Will we have another MMORPG like the 2004 and prior days?

Veiled_light

I haven't played one for more than the initial trial since 2004 with WoW being the last, but I quit that in 2006 as I hated changes Blizzard were making to dumb it down. Since WoW there was only one mechanically that impressed me, that was SWTOR.... sadly the world design was not there an so it felt like a mix between a crap Single Player RPG and a crap MMO, appealing to no one. 

I've just not wanted to be in an MMO world since those days, and when I look back it was mostly SOE delivering MMOs I loved, but then destroying them soon after with stupid changes like Blizzard did to WoW, only with less quality. Now SOE do not exist, there are no MMO developers any more You have the small indie ones, but they're making all the same mistakes again that we've seen over the years... I can see they will flop, why can't they? 

I was hoping someone could come in and make a VR MMORPG, because funnily enough you need less fidelity like Rec Room... it's manageable to smaller developers. You'd think it would be the other way around and it would require a massive budget, but your brain fills in the gaps in VR graphically and the immersion is what is important. I always thought if someone took Rec Room and turned it into a SWG type game it would be a huge hit.... no one is pulling it off yet though. For me that's probably the only way you can capture that feeling everyone got playing WoW with a small budget. Someone like Valve or Blizzard could probably pull off a WoW 2, but it will require hundreds of millions. 

I really want a world to be lost in again, I mean not even single player RPGs have done it for me since Skyrim. Bethesda flopped with Fallout 4 and I hated The Witcher 3, I thought the world looks out of proportion, like everything was too small compare to your character model. 

I knew the writing was on the wall for SOE in Planetside 2 Alpha, I played it an told the developer it felt like Battlefield, not Planetside. They wanted that slice of the pie thinking people would love it, but it was just boring..... they did the same with EverQuest Next wanting the Minecraft audience and the game wasn't fun.

You keep seeing this, developers like SOE become blind, none of them seem to understand what we want. I look at SWTOR and mechanically it felt so good, I was really surprised as Bioware have never been good at that part. However you got to Tatooine and could sum up the whole problem with how the Cities were split off from the questing area, with a mandatory Griffon like ride. Why? We want worlds that feel like worlds, not game levels, which make it feel like a single player game. They had one really cool thing and that was a Balloon ride for a Holocron or something, where everyone was PVPing over it. That was so good I bet they got rid of that at some point lol, but that is what we want from an MMO, interaction with other players. 

HazenXIII

Not to be a pessimist, but I don't think it'll ever happen, and the majority of the blame is the F2P/MTX business model. World of Warcraft is partly to blame as well.

MMOs prior to WoW were very niche and usually had a steep learning curve - usually resulting in a very rewarding and deeply layered game (EQ, EQ2, and SWG for example). When WoW hit it big and became a mainstream cash cow, naturally, every other company wanted to follow suit. SWG (the game I played from 2004 until it died) is probably the biggest and most notorious example of this.

To maximize profits and maximize players, everyone just started dumbing down their games and opening in-game item stores. It used to be that only F2P games had item stores, and you just kind of stayed away from those games because you knew they were the equivalent of a B movie. Then, companies realized they could also make you pay for the incomplete game AND have an in-game store that people would go crazy for AND make you pay for content locked behind a pay wall instead of just having a standard subscription for a full game experience without countless confusing P2P/F2P hybrid options.

So in my opinion, it all goes back to money ruining the MMO golden age. Sometimes I wish I hadn't even experienced the awesomeness of SWG or other MMOs in their prime because literally nothing I play now remotely compares in terms of being immersed into a living breathing world with a real community that relies on each other both socially and in terms of gameplay design.

In my opinion, for a game to cater to the early-to-mid 2000s style of MMOs, it would have to be funded so well that it's not even setting out to make money. It would just have to exist for pure enjoyment. The problem is that no business is going to do that for obvious reasons.

AlBQuirky

Also a pessimist, or rather a defeatist.

Those days are long gone when developers actually created games with the attitude, "What can we do that is fun?" Now it's all formulaic, shooting for the way to make the most money, because everyone and their suit knows that half a million players subbing every month equals poverty for all.

