't be forced to think like them.
I agree with the list except PvP vs PvE. There are rooms for both types of games but games that try to do both generally suffer from it. I think we'd generally be much better off if games would just come out and say if they focus on PvP or PvE and explicitly state that the other experience may be lacking in their games. Personally I have 0 interest in PvP so I would like to play MMOs that cater to PvE and, if they have PvP, do not mess around with the PvE game to accommodate PvP (eg PvP isn't balanced? that's fine - nothing is going to be changed if it will have ANY impact on PvE).
The one thing I would add is we need to get over World of Warcraft. Most MMOs I've tried still clearly follow the WoW "recipe". What we really need are new MMOs that actually innovate.
Active: D&D Online (alpha,beta,&unlimited)
Retired: Anarchy Online, Archlord (beta), Auto Assault (beta), CoH/CoV, Dark Age of Camelot, Dungeon Runners, Elder Scrolls Online, Everquest, EVE, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online (beta,live), Pathfinder Online (beta), Rift (beta,live), Secret World (beta,live), Star Wars Old Republic, Vanguard (beta), Warhammer (beta,live), World of Warcraft
I agree with everything except for the f2p/buy/sub point.
I keep thinking about how fking amazing Atlantica could be if it were a non f2p game. Super happy CU and Pantheon will have subs and there are EQ servers you can only play with a sub.
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
The MMORPG genre was defined by UO, EQ ,DAOC, AO, AC and a few others ..
All these games that DEFINED the Genre and industry have one thing in common ..
They all supported Thousands of players at the SAME time in the SAME persistent world ..
Now if these games literrally defined the genre and set the standards for what an MMOPRG is .. Why would anyone think Destiny 1 or 2 is an MMO ... .. its just not .. its multi player coop game and there is nothing wrong with that ..
But Destiny 2 will have the same effect on the MMO industry as Destiny 1 did ..
None , Zero...not a factor just like its predesccessor
so .... UO------EQ------DAOC-----AO-----AC-----Destiny
one of these things is not like the others ..........Which is it ?
I agree completely with you and if they want to put a genre on titles like Destiny then just remove the first M, so make it MORPG.
... ohh i have a easy solution for this website ... change your name into www.MORPG.com so you can keep up the reviews on those other MORPGs as well that arent "Massively" .... hell change the name to www.MO.com then you can have reviews on all the online games.
But when www.mmorpg.com changes its coarse of reviews from only mmorpgs to all games it doesnt mean MMORPG as a genre need to take the same coarse, they didnt invent the genre at all.
So what is anyone going to do when the rest of the world doesn't care about pedantic rules and calls them mmos anyway? Nothing. That's why it doesn't matter whether someone calls it someone, or not, or whether people like it called that, or not. It won't change what it is. It won't change studios making games for people that like them, no matter what they're tagged as.
You can sell me grapejuice instead of wine. I enjoy grapejuice but doesn't change the fact that I am having a different experience. Also doesn't change the fact that I have been deceived. No one said you can't find fun in denial.
Not tagging games correctly is a step backwards. And it is unrelated to the amount of fun you're having. So why not stop there? Let's call all games RPG as well. You are taking over a roll right? Call anything on a computer a virtual world. Let's even call singleplayer games that force you to stay online mmorpgs as well, afterall millions are connected to a server, eh?
Correct definions--or tags--help us understand and review things better. Of course many people don't care the music they are listening to is Baroque or speed thrash. But just want to enjoy and have fun. But they can't do that and critic at the same time.
My comment isn't about Destiny or @BillMurphy point which I understand. It's about your last comment only
Grape juice implies that the fruit juice isn't fermented. If you asked for grape juice in a restaurant the server would likely bring you unfermented juice. But if you were in a restaurant that served wine and not grape juice and asked for the grape juice list, unless the server was dense, they would bring you the wine list.
Lol * 1 million. Possibly the craziest thing I have read on these forums. The mental gymnastics you are going through to try and justify your point is mind blowing. Thanks for the laugh.
Wine is a subset of grapejuice (or any fermented fruit juice for that matter). It is a fermented beverage made by a fairly specific subset of yeasts. At least one intelligent primate has referred to it as grape juice plus. Wine was not a term coined off handedly to describe an abstract concept. Comparing the word to a coined phrase is disingenuous.
Grape juice implies that the fruit juice isn't fermented. If you asked for grape juice in a restaurant the server would likely bring you unfermented juice. But if you were in a restaurant that served wine and not grape juice and asked for the grape juice list, unless the server was dense, they would bring you the wine list. It might be dorky and coy, but it wouldn't be incorrect. The point is, context matters, even for clearly defined terms, but even more so for coined slang phrases.
Mead and wine are often confused because mead is fermented honey and wine is fermented fruit. They can taste similar or the same, but they're not the same because they both have clearly defined non-abstract objective empirically measurable differences. Calling a mead a wine, or vice versa, would be incorrect even though they're both fermented by the same group types of yeast, possibly even the same type.
What happens when you mix the honey and the fruit before you ferment? What is it? Is it a wine, a mead, a hybrid? That's what's happening in the gaming industry with multiplayer and massively multiplayer online games.
When MMOs get a clear, objective, widely accepted, consistent definition then the point will stand, but it's not a real word. Real words help us communicate clearly. Coined phrases, idioms, and colloquialisms can help communicate but not like real words.
Alright mate, I have had clearly made my point, and you understood what I meant. But yes, you are right. The wine example wasn't accurate. Let's work on that. Prepare for a wall of text then!
1. Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game is not slang. Slang is used very rare, is informal, and it is more common in speech than writing. This term was phrased by professionals, not common people. It has been used in writing by professionals for decades now. You could never call it slang before, you can't call it slang now.
