You guys wanna know whats wrong with these games??? $$$Money money .... money!$$$
More or less accurate.
About a decade ago, the video game industry was much smaller. Budgets were pocket change and studios were thought of as much as artists as businesses. Jump to today and the budgets are right up there with the movie and music industries. Is it any surprise that now the business end of video games is run the same way as those?
Look at all the crap movie remakes and re-used formula movies that hit the big screen. Maybe one out of 20 more might be worth watching and once in awhile one movie comes along that is truly great. It may sound depressing but that is where we are today; we're like the movie goers that bypass the new releases section in the video store and go straight to the foreign and independent film sections.
I don't know how long it will last. Movies and music have been at it a long time. Although the music industry is hurting from downloads (goes to show what happens when people have an alternative). There is always fresh meat to the market. a decade from now, some 13 year old will be playing his first MMO, Everquest 5 with the auto-leveling bot add-on, and think that it is the best thing since 7-eleven made the 96 oz slurpee.
Until something like an MMO Napster comes along I think we'll be waiting to find that needle in a haystack MMO gem to be released from the big studios.
First of all: I do welcome new ideas in the MMO genres, but I'd like to comments a couple of Torak's statements. "Someone is eventually going to need to break out of the box. If not, this genre is going to go out the window in the western market." Maybe, but that will not happen the next few years. "Asian game business models are really going to start putting alot of pressure on the "monthly" subscription fee model." I'm assuming that "Asian game models" means Asian games, though it could mean rip-offs, etc. You really believe that any company will use LOTS of time and money making a top quality game without charging us? Hmm.. would love to see it, but I don't thinks it's realistic. Not until production costs drops with a large percentage, at least. Torak was talking about the item shop model, which gives players the choice to buy additional enhancements (Xp/gold gain increase, but it could also be fashion clothes, things like that), and I can assure you it is very realistic. Granado Espada took over 3 years to make, 56 million USD, received the best korean game award 2006, as well as the best graphics award. Granado Espada is using a "free to play" item shop model in all regions, the english version is still discussing if they should go with a monthly fee or item shop, although an item shop is much more likely. "The main difference between western and Asian game models in both business and design is that Asian games are actually making allot of money." Which Asian game is making more money that Western? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Blizzard American? There can hardly be any MMO company making more money atm than they do. And soon we'll have LOTRO (I'm guessing a bit here - I think Turbine is Western, but I could be wrong). I haven't heard of any revoluting originality of this game, but I'm willing to bet a lot on that this will be a gigantic success. Nobody knows for sure, and also keep in mind that Blizzard is the only western mmorpg that is such a major success. all other western mmorpg's have 200k subscribers or less.
As I said, I'd love to see more original ideas, but I don't think we'll see any revolution in the communtiy, yet. Successes like WoW and my impression that WoW attracts lots of first-time MMO-ers, suggests so. Noobs tend to go for what's popular. But if I'm right, WoW might just be the best happening for the community ever, simply because there will be a lot of new MMO-ers looking for alternative games AND genres when they get tired of WoW.
Of course it's about money! A top quality MMO costs enormous amounts of money to make, and to maintain. If you was running a MMORPG company, would you be willing to risk $50 - 100 mills on a new type of project, just because you wanted to present something different?
I really doubt it.
It's easy to get the impression that you hate companies who earns lots of money by providing what customers wants. What's wrong with earning money? Don't forget, these companies MIGHT be the ones to think new thougts in the future, because they can afford to take a chance then.
Item shop may be a succesfull buisness concept but I think it's far from what OP is aiming for. Although I see how item shop is good for some people with limited playtime and enough cash in their disposal I think it's the most degrading and vile piece of dung that has ever hit the MMORPG model and goes against every single bit of byte it stands for.
They don't innovate because they don't need to; WoW introduced absolutly nothing new, they just took old ideas and made them more accessable and simplyfied. Fact of the situation is though, the majority of MMO players seem perfectly content with this, so nothing will change.
Older MMO gamers like myself are just moving on. When any sort of product becomes massed produced to a wide audience, it loses alot of what made it unique and original in the past, because they no longer have to take risks on innovation, there are so many MMO players now that will buy into whatever hype and marketing schemes that get thrown at them, sales seem to hinge more on hype than content now.
Think of it in terms like this: When the MMO market was much smaller and considered more of a niche' in the late 90's-02, companies had to keep comming up with ideas to entertain. The amount of MMO gamers were so much smaller that the only way to get a decent player base was to steal it from other companies, because it wasn't a Genre that was popular with the general masses.