Gone are the deep, rich worlds in which to explore and play in. Gone is the diversity in races, classes, cities, and zones. Gone is the danger and excitement of discovery. Gone is desire to sit down and play for more than 1 hour, let alone a whole weekend. Gone is the RPG half of MMORPG,where players actually talked (typed) to one another. Gone is the love so obviously shown an MMORPG by the developers.

Now it is all cut up and sold piecemeal by design for maximum dollars. They are played in small chunks of player's time. Time that "we" no longer have to devote to a rather intensive gaming experience. Gone are the majority of players who seek to "play" rather than "beat" a game.

No, those old times are gone forever, lost to business first and continuous money grabbing. No suit is ever satisfied. It is never enough money

Kyleran

No.

But you'll find it quite a bit easier to locate a fun new game to play if you do this first. 

Scot

I see only one way this could happen, the legal profession pushes on from loot boxes and looks at all the casino and dodgy funding practices. What is left as lawful is subscription, B2P, paid expansions and cosmetics. All of which may well be a lot higher to purchase than now.

Devoid of gameplay altering revenue models, without the casino play that has substituted for solid MMO game play; MMOs would go back to being about quality and long term playability. About paying for what you get rather than what you might get.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Talmien

I don't think its F2P or cash shop models that have destroyed MMOs. We won't have another MMO like 2004 because the development costs have risen so much since then. The original Everquest budget was just $3 million.

No one wants another Everquest, they want incredible real to life graphics, endless worlds, voice acting everywhere, and AI that is difficult to distinguish from real player.

All of that costs years and hundreds of millions to assemble a team large enough to pull it off. And its risky, because a $60 box price just won't cover it anymore. 

Nanfoodle

I dont agree with DMKano on this...

Ashes of Creation for one is making a large scale world thats all about exploring and getting lost. Dungeons are also on a large scale that will support many teams fighting in the same dungeon. You will have to wait another year + for that one but its looking like a winner. This will be a land and sea kind of game. Own a ship and go explore. 

CorePunk is a different type of MMO, its top down like a MOBA but it also is all about a large world you can get lost in. It has a fog of war mechanic, so you will really need to jump into the world to find out whats out there. It also has an awesome question system.


Archage 2 is also in the works, they did a good job of an expansive world in the first one. Will be interesting to see how they do with the second. Many did get turned away from the game by their payment model but friends that loved deep and rich worlds love Archage. 

Pantheon is a long ways off if it releases but is also a large scale world that has some deep PvE content. Large scale dungeons that will support many teams and an in-depth way to quest with the perception system.  

There are more games that are in the works that are not making a cookie cutter MMO that become the norm over the past 10 years. 2021 is looking like a good year for MMOs, there is more MMOs coming out in 2021 then we have seen in many many years. 

iixviiiix

Depend ,

There is a price for everything .

what price do you willing to pay for ?

Aeander

The "glory days" of MMORPGs will never come back. But MMOs are not dead. They're hibernating. They are experiencing a time in which excessive genre saturation killed faith in them and their high investment costs have become unfeasible.

There will come a point at which developing high quality MMOs becomes a more realistic investment prospect. And at that point, they won't mimic the MMOs of 2004 - they'll far exceed them.

Slapshot1188

Most things in life go in cycles.  Someday the genre will cycle back and capture a lot of the great aspects of the classic era but also incorporate new features and technology to bring it to a higher level.

I think that AI will play a huge roles in this, but not just an AI that controls NPC behavior.  No, I mean an AI that will actually build out these "deep rich worlds" and allow for near limitless stories to be told.  

I think there will be disruptive advances in how we see our games (video screens go away), I think we will see advances in how we control our actions (I love KB and Mouse but... I think we have taken it as far as we can), and in how we interact with each other (instant voice synthesizer?)

While I am a short term pessimist about todays games and companies, I am quite confident that in the long term we have just scratched the surface of what the genre can be.  

xpsync

Extremely unlikely.

It was a special place and time, some gamers were fortunate to have been there and experienced it to the fullest, and unfortunately many gamers today will never know what real gaming was like.

olepi

The gaming community changed, so the games changed too.