2. A similar example to Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game—yes I am using it in full because apparently when I use the acronym you say it is not a real word —is High-Rise Building. I am an architect; I have had projects in +30 countries. In different parts of the world, professionals and people have different definition for this term. Let's categorize them:
a. Definition set by Fire Safety departments: These definitions are not known by the common people, since they have to deal with them. How they announce a building High-Rise in their city depends on the length of their ladders and other safety procedures. In our argument, we don't care about this part. Because it is the equivalent of saying what measurements we should see to put out a fire off a server that can host X amount of people. We really don't care here.
b. Definition set by academic or data mining institutes and companies: Some of these definitions are local, the more credible ones are internationally accepted by professionals. These standards vary from +7-story to +12-story buildings or +35m to +15m. Of course higher numbers belong to Developed Countries. But when are referring to this definition in for example an international conference or an international web-site, you have go to the internationally accepted institutes.
c. Definition accepted widely by professionals around the globe which is again +7-storey buildings.
d. Definition accepted by common people: No institute has done this globally. So I talk from experience. Common people have higher standards when comes to this. Even when I had a project in a small town in a Developing Country. Usually it is a building that is very tall, and their frame of reference is usually New York.
Boring me with wine definition, eh? I can be much more boring mate!
If you study these numbers in history you learn as the technology advanced, these numbers increased. In no point in history they went back down. There might have been cases (I haven't ever read about a case though, but I can understand the logic if this ever happens) for safety to lower the bar what is considered High-Rise, but not by professionals.
No matter how many 2-storey building you build next to each other, the result still wouldn't make a High-Rise.
You can't build a 2-storey building and say it has risen and it is higher than the flat ground and it is pretty and I am having fun just looking at it so it is a High-Rise.
If someone makes a 2-storey building in New York and call it a High-Rise is plainly a joke. If not, as is using that term is a marketing technic is a cheat and a thief.
3. You wrote and I quote "When MMOs get a clear, objective, widely accepted, consistent definition then the point will stand,"--What you are working against that. You are working against having a definition. You are pro of not having definitions. And how do you think these definitions become consistent and widely accepted? Are you waiting for a Bill to pass through the Parliament? These definitions can become consistent and widely acceptable by the work websites like these. And when you go to mmorpg.com and find a wrong definition or you are been told you should get over the definition certainly isn't helpful at all.
4. Again I have to quote "but it's not a real word. Real words help us communicate clearly. Coined phrases, idioms, and colloquialisms can help communicate but not like real words."
Technical phrases cannot be compared to idioms. Intensive-Care-Unit, that's a technical phrase and you are comparing that to an idiom? That was just an awful example mate, sorry.
And coined phrases can help us communicate in many cases even better than the real words. Please don't make up universal rules here. That's why Dickens, Shakespeare and many others invented some them in the first place. Because those coined phrases could relay their intention, feeling, meaning, etc. much better than the words were available to them. Devil-May-Care: let's do that with one real word instead and then you'd realize how much are you missing in relaying that. Of course, you have to help people without the knowledge understand them. And telling them whoever is relaxed or reckless or whichever word you choose you can say Devil-May-Care instead is not helping at all.
You skipped the second part of my post. So I guess you agree with we do need accurate definitions.
Well, it is long enough to be considered a letter now!
I hope everything else is good with you and your family @Torval. Wish you all the best and let's meet soon.
Yours Truly, Connie
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
Sorry, but there's no room to budge on the group vs solo issue. The catering to solo gameplay is what has brought the mmorpg genre to the brink of destruction, and the only thing that is going to save it will be infusing it once again with the heavily cooperative play that made it so fantastic to begin with.
Sorry, but there's no room to budge on the group vs solo issue. The catering to solo gameplay is what has brought the mmorpg genre to the brink of destruction, and the only thing that is going to save it will be infusing it once again with the heavily cooperative play that made it so fantastic to begin with.
Catering to solo gameplay is merely a symptom of the real problem. MMOs didn't force people to solo content, the players drove that. You won't solve the problem by implementing group-heavy gameplay, you'll just end up with a game that flops.
Sorry, but there's no room to budge on the group vs solo issue. The catering to solo gameplay is what has brought the mmorpg genre to the brink of destruction, and the only thing that is going to save it will be infusing it once again with the heavily cooperative play that made it so fantastic to begin with.
That's simply a blatant misunderstanding of the problem.
Solo content is necessary to keep the playerbase engaged. If you force progress - any progress whatsoever - through group content only, players will leave the game in droves. The vast majority of gamers cannot dedicate the necessary amount of time to group content. They have jobs, families, social lives, other games to play, you name it.
The classic model where raiding is paramount and the only way to get progression 'in the endgame' is fatally flawed in this way, as it caters to a very specific audience which does not have the time or is willing to adjust their schedules to partake in it. Maybe you are willing to do the grind *and* the raid every evening between 19:00 and 0:00, but time is an increasingly precious thing for most people able to actually play these games. Even younger audiences (students and highschoolers mostly) who used to have oodles of free time now have an increasingly busy schedule in recent years.
The people who can spend the time on group content or can move their schedules around it (or are willing to) are more and more falling into a minority. This is made clear by the exponential rise in casual gaming in the past decade, and has been the impetus for Blizzard for example to make their group content accessible to the point of being almost irrelevant through the LFG and raid finder tools.
Getting a fixed group together for anything, even an online game, is difficult at best. Anyone who's ever played any P&P game knows this
MMO's which make group content optional rather than necessary are the norm, and will remain so for the forseeable future, unless someone finds out the magic formula for a game which will make everyone a) give up their current game and b) reschedule their life around a videogame.
Of course, you can go to a complete other extreme and remove group content alltogether, which is also obviously a bad idea. Why play an MMO when there's no multiplayer? BDO is a game which suffers from this to some extent, where group content is actually almost detrimental to progress rather than helpful in most cases.
