The internet has rules, are called netiquette. I have not problem on discussions to (almost) anything, If follow the netiquette.
In particular, MMO's are both a piece of art, and a piece of craft. And a product, that is sell for exchange of money. So of course, we are customers, and we can vent our disagreement or disagreement for these products or how are made.
It isn't the gamer's fault that alot of these games are buggy, it isn't the gamer's fault that games do not deliver the fun factor, it isn't the gamer's fault that they charge a monthly fee knowing their game isn't finished. What I do blame gamer's for is paying for broken mmos. Until they stop and show the devs who really controls the mmo market then you will constantly have bad apples like I mentioned above.
I would agree, except that you are forgetting one important, previously mentioned fact about the genra having opened up to a wider and often younger audience. Why is this important? Because most of these "gamers" don't actually pay for these games. Mommy and Daddy do. And when you are spending someone else's money, do you really think these kids are going to quit playing a game that all of their friends play to try and make a statemnet to the Dev community? The parents pay, but they don't play, and so they don't realize (or care perhaps) that their kids are getting ripped off. As long as the kids are quiet, that's all that matters. right?
It isn't the gamer's fault that alot of these games are buggy, it isn't the gamer's fault that games do not deliver the fun factor, it isn't the gamer's fault that they charge a monthly fee knowing their game isn't finished. What I do blame gamer's for is paying for broken mmos. Until they stop and show the devs who really controls the mmo market then you will constantly have bad apples like I mentioned above.
I would agree, except that you are forgetting one important, previously mentioned fact about the genra having opened up to a wider and often younger audience. Why is this important? Because most of these "gamers" don't actually pay for these games. Mommy and Daddy do. And when you are spending someone else's money, do you really think these kids are going to quit playing a game that all of their friends play to try and make a statemnet to the Dev community? The parents pay, but they don't play, and so they don't realize (or care perhaps) that their kids are getting ripped off. As long as the kids are quiet, that's all that matters. right?
True, the younger kids don't even care about the kind of things regarding a game compared to a more mature gamer. Though I still believe that the more mature crowd can set an example and not pay for half-assed broken buggy games we been getting throughout the years in regards to mmos.
its cuz mmo's these days are really uninventive lately, with no new ideas, with no sense of art or pride, just in it to get a quick buck. And those who enjoy it are either addicted the same way people get addicted to alcohol or drugs, or they are casual gamers. The people who actually like mmo's are left dissapointed with dozens of unfullfilled promises and expectations unmet.
I think far too many companies look at WoW's 11 million subscribers and see the profits that they imagine come from that. Then they decide that because this business model worked, that the success can be duplicated in the same way.
The environment in which WoW was released contributed greatly to the success of the product. I think WoW is a great game. Does it work for everyone? No. But it does what it does very well.
At the time it was released, not many people were playing MMOs, and those that were tended to be, as someone else said, either young adults or late teens. MMOs were expensive, computer resource intensive, and extremely time intensive. So the people who were playing had to have both money and time.
WoW was released around the same time as EQ2, from memory. I was playing EQ and a lot of people were interested in trying something different. But their expectations were quite open. People tried EQ2, they tried WoW. Some didn't like WoW's graphics. But others appreciated the less time-intensive nature of WoW. WoW allowed something that we now take for granted - the ability to do something in a short space of time, without requiring a group. For sure, you cannot do an end-game raid or an instance, but you can do something. In EQ, most people were restricted to group-only activities and dependant on class, could not often get a group at all.
This opened up the MMO market to people who didn't have a lot of resources in the way of money and time, and made it more mainstream. WoW's aggressive marketing also introduced it to people who weren't familiar with MMOs. The decision to moderate player behaviour at the level Blizzard has done, has meant that parents may feel safer letting their children play it. And because of how it's marketed, adults don't feel like they're playing a kid's game. Add to all that an interface that was easy to use and customer support that got back to you within a reasonable timeframe (especially compared to the existing competition) and Blizzard had their niche.
When people complain about WoW clones, its probably a good idea to stop and think about what that means. Do they mean that it's not time-intensive? Do they mean the interface is laid out with the same keybindings? Do they mean the graphic style is identical? This term is used far too often without being questioned.
I don't think the community has been spoiled by the "WoW Give Me Now!" mentality. I think this mentality exists in the outside world and it was only a matter of time before the MMO culture normalised itself against that wider group. This discussion is part of that - that we expect games to deliver what we want, how we want and at a price that we think is suitable. Whether or not that is realistic. Blaming Blizzard for that is not reasonable.
To assume that a casual gamer does not really like MMOs and that somewhere there is an elite group of MMO lovers who have more right to talk about what is good or bad in an MMO, is erroneous. The definition of 'casual gamer' differs from group to group, game to game. One would also think that unless a casual gamer liked the game, they would not be playing.
