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For those of us in limbo
Centhan
Member Posts: 483
This is a thread for those of us in limbo at the moment. I define limbo as the state we MMO gamers get when nothing currently released looks good, and nothing coming up gets us overly excited. I am also not currently playing a MMO game at the moment. However, I suppose you can be subscribed to one, just going through the gaming motions, and still be in the state of limbo.
So what has caused us to get to this state? Here are some things that came to mind…
Are we still hoping for the comeback of the “good ole days”?
Do we long for the development of games like UO or EQ again? When developers were young and hungry and they seemed to lean towards what gamers would think is fun, instead of what would necessarily make the most money?
I thought this could be the problem, and although I felt this way up until a little while ago, I don’t think this is it. This past summer, I went back to my first love, EQ, when they offered free game play for veterans. I probably logged in 3 or 4 times total, then had absolutely no desire to return. The best way I can describe it is going back to the area that you grew up in after many years of being away. Everything looks different…smaller and less magical somehow. Nothing is how you really remembered it in your mind, the fond memories are a bit diluted, and the woods you played in is now stripped bare with condos in its place. Some of the basic structures are there, but the fantasy is gone.
Is it that we are simply burnt out?
There were times when I used to live MMOs. Whether I was playing EQ, WoW, CoH or Planetside at the time, I used to play them non-stop, to a point where it did affect my real life. I never got to a point that I know some people did; those are true horror stories (divorce, child neglect, death, etc). However, I did blow off my clients for work, and resist going places socially because of it. Through the years I would take a month or two break from playing, and then come back just as strong as I have in the past. Is this not the way to play MMOs? It is my play style that I need to change? Did I simply play too much? It could be. The last game I played (WAR), I really didn’t play that way. Well, maybe I did in the first week (in beta), but after that, the desire to play really did diminish. Although I did play, it was very sporadic, and at a leisurely pace, but I still didn’t stick with it.
Is it the community?
Let me say first of all, that the best communities, out of all the games I have played, seemed to be EQ and EQ2. You got the occasional jerk in each of them, but the vast majority of gamers seemed to be very mature, polite, and helpful. I have found that as the MMO market grew and developed, the amount of decent people who played them seemed to go downhill very fast. However, I guess this would be true of anything that you are talking about. Whether it be an amusement park, restaurant or ice cream store. If it was once the “best kept secret” in town, as it becomes more and more popular, the quality of the service goes down, and the crowds become very different.
In the past, for instance, when you would ask for help on a location, quest, or how to tackle a particular challenge, you would get very helpful responses, you now get responses from degenerates saying "lrn 2 ply", or “go back to WoW”, which ironically is where you hear most of those type of responses. Did the community turn me off to playing MMOs?
Is the market simply too saturated with titles?
I’m going to pick a number out of the air, but let’s say around 2001 and before, how many popular MMOs were there? Three, four? You had EQ, UO, DAoC, AC…just to think of the larger ones. My point is, the market was small, solid, and only true gamers really knew about the wonderful world of MMO gaming. As time went on, and developers saw the potential of the incredible cash-cow that MMOs could be, everyone and their uncle starting making one, and in many cases, pushed them out the door as fast as they could (sacrificing quality of course), just so they could make the fast buck. Many times, this blew up in their face, and they most likely wound up losing money on the deal. However, many other MMOs currently linger, with paltry population counts, spreading out the MMO community over multiple, mediocre titles. MMOs survive on population of course. Are the low population counts what’s causing the worlds not to feel alive anymore?
What I think the issue may be for me is a combination of the above things. I have also considered the fact that the “fad” of MMOs is over for me. It was a nice nine year run, but it has run its course. There are at least a few that I will keep my eye on for the future, but again, nothing that really gets me overly excited. I am immune to hype at this point after being burned time and time again. AoC and WAR where the two final nails in the “hype coffin” for me. So what are these games that I will be tracking? They are Star Wars:TOR, Star Trek, Fallen Earth, DarkFall, and Champions. I will at least track the “vibes” of these games as they go through beta.
So who else is currently in Limbo? What are your reasons?
Comments
Why be in limbo? Adapt. It's something you have control over. You could adapt by walking away from mmorpgs to something else.
Nice post, I think most of what's said rings true.
All I want is a virtual world with a common theme where I can play a role with others in a shared fiction. It doesn't have to have the best quests, but it has to be immersive. I don't want to have to deal with RMTs, clans, loots, DPS, DKPs, headsets, virtual property lawsuits, powergamers, bots, and metagaming. I just want a virtual world with a common theme where everyone plays a role within it for the simple joy of making it happen.
Why can't I get what I want? I had it before. I know I'm not alone, because other folks enjoyed the exact same things I did.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I'm just stuck waiting for my guild to move on. Nothing I hate more than finding a whole new group of people to play with.
