It's not World of Warcraft itself that screwed up the MMORPG world.
You have many companies trying to tap into the success of WoW. They think it's the game engine or the quest structure or the PvP system etc. But, it's really quite simple. WoW's success is due to the notoriety of Warcraft and Starcraft and Blizzard.
So, don't be angry with WoW or Blizzard...be happy for them. Be angry at all the other companies that bring us the same thing over and over again.
It's not World of Warcraft itself that screwed up the MMORPG world. You have many companies trying to tap into the success of WoW. They think it's the game engine or the quest structure or the PvP system etc. But, it's really quite simple. WoW's success is due to the notoriety of Warcraft and Starcraft and Blizzard. So, don't be angry with WoW or Blizzard...be happy for them. Be angry at all the other companies that bring us the same thing over and over again.
I think this is very wrong. Star Wars is far more popular then WoW and it never drew that many people. WoW is the least time intensive MMO available and people value their time. I think it's as simple as that. People also value fun and WoW is fun until endgame for many people. My boss plays WoW and he hardly ever groups and he is just reaching level 60 after over a year of play. If you are casual the game last a longer period of time, but it's still fun for those who play a lot. They just go through it faster.
WoW drew in a "special" MMO population. My signatures are proof of that. I don't think WoW made MMOs easy, they were always easy really, it's just a time sink in the end.
The reason that i believe WoW is considered an easy mode game is because most your end game equipment and even before that can be gained by instancing. Heres something a WoW player has never had to deal with on a boss fight: Trains. some people may not agree with me, but the thing i found most difficult about DAoC and older MMOs werent the mobs or boss fights, but the effect that other players would have on them if your entire group wasnt paying attention.
People seem to be so much traumatized by EQ's grind that they forget it was hard in other aspects too.
A roaming lvl45 giant or a griffonthing in a lvl 15 zone forced you to be aware of your surroundings and keeped you on the edge. It is arguably(spelling?) a dubious feature for gameplay, but when high lvls came in the zone to defend the low lvls from the giants, it brought a sense of community and chivalry that is dissapearing nowadays. It gave the chance for high lvls to be heroes for the community.
Remember the old dungeons? Permafrost's goblins were like WoW's murlocs drinking cappuccionos in a cloning facility. Things were harder. Yes the grind was painfull, yes the AI was very stupid and the game mechanics were lacking alot, but honestly... It requiered more teamwork and coordination. How many times did I try to push into rooms with my group in Unrest. In a good group with a bard, the down time wasn't THAT bad. It was bad, but it focrced you to talk to the other 5 peeps instead of treating them has personnal healbots...
I'd refine my thoughts on why EQ was hard, but I have to get back too work.
--------- Gi (honesty), yu (courage), jin (compassion), tei (courtesy), meyo (honor), makoto (sincerity) and chugo (Duty) are the Seven Tenets of Bushido. Make them yours...
I think basically WoW is cited as easy-mode because everything is easily solable. If you have the entire world being stuff which you likely need a group for then you notch up the difficulty a little.
EQ didn't offer ANY KIND of solo play past level 50 back in the day. The only class that was able to do ok at all was the necromancer with the pre-nerf pet (duel fine-steel daggers anyone?)
And I personally hated, absolutely hated the death system of EQ - especially in places like fearplane or hateplane. You spent probably 70% of your time doing corpse retrievals!!
Ed
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I played EQ since early beta and 2 years afterward. I am a "casual" player so do not play as much as others. After the 2 years of playing EQ, the max level I got a char to was 30. When I started WoW, I got to max level in 10-11 months. I don't play any different then I did back then, so to me WoW does make it easier to level up and therefore really is the true "easy mode" of MMOs so far.
There are two types of easy: 1) Gameplay mechanics (i.e., how simple and sensible the interface and controls are), and 2) In-game challenge (i.e., how tough the monsters and dungeons are). WOW gave us easy gameplay mechanics, but still has some in-game challenge, especially in the dungeons. Some other games gave us messed up game mechanics instead.
We must not confuse the two.
Very well put, could'nt have said it better myself.
When ordinary people say that a game is 'hard', they mean that it's challenging, that you need a good strategy or good twitch ability to get through it. Not that it takes forever to do anything or that it requires you to have multiple people involved to do anything.
No one who's not an old-time MMO addict is impressed that you camped a boss for 4 hours, they think "I'd rather play an actual game for 4 hours than sit around waiting." Let's face it, if I want to wait for 4 hours not playing a game I could just go down to the DMV. Whether it takes me 10 mobs or 10,000 mobs to level, the challenge is in defeating each mob, not in grinding out some excessive number of them.
Saying that the game is challenging because you can't do anything by yourself, you need to spend an hour or two (the figure I always heard from FFXI players) getting a group together and only being able to go as long as the whole group can is also rather weak. Part of it is just the waiting, which again is not a 'challenge' unless your butt cramps up from sitting in the seat too long, and the other part isn't that the GAME is challenging, it's that organizing a group of people is challenging.
MMORPGs will be much better (and sell much better) when MMO devs completely ditch the insane concept that 'easy mode' = actually plays the game and makes progress in a reasonable amount of time.
I have to dissagree with the EQ delivered easy mode. I played the game for a short short time and found it very complicated. Now flame me if im wrong, but i think i remember having to destroy some spider eggs in the beginning and having to type /open just to do it. Now i know you can set up a hot key for that, but as WoW makes things easy and you will probably have a button premade for you for an instance like the "spider eggs"
I've always felt its less WoW dumbing things down and more about advances in game design streamlining things and making UI more user friendly. People who pound their chests and carry on about the good ole days don't carry a lot of credibility in my book. It's like preferring a Model T to a 2007 Jetta because it's a "more challenging" ride.
I've always felt its less WoW dumbing things down and more about advances in game design streamlining things and making UI more user friendly. People who pound their chests and carry on about the good ole days don't carry a lot of credibility in my book. It's like preferring a Model T to a 2007 Jetta because it's a "more challenging" ride.