WoW changed all that though. Blizzard has always been masters of hype and marketing, and they essentially opened up the MMO market to nearly all gamers. The amount of mmo players now has exploded compared to previous years, and alot of the reason for that is because Blizzard specifically targetted players new to MMO's to market WoW too; If you played any of blizzards older games while WoW was being developed, you would know this.
With all these new players floating around, there are now 2 reasons not to innovate: First of all, why take the risk when the market is so big now that unless thier game is a complete mess it's going to sell and sell well enough to make a profit. Also, the newer MMO gamers wern't around in the day's of EQ1, ultima, etc, so everything is new to them.
Thunderbolt1: Of course it's about money! A top quality MMO costs enormous amounts of money to make, and to maintain. If you was running a MMORPG company, would you be willing to risk $50 - 100 mills on a new type of project, just because you wanted to present something different? I really doubt it. It's easy to get the impression that you hate companies who earns lots of money by providing what customers wants. What's wrong with earning money? Don't forget, these companies MIGHT be the ones to think new thougts in the future, because they can afford to take a chance then.
So because they cost lots of money, we shouldn't expect anything different? Thats your answer?
Nothing is wrong with earning money sherlock, I don't see your point here. The question was, "whats wrong with the companies" not "whats wrong with my opinion".
I love this line right here, this sums up the problem nicely....couldn't have said it better.
Don't forget, these companies MIGHT be the ones to think new thougts in the future, because they can afford to take a chance then.
They might be the ones to think new thoughts in the future!!!!!!!!!! Just as soon as they milk the current train of thought dry. Until then enjoy WoW, everyone else is. If you behave and pay your $fee$ we may get around to thinking a new thought for you in the future when we can better afford to do that new thinking.
Aside from EVE Online, can you think of any MMOs that both broke from the usual mold and would be commonly considered fincially successful? There aren't many that many, if any, and the number is substantially smaller than the number of clones that have achieved fincial sucess.
DAoC comes to mind, they broke the EQ mold and even managed to get 250,000 subs half of what EQ had. Sadly game companies today have no balls, and refuse to try anything new. I still have hope in Mythic, they once had enough balls to make a new game and where rewarded for it. Let's hope EA didn't cut them off....
I have been reading mmorpg.com news and forums for a while and I have had a lot of opinions on many things as most others here do. Until now, I haven't been compelled to post anything because normally all the major opinions are covered countless times and most of the time the conversations' participants are not interested in the truth and progression of ideas but rather simply "winning", which reduce the conversations into stupidity. However, I cannot resist the the need to ask the question WHAT IN THE WORLD IS WRONG WITH MMORPG COMPANIES? There is no way in the world that non-established companies can create successful copycat, run-of-the-mill, coookie cutter MMORPGs anymore. It is now more costly than ever to create a cookie-cutter MMORPG to compete with what is already out there. For a non-established and non-mega-funded company, it would be best to do something ORIGINAL and not put yourself directly in competition with the huge companies like Blizzard and Sony. The MMORPG players that are addicted to mindlessly consuming time through constant clicking for no particular reason are unfortunately the largest part of the market now. And Blizzard, SOE, EA, NCSoft, etc... are currently in complete control of that market. They got the money to pour out endless expansion paid expansion packs, content additions, and new graphics to click on. It would take big money to create a copy of one of their games (all EQ clones of different variations, although a few of them are a little more original than others, but not by very much) and be able to successfully break into the market and steal market share LONG-TERM. So that part of the market is completely off-limits to any sane company that is not mega-funded. That means the smaller companies should go after the other market that is up for grabs. The market that wants open-ended gameplay, a true virtual world, decisions and consequences that determine your fate instead of how often/fast/much you click, heavy player interaction of both cooperation and competition, player control and influence on the world, etc... etc... Yet what do I see within the last week of reading mmorpg.com? SOE announcing a spy-themed MMORPG and within a week afterwards, two other companies announcing the exact same thing! We all know that there is a 99% chance these MMORPGs are going to be EQ clones (just with James Bond clothing)...but what on earth posseses these companies to all go for the exact same theme? Can't they at the very least, for their own sake if not anyone else's, set their EQ clones in different themes??? When is there ever going to be a company that actually puts their investment money to use and attempts to develop something original...instead of going into a doomed head-on copycat attack on the super-MMORPG corporations? Sure, I guess the company doesn't care while their developing the game, they will get paychecks from their investors with or without success....up until the game launches and is a complete failure against the game with superior graphics by the big guy. Wouldn't they WANT a successful game to make MORE money instead of just a regular paycheck for a few years? I just don't understand what is going on in the MMORPG industry. Three games of the exact same theme in one week...geez. I just had to get that off my chest....I almost posted something when I saw the second spy MMO in a week, but when a 3rd one was announced the very next day...that was too much for me to resist posting something about.
