I've read people talk about a game that would be revolutionizing the way we play games needs funds... well why couldn't Blizzard see that people are and have been wanting a game to topple WoW and just revolutionize its own game? Blizzard is a company that can take these risks and if no one likes the new mmo they fall back to WoW, but if they do like, then it's game over for all other companies basically. So it is race. I am just waiting to see who makes the first move and capitolizes on it.
Maybe a sudden change isn't the solution... what if people would just slowly go a bit further out of the box than the other mmo? If that feature doesn't work? Well, then go another direction, that way, even though it's slower, it bears less risk, and in turn, won't be abbandoned as fast, and for the players, it's still somewhat like the rest, so people won't be thinking it's something odd.
It can be done, it will be done. The box has to be explored from the outside again.
Wow is a solid game but its not this alone that makes the player base large. I remember when I was playing WoW in the first 2 years of its launch, I was working at a mortgage company doing IT desktop tier 3 so I would get around the building abit. I had a few departments that I was "the man" for and I remember talking to these ladies who were regular customers. These were 45+ soccer mom types and I was talking about how I play computer games like Quake 3, some counterstrike and they said they had just started playing a game with their kids and that they were sharing a computer and now they want to get their own computer and wanted some advice, so I asked ok, what game are you playing. They said Wow and one went on about , "well I dont know what Im doing I just follow this person around and I am a healer with armor and its fun". I said...you're a Palidan? She then got real excited and said Yes, Yes thats the name! and then the other lady chimed in about her character with the bow and she has a pet...
3 weeks later they are asking me what server I am on and I said oh well Im an undead warrior, and oh "you are one of those nasty guys we will have to get you"... Thats just about when I decided that its time to move on, lol omfg I still am really amazed at that piece of reality that I went through in my life, like a real Twilight Zone...
My point is, Wow was recruiting, parents, whole families into the game, incredible. So, you can imagine the kinda hill climb any company will have to beat it. Some one is going to have to do something really different. This means a new IP for one thing and new...something like a Wii mmo game where you are on American Idol with in game community voting and the judges are based on wild life animals with muppet personalities...something just stupid and crazy that sounds like there is no way in hell it will work.
I don’t understand what the fuss is all about. The author mentions basketball, a game loved by its enthusiasts, it’s been around a long time, has anyone decided it needs to change, or that we need a new kind of basketball?
Most of the desire for change comes from two sources. You have new companies who want a piece of the MMO pie so they need a ‘basketball killer’ to beat WoW. You have gamers who don’t understand their game is not like basketball, it has a more ridged formula which eventually makes it boring with repetition. To make a truly new kind of MMORG we would be to make something we would not call a MMORPG any more.
People go back to online shooters no matter how high their level, the end game is the start game, much like basketball. MMORPG’s have a more rigid development structure, its not just about how good you are at the keyboard, its about how long you have played, and what you did while playing.
That’s why it ends up boring and the only solution is to try another MMO, just like you move on from a solo game. Expecting ‘innovation’ to beat WoW is like expecting small independent film makers to beat and take the lead from Hollywood, dream on.
I don’t understand what the fuss is all about. The author mentions basketball, a game loved by its enthusiasts, it’s been around a long time, has anyone decided it needs to change, or that we need a new kind of basketball? Most of the desire for change comes from two sources. You have new companies who want a piece of the MMO pie so they need a ‘basketball killer’ to beat WoW. You have gamers who don’t understand their game is not like basketball, it has a more ridged formula which eventually makes it boring with repetition. To make a truly new kind of MMORG we would be to make something we would not call a MMORPG any more. People go back to online shooters no matter how high their level, the end game is the start game, much like basketball. MMORPG’s have a more rigid development structure, its not just about how good you are at the keyboard, its about how long you have played, and what you did while playing. That’s why it ends up boring and the only solution is to try another MMO, just like you move on from a solo game. Expecting ‘innovation’ to beat WoW is like expecting small independent film makers to beat and take the lead from Hollywood, dream on.
Very negative reaction.
Actually a real good way to steal a big chunk of Wow's numbers is to make the MMO that appeals to all races on the planet. You need the asian market, the euro market as well as the US market.
Grand Theft Auto MMO has it all. You make that game and you can take over the world. Open PvP with npc Police response, Strip clubs with real female characters getting virtual money from real players, pimps, gangs, hustlers, assassins, terrorists, swat...$$$ Fat Wow Loots!
What really jarred me about this article is that the author talks about how MMORPGs have to reinvent the way they think of the genre and completely failes to realize that this is precisely what Blizzard did with WoW.
In the basketball team example the players did not invent a new way to make shots or how to dribble. they still used the same old basic game mechanics. They simply changed the way they thought about the 'big picture' experience. Similarly while WoW retained most of the mechaincs of previous games it approached the 'gameplay experience' side from a different direction.
I played MMORPGs for a few years before WoW. However, when I started playing WoW I came to the realization that I never thought that you could play a MMORPG this way. I was conditioned into thinking that MMORPGs had to play a certain way with tedious grinds, camping, few quests and long leveling curves. WoW was so radical in those aspects that it blew my mind.
Any new game that wants to revolutionize the genre has to achieve the same effect. It is not enough that it changes mechanics or adds a feature or two. It needs to change the way players think of MMORPGs.
I'm all for innovation. But... who says it really has to come from the Dev's for it to work? I think that 'sandbox' games have really received a bad wrap over the last few years, but I think that the 'sandbox' system could be augmented to the point of 'success'. WoW, as we've all admitted, is a very well 'polished' game. I tip my hat to Blizzard. Wow does have a lot going for it, but honestly... at this point, what WoW has going for it is beyond the technical aspects of the game. I look at Blizzard and see a 'here's our menu, no substitutions allowed' type of game. It works as the masses can easily get into their game AND people are likely to stay because 'everyone else is doing it'. Word of mouth, ease of use, and high player population continues to work... while 'innovation' isn't really in play. Innovation = complexity and complexity would destroy Blizz's support model. A new game has to catch a positive 'popular' curve and outweigh, outlast, and outlive the 'negative' barrage that will come by the 'fanboi's' of other games. And, some games have more fanboi's in their arsenal than other games, let's be honest. I think most game companies are fearful of offering something that doesn't spoonfeed their clients, leading them down a linear path and telling a scripted story... the same path and same story for EVERY player. Spoonfeeding = success? Perhaps that's why we don't see more games for 'thinking' players.
No other MMO really is anymore complex than WoW is. Let's face it, when a new person joins WoW, most of the things raiders speak of seams pretty complex to the unlearned. It's the whole easy to get into, hard to master thing. The UI is very easy to learn, which is our interface to the game world. It's as easy as learning to use the internet using Internet Explorer. I mean you can even right click a name in the chat box to Report As Spam to let customer service know about gold sellers.
Sure, pressing hotbar numbers is easy. Sure, collecting quests, following the directions, and turning in quests are easy. Sure, solo encounters are mostly easy, with an average person being able to avoid death the majority of the time. But the complexity comes as the game goes on. Knowing which stats to use, how much of each stat to use, the math behind it all, which gear pieces maximize your template, the talent spec that maximizes you want to do, and the hotbar rotation you need to use all is complex. Sure, you can read all that stuff on the internet to avoid the complexity, but you can do that on any game, including EvE, so that's not a reason to say the game isn't complex. Other than that, you also have 5 man instances, heroics, and raids that increase in complexity from solo play. Each type of dungeon gets more complex and harder to complete. Complexity comes in many forms, not just from game mechanics. Coordinating attack in PvP and in Raids can be a pretty complex task.