Your right. While EQ was new and things like this had really never been done before, WoW went and fixed all those problems the previous MMO's had and made sure that they had the problems in the old MMO's fixed in the new ones
Since 8 million are playing and every legitimate review on the web says it is. Can't argue with cold hard facts buddy. But I guess everyone is nuts and plays WOW just because its the only MMORPG on the market. Wait!! its not like say back in the 90s when you only had a choice of 3.
Funny how you never mentioned how Mods work for WoW"s raid and pvp situations.
I bet I can train monkeys to stay on top of the arena If I give them gear and ventrilo.
A MOD won't mean the difference between a sucessful raid, since people have been raiding just fine without them. Same with PvP. Mods don't play the game for you and certainly don't mean you're always going to win in PvP with them. The advantages are minimal and don't make any difference against people who know how to play. I guess you're not one of them or you never played at all.
Not sure what you mean by WoW is just better designed from the ground up.
A better UI. A detailed world that looks great and has loads of content. Excellent animation and art design for this genre. Well designed, unique dungeons with scripted events. Fast combat mechanics with better LOS and split second timing for interupts and counters. Unique classes that play completely different. Unique races that aren't just humans with animal heads stuck on them. More methods of travel than any other MMOG. More quests than any other MMOG. More abilites per class than any other MMORPG. The amount of unique gear dwarfs other MMORPGs. Bugs and tech issues are generally minor compared to past MMORPGs. Balance has always been pretty solid compared to other MMOGs. It goes on and on. You obviously don't understand why that word "polished" is used all the time.
Obviously people got tired of grinding, running forever to get somewhere, and sitting down 95% of the time watching their mana and health bars slowly regen. At that point single player games begin to look good again. When a game came along that did away with all that, of course people jumped on it!
People seem to be so much traumatized by EQ's grind that they forget it was hard in other aspects too.
A roaming lvl45 giant or a griffonthing in a lvl 15 zone forced you to be aware of your surroundings and keeped you on the edge. It is arguably(spelling?) a dubious feature for gameplay, but when high lvls came in the zone to defend the low lvls from the giants, it brought a sense of community and chivalry that is dissapearing nowadays. It gave the chance for high lvls to be heroes for the community.
Remember the old dungeons? Permafrost's goblins were like WoW's murlocs drinking cappuccionos in a cloning facility. Things were harder. Yes the grind was painfull, yes the AI was very stupid and the game mechanics were lacking alot, but honestly... It requiered more teamwork and coordination. How many times did I try to push into rooms with my group in Unrest. In a good group with a bard, the down time wasn't THAT bad. It was bad, but it focrced you to talk to the other 5 peeps instead of treating them has personnal healbots...
You're right. Not to mention the bugs. And classes needing to be more on their feet because abilities weren't farmed out to every class to perform. People are right in that rightly some things have been improved and made more friendlier in the next gen mmorpgs, but there are many elements forgotten in detest of the past.
People seem to be so much traumatized by EQ's grind that they forget it was hard in other aspects too.
A roaming lvl45 giant or a griffonthing in a lvl 15 zone forced you to be aware of your surroundings and keeped you on the edge. It is arguably(spelling?) a dubious feature for gameplay, but when high lvls came in the zone to defend the low lvls from the giants, it brought a sense of community and chivalry that is dissapearing nowadays. It gave the chance for high lvls to be heroes for the community. Remember the old dungeons? Permafrost's goblins were like WoW's murlocs drinking cappuccionos in a cloning facility. Things were harder. Yes the grind was painfull, yes the AI was very stupid and the game mechanics were lacking alot, but honestly... It requiered more teamwork and coordination. How many times did I try to push into rooms with my group in Unrest. In a good group with a bard, the down time wasn't THAT bad. It was bad, but it focrced you to talk to the other 5 peeps instead of treating them has personnal healbots...
You're right. Not to mention the bugs. And classes needing to be more on their feet because abilities weren't farmed out to every class to perform. People are right in that rightly some things have been improved and made more friendlier in the next gen mmorpgs, but there are many elements forgotten in detest of the past.
Those things were all fun at the time, but in retrospect they were to much of a time sink. A time sink to the point that it just wasn't healthy. WoW may be missing the bonding of players, but at least you don't feel an obligation to play. You can set a small go and accomplish it. In EQ grouping was a large time sink, raiding was a large tink sink, pretty much everything was a huge time sink. Bonding seems like a great thing, but it actually ends up in you playing a lot more then you should be. Vanguard is somewhat similiar to old EQ, but people aren't flocking to it in droves. I have fond memories of EQ, but I don't ever want to repeat the experience again. It just took to much time.
People seem to be so much traumatized by EQ's grind that they forget it was hard in other aspects too.
A roaming lvl45 giant or a griffonthing in a lvl 15 zone forced you to be aware of your surroundings and keeped you on the edge. It is arguably(spelling?) a dubious feature for gameplay, but when high lvls came in the zone to defend the low lvls from the giants, it brought a sense of community and chivalry that is dissapearing nowadays. It gave the chance for high lvls to be heroes for the community. Remember the old dungeons? Permafrost's goblins were like WoW's murlocs drinking cappuccionos in a cloning facility. Things were harder. Yes the grind was painfull, yes the AI was very stupid and the game mechanics were lacking alot, but honestly... It requiered more teamwork and coordination. How many times did I try to push into rooms with my group in Unrest. In a good group with a bard, the down time wasn't THAT bad. It was bad, but it focrced you to talk to the other 5 peeps instead of treating them has personnal healbots...
You're right. Not to mention the bugs. And classes needing to be more on their feet because abilities weren't farmed out to every class to perform. People are right in that rightly some things have been improved and made more friendlier in the next gen mmorpgs, but there are many elements forgotten in detest of the past.