KFC is a popular fast-food restaurant. Although they server millions of customers, locally owned and operated franchises open up in my town every few months. Even though some of them close their doors a few months later.
I think the same rings true for MMO companies. Although World of Warcraft (I won't touch Sony.) is a mega-success, smaller businesses try and capture a bit of the market with similar product.
Also, a lot of smaller companies try to make small adjustments to popular ideas in order to pull a niche crowd away from a popular MMORPG. Every day we see posts on this forum which bash Blizzard and SoE. If those customers are upset with the product they are paying for, a smaller company may persuade them away.
rofl find it funny you picked KFC here. If you are following KFC at all you may know they are kinda in trouble atm. Alot of KFC francises are closing down and going under, the quality of KFC dropped off a few years ago and now alot of smaller franchises are forcing KFC out of many of its markets.. Its really kinda interesting to watch. I can go in a KFC now and just by the atmosphere, quality, and employees tell if it will be there in a month or not.. Its wierd watching a great beast in its death throes but thats kinda what we are seeing with many MMO's as well...
We are seeing it alot lately with SOE it seems. They are big they got the money to back them and make games but their quality sucks as well as their handling of the player base (I'll leave it at that so you can read into as customer service and/or cost fees).
Little teams like myself, have ideas, we just don't have enough money other then what we've put into ourselves and through initial investment to go large scale (wow-sized). That's the problem though, we DON'T want to be wow. We have our own vision of what we want and have an estimated size of what our "Niche" population will be. In the end though, that is an estimate, a gamble, a guess that no one can possibly know from the beginning. We've done a lot of research on it and we have a pretty good edumacated guess about it but its still just that, a good guess.
On the other hand, big companies like SOE, Blizzard etc don't want and/or have to guess. They know what sells on the market now and have whole departments telling them how much they are making and what the population density is in China playing "x" game. They won't innovate until a Indie does and then they'll take that Idea when its solid and market it, its what they do. Just like Walmart. There business is the numbers, you are just a number, and non-essential so you see the result in their products of mass-marketing of unfinished buggy or generic games.
We have vision without funds, they have funds but lack vision.
I am rather puzzled by it too, but one thing you must consider, there is a 3-4 year ramp up time to make one of these MMO's and risking that much development money on what the fanbase will be looking for 4 years from now is probably riskier than rolling dice. So they go with the safe decision and copy. I do agree that Eve has remained different and still makes money, although the game is not for everyone. Eve's one major flaw, they want to keep the game very open. The problem that this incurs is that the scammers and those that prey on the weak have little consequence. It is far more profitable to be a pirate than an anti. Most of the people that play that game, like it that way, so it will not change. Turbine has dared to be different, unfortunately AC2, their EQ clone was a real flop. DDO was based on board game rules, that work well with a live dungeon master but are really poorly suited to use in a MMO. But part of the agreement to get the title said they had to use that ruleset. D&D is always party related and it just turned off many players because soloing is out pretty much. They are about to embark on another existing theme world in Lord of the Rings Online. Personally I was impressed enough by the stress test to give it a try. Certainly has far better graphics than Wow, a bigger world, but I do understand that it is much like Wow. I do think that Wow will be vulnerable late summer and fall, the expansion was preported to be more casual friendly, but it looks like again it was really just a facade and it is still basically a grind and raid game still. I figure by late summer people will have most of the alts at 70 and bored. But so far nothing with really open ended play, with consequence though.
I disagree with your line of thinking, or rather if that's how these MMORPG devs are thinking, its pretty un-innovative and myopic. More realistically if I were designing a game, and I knew we had a couple years to work with, then I would think it more likely we would need to be as unique and different from the current game as possible. This is because by the time my game would be released I have given the market plenty of time to become completely bored and sick of what's out now, so more of the same would just be a complete turnoff to the market. The safe decision to copy is not going to be worth any of the current MMO player's time, those who are bitter and bored with all the clones of EQ's original concept. Its just not original enough to reinvent the wheel with prettier rims so to speak, which is all WoW, EQ2, Vanguard, etc etc have done. Admittedly there are a few standouts, EVE, CoH, maybe even SWG, but even those are only so unique from the formula, EVE online possibly the most so, and each has its own problems to deal with.