I'm just tired of hearing this "WoW is not complex" nonsense. Anygame becomes easy with good UI and internet guides.
To add to my point, anyone who says WoW isn't complex, I'd love to see proof of you being the first to clear a raid dungeon, or I'd like to hear you truthfully tell me that you never read the forums or any other guide on how to spend your talent points, what stats to focus on, which gems and enchants to use, where quest objective are, where to get which armor, and the other hundreds of questions that are raised per day on how to do this or that in WoW. Those questions wouldn't exist if the game wasn't complex enough to make a person think and have to make their own choices.
What really jarred me about this article is that the author talks about how MMORPGs have to reinvent the way they think of the genre and completely failes to realize that this is precisely what Blizzard did with WoW. In the basketball team example the players did not invent a new way to make shots or how to dribble. they still used the same old basic game mechanics. They simply changed the way they thought about the 'big picture' experience. Similarly while WoW retained most of the mechaincs of previous games it approached the 'gameplay experience' side from a different direction. I played MMORPGs for a few years before WoW. However, when I started playing WoW I came to the realization that I never thought that you could play a MMORPG this way. I was conditioned into thinking that MMORPGs had to play a certain way with tedious grinds, camping, few quests and long leveling curves. WoW was so radical in those aspects that it blew my mind. Any new game that wants to revolutionize the genre has to achieve the same effect. It is not enough that it changes mechanics or adds a feature or two. It needs to change the way players think of MMORPGs.
I agree with these comments. I laughed when Dana wrote how by the time WoW came out the hardcore were like, been here and done that. Paraphrasing of course. However, what an utterly B.S. comment. I played UO, AC1, AC2, DAoC, Shadowbane, CoH and Horizons all before WoW. EQ was about the only pre-WoW mmorpg I didn't play, but I know enough that WoW wouldn't have given you a "been there done that" feeling coming from EQ. WoW changed the way we play mmorpgs.
Blizzard popularized mmorpgs, mostly because of the Blizzard name and their reputation. However, if WoW hadn't been a good game it wouldn't have become successful. Blizzard did the process gradually, the original end game design was very much for the hardcore and super guilds. In BC they toned it down a bit, but added a real raid instance for small group play. The player reaction to Kara was overwhelming and that caught Blizzard's attention. So now we have 25 man and 10 man raids, both with progression and the game is still holding strong.
Dana is right about one thing, no one is going to topple Blizzard at their own game. I also believe that Blizzard will make the next wildly popular mmo, hell they have one in development right now. However, it's not going to cater to the hardcore group. Any mmo that wishes to become wildly popular is going to have to attract the masses. The day of hardcore catering in mainstream games is over. That's not to say there won't be high quality hardcore mmos, but we can't kid ourselves into thinking they will ever attain the popularity that WoW has.
The thing I find most ironic is that all of the features people ask for a lot in mmorpgs already exist in the single game. Asheron's Call 1. No classes all skill based, Free for All pvp with full loot (on darktide), seamless world without instances, tons of areas to explore, and while there are character levels they mostly serve as a guide than a hard rule as to what content you can or can't take. AC1 is 10 years old with an even older engine and they allowed boting to run rampant, which is why the game is dying if not dead already.
Originally posted by Kaneth I agree with these comments. I laughed when Dana wrote how by the time WoW came out the hardcore were like, been here and done that. Paraphrasing of course. However, what an utterly B.S. comment. I played UO, AC1, AC2, DAoC, Shadowbane, CoH and Horizons all before WoW. EQ was about the only pre-WoW mmorpg I didn't play, but I know enough that WoW wouldn't have given you a "been there done that" feeling coming from EQ. WoW changed the way we play mmorpgs. Blizzard popularized mmorpgs, mostly because of the Blizzard name and their reputation. However, if WoW hadn't been a good game it wouldn't have become successful. Blizzard did the process gradually, the original end game design was very much for the hardcore and super guilds. In BC they toned it down a bit, but added a real raid instance for small group play. The player reaction to Kara was overwhelming and that caught Blizzard's attention. So now we have 25 man and 10 man raids, both with progression and the game is still holding strong. Dana is right about one thing, no one is going to topple Blizzard at their own game. I also believe that Blizzard will make the next wildly popular mmo, hell they have one in development right now. However, it's not going to cater to the hardcore group. Any mmo that wishes to become wildly popular is going to have to attract the masses. The day of hardcore catering in mainstream games is over. That's not to say there won't be high quality hardcore mmos, but we can't kid ourselves into thinking they will ever attain the popularity that WoW has. The thing I find most ironic is that all of the features people ask for a lot in mmorpgs already exist in the single game. Asheron's Call 1. No classes all skill based, Free for All pvp with full loot (on darktide), seamless world without instances, tons of areas to explore, and while there are character levels they mostly serve as a guide than a hard rule as to what content you can or can't take. AC1 is 10 years old with an even older engine and they allowed boting to run rampant, which is why the game is dying if not dead already.
I never said WoW was a bad game. Quite the opposite.
However, the genius of WoW is not the game. It's the implementation. It's like they played the full court press in a girls little league with NBA players.
WoW is a marvel of implementation, but the core ideas that drive WoW are not terribly original. EQ, DAoC, etc. had done most of them, just not nearly as well.
Where they redefined the genre was quality. No one prior to them had achieved such a high level of polish and they showed the power of that, combined with their name, reputation and IP could do amazing things.
For me, while I appreciate WoW on a professional level, it's never really captured me. I feel like I've played it before. That's not a knock against them, they took a great formula and made it mass market. For most WoW players, I would bet that WoW was their first MMO.
Think of it in reverse. Why has the predicted outflow of WoW into the rest of the genre not happened? When WoW hit it big, I remember all sorts of people proclaiming it great because it had "grown the pool" of people who would play MMOs. That really has not happened, outside of WoW.
I'd argue a bit reason for that is that when people leave WoW and try other things, they just find an approximation of it, but not as well executed. And not just in games that came since, but also in those that predate it.
Dana Massey Formerly of MMORPG.com Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Personally, I don't think WoW brought all that much "polish" to the genre. When WoW first came out it wasn't all that polished. It took over a year for it to get to the level of polish that is currently understood as the "bar" of polish in the industry. As a veteran MMO player who's been playing MMO's since UO Beta 2, I can difinitively say that the biggest thing WoW brought to the genre was that they dumbed down the genre and made it easy to play for the average American. On top of that they were the first MMO to SERIOUSLY go global. Those two combined turned them into a cutlural phenomenon.
I don't feel there's anything wrong with the genre as a whole right now. I don't think the genre needs to "innovate" other than it needs more good games that have different stories. I don't think there's anything wrong with WoW or what it did to the genre in terms of the "polish" and the amount of bar raising it did for the industry. In fact I am greatful to what WoW did in terms of raising that bar. What I have a problem with is the general dumbing down of the genre to support a wider and wider audience, making the MMO gaming experience ADHD and for kids who don't know what the word comittment is about.
I'd love a game that is not designed for the masses. A game that is not DUMBED down for the average stupid casual gamer. I want a game that's modern, with modern graphics, modern polish, but has the old school pre-wow expectation that if you were a complete and total moron (like 70% of MMO players are today), that you shouldn't be playing this game.