Those things were all fun at the time, but in retrospect they were to much of a time sink. A time sink to the point that it just wasn't healthy. WoW may be missing the bonding of players, but at least you don't feel an obligation to play. You can set a small go and accomplish it. In EQ grouping was a large time sink, raiding was a large tink sink, pretty much everything was a huge time sink. Bonding seems like a great thing, but it actually ends up in you playing a lot more then you should be. Vanguard is somewhat similiar to old EQ, but people aren't flocking to it in droves. I have fond memories of EQ, but I don't ever want to repeat the experience again. It just took to much time.
You must not play in guild raids / end game of wow because everyone I know at work that plays the game barely have lives because they HAVE to be in game and playing in RAIDS to get anything. There's tons of stories on the net of people basically living in WoW and they're not even gold farmers. Granted EQ1 took longer but you didn't HAVE to do the time sink stuff to get anywhere in the game. All MMOs are time sinks and have time sinks its what keeps players in paying. The only difference is atleast for ME in my opinion is WoW's time sinks were pointless and the community has been constistantly rude, in the end the game just wasnt' fun for me but EQ1 never stopped being fun even if I was just traveling and hanging out places it was an adventure to do so (before PoP i really hated that expansion lol).
WoW just took away the leveling time sink they should just start everyone out at max level since the rest of the game is a snoring bore oh wait endgame is too after you do it two or three times.
WoW's popularity made the jump in and go without learning or experiencing anything a viable market but I don't think it'll stop games that you have to actually learn how to play and learn to experience the world from actually happening.
btw people aren't rushing to vanguard because the game barely worked at launch (the mechanics were fine everything else was broken lol)
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
People seem to be so much traumatized by EQ's grind that they forget it was hard in other aspects too.
A roaming lvl45 giant or a griffonthing in a lvl 15 zone forced you to be aware of your surroundings and keeped you on the edge. It is arguably(spelling?) a dubious feature for gameplay, but when high lvls came in the zone to defend the low lvls from the giants, it brought a sense of community and chivalry that is dissapearing nowadays. It gave the chance for high lvls to be heroes for the community. Remember the old dungeons? Permafrost's goblins were like WoW's murlocs drinking cappuccionos in a cloning facility. Things were harder. Yes the grind was painfull, yes the AI was very stupid and the game mechanics were lacking alot, but honestly... It requiered more teamwork and coordination. How many times did I try to push into rooms with my group in Unrest. In a good group with a bard, the down time wasn't THAT bad. It was bad, but it focrced you to talk to the other 5 peeps instead of treating them has personnal healbots...
You're right. Not to mention the bugs. And classes needing to be more on their feet because abilities weren't farmed out to every class to perform. People are right in that rightly some things have been improved and made more friendlier in the next gen mmorpgs, but there are many elements forgotten in detest of the past.
Those things were all fun at the time, but in retrospect they were to much of a time sink. A time sink to the point that it just wasn't healthy. WoW may be missing the bonding of players, but at least you don't feel an obligation to play. You can set a small go and accomplish it. In EQ grouping was a large time sink, raiding was a large tink sink, pretty much everything was a huge time sink. Bonding seems like a great thing, but it actually ends up in you playing a lot more then you should be. Vanguard is somewhat similiar to old EQ, but people aren't flocking to it in droves. I have fond memories of EQ, but I don't ever want to repeat the experience again. It just took to much time.
You must not play in guild raids / end game of wow because everyone I know at work that plays the game barely have lives because they HAVE to be in game and playing in RAIDS to get anything. There's tons of stories on the net of people basically living in WoW and they're not even gold farmers. Granted EQ1 took longer but you didn't HAVE to do the time sink stuff to get anywhere in the game. All MMOs are time sinks and have time sinks its what keeps players in paying. The only difference is atleast for ME in my opinion is WoW's time sinks were pointless and the community has been constistantly rude, in the end the game just wasnt' fun for me but EQ1 never stopped being fun even if I was just traveling and hanging out places it was an adventure to do so (before PoP i really hated that expansion lol).
WoW just took away the leveling time sink they should just start everyone out at max level since the rest of the game is a snoring bore oh wait endgame is too after you do it two or three times.
WoW's popularity made the jump in and go without learning or experiencing anything a viable market but I don't think it'll stop games that you have to actually learn how to play and learn to experience the world from actually happening.
btw people aren't rushing to vanguard because the game barely worked at launch (the mechanics were fine everything else was broken lol)
I guess we just look at it differntly. For me I loved playing WoW from 1-60. I really dislike raiding because it is just like Everquest. As you say it takes too much time. Many of the people who play WoW play the game 1-60 which is full of some pretty interesting quests. Yes some of them are repetative, but usually there some pretty decent story even in the small experience gaining quests. It's great to have those small goals you can accomplish in a small amount of time. The 5 man instances were pretty enjoyable for me as well. They didn't require any kind of obscene amount of time. When they brought in Molten Core that pretty much killed the game IMO. On the otherhand I expected the game to end at some point for me so after I got bored of leveling alts I just quit.
Everquest type of games on the otherhand are a large time sink from the start all the way to the top and beyond. Any game that has a lot of social interaction is going to require a bigger commitment and a larger amount of time to play.
It's true that all games are time sinks, but it's easier in some games to jump in, accomplish something, and jump out.
People seem to be so much traumatized by EQ's grind that they forget it was hard in other aspects too.
A roaming lvl45 giant or a griffonthing in a lvl 15 zone forced you to be aware of your surroundings and keeped you on the edge. It is arguably(spelling?) a dubious feature for gameplay, but when high lvls came in the zone to defend the low lvls from the giants, it brought a sense of community and chivalry that is dissapearing nowadays. It gave the chance for high lvls to be heroes for the community. Remember the old dungeons? Permafrost's goblins were like WoW's murlocs drinking cappuccionos in a cloning facility. Things were harder. Yes the grind was painfull, yes the AI was very stupid and the game mechanics were lacking alot, but honestly... It requiered more teamwork and coordination. How many times did I try to push into rooms with my group in Unrest. In a good group with a bard, the down time wasn't THAT bad. It was bad, but it focrced you to talk to the other 5 peeps instead of treating them has personnal healbots...