A balance needs to be found here. Group content for when people *can* play together and solo content for when they *can't*, so they can still play the game without feeling that there's nothing to do in the time they actually have to play it.
Sorry, but there's no room to budge on the group vs solo issue. The catering to solo gameplay is what has brought the mmorpg genre to the brink of destruction, and the only thing that is going to save it will be infusing it once again with the heavily cooperative play that made it so fantastic to begin with.
I actually think you are on to something here, but at the same time you have to acknowledge the reasons behind the move to solo content.
I'd like to see a game with basically all group content but a really easy drop-in drop-out grouping system so that groups could kind of organically form without the need for long commitment and/or voice coms. I've seen that in some games already, but its mainly only used in pvp or for world bosses/dungeons. Using a similar set up for general questing/adventuring might address some of the issues behind solo play.
Sorry, but there's no room to budge on the group vs solo issue. The catering to solo gameplay is what has brought the mmorpg genre to the brink of destruction, and the only thing that is going to save it will be infusing it once again with the heavily cooperative play that made it so fantastic to begin with.
I actually think you are on to something here, but at the same time you have to acknowledge the reasons behind the move to solo content.
I'd like to see a game with basically all group content but a really easy drop-in drop-out grouping system so that groups could kind of organically form without the need for long commitment and/or voice coms. I've seen that in some games already, but its mainly only used in pvp or for world bosses/dungeons. Using a similar set up for general questing/adventuring might address some of the issues behind solo play.
The open group system from WAR worked relatively well.
Basically, by default when you started a group, it was "open". Any players that came near your group in the game would get a notification that there was an open group nearby, tell you how many players were in it and, if obvious, would tell you what they were doing.
The open groups generally only worked for two activities: public quests and pvp.
For public quests they were great. The locations were fixed, the group sizes flexible, so for the first 6 months of the game you could pretty much walk up to any PQ, find a group, join it and have fun for 10-15 minutes. Eventually people realised that doing any PvE in the game would harm you, so PQs stopped being run, but for a while they were fun.
For PvP, it was also pretty good. You'd enter the PvP lake and get a popup telling you about open groups. During peak times, there might be 4 or 5 open groups running about, so you pick one that looks good (generally most amount of players), click join and thats it, you're in the raid.
If they could somehow add this open group system, with the ingame voice chat from lotro, plus some sort of content scaling so that content scales to your group size, then we've got a winner!
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
Five Things MMO Fans Need to Get Over - The List at MMORPG.com
I’ll start right off - this list is going to ruffle feathers. But also, if you actually read this far before getting angry with me, note - I am guilty of each of these five things myself. The MMO Genre is in the middle of the awkward teenage years (even if it’s closer to drinking age). At this time in our favorite pastime’s life, it’s natural to be brazen d*ckheads bicking with anyone and everyone about every little thing we think is important or righteous.
Sorry, but there's no room to budge on the group vs solo issue. The catering to solo gameplay is what has brought the mmorpg genre to the brink of destruction, and the only thing that is going to save it will be infusing it once again with the heavily cooperative play that made it so fantastic to begin with.
I actually think you are on to something here, but at the same time you have to acknowledge the reasons behind the move to solo content.
I'd like to see a game with basically all group content but a really easy drop-in drop-out grouping system so that groups could kind of organically form without the need for long commitment and/or voice coms. I've seen that in some games already, but its mainly only used in pvp or for world bosses/dungeons. Using a similar set up for general questing/adventuring might address some of the issues behind solo play.
The open group system from WAR worked relatively well.
Basically, by default when you started a group, it was "open". Any players that came near your group in the game would get a notification that there was an open group nearby, tell you how many players were in it and, if obvious, would tell you what they were doing.
The open groups generally only worked for two activities: public quests and pvp.
For public quests they were great. The locations were fixed, the group sizes flexible, so for the first 6 months of the game you could pretty much walk up to any PQ, find a group, join it and have fun for 10-15 minutes. Eventually people realised that doing any PvE in the game would harm you, so PQs stopped being run, but for a while they were fun.
For PvP, it was also pretty good. You'd enter the PvP lake and get a popup telling you about open groups. During peak times, there might be 4 or 5 open groups running about, so you pick one that looks good (generally most amount of players), click join and thats it, you're in the raid.
If they could somehow add this open group system, with the ingame voice chat from lotro, plus some sort of content scaling so that content scales to your group size, then we've got a winner!
That was actually exactly the game I was thinking of! Loved that system.
.... If they could somehow add this open group system, with the ingame voice chat from lotro, plus some sort of content scaling so that content scales to your group size, then we've got a winner!
IMO, to really have a winner you need to not only make
grouping as accessible as possible, but also more rewarding and less effort
overall than soloing; and I think this is where pretty much every MMO of the
post WOW era has fallen down.
Probably the best example of this is quests, and quest design in general. i.e.
Most 'modern' MMOs make solo questing not only the best EXP per hour you can
get, but also seem to actively make it difficult, if not impossible, to do
quests in a group (and it is rarely more rewarding), which IMO is simply the
wrong design for a so called MMO.
Note that this does not mean you need to ditch solo content altogether, just
that everything should be tuned with grouping in mind. For example: Instead of
a quest that requires you to kill 10 easily soloable rats, make it a quest to
kill 100 points worth of rats, with soloable rats worth 5 points (20 needed),
duo / trio rats worth 12 points (8+1 needed), and full group rats worth 25
points (only 4 needed). And if you have scaling, make it so that soloing a
dungeon gives significantly less EXP per hour and loot than doing that same
dungeon in group, even if that group is only a duo or trio.
Which does not mean locking all your best rewards behind the largest group
sizes your server will handle, simply that doing group content should get you
rewards faster than soloing. For example: If it takes the average raider 5 weeks to get a BiS weapon, then a similar
(or slightly less powerful) weapon should be available from 'lesser' content,
but should take a minimum of 10 weeks, and a greater overall effort (i.e. in
hours) to get (with shortcuts for group content vs. doing it purely solo).