In the beginning, RPG's were complex, with lots of classes, lots of quests, etc. Few people understood pen/paper RPG's, few people played the first MMORGP's.

The first MMORPG's were for that niche. Small groups of special people playing together for the first time.

But once they started making money, and especially since WoW made so much money, game developers wanted to cash in. And they expanded the player base to bring in more customers.

That brought in the Mortal Kombat Kiddies, as I call them. A dumbed down game, so that even children could play.  Mortal Kombat Kiddies don't want deep character progression, lots of reading, complex quests and storylines. They want action, and immediate gratification.

So that is the kind of games we get now.

Ungood

Ok, I suppose I will chime in on this.

It's been 20 years since MMO's hit the market. 16 since WoW steamrolled the domain.

A lot of players got older, we were younger back then, I wager a lot of us had free time, money, and a willingness to spend it on our hobbies.

Online games were new, they were a different world for us, and they did something magical.

They took away those 3 hour rules arguments that most social games ended up with. It went from needing to deal with your local circle of gamers, to having people across the world you could run with, and these games bridged cultural, social, and even language gaps.

It was magical in the sense we could just get in and play with other people.

Exploring worlds in EQ was a new thing, the whole idea of zones, going from one point to another in a game, discovering paths, and dangers along the way as it where, was new to many (if not all) of us.

I remember back in 2001, when EQ launched, and I was trying to get some friends into it, and trying to explain what it was like, and there was nothing really exactly like it, it was that new.

Then there was a surge, like a wild west of ideas, everyone jumped in, and the genre split into a million parts, with complexity, diversity, and challenge, being the hallmark keywords.

Play our game, and be a DRAGON!

Our game has a million skills, and you will learn to master them all or go insane trying!
Play as a Devil Paladin arch Necromancer with our diverse class building systems!
Kill Huge Hydras using only a scissors and shaving cream as you can play any of our 47 classes, including a barber!

And this was the name of the game.

Then WoW came, and said "Yah.. let's streamline this, let's make it easy, not hard"

and that idea worked.. and it worked well.

So, game developers learned that being complex, throwing too much into the mix, was in fact, not a good thing.

That there were a lot of RPG players out there, that wanted their hand held, they did not want to be tossed into a vast world and told "Go make your own fun"

Even then, some games like to use an example, GW2, opted to try and use hybrid idea, where there was a story if you wanted to do it, if you wanted the rails, you could ride them, but if not, no big and you could go out and make your own fun without any loss.

Anyway, so over time, the rules lawyer that used to be a buzzkill at the gaming table, evolved into the meta gamer, the players that tried to play with the system to optimize their game, and get the most out of everything.

This gives rise to the elitist and the like.

The thing is, as time passes, you had a lot of players get older, and between jobs, house, family, and life, they didn't want a second job playing games, they didn't want to deal with assholes and buzzkills, they wanted a fun game, like sitting at the table and half the time was talking about boobplate and buttcapes.

They wanted something easy, that they could escape into and have fun with other people.

You also had a group of players that did not have any of those things, and could invest into a game like it was a second job, or even a primary job, and in some cases wanted to find their validation in their game presence.

And you have MMO makers trying to make a game to get both of them to spend money.

As I have said many times before, an MMO should be made to target it's market, find a demographic they want to pull in, and focus on that one group, target the hell out of them, and make the best game you can for that group of players, if other people want to play as well, the door is open to them to come in, but, if they are unhappy there, the door is also open to them to leave.

The biggest mistakes that these game companies make, is they have a game that is good for one group, and they go and fuck with things to try and attract some other group.

Nanfoodle

remsleep said:

Nanfoodle said:

I dont agree with DMKano on this...

Ashes of Creation for one is making a large scale world thats all about exploring and getting lost. Dungeons are also on a large scale that will support many teams fighting in the same dungeon. You will have to wait another year + for that one but its looking like a winner. This will be a land and sea kind of game. Own a ship and go explore. 

CorePunk is a different type of MMO, its top down like a MOBA but it also is all about a large world you can get lost in. It has a fog of war mechanic, so you will really need to jump into the world to find out whats out there. It also has an awesome question system.