You're right. Not to mention the bugs. And classes needing to be more on their feet because abilities weren't farmed out to every class to perform. People are right in that rightly some things have been improved and made more friendlier in the next gen mmorpgs, but there are many elements forgotten in detest of the past.
Those things were all fun at the time, but in retrospect they were to much of a time sink. A time sink to the point that it just wasn't healthy. WoW may be missing the bonding of players, but at least you don't feel an obligation to play. You can set a small go and accomplish it. In EQ grouping was a large time sink, raiding was a large tink sink, pretty much everything was a huge time sink. Bonding seems like a great thing, but it actually ends up in you playing a lot more then you should be. Vanguard is somewhat similiar to old EQ, but people aren't flocking to it in droves. I have fond memories of EQ, but I don't ever want to repeat the experience again. It just took to much time.
You must not play in guild raids / end game of wow because everyone I know at work that plays the game barely have lives because they HAVE to be in game and playing in RAIDS to get anything. There's tons of stories on the net of people basically living in WoW and they're not even gold farmers. Granted EQ1 took longer but you didn't HAVE to do the time sink stuff to get anywhere in the game. All MMOs are time sinks and have time sinks its what keeps players in paying. The only difference is atleast for ME in my opinion is WoW's time sinks were pointless and the community has been constistantly rude, in the end the game just wasnt' fun for me but EQ1 never stopped being fun even if I was just traveling and hanging out places it was an adventure to do so (before PoP i really hated that expansion lol).
WoW just took away the leveling time sink they should just start everyone out at max level since the rest of the game is a snoring bore oh wait endgame is too after you do it two or three times.
WoW's popularity made the jump in and go without learning or experiencing anything a viable market but I don't think it'll stop games that you have to actually learn how to play and learn to experience the world from actually happening.
btw people aren't rushing to vanguard because the game barely worked at launch (the mechanics were fine everything else was broken lol)
Agreed. Every game needs time sinks. But what WoW did was give you the lvs fast but make you spend weeks and weeks trying to get the same gear as everyone else so you could be on the level that gave you an advantage in pvp etc. I deeply regret wasting my time in wow. It was fun leveling to 60, although the auto target click and spam my "3" key was epicly dull. I left while into raiding at end game. This being because as stated above it got hostile. Guild leaders and players took it far to seriously for me to have fun. And the lack of need to party with anyone until endgame was a big minus for me. I like to play an MMO because its A *M*assivly *M* ultiplayer. Not a Massively Solo Online Game. Which does in my opinion make it too easy. The fact i had to run endgame were the guild master would shout Fuck and flame every time someone messed up and the hardcore players would be seriously pissed if you messed up all because they may have missed there chance at epic loot or some silly crap. Gearcentric=easy for hardcore gamers. but if you dont have 8 hours to clear an instance, and you dont have dkp because you didnt run the instance 50 times before therefor you cant get loot, then sucks for you apparently. The lack of need for community, the gearcentric layout, and the auto target, auto this and that, go here do this and come back kind of play does make it easy, and for me very agrivating. Dont let me get started on how poor pvp is for casual gamers who dont have *uber sword of insane damage* because they dont play wow like its some sort of olympic sport.
People seem to be so much traumatized by EQ's grind that they forget it was hard in other aspects too.
A roaming lvl45 giant or a griffonthing in a lvl 15 zone forced you to be aware of your surroundings and keeped you on the edge. It is arguably(spelling?) a dubious feature for gameplay, but when high lvls came in the zone to defend the low lvls from the giants, it brought a sense of community and chivalry that is dissapearing nowadays. It gave the chance for high lvls to be heroes for the community. Remember the old dungeons? Permafrost's goblins were like WoW's murlocs drinking cappuccionos in a cloning facility. Things were harder. Yes the grind was painfull, yes the AI was very stupid and the game mechanics were lacking alot, but honestly... It requiered more teamwork and coordination. How many times did I try to push into rooms with my group in Unrest. In a good group with a bard, the down time wasn't THAT bad. It was bad, but it focrced you to talk to the other 5 peeps instead of treating them has personnal healbots...
You're right. Not to mention the bugs. And classes needing to be more on their feet because abilities weren't farmed out to every class to perform. People are right in that rightly some things have been improved and made more friendlier in the next gen mmorpgs, but there are many elements forgotten in detest of the past.
Those things were all fun at the time, but in retrospect they were to much of a time sink. A time sink to the point that it just wasn't healthy. WoW may be missing the bonding of players, but at least you don't feel an obligation to play. You can set a small go and accomplish it. In EQ grouping was a large time sink, raiding was a large tink sink, pretty much everything was a huge time sink. Bonding seems like a great thing, but it actually ends up in you playing a lot more then you should be. Vanguard is somewhat similiar to old EQ, but people aren't flocking to it in droves. I have fond memories of EQ, but I don't ever want to repeat the experience again. It just took to much time.
You must not play in guild raids / end game of wow because everyone I know at work that plays the game barely have lives because they HAVE to be in game and playing in RAIDS to get anything. There's tons of stories on the net of people basically living in WoW and they're not even gold farmers. Granted EQ1 took longer but you didn't HAVE to do the time sink stuff to get anywhere in the game. All MMOs are time sinks and have time sinks its what keeps players in paying. The only difference is atleast for ME in my opinion is WoW's time sinks were pointless and the community has been constistantly rude, in the end the game just wasnt' fun for me but EQ1 never stopped being fun even if I was just traveling and hanging out places it was an adventure to do so (before PoP i really hated that expansion lol).