In short, players should still be able to play an MMO solo, and have it be any enjoyable and rewarding experience, but only if that is truly the playstyle
they desire (i.e. not what we have now where it almost seems forced), however grouping should always be 'the best way
to play', right from level 1.
Sorry, but there's no room to budge on the group vs solo issue. The catering to solo gameplay is what has brought the mmorpg genre to the brink of destruction, and the only thing that is going to save it will be infusing it once again with the heavily cooperative play that made it so fantastic to begin with.
That's simply a blatant misunderstanding of the problem.
Solo content is necessary to keep the playerbase engaged. If you force progress - any progress whatsoever - through group content only, players will leave the game in droves. The vast majority of gamers cannot dedicate the necessary amount of time to group content. They have jobs, families, social lives, other games to play, you name it.
The classic model where raiding is paramount and the only way to get progression 'in the endgame' is fatally flawed in this way, as it caters to a very specific audience which does not have the time or is willing to adjust their schedules to partake in it. Maybe you are willing to do the grind *and* the raid every evening between 19:00 and 0:00, but time is an increasingly precious thing for most people able to actually play these games. Even younger audiences (students and highschoolers mostly) who used to have oodles of free time now have an increasingly busy schedule in recent years.
The people who can spend the time on group content or can move their schedules around it (or are willing to) are more and more falling into a minority. This is made clear by the exponential rise in casual gaming in the past decade, and has been the impetus for Blizzard for example to make their group content accessible to the point of being almost irrelevant through the LFG and raid finder tools.
Getting a fixed group together for anything, even an online game, is difficult at best. Anyone who's ever played any P&P game knows this
MMO's which make group content optional rather than necessary are the norm, and will remain so for the forseeable future, unless someone finds out the magic formula for a game which will make everyone a) give up their current game and b) reschedule their life around a videogame.
Of course, you can go to a complete other extreme and remove group content alltogether, which is also obviously a bad idea. Why play an MMO when there's no multiplayer? BDO is a game which suffers from this to some extent, where group content is actually almost detrimental to progress rather than helpful in most cases.
A balance needs to be found here. Group content for when people *can* play together and solo content for when they *can't*, so they can still play the game without feeling that there's nothing to do in the time they actually have to play it.
I think wrong Chrome, while a game that requires more forced grouping might not attract WoW like numbers, there is definitely a market for a game like this. You realize entire reason the genre has been suffering the last 8 years or so, is because we are playing the same solo oriented themepark, and please for the love of god don't use Wildstar as an example for a failed "hardore" game example.
Also, in regards to "people don't have time" to play, I think you are wrong here as well, people had just as many responsibilities as they did 15 years ago as they do today. I mean I played with tons of working adults and students back then that had full schedules and were still able to manage to raid and do a lot of the group content that was spread out through the non-instanced world. I'd also argue the kids playing MOBAs all day, sometimes for every long extended periods would also counter your argument that people don't have time.
The problem MMOs have now is that over the years they attracted a lot of people who really don't like MMOs, and a lot of companies, especially Blizzard have been chasing these customers hardcore the last 10 years or so. I'd wager to bet that these types of players make up a good bit of the MMO potential audience now. That is why you see the mindset that old school MMO mechanics wouldn't work for the modern MMO gamer, because the reality is, they were never MMO gamers to begin with.
Thankfully the indie MMO developers have seen the light, now whether or not they have the resources to deliver on this remains to be seen. I think MMO gaming is going to return to it's roots the next 5 years of being a niche genre for a niche audience. I long for the days when I can play a real MMO again, and not worry about that game catering to some person that really doesn't care for a lot of what for me, made MMOs special in the first place. Sure these games might not attract WoW like numbers, but that is okay, it has been made very clear by these developers that they don't need to cater to a mass audience in order to survive.
Sorry, but there's no room to budge on the group vs solo issue. The catering to solo gameplay is what has brought the mmorpg genre to the brink of destruction, and the only thing that is going to save it will be infusing it once again with the heavily cooperative play that made it so fantastic to begin with.
That's simply a blatant misunderstanding of the problem.
Solo content is necessary to keep the playerbase engaged. If you force progress - any progress whatsoever - through group content only, players will leave the game in droves. The vast majority of gamers cannot dedicate the necessary amount of time to group content. They have jobs, families, social lives, other games to play, you name it.
The classic model where raiding is paramount and the only way to get progression 'in the endgame' is fatally flawed in this way, as it caters to a very specific audience which does not have the time or is willing to adjust their schedules to partake in it. Maybe you are willing to do the grind *and* the raid every evening between 19:00 and 0:00, but time is an increasingly precious thing for most people able to actually play these games. Even younger audiences (students and highschoolers mostly) who used to have oodles of free time now have an increasingly busy schedule in recent years.
The people who can spend the time on group content or can move their schedules around it (or are willing to) are more and more falling into a minority. This is made clear by the exponential rise in casual gaming in the past decade, and has been the impetus for Blizzard for example to make their group content accessible to the point of being almost irrelevant through the LFG and raid finder tools.
Getting a fixed group together for anything, even an online game, is difficult at best. Anyone who's ever played any P&P game knows this
MMO's which make group content optional rather than necessary are the norm, and will remain so for the forseeable future, unless someone finds out the magic formula for a game which will make everyone a) give up their current game and b) reschedule their life around a videogame.
Of course, you can go to a complete other extreme and remove group content alltogether, which is also obviously a bad idea. Why play an MMO when there's no multiplayer? BDO is a game which suffers from this to some extent, where group content is actually almost detrimental to progress rather than helpful in most cases.
A balance needs to be found here. Group content for when people *can* play together and solo content for when they *can't*, so they can still play the game without feeling that there's nothing to do in the time they actually have to play it.