Game companies are producing a product for a profit. If their customers feel that promises are unfulfilled or expectations falling short, then this message needs to be clearly communicated to the company. And the subscription cancelled or the game unbought. I stopped playing EQ when I realised that Sony were going to nerf my game experience to all hell despite knowing what the community thought, and despite the problems they wanted fixing arising out of their own decisions. It's their game, they can do what they like - but I felt that if I really objected to what they were doing, the only appropriate decision was to stop paying them money.
If we do not hold companies accountable for the state of their product, and continue to buy unfinished, substandard games, what does that teach the companies? That they can keep doing it with no real consequence because its cheaper for them to produce shoddy games, and the customers still buy them so why bother producing good ones?
Given the current environment, I don't think the market is going to produce another WoW. If someone wants to compete they are going to have to produce something which is popular, rather than innovative. Innovation gets you nowhere if the rest of the product is terrible. New games need to be solid from the ground up, and at this time there is no incentive for companies to do this, as their product will be bought and played anyway.
And perhaps I should have added that this is more often the result of the parent/financing company's decisions than the developers.
Games that have used up their development budget need to be released to start making a profit. Whether or not they are finished, and we've seen far too many games pushed onto the market because of a marketing/finance decision, rather than the development decision that the product is ready.
This is not a development fault, but a fault in the priorities of the parent/financing company. A quick buck now, or solid profits later. Most don't seem to look past the quick buck now.
Maybe some people need to get some perspective and realize that companies only offer crap.
This is just nonsense. Some releases have been totally mismanaged but that's always been the case. There have been a few reasonably well made games lately. Most of the problem is emergent play. Developers just don't completely understand how their game mechanics will be used by players.
No he's right it is all boring grinding crap and the only good ones have been ruined by shit developers.
What is wrong with the community? It became popular. thats it. end of story.
The things happening to MMOs right now are exactly the same things that happen to any niche kind of thing, music, movies, games when they become mainstream. you can blame developers of you want, you can blame whatever you like but if you go and study what happens to a product when the genre go into the mainstream public you will see the same things happening to MMOs right now.
Realistically if you released games like DaoC or EQ today they would be laughed at compared to the games there is comming out today even if they had modern graphics. Grind grind grind, bad interface, little content, forced grouping, spawn camping for hours and hours, getting into list for farm groups and so on.
Realistically:
Give me a game with realistic weight on every item that affects your walking/running speed, the swing of your weapons, the falling damage. A game were you have to respect the environment because if you die in a dangerous place or too deep inside a dungeon you are screwed for days. A game were faction really means something, where if you are an Ogre you are hated basically in 80% of the fame and it's a pain to do anything, buying, selling, training, getting materials. I still remember i had to cross Qeynos through the sewers to get fish for a receipt in a distand island. That took me 3 days, you can't imagine the emotion when I finally left the sewers and swam free in the ocean, this is something no MMO gives you today. A game without maps and without minimap and bloody GPS, which made you memorize every signal in the landscape, where you could effectively get lost and die and good luck recovering your stuff. A game where you can attack any NPC (anyone in a red server) and suffer the consequences. A game without teleports, besides some special classes. A game where you needed each other to survive.
I don't think anybody would laugh at a game like that. And we had it back in 1999 until 2002 where SOE destroyed it with PoP expansion.
In comparison, we are getting crap in a nice box today.
I died in Vanguard around some crocs while I was on a boat they somehow attacked me from under the boat.... stupid bugs. Then i tried to get my corpse back and I died again and then I died about 20 times over the next few days. It wasn't fun and isn't an experience I want again, just made me want to quit and so I did.
SWG had the best death penalty where you get Decay, Battle Fatigue and Wounds which were all healed by other player professions. So it kept everything very social because you had to make friends with crafters to get the best deals and you gained relationships with new people via talking to them in Cantinas or Medic Centres. So many friends I gained from that system, got chatting and joined their guild and went to do stuff with them..... just wish the game actualy had content back then.
Games like Planetside wouldn't serve it well to have a death penalty though because you want to be in the action all the time so you will die alot but you'll be having so much fun.
it's more about cultural differences and tastes. west usually don't like what comes from the east, even stereotyping every brand and game from east as obnoxious and inferior.
yet, for all of these thoughts, quotes from others, only one thing is certain, NOBODY CAN PLEASE EVERYBODY!!
it's more about cultural differences and tastes. west usually don't like what comes from the east, even stereotyping every brand and game from east as obnoxious and inferior.
yet, for all of these thoughts, quotes from others, only one thing is certain, NOBODY CAN PLEASE EVERYBODY!!