WoW just took away the leveling time sink they should just start everyone out at max level since the rest of the game is a snoring bore oh wait endgame is too after you do it two or three times.
WoW's popularity made the jump in and go without learning or experiencing anything a viable market but I don't think it'll stop games that you have to actually learn how to play and learn to experience the world from actually happening.
btw people aren't rushing to vanguard because the game barely worked at launch (the mechanics were fine everything else was broken lol)
Agreed. Every game needs time sinks. But what WoW did was give you the lvs fast but make you spend weeks and weeks trying to get the same gear as everyone else so you could be on the level that gave you an advantage in pvp etc. I deeply regret wasting my time in wow. It was fun leveling to 60, although the auto target click and spam my "3" key was epicly dull. I left while into raiding at end game. This being because as stated above it got hostile. Guild leaders and players took it far to seriously for me to have fun. And the lack of need to party with anyone until endgame was a big minus for me. I like to play an MMO because its A *M*assivly *M* ultiplayer. Not a Massively Solo Online Game. Which does in my opinion make it too easy. The fact i had to run endgame were the guild master would shout Fuck and flame every time someone messed up and the hardcore players would be seriously pissed if you messed up all because they may have missed there chance at epic loot or some silly crap. Gearcentric=easy for hardcore gamers. but if you dont have 8 hours to clear an instance, and you dont have dkp because you didnt run the instance 50 times before therefor you cant get loot, then sucks for you apparently. The lack of need for community, the gearcentric layout, and the auto target, auto this and that, go here do this and come back kind of play does make it easy, and for me very agrivating. Dont let me get started on how poor pvp is for casual gamers who dont have *uber sword of insane damage* because they dont play wow like its some sort of olympic sport.
As I said you don't have to raid. You can just stop playing the game. Thats exactly what I did. I wasn't going to waste time on things like reputation grind, money grind, equipment grind. EQ had all that and it was to a much larger extent. Most games that have raiding are like this. Hopefully games in the future will make more 5 man content and just do away with raiding IMO.
As far as the Massively Multiplayer goes the main thing is you get to interact with other people. It doesn't mean you have to group or raid. It's a virtual world and you can do what you like within it. Your example is like saying because everyone thats on the server didn't play together it's not a MMO.
As for the generic layout I'm not sure what is the problem. The interface feels very comfortable to me. I've never played a game where 3rd person view was so comfortable to move around. Each class has a large array of skills which can be used to counter other classes skills. The Warrior and Rogue are the best reditions of melee classes I've seen in a MMO so far. They have their own unique power system instead of a generic power system. Warriors have rage and rogues have energy. I never understand why other MMOs give every class a power bar. It's horrible and makes no sense. Magic using classes use magic power. Melee classes use other forms to fuel their attacks. These two classes also have abilities like charge/intercept/sprint that allows them to compete with kiting classes. Each class is actually quite fun to play IMO. I've played them all.
Those things were all fun at the time, but in retrospect they were to much of a time sink. A time sink to the point that it just wasn't healthy. WoW may be missing the bonding of players, but at least you don't feel an obligation to play. You can set a small go and accomplish it. In EQ grouping was a large time sink, raiding was a large tink sink, pretty much everything was a huge time sink. Bonding seems like a great thing, but it actually ends up in you playing a lot more then you should be. Vanguard is somewhat similiar to old EQ, but people aren't flocking to it in droves. I have fond memories of EQ, but I don't ever want to repeat the experience again. It just took to much time.
Theres no doubting EQ was an extreme timesink but who are the elements labelled in the earlier post intepreted as timesinks? You could cynically define every activity in a mmorpg as a timesink apart from combat and quests but then you could also then go to a game like morrowind and think the same thing.
Those things were all fun at the time, but in retrospect they were to much of a time sink. A time sink to the point that it just wasn't healthy. WoW may be missing the bonding of players, but at least you don't feel an obligation to play. You can set a small go and accomplish it. In EQ grouping was a large time sink, raiding was a large tink sink, pretty much everything was a huge time sink. Bonding seems like a great thing, but it actually ends up in you playing a lot more then you should be. Vanguard is somewhat similiar to old EQ, but people aren't flocking to it in droves. I have fond memories of EQ, but I don't ever want to repeat the experience again. It just took to much time.
Theres no doubting EQ was an extreme timesink but who are the elements labelled in the earlier post intepreted as timesinks? You could cynically define every activity in a mmorpg as a timesink apart from combat and quests but then you could also then go to a game like morrowind and think the same thing.
As I pointed out the key is being able to jump into a game, accomplish something, and jump out whenever you want. If you are grouping a lot it's very difficult to do this. If you are raiding a lot it is near impossible to do this. Obviously as pointed out in WoW raiding is like this, but from 1-60 you are free to do what you want most of the time without worry of feeling a need to stay on for more time then you should really be spending. I feel this is something that is important to a lot of people.
Being more focused on quests on less on grinding really doesn't make a game "Easy Mode". Hardest thing about Everquest? Keeping yourself awake grinding at one camp for 3 hours for a half a level. Granted I played EQ for 6 years, so I have no room to complain, but give me a break.
WoW is succesful because of its ease to pick up and play. Especially for casuals. It's system requirements are lowe, so just about everyone can play as well. There is plenty of "tough" content there for you if you want to be in the 1% of the playerbase who platys for 18 hours a day. If that is what you are complaining about, then there is a goal for you. Go kill Ilidan.
Comments
It's not World of Warcraft itself that screwed up the MMORPG world.
You have many companies trying to tap into the success of WoW. They think it's the game engine or the quest structure or the PvP system etc. But, it's really quite simple. WoW's success is due to the notoriety of Warcraft and Starcraft and Blizzard.
So, don't be angry with WoW or Blizzard...be happy for them. Be angry at all the other companies that bring us the same thing over and over again.