Archage 2 is also in the works, they did a good job of an expansive world in the first one. Will be interesting to see how they do with the second. Many did get turned away from the game by their payment model but friends that loved deep and rich worlds love Archage. 

Pantheon is a long ways off if it releases but is also a large scale world that has some deep PvE content. Large scale dungeons that will support many teams and an in-depth way to quest with the perception system.  

There are more games that are in the works that are not making a cookie cutter MMO that become the norm over the past 10 years. 2021 is looking like a good year for MMOs, there is more MMOs coming out in 2021 then we have seen in many many years. 

1 - will any of those mmorpgs in the works actually make it to launch? - don't count your eggs before they hatch

2 - will any of them match what 1999-2004 mmorpg experience was like- I am highly skeptical that any of these games will

3 - will these games give players the same feelings they had back in 2004 - again - I think this goes back to the same "trying to recapture the first feeling" - and no matter how hard you try - it's just never the same



I think having *exactly* what we had 20 years ago won't happen ever again - these new games will not bring back the glory days of mmorpgs


Having said all that - i think if people approach new games as just new games to be enjoyed and not constantly trying to compare them to prior experiences - they can have a good time.

It's all about ramping down expectations and being realistic

I think they can and here is why. 10+ years of cookie cutter EQ1/WoW clones and another 5+ years of MMOs trying to be MOBAs amd we have allot of flops. Few hits like FF and ESO that did their own thing and did it well. Developers are getting that we dont need to have the hottest trends to make an MMO, like MOBA combat. 

CorePunk for instance is its own thing. Playing it will give you a different kinda of feels when you play it. Will everyone love it? Most likely not. But someone looking for something new to fall in love with. Games like CorePunk could give you the feels you are looking for. 2021 has allot of non-cookie cutter MMOs in the works. 

We are even getting some ARPG-MMOs. Will they be the next WoW? I dont think so but that rush of playing something different and exciting. I think we have allot of that on the way over the next 12-24 months. IMO, this kind of development could change how we look at MMOs and energize the online industry. 

Wizardry

There are many reasons but no ,not for a very long time as everything in life tends to cycle back onto itself over the years.
2nd poster touches on part of the problem as all studios seem to be aiming towards greed,mtx f2p models.

Another problem is that the market is just way too big now,way too much competition with big money operations controlling the market with heavy marketing.

To make a really good HQ game which imo would be way better than Wow because Wow to me is very ho hum average it would take 7 or so years depending on sub contracting and a very large investment RISK.

These studios do not sit there and think what would make a great game,they think about what SELLS and how cheap can we do it.This is why Epic stopped all development and just threw everything away and turned FN into a BR shooter because it makes loads of money.This is why Riot/Valorant jumped on the bandwagon very late,doesn't matter selling skins seems to be an easy sell.

So as long as studios aim for highest profit monetization we will never see at the very least a ROBUST mmorpg.I feel this is fact and why i completely gave up playing mmorpg's they are going nowhere ....for now.

xpsync

Scot said:

I see only one way this could happen, the legal profession pushes on from loot boxes and looks at all the casino and dodgy funding practices. What is left as lawful is subscription, B2P, paid expansions and cosmetics. All of which may well be a lot higher to purchase than now.

Devoid of gameplay altering revenue models, without the casino play that has substituted for solid MMO game play; MMOs would go back to being about quality and long term playability. About paying for what you get rather than what you might get.

Hopefully, or we get Season Pass 2 BS instead. They'll just dream up new ways to bend folks over.

Path of least resistance, work f'ing hard and develop an amazing game or milk whales, much like SC, Pantheon, Unchained, they'll just milk this shit forever.

Pantheon "Oh man we are running low on funds" that should get peeps to donate... tumbleweed rolls by... whelp that didn't work becasue people aren't going to throw money at a dying dream.

Following week Pantheon "Oh man we are doing so fucking amazing, we are turning down money" my ass, such scammers.

I play SWG:L becasue you play to earn, same for classic, and same for retail as it still retains some remnants of a forgotten era of gaming.

A time when playing a game meant you are playing a game and not playing with your wallet.