The problem is that like others have said before in this thread, investors and publishers want a product that is addictive, attractive, and accessible to a VERY wide audience because the profit margins for an MMO get pretty insane the larger the subscription base becomes. Investors and publishers don't want a game that one of the requirements are "Cannot solo past level 25" or "Must require raiding past level 50" or "Requires extensive involvement in guild for advancement" or oooooh this is a big one "Experience loss upon death or some other control mechanism to ensure high level players know the game well". If an MMO has too small of an audience you might as well publish a good console RPG like what Bathesda has done for over a decade.
So in summary, what is ironic and sad about all of this is that while the MMO industry has become mainstream, it has destroyed what the veteran MMO community loved most about the genre and as long as the current "formula" works of making games dumb and accessible, than the likelyhood of us EVER seeing a game like I want and many want becomes smaller and smaller every day.
I'm all for innovation. But... who says it really has to come from the Dev's for it to work? I think that 'sandbox' games have really received a bad wrap over the last few years, but I think that the 'sandbox' system could be augmented to the point of 'success'. WoW, as we've all admitted, is a very well 'polished' game. I tip my hat to Blizzard. Wow does have a lot going for it, but honestly... at this point, what WoW has going for it is beyond the technical aspects of the game. I look at Blizzard and see a 'here's our menu, no substitutions allowed' type of game. It works as the masses can easily get into their game AND people are likely to stay because 'everyone else is doing it'. Word of mouth, ease of use, and high player population continues to work... while 'innovation' isn't really in play. Innovation = complexity and complexity would destroy Blizz's support model. A new game has to catch a positive 'popular' curve and outweigh, outlast, and outlive the 'negative' barrage that will come by the 'fanboi's' of other games. And, some games have more fanboi's in their arsenal than other games, let's be honest. I think most game companies are fearful of offering something that doesn't spoonfeed their clients, leading them down a linear path and telling a scripted story... the same path and same story for EVERY player. Spoonfeeding = success? Perhaps that's why we don't see more games for 'thinking' players.
No other MMO really is anymore complex than WoW is. Let's face it, when a new person joins WoW, most of the things raiders speak of seams pretty complex to the unlearned. It's the whole easy to get into, hard to master thing. The UI is very easy to learn, which is our interface to the game world. It's as easy as learning to use the internet using Internet Explorer. I mean you can even right click a name in the chat box to Report As Spam to let customer service know about gold sellers.
Sure, pressing hotbar numbers is easy. Sure, collecting quests, following the directions, and turning in quests are easy. Sure, solo encounters are mostly easy, with an average person being able to avoid death the majority of the time. But the complexity comes as the game goes on. Knowing which stats to use, how much of each stat to use, the math behind it all, which gear pieces maximize your template, the talent spec that maximizes you want to do, and the hotbar rotation you need to use all is complex. Sure, you can read all that stuff on the internet to avoid the complexity, but you can do that on any game, including EvE, so that's not a reason to say the game isn't complex. Other than that, you also have 5 man instances, heroics, and raids that increase in complexity from solo play. Each type of dungeon gets more complex and harder to complete. Complexity comes in many forms, not just from game mechanics. Coordinating attack in PvP and in Raids can be a pretty complex task.
I'm just tired of hearing this "WoW is not complex" nonsense. Anygame becomes easy with good UI and internet guides.
To add to my point, anyone who says WoW isn't complex, I'd love to see proof of you being the first to clear a raid dungeon, or I'd like to hear you truthfully tell me that you never read the forums or any other guide on how to spend your talent points, what stats to focus on, which gems and enchants to use, where quest objective are, where to get which armor, and the other hundreds of questions that are raised per day on how to do this or that in WoW. Those questions wouldn't exist if the game wasn't complex enough to make a person think and have to make their own choices.
Sorry, but WoW is not a complex game. It's just not. Not from my personal perspective, it's not. It's a linear game with a boat-load of guidance and hand-holding involved. Wow is a paint by numbers game, where everyone's end-game portait ends up being the same thing.
I'm looking for something beyond this style of game. To me, that's what the article was really driving at, too.
I'm sure to a Dev, the math in WoW is 'complex'. But as a customer/end-user, I simply don't think it is. I want more choices... real choices in my games.
The article sounds like its right on, but its a pipe dream. You could replace MMORPG with FPS's and it'd be the same thing.
I don't want a "WoW-Beater" or a "WoW-crusher", or even a piece of Blizzard's pie. All of this talk about it has to be innovative and new and different and not a WoW clone, blah blah blah blah blah blah... Hogwash. Ya'll can't see the forest for the trees.
What the next "Big Thing" has to be is this one thing, and one thing only. This one thing is hard to achieve, especially long term. Its hard for game designers to remember its the core reason why we play games. Sometimes its completely forgotten. And its not the same for everyone, so there is no magic "pill" to make a game have it...
To have fun of course...something that is totally forgotten in MMO's for me now
However, this article is spot on. it's exactly what needs to happen to take down WoW and estabilish a new king. But I don't see it happenning in the forseeable future.
Good article, and I like the points Nate makes. I also wonder if the trend in mmo development has been catering to an increasing culture of selfishness, and this has been limiting the great strides in socializing and nation-building we once probably all imagined we'd be seeing about now. Presently, almost all mmo gameworlds are defined by three things: environment, mob, player. New games focus so much on what a player can do, that the mobs have become almost irrelevant. You can play Warhammer Online right through without noticing any real difference from mob to mob other than whether it hits you at range or up close. That means you essentially get locked into a world that is entirely centered around your hotbars. The monsters are just there so that your hotbar abilities have something to activate on, and are otherwise an impediment to your leveling. What am getting at is that I can't imagine the Next Big Thing happening until a game's development starts with the environment, and fills it with creditable hazzards and features, before introducing the element of the player. Does it seem to you that most games start with a list of the playable classes and work their way out from there? "The Dungeon Archer". It'll be cool, you'll be able to kill things with a bow and have 30 abilities which express this in fine detail. What will you be shooting against? I don't know, some kind of leech. Does it matter? They're all essentially the same. Am I still on topic? Sorry, never let a chance of a whinge pass by.
Fantastic post, and I agree. The environments in the latest games are, SAFE, stale, boring, and predictable. Sure there may be a place to fall off a cliff here and there and die, but that's about as dangerous as the environment gets. The mobs are all pretty boring as well. There is no real AI there, just a roll of the dice for each hit. Hell if the environments were more interesting, would we need as many quests? I think not.
What ever happened to night time in MMO's actually being DARK and treacherous? Now all these games have this magical full moon plus level of ambient light, and offer you an equally magical ability to emit light around you so you can see better. What the hell happened to environment debuffs and modifiers? Why isn't the mud slippery when it's wet, and why can my toon stand out in the freezing ice and snow for hours wth no shirt, or not enough clothes on. Why isn't there a wind or breeze that affects the flight of my arrows? Why don't mobs stalk you and attack you when you least expect it unless you notice and attack them first. Hell, SWG had Voritors on Dantooine that would stalk you for quite a long time/distance before deciding to attack you or not. They didn't just sit there and wait for you to come within an predetermined distance, then predictably attack like mobs today. This was 5+ years ago. When some of us "elitist" MMO players say the current games are "dumbed-down" these are the kinds of details we are referring to.