I think wrong Chrome, while a game that requires more forced grouping might not attract WoW like numbers, there is definitely a market for a game like this. You realize entire reason the genre has been suffering the last 8 years or so, is because we are playing the same solo oriented themepark, and please for the love of god don't use Wildstar as an example for a failed "hardore" game example.
Also, in regards to "people don't have time" to play, I think you are wrong here as well, people had just as many responsibilities as they did 15 years ago as they do today. I mean I played with tons of working adults and students back then that had full schedules and were still able to manage to raid and do a lot of the group content that was spread out through the non-instanced world. I'd also argue the kids playing MOBAs all day, sometimes for every long extended periods would also counter your argument that people don't have time.
The problem MMOs have now is that over the years they attracted a lot of people who really don't like MMOs, and a lot of companies, especially Blizzard have been chasing these customers hardcore the last 10 years or so. I'd wager to bet that these types of players make up a good bit of the MMO potential audience now. That is why you see the mindset that old school MMO mechanics wouldn't work for the modern MMO gamer, because the reality is, they were never MMO gamers to begin with.
Thankfully the indie MMO developers have seen the light, now whether or not they have the resources to deliver on this remains to be seen. I think MMO gaming is going to return to it's roots the next 5 years of being a niche genre for a niche audience. I long for the days when I can play a real MMO again, and not worry about that game catering to some person that really doesn't care for a lot of what for me, made MMOs special in the first place. Sure these games might not attract WoW like numbers, but that is okay, it has been made very clear by these developers that they don't need to cater to a mass audience in order to survive.
I agree with you that there are some projects which will ultimately return MMOs to their roots over the next few years. That's about the end of where I agree with you, though
I think that the biggest problem facing these games is nostalgic players. You are correct that there is a niche market who probably still does want an old school MMORPG (like an actual MMORPG). These are people who still play DAOC or MUDs or EQ or some other game where gameplay trumps graphics. However, if you released that same game today, would it thrive? Would it even get 4 digits of concurrent users? Probably not. DBG showed this with SWG-emu. They effective gave them license to run wild with it, and the numbers are still not large enough to justify any sort of development effort, and SWG could be the most beloved old-schoolish game in the history of gaming.
Pantheon looks encouraging. I think you could actually see 6-digit box sales for that. Is it sustainable, though? I have no clue.
What's cool, though, is that we'll be here to witness the death or rebirth or re-invetion of the genre, one way or another. That's pretty significant and pretty cool. It's one of those stories we'll tell our grand kids about "How back in our day, MMOs worked like this..."
.... If they could somehow add this open group system, with the ingame voice chat from lotro, plus some sort of content scaling so that content scales to your group size, then we've got a winner!
IMO, to really have a winner you need to not only make
grouping as accessible as possible, but also more rewarding and less effort
overall than soloing; and I think this is where pretty much every MMO of the
post WOW era has fallen down.
Probably the best example of this is quests, and quest design in general. i.e.
Most 'modern' MMOs make solo questing not only the best EXP per hour you can
get, but also seem to actively make it difficult, if not impossible, to do
quests in a group (and it is rarely more rewarding), which IMO is simply the
wrong design for a so called MMO.
I don't agree that grouping should be encouraged by a rewards system - it may work if the reward difference is significant, but if the difference in rewards isn't all that much, then convenience wins out.
I agree with your thoughts on questing though. It is an inherent problem with making linear storylines and breaking those storylines up into quests. Your progress through the quests automatically limits the people you can group with and if you force grouping then progression becomes really difficult later on in life as the population dwindles. Scaling technology (as in scaling to group size) has yet to be done well, so solo quests do, unfortunately, offer the best solution for story telling in MMOs.
What I'd prefer to see is to separate character progression from story progression. So, no exp gained from completing quests.
I feel if we went this route, then people like me who find the stories badly written and predictable could completely avoid quests and treat the game more like a sandbox - just find nice spots to grind and spend our time perfecting combat, looting trash and gold, then buying gear on the auction house. Those who prefer the themepark route could do the quests purely for the storyline, but they would still earn xp from killing stuff along the way and so would still level up, they just might have to stop and grind mobs for a bit every now and again if their natural xp wasn't enough to keep up with the quest direction.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
.... If they could somehow add this open group system, with the ingame voice chat from lotro, plus some sort of content scaling so that content scales to your group size, then we've got a winner!
IMO, to really have a winner you need to not only make
grouping as accessible as possible, but also more rewarding and less effort
overall than soloing; and I think this is where pretty much every MMO of the
post WOW era has fallen down.
Probably the best example of this is quests, and quest design in general. i.e.
Most 'modern' MMOs make solo questing not only the best EXP per hour you can
get, but also seem to actively make it difficult, if not impossible, to do
quests in a group (and it is rarely more rewarding), which IMO is simply the
wrong design for a so called MMO.
I don't agree that grouping should be encouraged by a rewards system - it may work if the reward difference is significant, but if the difference in rewards isn't all that much, then convenience wins out.
Here's an alternate perspective to the idea of grouping being rewarding. How about just not punishing grouping, lol. I mean as it stands the vast majority of systems punish groups, so you get reduced experience, high-level players have no reason to help lower-level players, etc. etc. I understand that they want to ensure that the pacing of the game is "right", but people who actually care about the story will ultimately continue on with it, even if they need to do half the game at max level, and the other half will be happy that they got an alt leveled up 2, 3, 4 times faster than usual.
Having some solo content is healthy, but it should always be slower and less efficient than group content, and the best content should always be reserved for groups. Full stop. This era of single player MMOs is disturbing and unnecessary.
"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."
Oh, Bill, we all know by now that you like to ruffle our feathers. :P When has B2P been a new trend? I thought that B2P was an old payment model, that is making a comeback, either way, that is what I prefer.