WoW drew in a "special" MMO population. My signatures are proof of that. I don't think WoW made MMOs easy, they were always easy really, it's just a time sink in the end.
The reason that i believe WoW is considered an easy mode game is because most your end game equipment and even before that can be gained by instancing. Heres something a WoW player has never had to deal with on a boss fight: Trains. some people may not agree with me, but the thing i found most difficult about DAoC and older MMOs werent the mobs or boss fights, but the effect that other players would have on them if your entire group wasnt paying attention.
and about LOTRO being easy, it just is.
People seem to be so much traumatized by EQ's grind that they forget it was hard in other aspects too.
A roaming lvl45 giant or a griffonthing in a lvl 15 zone forced you to be aware of your surroundings and keeped you on the edge. It is arguably(spelling?) a dubious feature for gameplay, but when high lvls came in the zone to defend the low lvls from the giants, it brought a sense of community and chivalry that is dissapearing nowadays. It gave the chance for high lvls to be heroes for the community.
Remember the old dungeons? Permafrost's goblins were like WoW's murlocs drinking cappuccionos in a cloning facility. Things were harder. Yes the grind was painfull, yes the AI was very stupid and the game mechanics were lacking alot, but honestly... It requiered more teamwork and coordination. How many times did I try to push into rooms with my group in Unrest. In a good group with a bard, the down time wasn't THAT bad. It was bad, but it focrced you to talk to the other 5 peeps instead of treating them has personnal healbots...
I'd refine my thoughts on why EQ was hard, but I have to get back too work.
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I think basically WoW is cited as easy-mode because everything is easily solable. If you have the entire world being stuff which you likely need a group for then you notch up the difficulty a little.
Well,
EQ didn't offer ANY KIND of solo play past level 50 back in the day. The only class that was able to do ok at all was the necromancer with the pre-nerf pet (duel fine-steel daggers anyone?)
And I personally hated, absolutely hated the death system of EQ - especially in places like fearplane or hateplane. You spent probably 70% of your time doing corpse retrievals!!
Ed
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No signature, I don't have a pen
When ordinary people say that a game is 'hard', they mean that it's challenging, that you need a good strategy or good twitch ability to get through it. Not that it takes forever to do anything or that it requires you to have multiple people involved to do anything.
No one who's not an old-time MMO addict is impressed that you camped a boss for 4 hours, they think "I'd rather play an actual game for 4 hours than sit around waiting." Let's face it, if I want to wait for 4 hours not playing a game I could just go down to the DMV. Whether it takes me 10 mobs or 10,000 mobs to level, the challenge is in defeating each mob, not in grinding out some excessive number of them.
Saying that the game is challenging because you can't do anything by yourself, you need to spend an hour or two (the figure I always heard from FFXI players) getting a group together and only being able to go as long as the whole group can is also rather weak. Part of it is just the waiting, which again is not a 'challenge' unless your butt cramps up from sitting in the seat too long, and the other part isn't that the GAME is challenging, it's that organizing a group of people is challenging.
MMORPGs will be much better (and sell much better) when MMO devs completely ditch the insane concept that 'easy mode' = actually plays the game and makes progress in a reasonable amount of time.
The developers only make what we buy.
Obviously people got tired of grinding, running forever to get somewhere, and sitting down 95% of the time watching their mana and health bars slowly regen. At that point single player games begin to look good again. When a game came along that did away with all that, of course people jumped on it!
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</OBAMA>
You're right. Not to mention the bugs. And classes needing to be more on their feet because abilities weren't farmed out to every class to perform. People are right in that rightly some things have been improved and made more friendlier in the next gen mmorpgs, but there are many elements forgotten in detest of the past.
You're right. Not to mention the bugs. And classes needing to be more on their feet because abilities weren't farmed out to every class to perform. People are right in that rightly some things have been improved and made more friendlier in the next gen mmorpgs, but there are many elements forgotten in detest of the past.
Those things were all fun at the time, but in retrospect they were to much of a time sink. A time sink to the point that it just wasn't healthy. WoW may be missing the bonding of players, but at least you don't feel an obligation to play. You can set a small go and accomplish it. In EQ grouping was a large time sink, raiding was a large tink sink, pretty much everything was a huge time sink. Bonding seems like a great thing, but it actually ends up in you playing a lot more then you should be. Vanguard is somewhat similiar to old EQ, but people aren't flocking to it in droves. I have fond memories of EQ, but I don't ever want to repeat the experience again. It just took to much time.You're right. Not to mention the bugs. And classes needing to be more on their feet because abilities weren't farmed out to every class to perform. People are right in that rightly some things have been improved and made more friendlier in the next gen mmorpgs, but there are many elements forgotten in detest of the past.
Those things were all fun at the time, but in retrospect they were to much of a time sink. A time sink to the point that it just wasn't healthy. WoW may be missing the bonding of players, but at least you don't feel an obligation to play. You can set a small go and accomplish it. In EQ grouping was a large time sink, raiding was a large tink sink, pretty much everything was a huge time sink. Bonding seems like a great thing, but it actually ends up in you playing a lot more then you should be. Vanguard is somewhat similiar to old EQ, but people aren't flocking to it in droves. I have fond memories of EQ, but I don't ever want to repeat the experience again. It just took to much time.You must not play in guild raids / end game of wow because everyone I know at work that plays the game barely have lives because they HAVE to be in game and playing in RAIDS to get anything. There's tons of stories on the net of people basically living in WoW and they're not even gold farmers. Granted EQ1 took longer but you didn't HAVE to do the time sink stuff to get anywhere in the game. All MMOs are time sinks and have time sinks its what keeps players in paying. The only difference is atleast for ME in my opinion is WoW's time sinks were pointless and the community has been constistantly rude, in the end the game just wasnt' fun for me but EQ1 never stopped being fun even if I was just traveling and hanging out places it was an adventure to do so (before PoP i really hated that expansion lol).