With regards to the problems Turbine is faced with, it has been my experience that they just don't have what it takes, and I say this after reviewing all their past works. AC was a mediocre rival to EQ, sorry not much else to say here other than they just didn't bring strong enough game. AO had alot of potential, but again, weak delivery, weak launch, weak game. DDO was a particularly awful failure IMO as a fan of the PnP D&D 3.5, but I think the least of the problems was its origins. I feel about this much the same as when a successful comic book gets converted into a weak movie, its because the director/screenwriter thought they could do it better or different from what was a known successful quantity, and are unfortunately wrong. Turbine made a mediocre RPG in general out of D&D, small instanced world, crappy graphics, and a less than first gen feel in the 3rd generation of MMORPG's, and I fail to see how D&D's ruleset contirbuted to the problem (Turbine's weak dev skills), when they were about as unfaithful to the ruleset as they could be. At best it derived the names of stuff from D&D, but otherwise changed rules functionality so completely, that it didn't feel much like D&D at all. So Turbine's failures in my opinion, from what I have witnessed from them, are solely their own, and the fact that they are just a weak dev company. Sorry, but the path to hell is paved with good intentions, and while Turbine might have "Dared to be different" at least in theory, they failed to deliver with solid games in all previous endeavors. Good ideas mean nothing without solid actions backing them up, and Turbine talks the talk without having proven with anything they've done, being able to walk the walk.
I do agree with your assessment of WoW, mainly because that's exaclty where i am with it right now. I came back a couple months ago hit 60, and got bored, however the expansion kept me intrigued, so I waited for it. Well I am already 70 now, and all that remains is the same grindy crap that was boring as hell at 60 to do. One can only re-roll a new character so many times before the crushing boredom sets in, and the inevitable truth that they will all end up at the same place with nothing left to do but soul sucking grinds. Truly one of the greater weaknesses in WoW is its end game.
Honestly, its going to have to get worse before it gets better I think. Companies very often won't risk much considering the money involved, until their cowardice and un-originality costs them more money than not. Its sad that its like this, but it is, at least from what I have seen. So we are going to have to wait for the next gen of games to repeat WoW, its successes and its weaknesses, and fail with it painfully, before someone dares to do it any different. My only hope will be that someone maybe will try to at least correct what have been the mistakes of WoW. Only time will tell though. My 2 cents.
They don't innovate because they don't need to; WoW introduced absolutly nothing new, they just took old ideas and made them more accessable and simplyfied. Fact of the situation is though, the majority of MMO players seem perfectly content with this, so nothing will change.
Older MMO gamers like myself are just moving on. When any sort of product becomes massed produced to a wide audience, it loses alot of what made it unique and original in the past, because they no longer have to take risks on innovation, there are so many MMO players now that will buy into whatever hype and marketing schemes that get thrown at them, sales seem to hinge more on hype than content now.
Think of it in terms like this: When the MMO market was much smaller and considered more of a niche' in the late 90's-02, companies had to keep comming up with ideas to entertain. The amount of MMO gamers were so much smaller that the only way to get a decent player base was to steal it from other companies, because it wasn't a Genre that was popular with the general masses.
WoW changed all that though. Blizzard has always been masters of hype and marketing, and they essentially opened up the MMO market to nearly all gamers. The amount of mmo players now has exploded compared to previous years, and alot of the reason for that is because Blizzard specifically targetted players new to MMO's to market WoW too; If you played any of blizzards older games while WoW was being developed, you would know this.
With all these new players floating around, there are now 2 reasons not to innovate: First of all, why take the risk when the market is so big now that unless thier game is a complete mess it's going to sell and sell well enough to ake a profit. Also, the newer MMO gamers wern't around in the day's of EQ1, ultima, etc, so everything is new to them.
