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General: Garret Fuller: Sequels and Cataclysms
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Sometimes games come back, sometimes they're reborn, sometimes they're reworked, and sometimes they're remade as sequels. Garrett looks at this phenomenon in this edition of his weekly column, including some games that desperately need a version 2.0.
So now that we have looked at two ways of resurrecting MMOs, the sequel and the face lift. Let’s talk about games that sorely need a resurrection. First on my list is Dark Age of Camelot. I know Warhammer tried to be a lot of things. The game had brilliant new ideas like public quests, guild advancement, and the Tome of Knowledge. Yet as far as PvP goes the two faction system just tipped the game to one side too much. Dark Age of Camelot had three factions. If any one side was strong on the server the other two sides, while still enemies, would balance out and take them down. Sure you can argue this point all you want, but I am speaking of experience when playing Midgard and fighting Hibernia, most times when the Albions came over the hill, we dropped our fight and turned against our common foe.
Read it all here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
Totally agree with you on DAoC 2. I would drop anything I was playing and play that game. Too bad it will never happen... =(
Long Ago - Dark Age of Camelot, Guild Wars
Now - Aion
Looking Forward To - SW: TOR, GW2, FF14
Will Never Touch Again - WoW
Smashed Hopes - Vanguard
Thanks for the great read!
Good read
Although I only played wow for 10 days I might give it another try when Cataclysm comes out if Aion isn't as good as I think it will be. Dam hype machines...
I would murder FAMILY to play DAOC2 and Planetside 2 simultaneously like I was playing DAOC and Planetside 5 years ago.
Maybe not...but it would be a dark temptation i would constantly struggle with.
DAOC to this day is the pinnacle of my mmorpg experience. I LOVED the world, the graphics, the combat, pretty much everything. I know it was flawed, and at times frustrating, but the thrill of taking 7 other players (or more) and roaming between towers and keeps, engaging with other players from the rival factions, raiding the relics, and, of course, darkness falls...well...nothing today comes close. WAR tries...but its "instant gratification policy" to try and appeal to the masses is really what destroyed a great premise...the world design and endgame pvp design were, and ARE STILL flawed.
Planetside, of course, is the only TRUE mmofps. Man...the thrill that game gave you for the first time...logging in with that score playing in the background...and when you were in a good outfit, the level of cohesion and proficiency that the game allowed for was downright unfair at times. 3 Galaxies dropping a full payload of maxs, and heavy infantry (with a few infs for hacks) and soon your base are belong to us!
There were tactics to the game that you don't even hear potential mmofps games even trying for...remember destroying the gens or tubes so they couldn't spawn? Remember camping the cc? Remember pop-locking a continent and waiting at the gates for your friends to finally get in?
No, DAOC and Planetside weren't perfect...but they were better THEN, than anything we have now...at least in MY opinion.
EDIT: Regarding a martial arts mmo...imagine how popular Naruto Online would be...WoW would crumble in seconds if the game was any good. Who doesn't want to be a chakra fueled ninja in a cool vest...let the players align with the different hidden villages, give them open world pvp options (but not allow rampant ganking...except on certain servers/shards whatever), and allow for mmo-style combat (with context sensitive button inputs) but a large stress placed on movement and intelligent use of abilities instead of the standard formula of "i'll stand here and hit you till you die". I can imagine it now...it would start with you training to be a ninja, going through the same trials the kids did in the early arcs of the story...
Oh crap, I just gave someone a great idea, didn't I?
http://steamcommunity.com/id/darksider
Steam =D
I don't use xfire anymore.
I
Very good article.
I am also very unimpressed with Cataclysm. New classes would trump new races. Without a doubt, although Death Knights were very blah to me.
You mentioned Necromancers, and a couple of years ago, I was discussing possible designs for a new WoW class on the Warcraft News Group. Necromancer was a very popular idea, and we came up with some good concepts for it. I'm sorry to say that the presence of Death Knights will preclude Necromancers being added as a class. There's too much similarity between the two.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Well, I'd sure be happy if Tabula Rasa got a rez -- probably as a F2P. It deserved a better chance than it got, imo.
I don't see new classes helping WoW. WoW may have a ton of content, but it only has so much design. Building more classes means having to copy and paste and rename abilities from other classes, leaving the existing ones feeling even less unique than they have since all that homoginization of buffing and debuffing abilities.
The Cataclysm is a great way of reinvigorating Azeroth. I hope their phasing is used carefully and doesn't divide players.
