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Why has the MMO market become so stagnant?
defenestrate
Member CommonPosts: 578
Ive noticed in the last year that there has been a flood in the mmo market of less then quality games. Of course in this post these are only my opinions and thoughts and I totally expect to have rebutals posted here.
Now I have been playing mmo's since Ultima Online was released, I enjoyed this game very much. I have also played DDO, FFXI, L2, WoW, EvE, Vanguard, LoTR Beta, MxO, RF Online, and Guild Wars so I consider myself an MMO "vet" even though the term vet has come under some fire recently. Now I admit not all of the games that I listed above are very quality games, but I tried them out to see how it would go. But recently Ive noticed that there has been a big surge of less then good quality games. In my mind I justify this by saying maybe the developers need more money to finish the game so they release it early relying on hype to skyrocket sales. After said skyrocket their mindframe probably being "promise the consumer that in coming weeks or months that the patches will flesh the game out nicely and please be patient." One great example of this being Vanguard SOH, this game had alot of great potential when it was released and I had high hopes. After awhile I just gave up because it was like all other games, which brings me to my next point.
Innovation
I believe that games have become stagnant in recent times because we or I, I should say, crave something amazingly innovative that will just amaze us and say "Thank god, its about time the devs finally got IT!" Innovation is the key IMO to any great game. Now I believe that EvE was the pinnacle of innovation in the MMO genre. This game broke alot of rules by just having one server, no avatars that walk around from town to town completing a series of quests for a sword that will be obsolete in 2 hours. Also the skill levelling is amazing. WHat other game can you set a skill to train and go on vacation for a week just to come back and find that you only have an hour left for that skill to complete training. Player owned space is another great innovation, where else can you hold a piece of the vast universe or worl for yourself and your mates. Another great innovation in the MMO genre was brought about by blizzard when they decided to implement reputation and the rewards that come with it, and also the different battle grounds.
Now Im hoping what we are waiting for is just around the corner with upcoming hopefulls like Warhammer Online, Richard Garriots Tabula Rasa and the Age of Conan. My eye is on Tabula Rasa but I will be playing the others as well.
Please post your thoughts, concerns and gripes
Now I have been playing mmo's since Ultima Online was released, I enjoyed this game very much. I have also played DDO, FFXI, L2, WoW, EvE, Vanguard, LoTR Beta, MxO, RF Online, and Guild Wars so I consider myself an MMO "vet" even though the term vet has come under some fire recently. Now I admit not all of the games that I listed above are very quality games, but I tried them out to see how it would go. But recently Ive noticed that there has been a big surge of less then good quality games. In my mind I justify this by saying maybe the developers need more money to finish the game so they release it early relying on hype to skyrocket sales. After said skyrocket their mindframe probably being "promise the consumer that in coming weeks or months that the patches will flesh the game out nicely and please be patient." One great example of this being Vanguard SOH, this game had alot of great potential when it was released and I had high hopes. After awhile I just gave up because it was like all other games, which brings me to my next point.
Innovation
I believe that games have become stagnant in recent times because we or I, I should say, crave something amazingly innovative that will just amaze us and say "Thank god, its about time the devs finally got IT!" Innovation is the key IMO to any great game. Now I believe that EvE was the pinnacle of innovation in the MMO genre. This game broke alot of rules by just having one server, no avatars that walk around from town to town completing a series of quests for a sword that will be obsolete in 2 hours. Also the skill levelling is amazing. WHat other game can you set a skill to train and go on vacation for a week just to come back and find that you only have an hour left for that skill to complete training. Player owned space is another great innovation, where else can you hold a piece of the vast universe or worl for yourself and your mates. Another great innovation in the MMO genre was brought about by blizzard when they decided to implement reputation and the rewards that come with it, and also the different battle grounds.
Now Im hoping what we are waiting for is just around the corner with upcoming hopefulls like Warhammer Online, Richard Garriots Tabula Rasa and the Age of Conan. My eye is on Tabula Rasa but I will be playing the others as well.
Please post your thoughts, concerns and gripes
Comments
Watch for the two classic series to make a good fight for the lead.
Be cool to people, and try and stay cool that way you never have to regret making someone feel bad. Don't take what ya got granted because some people never get to feel happy. We get to play these great MMOs and surf a good site. Be thankful for what ya got and next time ya feel down imagine a fat sea otter waddling with a pillow and a night cap. Bam! smiles!
Be cool to people, and try and stay cool that way you never have to regret making someone feel bad. Don't take what ya got granted because some people never get to feel happy. We get to play these great MMOs and surf a good site. Be thankful for what ya got and next time ya feel down imagine a fat sea otter waddling with a pillow and a night cap. Bam! smiles!
Because most games are based on the fantasy genre with elves, dwarfs and what not. We have too few sci-fi genre, or anything else. Hell I wouldn't mind an MMO about living in the 1920s and you can play as detective and try to solve mysteries and stop criminal gangs. Kinda like Dick Tracy. Just be sure to include various styles of trenchcoat and floppy hat in various shades of colors.
The current crop of mmos are a product of brain drain.
However, it is still a nearly 3 year old game.
Let's hope 2008 brings some innovation...maybe Aion? Who knows for sure...
I just don't know...basically..most of us that have been in MMO's for several years are going to be a rather "hard sell" I should think. A game tat brings in a new crop of MMO gamers from the "outside" is going to be the next great one I would imagine.
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
John Lennon
MMO's are stagnating because they are all the same on the core levels.