ok I am going to respond to each paragragh separately:
P1: Actually you are kinda right, in that the format of the game (high fantasy, class based, essentially D&D stlye RPG conept) isn't new. EQ started it, WoW refined it. However, what was new, was the storyline was Warcraft, the graphics didn't feel 3rd rate probably for the first time in MMO history, accessibility and simplification also exposed MMORPG's to the rest of the world (mainstream), which may be considered bad for some, but is a good thing, since the success WoW achieved was previously unprecedented in the market, thus opening the doors for MMORPG's to become a genre of much more interests to game developers. WoW is probably as near to perfect as any MMORPG has actually come, near but not quite. The end game is a sore point for many, mainly because its not fun, completely halts the otherwise nice pacing of the game, and basically neutralizes the accessibility that appealed to its audience for the better part of the game as a whole. PVP also has many issues, basically being reduced to the winner is the one who strikes first, and 90% of the time, this is true. As well, I think the classic D&D style RPG model with character classes and levels really just doesn't make for a great PvP concept. Often it leads to players crying about balance between classes, and then usually class homogenization, constant changes, nerfs/buffs, etc in an attempt to solve the "balance" problem. Sorry but the model was designed with classes as specialists to create party inter-dependancies for cooperative play, not PvP, and no MMORPG yet that uses that model in my experience has successfully introduced PvP into it without creating the deadly "class balance" dilemma. Blizzard has tried real hard, but clearly haven't quite figured it out yet, since 2+years live, they have never yet worked the classes to a finished point, constantly changing and re-balancing them to this day, predominantly if not exclusively due to PvP balance issues. But I don't fault WoW for reinventing the wheel here, the genre truly needed to see what it could be in a supremely polished state, and for the stage that WoW entered the MMORPG market, they shook up the industry with their incredible execution. Blizzard innovated alot more than people want to give them credit for, but just didn't quite achieve perfection. But lets be honest, they came a helluva lot closer than anyone else has to date. Now its up to the next generation to look at WoW, and see what they can do to break the mold, and truly reinvent the expectations of the genre, as WoW did before them. If WoW had merely been a complete clone of EQ, it would have just been Vanguard...jk, it wouldn't nearly have been as successful as it has been. So to be fair Blizzard/WoW deserves credit for doing a lot of things right, not just crapped on because it didn't get it ALL right.
P2: I see where you are coming from, but imagine for a minute that every future MMORPG is just WoW remade. We won't nearly be as astonished by the technical, accessibility, and marketing leaps that made WoW ahead of its time, we will expect that now. So with the MMORPG market being even more mainstream than before, developers will have to become more innovative/competitive to attract customers to their games. Consider the cellular phone industry, because it is mainstream, and because their is heavy competition, each cellular dealer/phone manufacturer is constantly innovating on the technology and features to offer their customers. As for hype over content, I agree it has been that way, but also consider this hasn't been a very much more than niche market for several years now. With the increased market size comes increased visibility, and the previous hype/lies/broken promises that developers in the past have been guilty of, will be exposed instantly and made intolerable immediately from future developers (go go super jaded, righteous MMORPG players).
P3: I addressed much of this with my above response in Paragraph 2, but to be more specific, I honeslty think that while it was a more niche market, developers really could have thrown anything out there and the "niche" would have taken it, simply because while the market was niche, developers were even fewer, and our options were limited. I strongly believe that the only reason anyone played UO or EQ for as long as they did was because there was no significant competition in the market for players to turn to.
P4: Mostly agree, Blizzard is good at marketing and hype, also must add though, that in my opinion, Blizzard has also been one of the elite few software development companies that even comes close to, if not fully achieves, delivering the goods to go with all that "hype". Honestly, with few exceptions, Blizzard has developed pure gold nearly every time they've released something. Diablo/Diablo2 defined a decade or more of computer gaming. Battle.net was a pioneering step in online gaming. The Warcraft and Starcraft series both set the standard for the RTS game genre. I am sounding a bit fanboi-ish for Blizzard right now, but only because the quoted post polarizes me to it by being imbalanced towards Blizzard/WoW in terms of giving credit vs decrying flaws.
P5: Disagree, with the mainstream now aware and expectant in the formerly niche market of MMORPG's, I highly suspect that developers who seek success in the genre will have to be more innovative than ever. Blizzard showed investors and developers everywhere that there is big money to be made in MMO's, but with the influx of people trying to get a share of the market, competition will be at an unprecedented high in the history of this genre. Not to mention, that same newly aware mainstream audience is fully aware of WoW, and Blizzard set the bar pretty high with it to be honest, so newcomers will either rise to the challenge and offer something new that people desire, or they will fail.
Long have MMORPG developers known that they have had a niche market at their behest, a market who would willingly play even a mediocre title, tolerate poor customer service, developer lies, community mistreatment, etc because they had a monopoly. With the vultures flocking to the gold mine that Blizzard has shown the world is available in this industry, expect to see hardcore competition, and with it, consumer expectations at an all time high. Simply put, Blizzard has in all likely hood brought the attention and competition sorely needed into this genre/market that will finally weed out the crap developers (SOE, Brad Mcquaid, Turbine, et al), their games, and their awful practices that have embittered all of us.