WoW just took away the leveling time sink they should just start everyone out at max level since the rest of the game is a snoring bore oh wait endgame is too after you do it two or three times.
WoW's popularity made the jump in and go without learning or experiencing anything a viable market but I don't think it'll stop games that you have to actually learn how to play and learn to experience the world from actually happening.
btw people aren't rushing to vanguard because the game barely worked at launch (the mechanics were fine everything else was broken lol)
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
You're right. Not to mention the bugs. And classes needing to be more on their feet because abilities weren't farmed out to every class to perform. People are right in that rightly some things have been improved and made more friendlier in the next gen mmorpgs, but there are many elements forgotten in detest of the past.
Those things were all fun at the time, but in retrospect they were to much of a time sink. A time sink to the point that it just wasn't healthy. WoW may be missing the bonding of players, but at least you don't feel an obligation to play. You can set a small go and accomplish it. In EQ grouping was a large time sink, raiding was a large tink sink, pretty much everything was a huge time sink. Bonding seems like a great thing, but it actually ends up in you playing a lot more then you should be. Vanguard is somewhat similiar to old EQ, but people aren't flocking to it in droves. I have fond memories of EQ, but I don't ever want to repeat the experience again. It just took to much time.You must not play in guild raids / end game of wow because everyone I know at work that plays the game barely have lives because they HAVE to be in game and playing in RAIDS to get anything. There's tons of stories on the net of people basically living in WoW and they're not even gold farmers. Granted EQ1 took longer but you didn't HAVE to do the time sink stuff to get anywhere in the game. All MMOs are time sinks and have time sinks its what keeps players in paying. The only difference is atleast for ME in my opinion is WoW's time sinks were pointless and the community has been constistantly rude, in the end the game just wasnt' fun for me but EQ1 never stopped being fun even if I was just traveling and hanging out places it was an adventure to do so (before PoP i really hated that expansion lol).
WoW just took away the leveling time sink they should just start everyone out at max level since the rest of the game is a snoring bore oh wait endgame is too after you do it two or three times.
WoW's popularity made the jump in and go without learning or experiencing anything a viable market but I don't think it'll stop games that you have to actually learn how to play and learn to experience the world from actually happening.
btw people aren't rushing to vanguard because the game barely worked at launch (the mechanics were fine everything else was broken lol)
I guess we just look at it differntly. For me I loved playing WoW from 1-60. I really dislike raiding because it is just like Everquest. As you say it takes too much time. Many of the people who play WoW play the game 1-60 which is full of some pretty interesting quests. Yes some of them are repetative, but usually there some pretty decent story even in the small experience gaining quests. It's great to have those small goals you can accomplish in a small amount of time. The 5 man instances were pretty enjoyable for me as well. They didn't require any kind of obscene amount of time. When they brought in Molten Core that pretty much killed the game IMO. On the otherhand I expected the game to end at some point for me so after I got bored of leveling alts I just quit.
Everquest type of games on the otherhand are a large time sink from the start all the way to the top and beyond. Any game that has a lot of social interaction is going to require a bigger commitment and a larger amount of time to play.
It's true that all games are time sinks, but it's easier in some games to jump in, accomplish something, and jump out.
You're right. Not to mention the bugs. And classes needing to be more on their feet because abilities weren't farmed out to every class to perform. People are right in that rightly some things have been improved and made more friendlier in the next gen mmorpgs, but there are many elements forgotten in detest of the past.
Those things were all fun at the time, but in retrospect they were to much of a time sink. A time sink to the point that it just wasn't healthy. WoW may be missing the bonding of players, but at least you don't feel an obligation to play. You can set a small go and accomplish it. In EQ grouping was a large time sink, raiding was a large tink sink, pretty much everything was a huge time sink. Bonding seems like a great thing, but it actually ends up in you playing a lot more then you should be. Vanguard is somewhat similiar to old EQ, but people aren't flocking to it in droves. I have fond memories of EQ, but I don't ever want to repeat the experience again. It just took to much time.You must not play in guild raids / end game of wow because everyone I know at work that plays the game barely have lives because they HAVE to be in game and playing in RAIDS to get anything. There's tons of stories on the net of people basically living in WoW and they're not even gold farmers. Granted EQ1 took longer but you didn't HAVE to do the time sink stuff to get anywhere in the game. All MMOs are time sinks and have time sinks its what keeps players in paying. The only difference is atleast for ME in my opinion is WoW's time sinks were pointless and the community has been constistantly rude, in the end the game just wasnt' fun for me but EQ1 never stopped being fun even if I was just traveling and hanging out places it was an adventure to do so (before PoP i really hated that expansion lol).
WoW just took away the leveling time sink they should just start everyone out at max level since the rest of the game is a snoring bore oh wait endgame is too after you do it two or three times.
WoW's popularity made the jump in and go without learning or experiencing anything a viable market but I don't think it'll stop games that you have to actually learn how to play and learn to experience the world from actually happening.
btw people aren't rushing to vanguard because the game barely worked at launch (the mechanics were fine everything else was broken lol)
Agreed. Every game needs time sinks. But what WoW did was give you the lvs fast but make you spend weeks and weeks trying to get the same gear as everyone else so you could be on the level that gave you an advantage in pvp etc. I deeply regret wasting my time in wow. It was fun leveling to 60, although the auto target click and spam my "3" key was epicly dull. I left while into raiding at end game. This being because as stated above it got hostile. Guild leaders and players took it far to seriously for me to have fun. And the lack of need to party with anyone until endgame was a big minus for me. I like to play an MMO because its A *M*assivly *M* ultiplayer. Not a Massively Solo Online Game. Which does in my opinion make it too easy. The fact i had to run endgame were the guild master would shout Fuck and flame every time someone messed up and the hardcore players would be seriously pissed if you messed up all because they may have missed there chance at epic loot or some silly crap. Gearcentric=easy for hardcore gamers. but if you dont have 8 hours to clear an instance, and you dont have dkp because you didnt run the instance 50 times before therefor you cant get loot, then sucks for you apparently. The lack of need for community, the gearcentric layout, and the auto target, auto this and that, go here do this and come back kind of play does make it easy, and for me very agrivating. Dont let me get started on how poor pvp is for casual gamers who dont have *uber sword of insane damage* because they dont play wow like its some sort of olympic sport.Currently playing: Planetside, Americas Army.