The Official God FAQ
I still play EVE, and of all your points, I'd have to say the community factor (as a result of design changes in newer games) might be the greatest contributer to todays problems.
One common thread all of the old games had was that they forced players to depend on each other by making grouping up the only really viable method to quickly advance your character.
While there were times back then I decried the design, looking now I see it was that same hated design that forced me to group up regularly with total strangers and I met many new people and made tons of friends.
Now, unless you really want to find a guild, you can play most games almost entirely on solo mode which is more or less what I did with WOW, LotRO, AOC and WAR, and I didn't enjoy most of them.
I did have some fun in WOW, mostly because the "all quest" model was novel when it was new, but once that wore off I found myself wanting to raid, which again forced me to seek out a social circle to enjoy the game with.
As much as I hated raiding itself for the timesinks, I made more friends while raiding than at any other time in the last 4 games.
Now in EVE I was following down the same path, but the harsh pvp nature of the game again forced me to seek out corps/alliances so I could go out into 0.0 and enjoy the full game experience, and continues to force me to be in a corp so I can further my own goals for game enjoyment.
I put forth it was this forced interaction mechanism the old games had which made them so special, even if while we were going through them we complained about it the whole time.
"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
I will second what Kyleran said.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
I never thought about this factor as well, but it is definitely one to think about.
Looking back at EQ, you had to group to get anything accomplished, and all of my fondest memories were with the guild I was in and the people I did things with. Even in WoW, which is about 1000x more solo friendly, the best experiences I had were with guilds and with the people I met.
Without a doubt, no matter which game I played, the 5 person dungeon crawls were the most fun (Planetside excluded of course). You had to coordinate and play as a team to be successful.
You will get a ton of people on this site saying forced grouping should not be in MMOs, but you are totally correct in what you said. In the past, even during the times when I complained about the forced grouping, it still yielded the best memories in retrospect.
/raises hand
This is pretty much what I'm looking for to.
I just want to be an average citizen in an online community, and not an archetypical hero based on someone else's preconceived ideas.
/raises hand
This is pretty much what I'm looking for to.
I just want to be an average citizen in an online community, and not an archetypical hero based on someone else's preconceived ideas.
Like you I want to carve my own path. I wouldn't mind if the game threw me into the world with nothing more then a loin cloth and a stick and let me take it from there. It's not all the time that I want to be the dragons slaying hero. Sometimes I want to be that thieving bastard that picked your pocket or broke into your house, and to take this idea further I'd like to be a craftsman of some kind deep in the remote reaches of the wilderness making exquisite items that are hard to come by and having a select few players find my cabin for whom I can make these rare items.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
I think that now we've had a chance to play a variety of MMOs, we can see what we imagine to be our ideal (for me this is a Planetside like game, but with more crafting and empire building), and are only going to be satisfied when a game comes along and ticks the boxes we have set for it.
I really don't want to get engaged in the daily 'solo vs grouping' debate that seems to eternally smoke like a tower of burning tires here but I would like to add that the great memories some speak of are simply part of being in a group. Forced grouping should have nothing to do with it. If you had freely entered that group the experience would likely have been the same.
Initially hating the group aspect and being forced into it towards a pleasurable outcome is a personal trait/viewpoint. Others may enjoy grouping but don't want to be forced into it. All types of people for (hopefully) a variety of games. People only seem to get upset when "their game" has a particular shift in terms of the group dynamic.
Imagine a game that had forced roleplaying. You (the customer) may hate the idea but you enter the game anyway and learn to love the roleplaying aspect but I can only imagine the community outcry that would be launched against such a game that forces a particular playstyle in a supposedly open environment. Not that there shouldn't be such a game but I think that the developers would be shooting themselves in the foot for a design choice that doesn't need to be made. People can roleplay if they wish in most games. People can freely group in the same manner.
Most of the solo/group debate comes from the limited design and scope of most games in my jaded opinion.
Okay, I'm obviously rambling but in essence I imagine mmorpgs with such an open and varied environment that all types of gaming are possible whether it is a solo regicide attempt or a group of 300 that invades every tavern on the coast and then paints all the cows green.
Adapt to crap? Dont be a sheep as you stated; make a statement that every pay mmo is crap and nothing more than a rehashed, window dressing clone with a bell or whistle that isnt enough to keep any reasonable person engaged for more than a few months to work through its newness.
As far as im concerned, there is nothing to walk to other than a free-to play mmo until one of the few new titles launches in the US.
I have to say that SWG came the closest to a virtual world where you can be and do anything you want, and it reached it's peak with the release of JTLS, but the game was plagued by lies, misinformation, and unrealized potential.