Item shop may be a succesfull buisness concept but I think it's far from what OP is aiming for. Although I see how item shop is good for some people with limited playtime and enough cash in their disposal I think it's the most degrading and vile piece of dung that has ever hit the MMORPG model and goes against every single bit of byte it stands for.
I completely agree. Item shops and developer sponsored selling of advantages, no matter how insignificant, including preorder advantages, runs contrary to the essence of playing a MMOG and immersing oneself in a virtual world.
Comments
any company produce thta fills everyones expectations that has not already been done? Community makes a game not a devs
innovative idea....
About a decade ago, the video game industry was much smaller. Budgets were pocket change and studios were thought of as much as artists as businesses. Jump to today and the budgets are right up there with the movie and music industries. Is it any surprise that now the business end of video games is run the same way as those?
Look at all the crap movie remakes and re-used formula movies that hit the big screen. Maybe one out of 20 more might be worth watching and once in awhile one movie comes along that is truly great. It may sound depressing but that is where we are today; we're like the movie goers that bypass the new releases section in the video store and go straight to the foreign and independent film sections.
I don't know how long it will last. Movies and music have been at it a long time. Although the music industry is hurting from downloads (goes to show what happens when people have an alternative). There is always fresh meat to the market. a decade from now, some 13 year old will be playing his first MMO, Everquest 5 with the auto-leveling bot add-on, and think that it is the best thing since 7-eleven made the 96 oz slurpee.
Until something like an MMO Napster comes along I think we'll be waiting to find that needle in a haystack MMO gem to be released from the big studios.
Thunderbolt1:
Of course it's about money! A top quality MMO costs enormous amounts of money to make, and to maintain. If you was running a MMORPG company, would you be willing to risk $50 - 100 mills on a new type of project, just because you wanted to present something different?
I really doubt it.
It's easy to get the impression that you hate companies who earns lots of money by providing what customers wants. What's wrong with earning money? Don't forget, these companies MIGHT be the ones to think new thougts in the future, because they can afford to take a chance then.
Older MMO gamers like myself are just moving on. When any sort of product becomes massed produced to a wide audience, it loses alot of what made it unique and original in the past, because they no longer have to take risks on innovation, there are so many MMO players now that will buy into whatever hype and marketing schemes that get thrown at them, sales seem to hinge more on hype than content now.
Think of it in terms like this: When the MMO market was much smaller and considered more of a niche' in the late 90's-02, companies had to keep comming up with ideas to entertain. The amount of MMO gamers were so much smaller that the only way to get a decent player base was to steal it from other companies, because it wasn't a Genre that was popular with the general masses.
WoW changed all that though. Blizzard has always been masters of hype and marketing, and they essentially opened up the MMO market to nearly all gamers. The amount of mmo players now has exploded compared to previous years, and alot of the reason for that is because Blizzard specifically targetted players new to MMO's to market WoW too; If you played any of blizzards older games while WoW was being developed, you would know this.
With all these new players floating around, there are now 2 reasons not to innovate: First of all, why take the risk when the market is so big now that unless thier game is a complete mess it's going to sell and sell well enough to make a profit. Also, the newer MMO gamers wern't around in the day's of EQ1, ultima, etc, so everything is new to them.
So because they cost lots of money, we shouldn't expect anything different? Thats your answer?
Nothing is wrong with earning money sherlock, I don't see your point here. The question was, "whats wrong with the companies" not "whats wrong with my opinion".
I love this line right here, this sums up the problem nicely....couldn't have said it better.
Don't forget, these companies MIGHT be the ones to think new thougts in the future, because they can afford to take a chance then.
They might be the ones to think new thoughts in the future!!!!!!!!!! Just as soon as they milk the current train of thought dry. Until then enjoy WoW, everyone else is. If you behave and pay your $fee$ we may get around to thinking a new thought for you in the future when we can better afford to do that new thinking.
I give up.
I'm pretty sure you get worked up and provoked just by someone saying "hello" to you
Thepwnblog.com - MMORPG blog
I think the same rings true for MMO companies. Although World of Warcraft (I won't touch Sony.) is a mega-success, smaller businesses try and capture a bit of the market with similar product.