Old in the sense that Guild Wars did it 12 years ago, sure. Though of course at the time that was because "it's not an MMO." But other than that and the last decade of F2P, everything's always been charged by month, hour, or minute. B2P's only recently a trend.
Favorites: EQ, EVE | Playing: None. Mostly VR and strategy | Anticipating: CU, Pantheon
The entirety of this list can basically be boiled down to one core principle - put your dollars into the games that meet your standards. <-- Yes this!<br />
Be sure to pay people who meet these your standards for sure! Even during times you are not required too ( I would love a Tip Jar for this idea! just give people money for doing good work and nothing in return )
We are also seeing a trend of companies that want addicts more than customers and desire to run unregulated Casinos aka games of chance more than the games we love to play. Seriously, STOP PAYING THESE PEOPLE, unless you REALLY want Video Game Themed Unregulated Casinos. Where the people in charge have no repercussions in place to stop them from changing the rules in order to drain more profit from you.
BDO is trending slowly in this direction. Personally with no weekly cap on certain items, I find it closer to this idea than not. Be certain of your standards far before they are breached. Once they are, they may not return.
Comments
MMORPG Acronym: Conjured up by the industry as a measure to facilitate the D&D Nerds (including myself) as roleplaying in social culture refers to a form of therapy, while the word for "roleplaying" in the public eye is called "acting" as part of Performance Arts.
PvP vs PvE: Game Design becomes important if a hybrid game flows in one way or another. Look at how GW1 was changed to have PvP version of PvE skills. Look at what happens when PvP-Based Combat is fought over using PvE Skills and the chaos it creates. Its important to know the kind of orientation a game has PRIOR to investing in it and not after.
Sandbox vs Themepark: Again! Game Design is extremely different for Sandbox vs Themepark. Know what you are getting into.
Group vs Solo: Which one is the Ying and which one is the Yang? Either way you choose, one more Solo-Exclusive player means one less Group-Exclusive Player and vice versa. Pick your poison on what form you prefer and watch the majority and minority get seriously disappointed when a middle-ground is chosen and everyone serious leaves your game by next tuesday.
F2P vs Subscription: The model used to generate revenue goes into the design of the product itself. Either within the product itself, or through direct purchase. This is part of business classes and even Software Engineering programming courses. So yes, its kind of a big deal how model determines how the playerbase generally expects money to be made, and the hurdles it appears.
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I like how this starts with "Get over it!" and to that I say "I would much rather see people get over making convoluted arguments over the grand being portrayed as trivial stuff when such issues make all the difference. Perhaps we should just Blindly jump into the next game that appears, and ignore everything about it, but gladly give the developer our money without question.
In my opinion, it is what thoughts like this represent.
For, how else would one perceive such manner if we view these five points satisfied in a logical argument? It translates to "Don't care, Just Play" and that would be great and cool, if and only if such action didn't involve us being monetized during gameplay and not before or afterwards.
Not tagging games correctly is a step backwards. And it is unrelated to the amount of fun you're having. So why not stop there? Let's call all games RPG as well. You are taking over a roll right? Call anything on a computer a virtual world. Let's even call singleplayer games that force you to stay online mmorpgs as well, afterall millions are connected to a server, eh?
Correct definions--or tags--help us understand and review things better. Of course many people don't care the music they are listening to is Baroque or speed thrash. But just want to enjoy and have fun. But they can't do that and critic at the same time.
My comment isn't about Destiny or @BillMurphy point which I understand. It's about your last comment only
The one thing I would add is we need to get over World of Warcraft. Most MMOs I've tried still clearly follow the WoW "recipe". What we really need are new MMOs that actually innovate.
Active: D&D Online (alpha,beta,&unlimited)
Retired: Anarchy Online, Archlord (beta), Auto Assault (beta), CoH/CoV, Dark Age of Camelot, Dungeon Runners, Elder Scrolls Online, Everquest, EVE, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online (beta,live), Pathfinder Online (beta), Rift (beta,live), Secret World (beta,live), Star Wars Old Republic, Vanguard (beta), Warhammer (beta,live), World of Warcraft
I keep thinking about how fking amazing Atlantica could be if it were a non f2p game. Super happy CU and Pantheon will have subs and there are EQ servers you can only play with a sub.
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
Lol * 1 million. Possibly the craziest thing I have read on these forums. The mental gymnastics you are going through to try and justify your point is mind blowing. Thanks for the laugh.
1. Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game is not slang. Slang is used very rare, is informal, and it is more common in speech than writing. This term was phrased by professionals, not common people. It has been used in writing by professionals for decades now. You could never call it slang before, you can't call it slang now.
2. A similar example to Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game—yes I am using it in full because apparently when I use the acronym you say it is not a real word
a. Definition set by Fire Safety departments: These definitions are not known by the common people, since they have to deal with them. How they announce a building High-Rise in their city depends on the length of their ladders and other safety procedures. In our argument, we don't care about this part. Because it is the equivalent of saying what measurements we should see to put out a fire off a server that can host X amount of people. We really don't care here.
b. Definition set by academic or data mining institutes and companies: Some of these definitions are local, the more credible ones are internationally accepted by professionals. These standards vary from +7-story to +12-story buildings or +35m to +15m. Of course higher numbers belong to Developed Countries. But when are referring to this definition in for example an international conference or an international web-site, you have go to the internationally accepted institutes.
c. Definition accepted widely by professionals around the globe which is again +7-storey buildings.
d. Definition accepted by common people: No institute has done this globally. So I talk from experience. Common people have higher standards when comes to this. Even when I had a project in a small town in a Developing Country. Usually it is a building that is very tall, and their frame of reference is usually New York.
Boring me with wine definition, eh? I can be much more boring mate!