Praying to Zeus for: Darkfall.
You're right. Not to mention the bugs. And classes needing to be more on their feet because abilities weren't farmed out to every class to perform. People are right in that rightly some things have been improved and made more friendlier in the next gen mmorpgs, but there are many elements forgotten in detest of the past.
Those things were all fun at the time, but in retrospect they were to much of a time sink. A time sink to the point that it just wasn't healthy. WoW may be missing the bonding of players, but at least you don't feel an obligation to play. You can set a small go and accomplish it. In EQ grouping was a large time sink, raiding was a large tink sink, pretty much everything was a huge time sink. Bonding seems like a great thing, but it actually ends up in you playing a lot more then you should be. Vanguard is somewhat similiar to old EQ, but people aren't flocking to it in droves. I have fond memories of EQ, but I don't ever want to repeat the experience again. It just took to much time.You must not play in guild raids / end game of wow because everyone I know at work that plays the game barely have lives because they HAVE to be in game and playing in RAIDS to get anything. There's tons of stories on the net of people basically living in WoW and they're not even gold farmers. Granted EQ1 took longer but you didn't HAVE to do the time sink stuff to get anywhere in the game. All MMOs are time sinks and have time sinks its what keeps players in paying. The only difference is atleast for ME in my opinion is WoW's time sinks were pointless and the community has been constistantly rude, in the end the game just wasnt' fun for me but EQ1 never stopped being fun even if I was just traveling and hanging out places it was an adventure to do so (before PoP i really hated that expansion lol).
WoW just took away the leveling time sink they should just start everyone out at max level since the rest of the game is a snoring bore oh wait endgame is too after you do it two or three times.
WoW's popularity made the jump in and go without learning or experiencing anything a viable market but I don't think it'll stop games that you have to actually learn how to play and learn to experience the world from actually happening.
btw people aren't rushing to vanguard because the game barely worked at launch (the mechanics were fine everything else was broken lol)
Agreed. Every game needs time sinks. But what WoW did was give you the lvs fast but make you spend weeks and weeks trying to get the same gear as everyone else so you could be on the level that gave you an advantage in pvp etc. I deeply regret wasting my time in wow. It was fun leveling to 60, although the auto target click and spam my "3" key was epicly dull. I left while into raiding at end game. This being because as stated above it got hostile. Guild leaders and players took it far to seriously for me to have fun. And the lack of need to party with anyone until endgame was a big minus for me. I like to play an MMO because its A *M*assivly *M* ultiplayer. Not a Massively Solo Online Game. Which does in my opinion make it too easy. The fact i had to run endgame were the guild master would shout Fuck and flame every time someone messed up and the hardcore players would be seriously pissed if you messed up all because they may have missed there chance at epic loot or some silly crap. Gearcentric=easy for hardcore gamers. but if you dont have 8 hours to clear an instance, and you dont have dkp because you didnt run the instance 50 times before therefor you cant get loot, then sucks for you apparently. The lack of need for community, the gearcentric layout, and the auto target, auto this and that, go here do this and come back kind of play does make it easy, and for me very agrivating. Dont let me get started on how poor pvp is for casual gamers who dont have *uber sword of insane damage* because they dont play wow like its some sort of olympic sport.As I said you don't have to raid. You can just stop playing the game. Thats exactly what I did. I wasn't going to waste time on things like reputation grind, money grind, equipment grind. EQ had all that and it was to a much larger extent. Most games that have raiding are like this. Hopefully games in the future will make more 5 man content and just do away with raiding IMO.
As far as the Massively Multiplayer goes the main thing is you get to interact with other people. It doesn't mean you have to group or raid. It's a virtual world and you can do what you like within it. Your example is like saying because everyone thats on the server didn't play together it's not a MMO.
As for the generic layout I'm not sure what is the problem. The interface feels very comfortable to me. I've never played a game where 3rd person view was so comfortable to move around. Each class has a large array of skills which can be used to counter other classes skills. The Warrior and Rogue are the best reditions of melee classes I've seen in a MMO so far. They have their own unique power system instead of a generic power system. Warriors have rage and rogues have energy. I never understand why other MMOs give every class a power bar. It's horrible and makes no sense. Magic using classes use magic power. Melee classes use other forms to fuel their attacks. These two classes also have abilities like charge/intercept/sprint that allows them to compete with kiting classes. Each class is actually quite fun to play IMO. I've played them all.
As I pointed out the key is being able to jump into a game, accomplish something, and jump out whenever you want. If you are grouping a lot it's very difficult to do this. If you are raiding a lot it is near impossible to do this. Obviously as pointed out in WoW raiding is like this, but from 1-60 you are free to do what you want most of the time without worry of feeling a need to stay on for more time then you should really be spending. I feel this is something that is important to a lot of people.
no way to die after all have see a death boss .
my 2 cent , sorry for my bad eng.
Being more focused on quests on less on grinding really doesn't make a game "Easy Mode". Hardest thing about Everquest? Keeping yourself awake grinding at one camp for 3 hours for a half a level. Granted I played EQ for 6 years, so I have no room to complain, but give me a break.
WoW is succesful because of its ease to pick up and play. Especially for casuals. It's system requirements are lowe, so just about everyone can play as well. There is plenty of "tough" content there for you if you want to be in the 1% of the playerbase who platys for 18 hours a day. If that is what you are complaining about, then there is a goal for you. Go kill Ilidan.
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