Nobody cares about the community because they don't have to care about it to be successful in today's games. Today, you are judged more by your armor and stats than your skill or personality for the most part, it seems.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I think part of the answer to the OP's question might be related to how many people in the general population think that they are the greatest idea makers ever and could run a business better than anyone else.
I think just about everyone I have ever met in my life at least at one point has told me about a great idea and how they should run a business around it.
I think this is one of the problems. People get in game and think that becuae they play and have ideas that they could do a better job.
"Ideas are cheap, action is the real work" <i forget who said that>
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Comments
The internet has rules, are called netiquette. I have not problem on discussions to (almost) anything, If follow the netiquette.
In particular, MMO's are both a piece of art, and a piece of craft. And a product, that is sell for exchange of money. So of course, we are customers, and we can vent our disagreement or disagreement for these products or how are made.
People are the problem, they never agree with me and are big poopie heads.
I would agree, except that you are forgetting one important, previously mentioned fact about the genra having opened up to a wider and often younger audience. Why is this important? Because most of these "gamers" don't actually pay for these games. Mommy and Daddy do. And when you are spending someone else's money, do you really think these kids are going to quit playing a game that all of their friends play to try and make a statemnet to the Dev community? The parents pay, but they don't play, and so they don't realize (or care perhaps) that their kids are getting ripped off. As long as the kids are quiet, that's all that matters. right?
Most people around here are waiting for something that won't happen.
I would agree, except that you are forgetting one important, previously mentioned fact about the genra having opened up to a wider and often younger audience. Why is this important? Because most of these "gamers" don't actually pay for these games. Mommy and Daddy do. And when you are spending someone else's money, do you really think these kids are going to quit playing a game that all of their friends play to try and make a statemnet to the Dev community? The parents pay, but they don't play, and so they don't realize (or care perhaps) that their kids are getting ripped off. As long as the kids are quiet, that's all that matters. right?
True, the younger kids don't even care about the kind of things regarding a game compared to a more mature gamer. Though I still believe that the more mature crowd can set an example and not pay for half-assed broken buggy games we been getting throughout the years in regards to mmos.
its cuz mmo's these days are really uninventive lately, with no new ideas, with no sense of art or pride, just in it to get a quick buck. And those who enjoy it are either addicted the same way people get addicted to alcohol or drugs, or they are casual gamers. The people who actually like mmo's are left dissapointed with dozens of unfullfilled promises and expectations unmet.
When I'm energetic I'm:
the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
When I'm at default I'm:
WHITE/BLUE
Lol according to this I'm bipolar :O
I think far too many companies look at WoW's 11 million subscribers and see the profits that they imagine come from that. Then they decide that because this business model worked, that the success can be duplicated in the same way.
The environment in which WoW was released contributed greatly to the success of the product. I think WoW is a great game. Does it work for everyone? No. But it does what it does very well.
At the time it was released, not many people were playing MMOs, and those that were tended to be, as someone else said, either young adults or late teens. MMOs were expensive, computer resource intensive, and extremely time intensive. So the people who were playing had to have both money and time.
WoW was released around the same time as EQ2, from memory. I was playing EQ and a lot of people were interested in trying something different. But their expectations were quite open. People tried EQ2, they tried WoW. Some didn't like WoW's graphics. But others appreciated the less time-intensive nature of WoW. WoW allowed something that we now take for granted - the ability to do something in a short space of time, without requiring a group. For sure, you cannot do an end-game raid or an instance, but you can do something. In EQ, most people were restricted to group-only activities and dependant on class, could not often get a group at all.
This opened up the MMO market to people who didn't have a lot of resources in the way of money and time, and made it more mainstream. WoW's aggressive marketing also introduced it to people who weren't familiar with MMOs. The decision to moderate player behaviour at the level Blizzard has done, has meant that parents may feel safer letting their children play it. And because of how it's marketed, adults don't feel like they're playing a kid's game. Add to all that an interface that was easy to use and customer support that got back to you within a reasonable timeframe (especially compared to the existing competition) and Blizzard had their niche.
When people complain about WoW clones, its probably a good idea to stop and think about what that means. Do they mean that it's not time-intensive? Do they mean the interface is laid out with the same keybindings? Do they mean the graphic style is identical? This term is used far too often without being questioned.
I don't think the community has been spoiled by the "WoW Give Me Now!" mentality. I think this mentality exists in the outside world and it was only a matter of time before the MMO culture normalised itself against that wider group. This discussion is part of that - that we expect games to deliver what we want, how we want and at a price that we think is suitable. Whether or not that is realistic. Blaming Blizzard for that is not reasonable.
To assume that a casual gamer does not really like MMOs and that somewhere there is an elite group of MMO lovers who have more right to talk about what is good or bad in an MMO, is erroneous. The definition of 'casual gamer' differs from group to group, game to game. One would also think that unless a casual gamer liked the game, they would not be playing.