This conversation reminded me of the little things indy map makers in (FPS) shooter games used to do to shake up the standard rules in their maps, and some of them were very popular. For example, in Quake games, you could turn off or turn down gravity for your map, so people would make maps that were fun to play in low gravity. It completely changed the gameplay, and people had a lot of fun. Or, you might have had a map that was simply a series of "tightropes" at various heights and angles, and if you missed one escaping or chasing your opponent, you fell and died. Or, look at "instagib" modes where if someone hit you with a railgun, you exploded into a pile of meat chunks. You tried DAMN hard not to get hit. There were all kinds of cool mods like this, and it kept things interesting.
It was almost ALWAYS the players who made these interesting maps/mods, and not the game developers. Despite the fact that people loved to try new stuff like this, the devs still chose to play it safe and "keep it real". If you are building an MMO right now, what is stopping you from having an area in the game world that has low gravity, or an area where the mobs are chasing you through a series of completely randomized traps and/or puzzles that required your complete attention to navigate? Why is everything so predictable when you have the ability to create any environment you can imagine? Why isn't there a mob that swallows you before you know what's going on, and you have to attack it's internal organs to get back out? Why can I watch a movie on one screen while playing an MMO on the other these days because the MMO is not a real challenge?
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I can't agree more with the article. I am sure most of the posters here are just sick of the Wow clones. The Indy companies out there need to read it and take heed.
The really sad thing is, there is nothing that I know of in the pipeline from any of the current MMO companies that comes close to breaking new ground.
I see Star Wars fans pinning great hopes on the game Bioware is doing, unfortunately it will be just another Wow clone because that is all Bioware and LA know how to do. Really sad to see LA mired in the clone market when they used to be the scions of originality.
The trouble is there are lots of Indie company failures out there and they are still coming. Many thought Darkfall would be the hit we needed only to find out it was just another POS put together by a bunch of bumbling kids. A small company needs start small and not attempt to throw everying in the game immediately. That is a recipe for disaster.
Don't know what we will see in the future in the genre, but whatever it is, the player needs more freedom to choose. The characters should never be limited by levels or classes or what they can wear. If a magic caster wants to wear plate mail he should be able to, it might limit his magic some, but he should be able to do it. The game also needs to appeal to the casual and the dedicated players and make sure there is not a huge gap there.
I don't have the answers, but I do know that I have not seen anything yet that comes close to allowing that.
PS Wow is not a complex MMO, if you want complex, try SWG or Eve. Those games were far more complex than Wow. Wow's success was built on not being complex.
Personally, I don't think WoW brought all that much "polish" to the genre. When WoW first came out it wasn't all that polished. It took over a year for it to get to the level of polish that is currently understood as the "bar" of polish in the industry. As a veteran MMO player who's been playing MMO's since UO Beta 2, I can difinitively say that the biggest thing WoW brought to the genre was that they dumbed down the genre and made it easy to play for the average American. On top of that they were the first MMO to SERIOUSLY go global. Those two combined turned them into a cutlural phenomenon. I don't feel there's anything wrong with the genre as a whole right now. I don't think the genre needs to "innovate" other than it needs more good games that have different stories. I don't think there's anything wrong with WoW or what it did to the genre in terms of the "polish" and the amount of bar raising it did for the industry. In fact I am greatful to what WoW did in terms of raising that bar. What I have a problem with is the general dumbing down of the genre to support a wider and wider audience, making the MMO gaming experience ADHD and for kids who don't know what the word comittment is about. I'd love a game that is not designed for the masses. A game that is not DUMBED down for the average stupid casual gamer. I want a game that's modern, with modern graphics, modern polish, but has the old school pre-wow expectation that if you were a complete and total moron (like 70% of MMO players are today), that you shouldn't be playing this game.
The problem is that like others have said before in this thread, investors and publishers want a product that is addictive, attractive, and accessible to a VERY wide audience because the profit margins for an MMO get pretty insane the larger the subscription base becomes. Investors and publishers don't want a game that one of the requirements are "Cannot solo past level 25" or "Must require raiding past level 50" or "Requires extensive involvement in guild for advancement" or oooooh this is a big one "Experience loss upon death or some other control mechanism to ensure high level players know the game well". If an MMO has too small of an audience you might as well publish a good console RPG like what Bathesda has done for over a decade. So in summary, what is ironic and sad about all of this is that while the MMO industry has become mainstream, it has destroyed what the veteran MMO community loved most about the genre and as long as the current "formula" works of making games dumb and accessible, than the likelyhood of us EVER seeing a game like I want and many want becomes smaller and smaller every day.
So much talk about the genre being dumbed down by WoW, and all I start to hear when I see the word dumbed down is "blah blah blah." People say WoW dumbed down the genre, and I say whatever. There's nothing to prove that WoW dumbed down the genre and I've played MMO's several years by the time WoW came out. You still have lots of people asking questions on how to do this or that and you still have hundreds of guides on how to do this or that in WoW. If the game was so easy a caveman can do it, there'd be no need for guides. There just wouldn't be a market for them, because it'd take more time and money to find a guide than to just play the game.
I'm all for innovation. But... who says it really has to come from the Dev's for it to work? I think that 'sandbox' games have really received a bad wrap over the last few years, but I think that the 'sandbox' system could be augmented to the point of 'success'. WoW, as we've all admitted, is a very well 'polished' game. I tip my hat to Blizzard. Wow does have a lot going for it, but honestly... at this point, what WoW has going for it is beyond the technical aspects of the game. I look at Blizzard and see a 'here's our menu, no substitutions allowed' type of game. It works as the masses can easily get into their game AND people are likely to stay because 'everyone else is doing it'. Word of mouth, ease of use, and high player population continues to work... while 'innovation' isn't really in play. Innovation = complexity and complexity would destroy Blizz's support model. A new game has to catch a positive 'popular' curve and outweigh, outlast, and outlive the 'negative' barrage that will come by the 'fanboi's' of other games. And, some games have more fanboi's in their arsenal than other games, let's be honest. I think most game companies are fearful of offering something that doesn't spoonfeed their clients, leading them down a linear path and telling a scripted story... the same path and same story for EVERY player. Spoonfeeding = success? Perhaps that's why we don't see more games for 'thinking' players.
No other MMO really is anymore complex than WoW is. Let's face it, when a new person joins WoW, most of the things raiders speak of seams pretty complex to the unlearned. It's the whole easy to get into, hard to master thing. The UI is very easy to learn, which is our interface to the game world. It's as easy as learning to use the internet using Internet Explorer. I mean you can even right click a name in the chat box to Report As Spam to let customer service know about gold sellers.
Sure, pressing hotbar numbers is easy. Sure, collecting quests, following the directions, and turning in quests are easy. Sure, solo encounters are mostly easy, with an average person being able to avoid death the majority of the time. But the complexity comes as the game goes on. Knowing which stats to use, how much of each stat to use, the math behind it all, which gear pieces maximize your template, the talent spec that maximizes you want to do, and the hotbar rotation you need to use all is complex. Sure, you can read all that stuff on the internet to avoid the complexity, but you can do that on any game, including EvE, so that's not a reason to say the game isn't complex. Other than that, you also have 5 man instances, heroics, and raids that increase in complexity from solo play. Each type of dungeon gets more complex and harder to complete. Complexity comes in many forms, not just from game mechanics. Coordinating attack in PvP and in Raids can be a pretty complex task.
I'm just tired of hearing this "WoW is not complex" nonsense. Anygame becomes easy with good UI and internet guides.