If you study these numbers in history you learn as the technology advanced, these numbers increased. In no point in history they went back down. There might have been cases (I haven't ever read about a case though, but I can understand the logic if this ever happens) for safety to lower the bar what is considered High-Rise, but not by professionals.
No matter how many 2-storey building you build next to each other, the result still wouldn't make a High-Rise.
You can't build a 2-storey building and say it has risen and it is higher than the flat ground and it is pretty and I am having fun just looking at it so it is a High-Rise.
If someone makes a 2-storey building in New York and call it a High-Rise is plainly a joke. If not, as is using that term is a marketing technic is a cheat and a thief.
3. You wrote and I quote "When MMOs get a clear, objective, widely accepted, consistent definition then the point will stand,"--What you are working against that. You are working against having a definition. You are pro of not having definitions. And how do you think these definitions become consistent and widely accepted? Are you waiting for a Bill to pass through the Parliament? These definitions can become consistent and widely acceptable by the work websites like these. And when you go to mmorpg.com and find a wrong definition or you are been told you should get over the definition certainly isn't helpful at all.
4. Again I have to quote "but it's not a real word. Real words help us communicate clearly. Coined phrases, idioms, and colloquialisms can help communicate but not like real words."
Technical phrases cannot be compared to idioms. Intensive-Care-Unit, that's a technical phrase and you are comparing that to an idiom? That was just an awful example mate, sorry.
And coined phrases can help us communicate in many cases even better than the real words. Please don't make up universal rules here. That's why Dickens, Shakespeare and many others invented some them in the first place. Because those coined phrases could relay their intention, feeling, meaning, etc. much better than the words were available to them. Devil-May-Care: let's do that with one real word instead and then you'd realize how much are you missing in relaying that. Of course, you have to help people without the knowledge understand them. And telling them whoever is relaxed or reckless or whichever word you choose you can say Devil-May-Care instead is not helping at all.
You skipped the second part of my post. So I guess you agree with we do need accurate definitions.
Well, it is long enough to be considered a letter now!
I hope everything else is good with you and your family @Torval. Wish you all the best and let's meet soon.
Yours Truly,
Connie
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Catering to solo gameplay is merely a symptom of the real problem. MMOs didn't force people to solo content, the players drove that. You won't solve the problem by implementing group-heavy gameplay, you'll just end up with a game that flops.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Solo content is necessary to keep the playerbase engaged. If you force progress - any progress whatsoever - through group content only, players will leave the game in droves. The vast majority of gamers cannot dedicate the necessary amount of time to group content. They have jobs, families, social lives, other games to play, you name it.
The classic model where raiding is paramount and the only way to get progression 'in the endgame' is fatally flawed in this way, as it caters to a very specific audience which does not have the time or is willing to adjust their schedules to partake in it. Maybe you are willing to do the grind *and* the raid every evening between 19:00 and 0:00, but time is an increasingly precious thing for most people able to actually play these games. Even younger audiences (students and highschoolers mostly) who used to have oodles of free time now have an increasingly busy schedule in recent years.
The people who can spend the time on group content or can move their schedules around it (or are willing to) are more and more falling into a minority. This is made clear by the exponential rise in casual gaming in the past decade, and has been the impetus for Blizzard for example to make their group content accessible to the point of being almost irrelevant through the LFG and raid finder tools.
Getting a fixed group together for anything, even an online game, is difficult at best. Anyone who's ever played any P&P game knows this
MMO's which make group content optional rather than necessary are the norm, and will remain so for the forseeable future, unless someone finds out the magic formula for a game which will make everyone a) give up their current game and b) reschedule their life around a videogame.
Of course, you can go to a complete other extreme and remove group content alltogether, which is also obviously a bad idea. Why play an MMO when there's no multiplayer? BDO is a game which suffers from this to some extent, where group content is actually almost detrimental to progress rather than helpful in most cases.
A balance needs to be found here. Group content for when people *can* play together and solo content for when they *can't*, so they can still play the game without feeling that there's nothing to do in the time they actually have to play it.
Playing: WF
Played: WoW, GW2, L2, WAR, AoC, DnL (2005), GW, LotRO, EQ2, TOR, CoH (RIP), STO, TSW, TERA, EVE, ESO, BDO
Tried: EQ, UO, AO, EnB, TCoS, Fury, Ryzom, EU, DDO, TR, RF, CO, Aion, VG, DN, Vindictus, AA
I'd like to see a game with basically all group content but a really easy drop-in drop-out grouping system so that groups could kind of organically form without the need for long commitment and/or voice coms. I've seen that in some games already, but its mainly only used in pvp or for world bosses/dungeons. Using a similar set up for general questing/adventuring might address some of the issues behind solo play.
Basically, by default when you started a group, it was "open". Any players that came near your group in the game would get a notification that there was an open group nearby, tell you how many players were in it and, if obvious, would tell you what they were doing.
The open groups generally only worked for two activities: public quests and pvp.
For public quests they were great. The locations were fixed, the group sizes flexible, so for the first 6 months of the game you could pretty much walk up to any PQ, find a group, join it and have fun for 10-15 minutes. Eventually people realised that doing any PvE in the game would harm you, so PQs stopped being run, but for a while they were fun.
For PvP, it was also pretty good. You'd enter the PvP lake and get a popup telling you about open groups. During peak times, there might be 4 or 5 open groups running about, so you pick one that looks good (generally most amount of players), click join and thats it, you're in the raid.
If they could somehow add this open group system, with the ingame voice chat from lotro, plus some sort of content scaling so that content scales to your group size, then we've got a winner!
IMO, to really have a winner you need to not only make grouping as accessible as possible, but also more rewarding and less effort overall than soloing; and I think this is where pretty much every MMO of the post WOW era has fallen down.