Game companies are producing a product for a profit. If their customers feel that promises are unfulfilled or expectations falling short, then this message needs to be clearly communicated to the company. And the subscription cancelled or the game unbought. I stopped playing EQ when I realised that Sony were going to nerf my game experience to all hell despite knowing what the community thought, and despite the problems they wanted fixing arising out of their own decisions. It's their game, they can do what they like - but I felt that if I really objected to what they were doing, the only appropriate decision was to stop paying them money.
If we do not hold companies accountable for the state of their product, and continue to buy unfinished, substandard games, what does that teach the companies? That they can keep doing it with no real consequence because its cheaper for them to produce shoddy games, and the customers still buy them so why bother producing good ones?
Given the current environment, I don't think the market is going to produce another WoW. If someone wants to compete they are going to have to produce something which is popular, rather than innovative. Innovation gets you nowhere if the rest of the product is terrible. New games need to be solid from the ground up, and at this time there is no incentive for companies to do this, as their product will be bought and played anyway.
And perhaps I should have added that this is more often the result of the parent/financing company's decisions than the developers.
Games that have used up their development budget need to be released to start making a profit. Whether or not they are finished, and we've seen far too many games pushed onto the market because of a marketing/finance decision, rather than the development decision that the product is ready.
This is not a development fault, but a fault in the priorities of the parent/financing company. A quick buck now, or solid profits later. Most don't seem to look past the quick buck now.
What is wrong with the community you ask.
Answer: It's full with immature children and immature adults.
What is wrong with the game makers?
Answer: I think that they are not very good at what they are doing.
This is just nonsense. Some releases have been totally mismanaged but that's always been the case. There have been a few reasonably well made games lately. Most of the problem is emergent play. Developers just don't completely understand how their game mechanics will be used by players.
No he's right it is all boring grinding crap and the only good ones have been ruined by shit developers.
What is wrong with the community? It became popular. thats it. end of story.
The things happening to MMOs right now are exactly the same things that happen to any niche kind of thing, music, movies, games when they become mainstream. you can blame developers of you want, you can blame whatever you like but if you go and study what happens to a product when the genre go into the mainstream public you will see the same things happening to MMOs right now.
Realistically:
Give me a game with realistic weight on every item that affects your walking/running speed, the swing of your weapons, the falling damage. A game were you have to respect the environment because if you die in a dangerous place or too deep inside a dungeon you are screwed for days. A game were faction really means something, where if you are an Ogre you are hated basically in 80% of the fame and it's a pain to do anything, buying, selling, training, getting materials. I still remember i had to cross Qeynos through the sewers to get fish for a receipt in a distand island. That took me 3 days, you can't imagine the emotion when I finally left the sewers and swam free in the ocean, this is something no MMO gives you today. A game without maps and without minimap and bloody GPS, which made you memorize every signal in the landscape, where you could effectively get lost and die and good luck recovering your stuff. A game where you can attack any NPC (anyone in a red server) and suffer the consequences. A game without teleports, besides some special classes. A game where you needed each other to survive.
I don't think anybody would laugh at a game like that. And we had it back in 1999 until 2002 where SOE destroyed it with PoP expansion.
In comparison, we are getting crap in a nice box today.
I died in Vanguard around some crocs while I was on a boat they somehow attacked me from under the boat.... stupid bugs. Then i tried to get my corpse back and I died again and then I died about 20 times over the next few days. It wasn't fun and isn't an experience I want again, just made me want to quit and so I did.
SWG had the best death penalty where you get Decay, Battle Fatigue and Wounds which were all healed by other player professions. So it kept everything very social because you had to make friends with crafters to get the best deals and you gained relationships with new people via talking to them in Cantinas or Medic Centres. So many friends I gained from that system, got chatting and joined their guild and went to do stuff with them..... just wish the game actualy had content back then.
Games like Planetside wouldn't serve it well to have a death penalty though because you want to be in the action all the time so you will die alot but you'll be having so much fun.
it's more about cultural differences and tastes. west usually don't like what comes from the east, even stereotyping every brand and game from east as obnoxious and inferior.
yet, for all of these thoughts, quotes from others, only one thing is certain, NOBODY CAN PLEASE EVERYBODY!!
Except WOW.
joking...
a bit.
Nobody cares about the community because they don't have to care about it to be successful in today's games. Today, you are judged more by your armor and stats than your skill or personality for the most part, it seems.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I think part of the answer to the OP's question might be related to how many people in the general population think that they are the greatest idea makers ever and could run a business better than anyone else.
I think just about everyone I have ever met in my life at least at one point has told me about a great idea and how they should run a business around it.
I think this is one of the problems. People get in game and think that becuae they play and have ideas that they could do a better job.
"Ideas are cheap, action is the real work" <i forget who said that>
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me