To add to my point, anyone who says WoW isn't complex, I'd love to see proof of you being the first to clear a raid dungeon, or I'd like to hear you truthfully tell me that you never read the forums or any other guide on how to spend your talent points, what stats to focus on, which gems and enchants to use, where quest objective are, where to get which armor, and the other hundreds of questions that are raised per day on how to do this or that in WoW. Those questions wouldn't exist if the game wasn't complex enough to make a person think and have to make their own choices.
Sorry, but WoW is not a complex game. It's just not. Not from my personal perspective, it's not. It's a linear game with a boat-load of guidance and hand-holding involved. Wow is a paint by numbers game, where everyone's end-game portait ends up being the same thing.
I'm looking for something beyond this style of game. To me, that's what the article was really driving at, too.
I'm sure to a Dev, the math in WoW is 'complex'. But as a customer/end-user, I simply don't think it is. I want more choices... real choices in my games.
You say WoW is not a complex game, yet you don't give any examples, other than "It's just not." Well I'm sorry, but "It's just not," isn't convincing at all. I still think WoW is no more or no less complex than any other game on the market. There is more guidance in the game, but that makes a game more user friendly, not less complex. You say you want more choices in a game, but fail to address how each class has 3 different choices on how to play it. How there's over 5 different ways to progress at end game (Solo PvE, BG's, Arenas, 5-mans, Heroics, 10-mans, 25mans) and no one forces you to choose one method over another, other than your own greed for better gear. How about over a hundred unique mounts to choose from? My point is there is plenty of choice and you're giving no examples of a lack of choice or a game with more choices.
But there's already a WoW out there, so I agree, the article is stating that we need something totally different from WoW to advance the genre.
I'm going to second Blackwatch on this one... WoW is not complex and it's getting less and less complex by the day. Want to know a complex game? Look at any successful MMO that came before WoW.
I played Motor City Online, DAoC, SWG, and CoX, which were all games that came before WoW. None were any more or less complex than WoW was, except Motor City Online.
So much talk about the genre being dumbed down by WoW, and all I start to hear when I see the word dumbed down is "blah blah blah." People say WoW dumbed down the genre, and I say whatever. There's nothing to prove that WoW dumbed down the genre and I've played MMO's several years by the time WoW came out. You still have lots of people asking questions on how to do this or that and you still have hundreds of guides on how to do this or that in WoW. If the game was so easy a caveman can do it, there'd be no need for guides. There just wouldn't be a market for them, because it'd take more time and money to find a guide than to just play the game.
Go back to page 7 and read my post, and you will see what is meant by "dumbing it down". The OP article explains it as well. WoW took the MMO idea and refined it down to a simplistic polished product. The game world in WoW does not have much granular detail or feel alive. When I say detail I'm not talking about graphics, I'm talking about the little things that are going on in the world, or things the players can interact with.
Also, WoW gets far too much credit for the quality of the game being responsible for it's success. Sure, the game can be fun, and it's very polished, but to overlook the fact that you can run it on damn near any computer hardware is ridiculous. If it wasn't for this fact, they wouldn't even have a fraction of the subscriber numbers they do simply because most people do not have gaming rigs. WoW doesn't require one.
I personally believe WoW has been refined down to the level of a video poker or slot machine. It has been boiled down to focus on the addictive aspects of gaming, just as the OP says. How many times have you WoW players logged into the game and heard your guildmates declare how bored they are, yet they are still there trudging through the game, probably while watching TV or doing other things? This is not immersion, this is addiction. They also get hooked into hanging out with their friends and this keeps them around a lot longer than they would based on the gameplay alone.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
The new mmorpg that ignored everything and redefined the genre is Darkfall Online.
Maybe, but where is the one that isn't broken and hacked to death? I have been giving Darkfall the benefit of the doubt since day one. If you, for some strange reason, wanted to go through all of my previous posts ever made on the website, you probably won't find a single negative word about it until now. Everytime I turn around, there is some disaster going on in that game, and now the hackers are owning it. Sorry, Darkfall might have had the right idea in concept, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion.
I will keep an eye on it, because it still has a ton of potential assuming the management and developers are capable.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
- others have already tried to be innovative, succeeded, but certainly not toppled the likes of WoW
- WoW is successful because of the sheep-factor - it's simple, accessible & now has far too much momentum to be toppled easily
- even Blizzard are planning their next WoW-killa mmo - & I bet they're not silly enough to think something completely 'new' will be it
WoW is the opiate of the mmo-people. And it's hard to beat 11mill+ ppl for company. I played it for a few months last year, & it certainly is addictive. But for my money, mmos like LOTRO & CoX are better games. But then again, I'm mostly a casual player/soloer. Now THAT'S an uptapped market in mmos. Why TF doesn't someone bring out a mmo focsued & centred on our kind? <G> Give soloers the better XP, quests & top-end content. After all, the groupies have it easier anyway given they have diversity & numbers. I've never understood this back-to-frontness in mmo design personally. Everything is harder (or impossible!) to solo, yet grouping gives you better reward-4-effort. Bah.
There is nothing on the horizon that will 'beat' WoW. It's too firmly entrenched right now. There will also be plenty of innovative mmos as well, but they won't be competing for market share.
They say that right before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. That's true, even for a blind man. ^DareDevil^
Comments
I've read people talk about a game that would be revolutionizing the way we play games needs funds... well why couldn't Blizzard see that people are and have been wanting a game to topple WoW and just revolutionize its own game? Blizzard is a company that can take these risks and if no one likes the new mmo they fall back to WoW, but if they do like, then it's game over for all other companies basically. So it is race. I am just waiting to see who makes the first move and capitolizes on it.
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At the end of the day I'm playing a videoGAME. If i'm not having fun why would I bother?
Maybe a sudden change isn't the solution... what if people would just slowly go a bit further out of the box than the other mmo? If that feature doesn't work? Well, then go another direction, that way, even though it's slower, it bears less risk, and in turn, won't be abbandoned as fast, and for the players, it's still somewhat like the rest, so people won't be thinking it's something odd.
It can be done, it will be done. The box has to be explored from the outside again.
Wow is a solid game but its not this alone that makes the player base large. I remember when I was playing WoW in the first 2 years of its launch, I was working at a mortgage company doing IT desktop tier 3 so I would get around the building abit. I had a few departments that I was "the man" for and I remember talking to these ladies who were regular customers. These were 45+ soccer mom types and I was talking about how I play computer games like Quake 3, some counterstrike and they said they had just started playing a game with their kids and that they were sharing a computer and now they want to get their own computer and wanted some advice, so I asked ok, what game are you playing. They said Wow and one went on about , "well I dont know what Im doing I just follow this person around and I am a healer with armor and its fun". I said...you're a Palidan? She then got real excited and said Yes, Yes thats the name! and then the other lady chimed in about her character with the bow and she has a pet...
3 weeks later they are asking me what server I am on and I said oh well Im an undead warrior, and oh "you are one of those nasty guys we will have to get you"... Thats just about when I decided that its time to move on, lol omfg I still am really amazed at that piece of reality that I went through in my life, like a real Twilight Zone...
My point is, Wow was recruiting, parents, whole families into the game, incredible. So, you can imagine the kinda hill climb any company will have to beat it. Some one is going to have to do something really different. This means a new IP for one thing and new...something like a Wii mmo game where you are on American Idol with in game community voting and the judges are based on wild life animals with muppet personalities...something just stupid and crazy that sounds like there is no way in hell it will work.
oh shit...