Three faction PvP and martial arts? Sad to say, that neatly describes the ill-fated (and now dead) Matrix Online. Sure there was Gun-Fu thrown in with the Kung-Fu, but at the end of the day there was a lot going for it.
R.I.P MxO.
[CENTER][SIZE="3"][B][COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"][FONT="Tahoma"]TSW[/FONT][/COLOR][COLOR="Sienna"][FONT="Georgia"]. fm[/FONT][/COLOR][/B][/SIZE] - Giving Voice to The Secret World. [http://tsw.fm/][/CENTER]
Agreed. I played Spy and sniper to level cap. Its too bad there wasn't much to do, once you got there. I'd VERY much like to see TR given a second chance. Some of the game concepts(like the Bane wave attacks on the bases) were a great deal of fun.
Actually just started reading the article but I felt I had to offer one correction. There were movie sequels in the 40's and 50's, especially some famous monster movies. for example:
The Mummy's Hand (1940)
The Mummy's Tomb (1942)
The Mummy's Ghost (1944)
The Mummy's Curse (1944)
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
The best PvP I have played so far is WaR. It's different and I think that's why people don't like it. WaR factions are balanced. It's just the amount of players on each faction in the server that matters. They had any type of PvP you could want. The castle sieges and main city raids were something I have never seen before.
Wow Garrett,
Is there anything you like about SOE? SOE has earned the scorn of many a player but you twisted that knife a little more.
BTW, good read and I hope a good answer will be found one day to this issue with older MMO's. I agree about a western directed Kung-Fu MMO. I see it, however, as more of a niche market much like a real good Old West MMO would be. Devs, please prove me wrong.
I think that Guild Wars 2 will work because a very well constructed GW2 will transfer its GW player base and attract new customers. GW was and is an amazing game, and if GW2 can be even a tad better, it should get many more players. My only concern is the switch from instance to persistent world.
<a href="http://profile.xfire.com/n45vrsa9"><img src="http://miniprofile.xfire.com/bg/sh/type/0/n45vrsa9.png"; width="440" height="111" /></a>
One game not mentioned in transition right now that was not mentions would be DDO. The decision to go from a monthly subscription only to having a choice between that and microtransactions is an obvious attempt to save a game that has low player base numbers. The question is will the new 'facelift' give a breath of fresh air to the game or simply keep it limping along to its inevitable end? One thing is sure, DDO is out in an ocean capsized and can do one of two things - sink or swim.
Our spirit was here long before you
Long before us
And long will it be after your pride brings you to your end
Guild Wars 2 is a slightly different thing then EQ2. First of all, the way levels were done in GW, anyone could max a character or 10 to 20. Then with EotN they added the Hall of Awesome or w/e they call it(haven't played in a while), which in the end will alow weapons titles etc. to be transfered over to GW2. I doubt people will miss their characters in GW2 anyway, since their are 4 new races and a crapload more levels to gain. That and Server vs. Server PvP will be BA.
So, I think if you're going to revive a game, you should re-invent it, but have a system in place where you don't lose EVERYTHING when you switch over.
Asheron's Call needs a resurrection/sequel(now that they are away from Microsoft) or whatever you want to call it. As I keep saying (with every post with my signature in fact) AC is the least respected successful MMO out there.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
This^^^^
I would love to play AC again, rez'ed as a modern game from the start. By and far, my favourite MMORPG.
I wonder why no one has tried to make a MMO out of the Highlander movie's? Sounds like a great PvP game to me.
I wonder why no one has tried to make a MMO out of the Highlander movie's? Sounds like a great PvP game to me.
Because "There can be only one."
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
I am one of the people SOE lost with the release of EQ2. I played EQ for about 3 years before EQ2 came out. I bought the pre-sale hype and ordered the Collector's Edition. Somehow, they underestimated the number CE tin cases they'd need, and I ended up receiving my copy several days after launch. It was a harbinger of things to come.
I played a berserker up to about level 28, doing the guild-levelling quests and such. Then it came time to kill a rare-spawn mob in the high-20's zone. After camping the thing for about 12 hours over three or four days and never seeing it, I camped my character and never returned to the game.
EQ2 presented two problems at launch. 1) The game was a vast improvement in experience, from graphics to quest-tracking over EQ, leaving me with no desire to go back. 2) It suffered from a number of issues, including the above-mentioned "impossible to find but required to advance" mobs, quest chains that dead-ended in bugs, and overall a game that just seemed more focused on the grind than fun.