Yet retail has now added a transmog tab to the store

I play retail because it doesn't have an obsessive overly aggressive cash shop unlike every f'ing mmorpg out there, that's why retail wins!

It's not trying to nickle and dime me at every turn, i pay my sub and play.

No Potions, no xp boosts, no dlc's, no chapters, you buy the game and play, heck all you need now is a sub and you get everything all the way up to BFA for free.

So it's kinda worrisome to notice the unobtrusive cash shop expand even as minuscule as it just has is concerning.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Wizardry

OP mentions he was hoping for a VR mmorpg.

I am not going to say that is a bad idea but the whole VR idea was just a marketing scam to cash in ,no different than gaming chairs and mics and all the other peripherals trying to cash in on gaming.

Knowing that Facebook bought out Oculus Rift and you MUST have a good standing Facebook account just to use Oculus and to acquire your games pretty much puts a nail in that coffin.

Riot games making tons of money right....let's make a cheap Valorant game because MTX BR games are still rolling in the dough.These studios DO NOT care about making quality games,they care about easy ways to get rich.

The reason mtx works and subs have sort of died off is because consumers are dumb.They whine about being forced to spend but then go ahead and over spend on mtx like a bunch of dumb asses.Some of the MTX packaging is 6-50++ months worth of sub fees so go figure people were complaining lol.You can buy ONE weapon skin for Valorant and buy two games with that money,seriously how dumb are people?

So in reality ask yourself WHY would any developer want to risk a high investment when they can get rich doing it the easy way?

Amathe

I think classic games, or games in a classic style, always have the potential to return in some form. But there is no knowing when that will happen. 

cheyane

I was wondering to myself what would have happened if two games came out exactly like Everquest in 1999 at the same time.

This hypothetical question is with special reference to my own experiences in the genre. I have always believed that Everquest was special and that I loved it so much because it was so immersive and gave me a world I could live in and get lost in for hours and hours and hours....., what if another game had come out at the same time that was like Everquest. Would my experience in Everquest be duplicated in the second game when I play it after having played Everquest?

It cannot because you can never go back and experience something for the first time. So I believe that Everquest cannot be supplanted by any other game. However I have found a lot of fun in other games even if they could not give me the awe and wonder of my first foray into the MMORPG genre.

Games have definitely been dumbed down and this has affected all of us in varying ways and most apparently our desire to continue playing. We play games for a lot less time now than we used to. 

I have found worlds that I enjoyed a great deal like vanilla WoW when it came out and I was very happy to play the game and I did get lost in the game. Getting lost in a game is a state of mind that cannot be forced. It is natural and some people just don't get lost in a game because may be they are too rooted in our present world. I can vouch for feeling cold when I am surrounded in ice and cold or feeling actual fright and fear in a game and that is getting lost in a world. It is possible that some people think getting lost in a world is more than that but to me it is when you lose track of real time or are so involved in a game that a slight sound makes you jump. It does not have to be epic like Ready Player One , it happens even in single player games.

While VR may indeed be the next answer, I am unfortunately very aware of how badly I get sick in first person games and am personally convinced this technology as it is right now is deleterious to your health long term. May be in ten years once they have come up with better hardware I might consider it. 

achesoma

It was the community that made old school mmos what they were. I doubt that will ever be fully recaptured. Though there are micro communities within games that predominantly gather in guilds and Discord. That’s the closest it gets to that close mmo community feeling. 

I’m curious how you felt vanilla WoW was “dumbed down” but SWTOR impressed you. What was impressive about SWTOR?

laserit

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

If VR is a scam, why am I having so much fun with my Pimax 8K headset playing games like Elite Dangerous, Assetto Corsa or Dirt Rally II ?

VR in simulation games is just amazing.

Oh, and I don't even own an Occulus... could I be so wrong there too ?

But it all must be my imagination...

... or it's just that every time I give that guy another chance and look one of his posts despite him being one of the rare on my ignore list, I immediately remember why he is there

How is the 8k headset? What monitor resolution would you compare it too? I've been waiting and wanting to get a headset for driving sims. Just need the resolution to be acceptable for me.

Ungood

blueturtle13 said:

Nanfoodle said:

remsleep said:

Nanfoodle said:

I dont agree with DMKano on this...