Very good article that does remind people that we need to be looking at the core of what is wanted from a game.
You do not look at what is available and dream a solution...
You dream a solution and use what is available to build it.
I don’t understand what the fuss is all about. The author mentions basketball, a game loved by its enthusiasts, it’s been around a long time, has anyone decided it needs to change, or that we need a new kind of basketball?
Most of the desire for change comes from two sources. You have new companies who want a piece of the MMO pie so they need a ‘basketball killer’ to beat WoW. You have gamers who don’t understand their game is not like basketball, it has a more ridged formula which eventually makes it boring with repetition. To make a truly new kind of MMORG we would be to make something we would not call a MMORPG any more.
People go back to online shooters no matter how high their level, the end game is the start game, much like basketball. MMORPG’s have a more rigid development structure, its not just about how good you are at the keyboard, its about how long you have played, and what you did while playing.
That’s why it ends up boring and the only solution is to try another MMO, just like you move on from a solo game. Expecting ‘innovation’ to beat WoW is like expecting small independent film makers to beat and take the lead from Hollywood, dream on.
Very negative reaction.
Actually a real good way to steal a big chunk of Wow's numbers is to make the MMO that appeals to all races on the planet. You need the asian market, the euro market as well as the US market.
Grand Theft Auto MMO has it all. You make that game and you can take over the world. Open PvP with npc Police response, Strip clubs with real female characters getting virtual money from real players, pimps, gangs, hustlers, assassins, terrorists, swat...$$$ Fat Wow Loots!
What really jarred me about this article is that the author talks about how MMORPGs have to reinvent the way they think of the genre and completely failes to realize that this is precisely what Blizzard did with WoW.
In the basketball team example the players did not invent a new way to make shots or how to dribble. they still used the same old basic game mechanics. They simply changed the way they thought about the 'big picture' experience. Similarly while WoW retained most of the mechaincs of previous games it approached the 'gameplay experience' side from a different direction.
I played MMORPGs for a few years before WoW. However, when I started playing WoW I came to the realization that I never thought that you could play a MMORPG this way. I was conditioned into thinking that MMORPGs had to play a certain way with tedious grinds, camping, few quests and long leveling curves. WoW was so radical in those aspects that it blew my mind.
Any new game that wants to revolutionize the genre has to achieve the same effect. It is not enough that it changes mechanics or adds a feature or two. It needs to change the way players think of MMORPGs.
No other MMO really is anymore complex than WoW is. Let's face it, when a new person joins WoW, most of the things raiders speak of seams pretty complex to the unlearned. It's the whole easy to get into, hard to master thing. The UI is very easy to learn, which is our interface to the game world. It's as easy as learning to use the internet using Internet Explorer. I mean you can even right click a name in the chat box to Report As Spam to let customer service know about gold sellers.
Sure, pressing hotbar numbers is easy. Sure, collecting quests, following the directions, and turning in quests are easy. Sure, solo encounters are mostly easy, with an average person being able to avoid death the majority of the time. But the complexity comes as the game goes on. Knowing which stats to use, how much of each stat to use, the math behind it all, which gear pieces maximize your template, the talent spec that maximizes you want to do, and the hotbar rotation you need to use all is complex. Sure, you can read all that stuff on the internet to avoid the complexity, but you can do that on any game, including EvE, so that's not a reason to say the game isn't complex. Other than that, you also have 5 man instances, heroics, and raids that increase in complexity from solo play. Each type of dungeon gets more complex and harder to complete. Complexity comes in many forms, not just from game mechanics. Coordinating attack in PvP and in Raids can be a pretty complex task.
I'm just tired of hearing this "WoW is not complex" nonsense. Anygame becomes easy with good UI and internet guides.
To add to my point, anyone who says WoW isn't complex, I'd love to see proof of you being the first to clear a raid dungeon, or I'd like to hear you truthfully tell me that you never read the forums or any other guide on how to spend your talent points, what stats to focus on, which gems and enchants to use, where quest objective are, where to get which armor, and the other hundreds of questions that are raised per day on how to do this or that in WoW. Those questions wouldn't exist if the game wasn't complex enough to make a person think and have to make their own choices.
I agree with these comments. I laughed when Dana wrote how by the time WoW came out the hardcore were like, been here and done that. Paraphrasing of course. However, what an utterly B.S. comment. I played UO, AC1, AC2, DAoC, Shadowbane, CoH and Horizons all before WoW. EQ was about the only pre-WoW mmorpg I didn't play, but I know enough that WoW wouldn't have given you a "been there done that" feeling coming from EQ. WoW changed the way we play mmorpgs.
Blizzard popularized mmorpgs, mostly because of the Blizzard name and their reputation. However, if WoW hadn't been a good game it wouldn't have become successful. Blizzard did the process gradually, the original end game design was very much for the hardcore and super guilds. In BC they toned it down a bit, but added a real raid instance for small group play. The player reaction to Kara was overwhelming and that caught Blizzard's attention. So now we have 25 man and 10 man raids, both with progression and the game is still holding strong.
Dana is right about one thing, no one is going to topple Blizzard at their own game. I also believe that Blizzard will make the next wildly popular mmo, hell they have one in development right now. However, it's not going to cater to the hardcore group. Any mmo that wishes to become wildly popular is going to have to attract the masses. The day of hardcore catering in mainstream games is over. That's not to say there won't be high quality hardcore mmos, but we can't kid ourselves into thinking they will ever attain the popularity that WoW has.
The thing I find most ironic is that all of the features people ask for a lot in mmorpgs already exist in the single game. Asheron's Call 1. No classes all skill based, Free for All pvp with full loot (on darktide), seamless world without instances, tons of areas to explore, and while there are character levels they mostly serve as a guide than a hard rule as to what content you can or can't take. AC1 is 10 years old with an even older engine and they allowed boting to run rampant, which is why the game is dying if not dead already.
I never said WoW was a bad game. Quite the opposite.
However, the genius of WoW is not the game. It's the implementation. It's like they played the full court press in a girls little league with NBA players.
WoW is a marvel of implementation, but the core ideas that drive WoW are not terribly original. EQ, DAoC, etc. had done most of them, just not nearly as well.
Where they redefined the genre was quality. No one prior to them had achieved such a high level of polish and they showed the power of that, combined with their name, reputation and IP could do amazing things.
For me, while I appreciate WoW on a professional level, it's never really captured me. I feel like I've played it before. That's not a knock against them, they took a great formula and made it mass market. For most WoW players, I would bet that WoW was their first MMO.
Think of it in reverse. Why has the predicted outflow of WoW into the rest of the genre not happened? When WoW hit it big, I remember all sorts of people proclaiming it great because it had "grown the pool" of people who would play MMOs. That really has not happened, outside of WoW.
I'd argue a bit reason for that is that when people leave WoW and try other things, they just find an approximation of it, but not as well executed. And not just in games that came since, but also in those that predate it.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Personally, I don't think WoW brought all that much "polish" to the genre. When WoW first came out it wasn't all that polished. It took over a year for it to get to the level of polish that is currently understood as the "bar" of polish in the industry. As a veteran MMO player who's been playing MMO's since UO Beta 2, I can difinitively say that the biggest thing WoW brought to the genre was that they dumbed down the genre and made it easy to play for the average American. On top of that they were the first MMO to SERIOUSLY go global. Those two combined turned them into a cutlural phenomenon.