Unable to return to EQ, and having no desire to go forward with EQ2, I found myself trying out WoW. Nearly five years later, I'm still there. I still thoroughly enjoy the game, and I'm looking forward to the revamp in Cataclysm. Thanks SOE.
In my opinion the facelift strategy has already worked well in MMOs.
EVE - Trinity: www.eveonline.com/download/videos/Default.asp (the video sums it up pretty nicely I think)
Of course, in EVE there cannot be an argument over adding new classes but CCP has been adding new content and new features all the time anyway.
If Blizzard learned a lesson or two from that maybe Cataclysm will succeed.
I can understand why Sony created EQ2. It's actually very simple:
All games run on an engine. There is only so much that any given engine can support. No matter how cutting edge that engine may be to begin with, there will come a time when it just can't be pushed any farther. The graphics look dated. New mechanics can't be added. And on top of that, the original programmers moved on to other things, their replacements since moved on, and maybe even THEIR replacements as well. Which leads to a point where nobody even understands the code enough anymore to change things without requiring a complete overhaul from top to bottom -- something that would actually take less time and money starting from scratch with a new engine.
SOE wanted to update the look of EQ with bleeding edge graphics. Unfortunately, in the process they actually pushed it too far and reached a level where most computers couldn't even begin to dream of running max settings. Even today -- five years later -- most machines can't max out EQ2. The reason for this is actually due to the dead ends that they forced themselves into by trying to do too much to begin with. For example, we now have multi-core computers being commonplace, but SOE can't implement support into EQ2 without completely rewriting the engine. They put themselves in too much of a corner. Ironically, EQ2's graphics look way, way more dated than WoW's even though WoW runs great on almost every computer out there.
That's an example of where Blizzard did it right, actually. They set the entry threshold for the engine very low, relying more on style than on gee-whiz features to make the game look how it does. Over time they have been making tweaks to the engine to make the game better looking. WotLK included a new ice shader. Cataclysm will have a new water shader. We've also seen blob shadows give way to real shadows and even ambient occlusion. Where EQ2 went berzerk with bump mapping (at a time when most computers didn't even have enough video RAM to handle twice as many texture maps), WoW has waited. Now they not only have the option of bump but also normal mapping or even parallax mapping. I'm honestly shocked that they've never added normal or parallax as it would make the game look so much better. But that's not the point of this post.
What I meant to say from the start is that over time player expectations rise to a point where a game's developers can no longer meet those expectations with the original technology. At that point they have no choice but to release a new engine. Most of the time, a sequel makes the most sense for this. If done right it could bring new customers into the fold without losing old customers. Sony messed up by pushing too far. Square and ArenaNet will hopefully learn from what SOE did wrong. It's very, very rare for a developer to do what we saw with EVE Online, releasing a whole new engine as a free update.
I should have pointed this out:
http://www.enb-emulator.com/
The fact that they've got it working to the degree that they have and been collectively focused for all these years is nothing short of a triumph.
ive been playing MMOs for years now and I get sick and tired of games being so narrow and overly combat oriented.
Im looking for a game that you feel like your in an alternate universe,, very organic with lots of player choice and freedom not stuffed into a maze with one vending machine quest after another
make a world, not a game, we dont want another game.
Good read.
The comment about a martial arts game reminded me of something i'd like which is a game completely steeped in a particular real world mythology e.g Chinese/Japanese/Korean or Norse or ancient Greek. The classes, mobs, magic, gods would all be consistent with that so it would be part educational as well as a game. The mythology wouldn't just be the backdrop either it would interweave with the game e.g in the classical one the gods would be actively involved in the world with, for example, lots of quests involving Zeus wanting to have sex with various princesses. The Chinese one might revolve around Chi and dragons. Potentially it could be the same game with different regions based on different mythologies.
You know, every single time I read one of Garret Fuller's articles, I get about half-way through and say, "Lord, this man is physically incapable of writing." It's not like I think his ideas are wrong, or that he's bad at what he does... but I cannot bring myself to finish a single article. The awkward wordings, the mildly wrong grammar, the occasional typo... it just all adds up to a giant headache for me.
Might just be me, I don't know.
EDIT: I really think the information in the articles is of the highest quality, and my only unpleasantness is some weird mesh of his writing style and me, not the writing itself. I feel it important to clarify that in case of future quotes.