Probably the best example of this is quests, and quest design in general. i.e. Most 'modern' MMOs make solo questing not only the best EXP per hour you can get, but also seem to actively make it difficult, if not impossible, to do quests in a group (and it is rarely more rewarding), which IMO is simply the wrong design for a so called MMO.
Note that this does not mean you need to ditch solo content altogether, just that everything should be tuned with grouping in mind. For example: Instead of a quest that requires you to kill 10 easily soloable rats, make it a quest to kill 100 points worth of rats, with soloable rats worth 5 points (20 needed), duo / trio rats worth 12 points (8+1 needed), and full group rats worth 25 points (only 4 needed). And if you have scaling, make it so that soloing a dungeon gives significantly less EXP per hour and loot than doing that same dungeon in group, even if that group is only a duo or trio.
Which does not mean locking all your best rewards behind the largest group sizes your server will handle, simply that doing group content should get you rewards faster than soloing. For example: If it takes the average raider 5 weeks to get a BiS weapon, then a similar (or slightly less powerful) weapon should be available from 'lesser' content, but should take a minimum of 10 weeks, and a greater overall effort (i.e. in hours) to get (with shortcuts for group content vs. doing it purely solo).
In short, players should still be able to play an MMO solo, and have it be any enjoyable and rewarding experience, but only if that is truly the playstyle they desire (i.e. not what we have now where it almost seems forced), however grouping should always be 'the best way to play', right from level 1.
Also, in regards to "people don't have time" to play, I think you are wrong here as well, people had just as many responsibilities as they did 15 years ago as they do today. I mean I played with tons of working adults and students back then that had full schedules and were still able to manage to raid and do a lot of the group content that was spread out through the non-instanced world. I'd also argue the kids playing MOBAs all day, sometimes for every long extended periods would also counter your argument that people don't have time.
The problem MMOs have now is that over the years they attracted a lot of people who really don't like MMOs, and a lot of companies, especially Blizzard have been chasing these customers hardcore the last 10 years or so. I'd wager to bet that these types of players make up a good bit of the MMO potential audience now. That is why you see the mindset that old school MMO mechanics wouldn't work for the modern MMO gamer, because the reality is, they were never MMO gamers to begin with.
Thankfully the indie MMO developers have seen the light, now whether or not they have the resources to deliver on this remains to be seen. I think MMO gaming is going to return to it's roots the next 5 years of being a niche genre for a niche audience. I long for the days when I can play a real MMO again, and not worry about that game catering to some person that really doesn't care for a lot of what for me, made MMOs special in the first place. Sure these games might not attract WoW like numbers, but that is okay, it has been made very clear by these developers that they don't need to cater to a mass audience in order to survive.
I agree with you that there are some projects which will ultimately return MMOs to their roots over the next few years. That's about the end of where I agree with you, though
I think that the biggest problem facing these games is nostalgic players. You are correct that there is a niche market who probably still does want an old school MMORPG (like an actual MMORPG). These are people who still play DAOC or MUDs or EQ or some other game where gameplay trumps graphics. However, if you released that same game today, would it thrive? Would it even get 4 digits of concurrent users? Probably not. DBG showed this with SWG-emu. They effective gave them license to run wild with it, and the numbers are still not large enough to justify any sort of development effort, and SWG could be the most beloved old-schoolish game in the history of gaming.
Pantheon looks encouraging. I think you could actually see 6-digit box sales for that. Is it sustainable, though? I have no clue.
What's cool, though, is that we'll be here to witness the death or rebirth or re-invetion of the genre, one way or another. That's pretty significant and pretty cool. It's one of those stories we'll tell our grand kids about "How back in our day, MMOs worked like this..."
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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I agree with your thoughts on questing though. It is an inherent problem with making linear storylines and breaking those storylines up into quests. Your progress through the quests automatically limits the people you can group with and if you force grouping then progression becomes really difficult later on in life as the population dwindles. Scaling technology (as in scaling to group size) has yet to be done well, so solo quests do, unfortunately, offer the best solution for story telling in MMOs.
What I'd prefer to see is to separate character progression from story progression. So, no exp gained from completing quests.
I feel if we went this route, then people like me who find the stories badly written and predictable could completely avoid quests and treat the game more like a sandbox - just find nice spots to grind and spend our time perfecting combat, looting trash and gold, then buying gear on the auction house. Those who prefer the themepark route could do the quests purely for the storyline, but they would still earn xp from killing stuff along the way and so would still level up, they just might have to stop and grind mobs for a bit every now and again if their natural xp wasn't enough to keep up with the quest direction.
Here's an alternate perspective to the idea of grouping being rewarding. How about just not punishing grouping, lol. I mean as it stands the vast majority of systems punish groups, so you get reduced experience, high-level players have no reason to help lower-level players, etc. etc. I understand that they want to ensure that the pacing of the game is "right", but people who actually care about the story will ultimately continue on with it, even if they need to do half the game at max level, and the other half will be happy that they got an alt leveled up 2, 3, 4 times faster than usual.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Too much emphasis on XP IMHO
Personally I like good content.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."
Old in the sense that Guild Wars did it 12 years ago, sure. Though of course at the time that was because "it's not an MMO." But other than that and the last decade of F2P, everything's always been charged by month, hour, or minute. B2P's only recently a trend.
Be sure to pay people who meet these your standards for sure! Even during times you are not required too ( I would love a Tip Jar for this idea! just give people money for doing good work and nothing in return )
We are also seeing a trend of companies that want addicts more than customers and desire to run unregulated Casinos aka games of chance more than the games we love to play. Seriously, STOP PAYING THESE PEOPLE, unless you REALLY want Video Game Themed Unregulated Casinos. Where the people in charge have no repercussions in place to stop them from changing the rules in order to drain more profit from you.
BDO is trending slowly in this direction. Personally with no weekly cap on certain items, I find it closer to this idea than not. Be certain of your standards far before they are breached. Once they are, they may not return.