I don't feel there's anything wrong with the genre as a whole right now. I don't think the genre needs to "innovate" other than it needs more good games that have different stories. I don't think there's anything wrong with WoW or what it did to the genre in terms of the "polish" and the amount of bar raising it did for the industry. In fact I am greatful to what WoW did in terms of raising that bar. What I have a problem with is the general dumbing down of the genre to support a wider and wider audience, making the MMO gaming experience ADHD and for kids who don't know what the word comittment is about.
I'd love a game that is not designed for the masses. A game that is not DUMBED down for the average stupid casual gamer. I want a game that's modern, with modern graphics, modern polish, but has the old school pre-wow expectation that if you were a complete and total moron (like 70% of MMO players are today), that you shouldn't be playing this game.
The problem is that like others have said before in this thread, investors and publishers want a product that is addictive, attractive, and accessible to a VERY wide audience because the profit margins for an MMO get pretty insane the larger the subscription base becomes. Investors and publishers don't want a game that one of the requirements are "Cannot solo past level 25" or "Must require raiding past level 50" or "Requires extensive involvement in guild for advancement" or oooooh this is a big one "Experience loss upon death or some other control mechanism to ensure high level players know the game well". If an MMO has too small of an audience you might as well publish a good console RPG like what Bathesda has done for over a decade.
So in summary, what is ironic and sad about all of this is that while the MMO industry has become mainstream, it has destroyed what the veteran MMO community loved most about the genre and as long as the current "formula" works of making games dumb and accessible, than the likelyhood of us EVER seeing a game like I want and many want becomes smaller and smaller every day.
No other MMO really is anymore complex than WoW is. Let's face it, when a new person joins WoW, most of the things raiders speak of seams pretty complex to the unlearned. It's the whole easy to get into, hard to master thing. The UI is very easy to learn, which is our interface to the game world. It's as easy as learning to use the internet using Internet Explorer. I mean you can even right click a name in the chat box to Report As Spam to let customer service know about gold sellers.
Sure, pressing hotbar numbers is easy. Sure, collecting quests, following the directions, and turning in quests are easy. Sure, solo encounters are mostly easy, with an average person being able to avoid death the majority of the time. But the complexity comes as the game goes on. Knowing which stats to use, how much of each stat to use, the math behind it all, which gear pieces maximize your template, the talent spec that maximizes you want to do, and the hotbar rotation you need to use all is complex. Sure, you can read all that stuff on the internet to avoid the complexity, but you can do that on any game, including EvE, so that's not a reason to say the game isn't complex. Other than that, you also have 5 man instances, heroics, and raids that increase in complexity from solo play. Each type of dungeon gets more complex and harder to complete. Complexity comes in many forms, not just from game mechanics. Coordinating attack in PvP and in Raids can be a pretty complex task.
I'm just tired of hearing this "WoW is not complex" nonsense. Anygame becomes easy with good UI and internet guides.
To add to my point, anyone who says WoW isn't complex, I'd love to see proof of you being the first to clear a raid dungeon, or I'd like to hear you truthfully tell me that you never read the forums or any other guide on how to spend your talent points, what stats to focus on, which gems and enchants to use, where quest objective are, where to get which armor, and the other hundreds of questions that are raised per day on how to do this or that in WoW. Those questions wouldn't exist if the game wasn't complex enough to make a person think and have to make their own choices.
Sorry, but WoW is not a complex game. It's just not. Not from my personal perspective, it's not. It's a linear game with a boat-load of guidance and hand-holding involved. Wow is a paint by numbers game, where everyone's end-game portait ends up being the same thing.
I'm looking for something beyond this style of game. To me, that's what the article was really driving at, too.
I'm sure to a Dev, the math in WoW is 'complex'. But as a customer/end-user, I simply don't think it is. I want more choices... real choices in my games.
I'm going to second Blackwatch on this one... WoW is not complex and it's getting less and less complex by the day.
Want to know a complex game? Look at any successful MMO that came before WoW.
The article sounds like its right on, but its a pipe dream. You could replace MMORPG with FPS's and it'd be the same thing.
I don't want a "WoW-Beater" or a "WoW-crusher", or even a piece of Blizzard's pie. All of this talk about it has to be innovative and new and different and not a WoW clone, blah blah blah blah blah blah... Hogwash. Ya'll can't see the forest for the trees.
What the next "Big Thing" has to be is this one thing, and one thing only. This one thing is hard to achieve, especially long term. Its hard for game designers to remember its the core reason why we play games. Sometimes its completely forgotten. And its not the same for everyone, so there is no magic "pill" to make a game have it...
Can anyone guess what this one thing is?
To have fun of course...something that is totally forgotten in MMO's for me now
However, this article is spot on. it's exactly what needs to happen to take down WoW and estabilish a new king. But I don't see it happenning in the forseeable future.
Fantastic post, and I agree. The environments in the latest games are, SAFE, stale, boring, and predictable. Sure there may be a place to fall off a cliff here and there and die, but that's about as dangerous as the environment gets. The mobs are all pretty boring as well. There is no real AI there, just a roll of the dice for each hit. Hell if the environments were more interesting, would we need as many quests? I think not.
What ever happened to night time in MMO's actually being DARK and treacherous? Now all these games have this magical full moon plus level of ambient light, and offer you an equally magical ability to emit light around you so you can see better. What the hell happened to environment debuffs and modifiers? Why isn't the mud slippery when it's wet, and why can my toon stand out in the freezing ice and snow for hours wth no shirt, or not enough clothes on. Why isn't there a wind or breeze that affects the flight of my arrows? Why don't mobs stalk you and attack you when you least expect it unless you notice and attack them first. Hell, SWG had Voritors on Dantooine that would stalk you for quite a long time/distance before deciding to attack you or not. They didn't just sit there and wait for you to come within an predetermined distance, then predictably attack like mobs today. This was 5+ years ago. When some of us "elitist" MMO players say the current games are "dumbed-down" these are the kinds of details we are referring to.
This conversation reminded me of the little things indy map makers in (FPS) shooter games used to do to shake up the standard rules in their maps, and some of them were very popular. For example, in Quake games, you could turn off or turn down gravity for your map, so people would make maps that were fun to play in low gravity. It completely changed the gameplay, and people had a lot of fun. Or, you might have had a map that was simply a series of "tightropes" at various heights and angles, and if you missed one escaping or chasing your opponent, you fell and died. Or, look at "instagib" modes where if someone hit you with a railgun, you exploded into a pile of meat chunks. You tried DAMN hard not to get hit. There were all kinds of cool mods like this, and it kept things interesting.
It was almost ALWAYS the players who made these interesting maps/mods, and not the game developers. Despite the fact that people loved to try new stuff like this, the devs still chose to play it safe and "keep it real". If you are building an MMO right now, what is stopping you from having an area in the game world that has low gravity, or an area where the mobs are chasing you through a series of completely randomized traps and/or puzzles that required your complete attention to navigate? Why is everything so predictable when you have the ability to create any environment you can imagine? Why isn't there a mob that swallows you before you know what's going on, and you have to attack it's internal organs to get back out? Why can I watch a movie on one screen while playing an MMO on the other these days because the MMO is not a real challenge?
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I can't agree more with the article. I am sure most of the posters here are just sick of the Wow clones. The Indy companies out there need to read it and take heed.
The really sad thing is, there is nothing that I know of in the pipeline from any of the current MMO companies that comes close to breaking new ground.