Also, a lot of smaller companies try to make small adjustments to popular ideas in order to pull a niche crowd away from a popular MMORPG. Every day we see posts on this forum which bash Blizzard and SoE. If those customers are upset with the product they are paying for, a smaller company may persuade them away.
rofl find it funny you picked KFC here. If you are following KFC at all you may know they are kinda in trouble atm. Alot of KFC francises are closing down and going under, the quality of KFC dropped off a few years ago and now alot of smaller franchises are forcing KFC out of many of its markets.. Its really kinda interesting to watch. I can go in a KFC now and just by the atmosphere, quality, and employees tell if it will be there in a month or not.. Its wierd watching a great beast in its death throes but thats kinda what we are seeing with many MMO's as well...
We are seeing it alot lately with SOE it seems. They are big they got the money to back them and make games but their quality sucks as well as their handling of the player base (I'll leave it at that so you can read into as customer service and/or cost fees).
Little teams like myself, have ideas, we just don't have enough money other then what we've put into ourselves and through initial investment to go large scale (wow-sized). That's the problem though, we DON'T want to be wow. We have our own vision of what we want and have an estimated size of what our "Niche" population will be. In the end though, that is an estimate, a gamble, a guess that no one can possibly know from the beginning. We've done a lot of research on it and we have a pretty good edumacated guess about it but its still just that, a good guess.
On the other hand, big companies like SOE, Blizzard etc don't want and/or have to guess. They know what sells on the market now and have whole departments telling them how much they are making and what the population density is in China playing "x" game. They won't innovate until a Indie does and then they'll take that Idea when its solid and market it, its what they do. Just like Walmart. There business is the numbers, you are just a number, and non-essential so you see the result in their products of mass-marketing of unfinished buggy or generic games.
We have vision without funds, they have funds but lack vision.
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With regards to the problems Turbine is faced with, it has been my experience that they just don't have what it takes, and I say this after reviewing all their past works. AC was a mediocre rival to EQ, sorry not much else to say here other than they just didn't bring strong enough game. AO had alot of potential, but again, weak delivery, weak launch, weak game. DDO was a particularly awful failure IMO as a fan of the PnP D&D 3.5, but I think the least of the problems was its origins. I feel about this much the same as when a successful comic book gets converted into a weak movie, its because the director/screenwriter thought they could do it better or different from what was a known successful quantity, and are unfortunately wrong. Turbine made a mediocre RPG in general out of D&D, small instanced world, crappy graphics, and a less than first gen feel in the 3rd generation of MMORPG's, and I fail to see how D&D's ruleset contirbuted to the problem (Turbine's weak dev skills), when they were about as unfaithful to the ruleset as they could be. At best it derived the names of stuff from D&D, but otherwise changed rules functionality so completely, that it didn't feel much like D&D at all. So Turbine's failures in my opinion, from what I have witnessed from them, are solely their own, and the fact that they are just a weak dev company. Sorry, but the path to hell is paved with good intentions, and while Turbine might have "Dared to be different" at least in theory, they failed to deliver with solid games in all previous endeavors. Good ideas mean nothing without solid actions backing them up, and Turbine talks the talk without having proven with anything they've done, being able to walk the walk.
I do agree with your assessment of WoW, mainly because that's exaclty where i am with it right now. I came back a couple months ago hit 60, and got bored, however the expansion kept me intrigued, so I waited for it. Well I am already 70 now, and all that remains is the same grindy crap that was boring as hell at 60 to do. One can only re-roll a new character so many times before the crushing boredom sets in, and the inevitable truth that they will all end up at the same place with nothing left to do but soul sucking grinds. Truly one of the greater weaknesses in WoW is its end game.
Honestly, its going to have to get worse before it gets better I think. Companies very often won't risk much considering the money involved, until their cowardice and un-originality costs them more money than not. Its sad that its like this, but it is, at least from what I have seen. So we are going to have to wait for the next gen of games to repeat WoW, its successes and its weaknesses, and fail with it painfully, before someone dares to do it any different. My only hope will be that someone maybe will try to at least correct what have been the mistakes of WoW. Only time will tell though. My 2 cents.