Ashes of Creation for one is making a large scale world thats all about exploring and getting lost. Dungeons are also on a large scale that will support many teams fighting in the same dungeon. You will have to wait another year + for that one but its looking like a winner. This will be a land and sea kind of game. Own a ship and go explore. 

CorePunk is a different type of MMO, its top down like a MOBA but it also is all about a large world you can get lost in. It has a fog of war mechanic, so you will really need to jump into the world to find out whats out there. It also has an awesome question system.


Archage 2 is also in the works, they did a good job of an expansive world in the first one. Will be interesting to see how they do with the second. Many did get turned away from the game by their payment model but friends that loved deep and rich worlds love Archage. 

Pantheon is a long ways off if it releases but is also a large scale world that has some deep PvE content. Large scale dungeons that will support many teams and an in-depth way to quest with the perception system.  

There are more games that are in the works that are not making a cookie cutter MMO that become the norm over the past 10 years. 2021 is looking like a good year for MMOs, there is more MMOs coming out in 2021 then we have seen in many many years. 

1 - will any of those mmorpgs in the works actually make it to launch? - don't count your eggs before they hatch

2 - will any of them match what 1999-2004 mmorpg experience was like- I am highly skeptical that any of these games will

3 - will these games give players the same feelings they had back in 2004 - again - I think this goes back to the same "trying to recapture the first feeling" - and no matter how hard you try - it's just never the same



I think having *exactly* what we had 20 years ago won't happen ever again - these new games will not bring back the glory days of mmorpgs


Having said all that - i think if people approach new games as just new games to be enjoyed and not constantly trying to compare them to prior experiences - they can have a good time.

It's all about ramping down expectations and being realistic

I think they can and here is why. 10+ years of cookie cutter EQ1/WoW clones and another 5+ years of MMOs trying to be MOBAs amd we have allot of flops. Few hits like FF and ESO that did their own thing and did it well. Developers are getting that we dont need to have the hottest trends to make an MMO, like MOBA combat. 

CorePunk for instance is its own thing. Playing it will give you a different kinda of feels when you play it. Will everyone love it? Most likely not. But someone looking for something new to fall in love with. Games like CorePunk could give you the feels you are looking for. 2021 has allot of non-cookie cutter MMOs in the works. 

We are even getting some ARPG-MMOs. Will they be the next WoW? I dont think so but that rush of playing something different and exciting. I think we have allot of that on the way over the next 12-24 months. IMO, this kind of development could change how we look at MMOs and energize the online industry. 

I disagree. 

Corepunk plays like Torchlight 3 should have.
It will not go anywhere close to furthering the genre along. 
It is ok fun for what it is (at this stage anyway) but nothing it does is new and it recycles things we have seen in ARPGs for years and years now. 
It feels like any other ARPG at this point.
With MMO features just tacked on.
Only a 4 party member cap. 
I dislike a fog of war.
Gear scores too? ugh. 
You will see for yourself soon enough.
Perhaps they can pull it together by launch but it is still just an ARPG with tacked on MMORPG systems.
We have all seen how that turns out. 

Everything that is coming out over the next few years is just variations of the same games over and over again.
For some people that will be fine. 
For many of us that will not be fine. 

The technology needs to advance before we see a shift in the genre that everyone is really looking for. 
Until then we just need to be content to play what is there or like some of us just move on to other genres all together. 
Perhaps my grandkids will be able to play the MMORPG games I wish I could.

To be fair, many people would have happy with a revitalized game concept. 

It is not about doing NEW things, sometimes it is about finding those hidden gems that were lost under the treads of progress, polishing them off and exposing them as the diamonds they are.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Nanfoodle

achesoma said:

It was the community that made old school mmos what they were. I doubt that will ever be fully recaptured. Though there are micro communities within games that predominantly gather in guilds and Discord. That’s the closest it gets to that close mmo community feeling. 

I’m curious how you felt vanilla WoW was “dumbed down” but SWTOR impressed you. What was impressive about SWTOR?

Ya the TicTok generation has a very short attention span. If they start designing MMOs to have 30-60 seconds of content at a shot, Im out.