I see Star Wars fans pinning great hopes on the game Bioware is doing, unfortunately it will be just another Wow clone because that is all Bioware and LA know how to do. Really sad to see LA mired in the clone market when they used to be the scions of originality.
The trouble is there are lots of Indie company failures out there and they are still coming. Many thought Darkfall would be the hit we needed only to find out it was just another POS put together by a bunch of bumbling kids. A small company needs start small and not attempt to throw everying in the game immediately. That is a recipe for disaster.
Don't know what we will see in the future in the genre, but whatever it is, the player needs more freedom to choose. The characters should never be limited by levels or classes or what they can wear. If a magic caster wants to wear plate mail he should be able to, it might limit his magic some, but he should be able to do it. The game also needs to appeal to the casual and the dedicated players and make sure there is not a huge gap there.
I don't have the answers, but I do know that I have not seen anything yet that comes close to allowing that.
PS Wow is not a complex MMO, if you want complex, try SWG or Eve. Those games were far more complex than Wow. Wow's success was built on not being complex.
So much talk about the genre being dumbed down by WoW, and all I start to hear when I see the word dumbed down is "blah blah blah." People say WoW dumbed down the genre, and I say whatever. There's nothing to prove that WoW dumbed down the genre and I've played MMO's several years by the time WoW came out. You still have lots of people asking questions on how to do this or that and you still have hundreds of guides on how to do this or that in WoW. If the game was so easy a caveman can do it, there'd be no need for guides. There just wouldn't be a market for them, because it'd take more time and money to find a guide than to just play the game.
No other MMO really is anymore complex than WoW is. Let's face it, when a new person joins WoW, most of the things raiders speak of seams pretty complex to the unlearned. It's the whole easy to get into, hard to master thing. The UI is very easy to learn, which is our interface to the game world. It's as easy as learning to use the internet using Internet Explorer. I mean you can even right click a name in the chat box to Report As Spam to let customer service know about gold sellers.
Sure, pressing hotbar numbers is easy. Sure, collecting quests, following the directions, and turning in quests are easy. Sure, solo encounters are mostly easy, with an average person being able to avoid death the majority of the time. But the complexity comes as the game goes on. Knowing which stats to use, how much of each stat to use, the math behind it all, which gear pieces maximize your template, the talent spec that maximizes you want to do, and the hotbar rotation you need to use all is complex. Sure, you can read all that stuff on the internet to avoid the complexity, but you can do that on any game, including EvE, so that's not a reason to say the game isn't complex. Other than that, you also have 5 man instances, heroics, and raids that increase in complexity from solo play. Each type of dungeon gets more complex and harder to complete. Complexity comes in many forms, not just from game mechanics. Coordinating attack in PvP and in Raids can be a pretty complex task.
I'm just tired of hearing this "WoW is not complex" nonsense. Anygame becomes easy with good UI and internet guides.
To add to my point, anyone who says WoW isn't complex, I'd love to see proof of you being the first to clear a raid dungeon, or I'd like to hear you truthfully tell me that you never read the forums or any other guide on how to spend your talent points, what stats to focus on, which gems and enchants to use, where quest objective are, where to get which armor, and the other hundreds of questions that are raised per day on how to do this or that in WoW. Those questions wouldn't exist if the game wasn't complex enough to make a person think and have to make their own choices.
Sorry, but WoW is not a complex game. It's just not. Not from my personal perspective, it's not. It's a linear game with a boat-load of guidance and hand-holding involved. Wow is a paint by numbers game, where everyone's end-game portait ends up being the same thing.
I'm looking for something beyond this style of game. To me, that's what the article was really driving at, too.
I'm sure to a Dev, the math in WoW is 'complex'. But as a customer/end-user, I simply don't think it is. I want more choices... real choices in my games.
You say WoW is not a complex game, yet you don't give any examples, other than "It's just not." Well I'm sorry, but "It's just not," isn't convincing at all. I still think WoW is no more or no less complex than any other game on the market. There is more guidance in the game, but that makes a game more user friendly, not less complex. You say you want more choices in a game, but fail to address how each class has 3 different choices on how to play it. How there's over 5 different ways to progress at end game (Solo PvE, BG's, Arenas, 5-mans, Heroics, 10-mans, 25mans) and no one forces you to choose one method over another, other than your own greed for better gear. How about over a hundred unique mounts to choose from? My point is there is plenty of choice and you're giving no examples of a lack of choice or a game with more choices.
But there's already a WoW out there, so I agree, the article is stating that we need something totally different from WoW to advance the genre.
I played Motor City Online, DAoC, SWG, and CoX, which were all games that came before WoW. None were any more or less complex than WoW was, except Motor City Online.
Go back to page 7 and read my post, and you will see what is meant by "dumbing it down". The OP article explains it as well. WoW took the MMO idea and refined it down to a simplistic polished product. The game world in WoW does not have much granular detail or feel alive. When I say detail I'm not talking about graphics, I'm talking about the little things that are going on in the world, or things the players can interact with.
Also, WoW gets far too much credit for the quality of the game being responsible for it's success. Sure, the game can be fun, and it's very polished, but to overlook the fact that you can run it on damn near any computer hardware is ridiculous. If it wasn't for this fact, they wouldn't even have a fraction of the subscriber numbers they do simply because most people do not have gaming rigs. WoW doesn't require one.
I personally believe WoW has been refined down to the level of a video poker or slot machine. It has been boiled down to focus on the addictive aspects of gaming, just as the OP says. How many times have you WoW players logged into the game and heard your guildmates declare how bored they are, yet they are still there trudging through the game, probably while watching TV or doing other things? This is not immersion, this is addiction. They also get hooked into hanging out with their friends and this keeps them around a lot longer than they would based on the gameplay alone.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Newsflash:
The new mmorpg that ignored everything and redefined the genre is Darkfall Online.
Maybe, but where is the one that isn't broken and hacked to death? I have been giving Darkfall the benefit of the doubt since day one. If you, for some strange reason, wanted to go through all of my previous posts ever made on the website, you probably won't find a single negative word about it until now. Everytime I turn around, there is some disaster going on in that game, and now the hackers are owning it. Sorry, Darkfall might have had the right idea in concept, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion.
I will keep an eye on it, because it still has a ton of potential assuming the management and developers are capable.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Great thread. A couple quick observations:
- others have already tried to be innovative, succeeded, but certainly not toppled the likes of WoW
- WoW is successful because of the sheep-factor - it's simple, accessible & now has far too much momentum to be toppled easily
- even Blizzard are planning their next WoW-killa mmo - & I bet they're not silly enough to think something completely 'new' will be it
WoW is the opiate of the mmo-people. And it's hard to beat 11mill+ ppl for company. I played it for a few months last year, & it certainly is addictive. But for my money, mmos like LOTRO & CoX are better games. But then again, I'm mostly a casual player/soloer. Now THAT'S an uptapped market in mmos. Why TF doesn't someone bring out a mmo focsued & centred on our kind? <G> Give soloers the better XP, quests & top-end content. After all, the groupies have it easier anyway given they have diversity & numbers. I've never understood this back-to-frontness in mmo design personally. Everything is harder (or impossible!) to solo, yet grouping gives you better reward-4-effort. Bah.
There is nothing on the horizon that will 'beat' WoW. It's too firmly entrenched right now. There will also be plenty of innovative mmos as well, but they won't be competing for market share.
They say that right before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. That's true, even for a blind man. ^DareDevil^