P1: Actually you are kinda right, in that the format of the game (high fantasy, class based, essentially D&D stlye RPG conept) isn't new. EQ started it, WoW refined it. However, what was new, was the storyline was Warcraft, the graphics didn't feel 3rd rate probably for the first time in MMO history, accessibility and simplification also exposed MMORPG's to the rest of the world (mainstream), which may be considered bad for some, but is a good thing, since the success WoW achieved was previously unprecedented in the market, thus opening the doors for MMORPG's to become a genre of much more interests to game developers. WoW is probably as near to perfect as any MMORPG has actually come, near but not quite. The end game is a sore point for many, mainly because its not fun, completely halts the otherwise nice pacing of the game, and basically neutralizes the accessibility that appealed to its audience for the better part of the game as a whole. PVP also has many issues, basically being reduced to the winner is the one who strikes first, and 90% of the time, this is true. As well, I think the classic D&D style RPG model with character classes and levels really just doesn't make for a great PvP concept. Often it leads to players crying about balance between classes, and then usually class homogenization, constant changes, nerfs/buffs, etc in an attempt to solve the "balance" problem. Sorry but the model was designed with classes as specialists to create party inter-dependancies for cooperative play, not PvP, and no MMORPG yet that uses that model in my experience has successfully introduced PvP into it without creating the deadly "class balance" dilemma. Blizzard has tried real hard, but clearly haven't quite figured it out yet, since 2+years live, they have never yet worked the classes to a finished point, constantly changing and re-balancing them to this day, predominantly if not exclusively due to PvP balance issues. But I don't fault WoW for reinventing the wheel here, the genre truly needed to see what it could be in a supremely polished state, and for the stage that WoW entered the MMORPG market, they shook up the industry with their incredible execution. Blizzard innovated alot more than people want to give them credit for, but just didn't quite achieve perfection. But lets be honest, they came a helluva lot closer than anyone else has to date. Now its up to the next generation to look at WoW, and see what they can do to break the mold, and truly reinvent the expectations of the genre, as WoW did before them. If WoW had merely been a complete clone of EQ, it would have just been Vanguard...jk, it wouldn't nearly have been as successful as it has been. So to be fair Blizzard/WoW deserves credit for doing a lot of things right, not just crapped on because it didn't get it ALL right.
P2: I see where you are coming from, but imagine for a minute that every future MMORPG is just WoW remade. We won't nearly be as astonished by the technical, accessibility, and marketing leaps that made WoW ahead of its time, we will expect that now. So with the MMORPG market being even more mainstream than before, developers will have to become more innovative/competitive to attract customers to their games. Consider the cellular phone industry, because it is mainstream, and because their is heavy competition, each cellular dealer/phone manufacturer is constantly innovating on the technology and features to offer their customers. As for hype over content, I agree it has been that way, but also consider this hasn't been a very much more than niche market for several years now. With the increased market size comes increased visibility, and the previous hype/lies/broken promises that developers in the past have been guilty of, will be exposed instantly and made intolerable immediately from future developers (go go super jaded, righteous MMORPG players).
P3: I addressed much of this with my above response in Paragraph 2, but to be more specific, I honeslty think that while it was a more niche market, developers really could have thrown anything out there and the "niche" would have taken it, simply because while the market was niche, developers were even fewer, and our options were limited. I strongly believe that the only reason anyone played UO or EQ for as long as they did was because there was no significant competition in the market for players to turn to.
P4: Mostly agree, Blizzard is good at marketing and hype, also must add though, that in my opinion, Blizzard has also been one of the elite few software development companies that even comes close to, if not fully achieves, delivering the goods to go with all that "hype". Honestly, with few exceptions, Blizzard has developed pure gold nearly every time they've released something. Diablo/Diablo2 defined a decade or more of computer gaming. Battle.net was a pioneering step in online gaming. The Warcraft and Starcraft series both set the standard for the RTS game genre. I am sounding a bit fanboi-ish for Blizzard right now, but only because the quoted post polarizes me to it by being imbalanced towards Blizzard/WoW in terms of giving credit vs decrying flaws.
P5: Disagree, with the mainstream now aware and expectant in the formerly niche market of MMORPG's, I highly suspect that developers who seek success in the genre will have to be more innovative than ever. Blizzard showed investors and developers everywhere that there is big money to be made in MMO's, but with the influx of people trying to get a share of the market, competition will be at an unprecedented high in the history of this genre. Not to mention, that same newly aware mainstream audience is fully aware of WoW, and Blizzard set the bar pretty high with it to be honest, so newcomers will either rise to the challenge and offer something new that people desire, or they will fail.
Long have MMORPG developers known that they have had a niche market at their behest, a market who would willingly play even a mediocre title, tolerate poor customer service, developer lies, community mistreatment, etc because they had a monopoly. With the vultures flocking to the gold mine that Blizzard has shown the world is available in this industry, expect to see hardcore competition, and with it, consumer expectations at an all time high. Simply put, Blizzard has in all likely hood brought the attention and competition sorely needed into this genre/market that will finally weed out the crap developers (SOE, Brad Mcquaid, Turbine, et al), their games, and their awful practices that have embittered all of us.
My 2 cents.