Let's look at Turbine for an answer to your question. They had the grand-daddy of all IPs for the MMOG, D&DO. IMO, they released a year too early with too little content. Why? Simple. The word "potential" was king on their beta boards and the company bought into fanbois hype. Then, Turbine picks up another lil' IP called Lord of the Rings Online. DoH!!!!!!! As a beta tester you could see Turbine lose interest in DDO with the signing of that IP and the soon followed departure of over 1/2 of the team from DDO to go work on LOTRO.
DDO went from a level 20 with advance classes to a 10 character level and 12 instance/mastering content model release in an astonishingly short period of time. Fanbois praised the decision because their game would be live and over time the game would be up because it had so much "potential".
Now, let's look at Turbine's beloved LOTRO. It has more subscribers that DDO could possibly ever have. Why is that? The LoTRO team followed the WoW model. The key was to not do anything badly and they didn't. I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but Turbine delivered a quality product and their release of LoTRO was the smoothest of any game that I've been there from the start. (Which is saying a lot since I've been around the industry for over ten years.
Developers need to lock up the lil' word potential in their lil' safe in the manager's office and forget it even exists. Bring innovation, your own angle making your game unique with quality and the numbers will follow.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
I agree with you. The games are starting to all feel the same and none feel worth spending my time and or money on. Plus most of them are designed so that within a few months I have reached the end of my growth. Yet I find myself always watching the new games comming up with my fingers crossed for something. I hold on to Hope.
For me I bemoan the loss of the art of Role Playing. Now it seems it is all just number crunching. Crunch this mob for xx numbers , crunch that mob for xx numbers ............... The people you meet have as much persoanlity as a paper doll. It is all lets do this mob until this level and go here. The few who even bother to make up a bio seldom follow it up by acting in that fashion in game. Even myself included since trying to be the character is met with resistance and ridicule.
Who knows the future may surprise us.
In my opinion, QUALITY should not be the highest praise a game should strive for. Instead, they *should always* create games with the assumption that they will have the highest possible quality they can put out. QUALITY may be necessary, but it is not all-encompassing. Take LOTRO for example. The quality is undoubtedly high, but when the core elements of the game remain strikingly similar to existing games, the high quality isn't a feature that brings subscriptions or inspires gamers.
Like many others here, I'm looking for INNOVATION, something fresh to inspire new enjoyment. No doubt, it takes a lot of creativity, in addition to skill, to craft a game that is ground-breaking in any regard, but when game developers can hit the spot they are well rewarded.
My youtube MMO gaming channel
I agree... not many developers are trying hard enough to make a new mmo worth playing.
No matter what quality and polish-level these recent games come, it's using the familiar model of MMO that some of us are already sick of. AoC and WAR will not be bringing anything new to the table, IMO. Tabula Rasa and Pirates of the Burning Sea on the other hand will most likely offer something different.
The future is not bleak, but we are definitely down in the dumps within the MMO timeline.
And dont forget: Statistically 8 of 10 people DO want to have a WoW-Clone.
---
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
What the industry needs is inovation and I don't know who is going to do that first. I can still see levels being used for advancement but Id really like to see an open advancement. Skills should be chosen and not handed to you; I loved the AC1 model where levels didn't matter as much as the skill of your play did. I also liked the open skillset of SWG; being able to chose anything you wanted was a very cool concept. Those were the two games that really kept me hooked for a long period of time (AC1 4 years, SWG till NGE came along).
The industry needs more models like that and should stick to their guns about making that model. To tell you the truth I also loved not having a quest journal in AC1.... it really was a true sanbox and you could go do whatever you wanted. I think that I would like a little bit better story line but figuring things out for yourself was really cool and kept me interested. Well we will see what 08 has in store for us.
Anyway yeah I agree that developers have closed up in terms of innovation. They see it as either they have to go balls to the wall, and topple WoW, or they can just "get by" and survive as a clone. Nobody is going to take the risk to compete with WoW's millions of subscribers, but instead they offer slightly different experiences. The problem is how slight those differences are. Usually it is just a new skin, and different world.
I mean would you like the same gift re-wrapped in different paper every year?
The OP mentioned UO and EvE..two games with terrible launches, (UO won Coaster of the year when it first came out due to playability issues). Sure, they recovered later, but its just not a winning business model to release a half-finished, buggy game and hope to draw customers.
I think we're going to have to see a few firms try to launch WoW clones and fail miserably...then they'll decide that its time to bring out something new.....
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
IMO, Innovation is over-rated. Give me a game that I find fun. I don't care if it is a complete remake of an older game. Innovation doesn't equal fun in my eyes. Innovation is the new catch phrase of the MMO "vet" who is bored of whats out there because he has played it all. As you can see in my sig, I have played pretty much every western P2P MMO ever made. Do I get bored of some? Sure. I think a lot of them are not very fun. I don't think it's do to a lack of innovation though. Some of the games people do equate with innovation I found the worst of all the MMOs such as EvE and SWG when if first came out.
Pretty much I think people are using innovation as the new catch phrase, now that sandbox has lost some of it's appeal. (especially with Vanguard being a sandbox game and totally bombing).
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
Blizzard will release the next "*innovative"game that will be successfull. Really look at their history. It may take a while they are notorious for taking years to produce a game, I mean I'm sure i have my WC2 disc that has a quick teaser for WoW.
(innovative games by blizzard have mostly been taking a format from another game and actually making it work)
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
It's only the western MMO market that has become stagnant, the asian MMO market will revolutionize the industry in my most humble opinion.
I mean how many western MMO:s are free to play compaired to how many asian MMO:s that are free too play?!
This could very well be the business model of the future and the monthly fee a thing of the past, who knows?
The MMO companies will make their revenues from the expansions and sertain items and perks that you can buy within the game.