The main difference between Themepark and Sandbox MMOs:
Themepark MMOs: The game 'world' exists to influence players. Sandbox MMOs: The game 'world' exists for players to influence it. WoW is a static game world, where anything and everything a player does has no lasting impact on the game world. There are very infrequent and slight exceptions to this, such as the AQ gate event, but even that was predetermined with only a single outcome, which was forced to occur if players took to long to do it themselves. WoW is by no means a sandbox MMO, because it's entirely too static.
Only Second Life fits your definition. The thing about MMOs is that everyone wants to be the hero, everyone wants to kill the dragon or defeat the evil empire. And if everyone wants to do it, the event or quest has to reset to get ready for the next person.
In Second Life, if you stop paying, even your changes will be removed from the world.
Except if you let everyone be the hero, suddenly being the hero is completely meaningless and pointless. This is another things that leads to people becoming bored of themepark games.
As opposed to Sandbox games where no one is a hero because everyone can do everything and there is no goal? So your choice is either you want to be a hero, in which everyone can be a hero and therefore no one is unique and different. Or -- no one can be a hero because everyone is exactly the same and there isn't anyone to actually fight, but other non-heroes? Tit for tat!
I take it you've never played a sandbox game before then? One of the freedoms for player choice in sandboxes is usually the choice to kill other players. Bad guys and good guys emerge, you end up with some really bad guys who mass murder everyone, but at the same time you get the anti-pks, the protectors who hunt the murderers, you get exceptionally great players on both sides, so not only in a sandbox can you have heroes, but you can also have villains, aswell as average players and everything in between. In themepark games you just have a game full of average players, if you want to call them all heroes, that's fine, but since they're all heroes, they're really nothing more than average.
You mean like I never played UO and AC : DT server, both of which I played? Guess what, it's the same exact thing. You just rewrote what I said and tried to make it sound dramatic... you get to kill people!!!! You get to kill people in WoW!!!! You get exceptionally great players, because you say they are great... not because they really are. But rather, you like sandbox games and therefore anyone playing a sandbox game is just plain better, where as anyone playing a theme park game is simply average... btw, who are the best FPS teams and what MMO game do they play?
Would it be -- SK Gaming? Ya I hear they are pretty damn good, but since they play WoW they must simply be average and everyone they play just sucks.
Replacing NPCs with PCs does not change the fact that you are still grinding by killing. It just changes what you happen to grind on! In a sandbox game, you will simply have a bunch of min-maxers running around with the best gear/skills to make it easier to grief other players, and yes, you may have anti-pks, but what does that actually provide? They aren't heroes really, each side has an agenda, and heroes and villians are simply interchangeable based on your perception of them. There of course are true villians, but not in a video game. Not until one side can control every NPC, and convince every PC to kill every single person who plays the game over and over.
Again, in WoW everyone can be a hero, in a sandbox game no one can be a hero because everyone can do exactly what the other guy does. It doesn't change anything.
I think there's plenty of room for a hybrid game. The problem I have with the sandbox mindset as a player is that I don't want the players to be responsible for everything.
As a player in an MMORPG, I'd like to have choices that matter. I want to be able to affect the world in meaningful ways. I want to be able to join up with others and produce an even bigger change. I want to be able to build secret lairs, have meaningful exploration, etc. I want an economy where players have a large effect. However, I wouldn't be happy with a game that only does these things.
I want a world that reacts to me. If I pass by a village that's on fire and I put it out, I want the NPCs to react somewhat believably. If I just stand by and watch, I'd want them to yell at me, especially afterwards when they have more time. I want big plot elements going on. I want enemies more powerful than a player who use lost technology/magic and want to do epically evil things. If players don't stop those villains, then the villains should win (which really just makes them harder to defeat). I want NPC-based stuff to porgress on its own as well as respond to PC behavior. I'd like it if NPCs could have some sense of personality and memory as well -- heck, I'd like the player to develop a personality based on his actions and decisions and the NPCs respond to that.
A lot of that isn't easy per se, but some semblance of it is doable. We certainly have the technology to have players accident awaken sleeping evils and then those evils start gathering power (gaining some player allies perhaps) and start taking places over. We certainly have the technology to make sure the outcome of such a struggle isn't a foregone conclusion too.
Many of the choices you wrote either barely are very small bits of bluff or through bad wording you've re-used the same feature multiple times.
Do I just solo? You're praising the fact that players have the option to group in WoW? What mmo doesn't have that?
Do I do a quest? Actually, if you're leveling from 1 to 80 you don't have much of a choice in this, you'll severely put yourself at a handicap if you choose to ignore quest chains so doing them is not a choice unless you're some kind of hardcore fanatic set out to level without questing.
Do I do Wintergrasp? Arena? Battleground? Do I kill alliance? You turn reduce these 4 to just 1, what you really mean to say is "Do I go pvp"? If we're going to seperate each and every type of PVP into sub categories based on god knows what then i'm sure games like EVE will have a much bigger list than this.
Do I want to collect a new pet or mount? I'm not decided on this, it's one very small thing you can do and i'm sure most players won't be doing it often.
Do I want to complete an achivement? Pointless fluff, it has no effect on gameplay.
Do I want to level up another character? Erm, this isn't exactly a unique feature to WoW, and this isn't all about EVE vs WoW, but from this comment, it's obvious now that you're just trying to compare the 2 against each other.
Do I re-design the guild tabard? lol?
As for being forced down a path, you're forced down it from the moment you create your character, many people will follow the quickest route to max level and that is to do quests, these quests are designed to point you to where the next area to go is all throughout the game.
I was just listing random stuff you can do. Different ways to level up or PvP. I can LOL at people who played UO and decorated their house or wasted tremendous hours of their life in Eve running a corp that could be better spent running a REAL business. But I won't. I won't LOL at them, because thats just what you do in the game.
Go list a bunch of things you can do in Eve, DF or UO and I'll break them down into their lowest forms as well, turning them into either RPing, making money, PvE or PvP. See, I can play semantics too. Were you serious? Who cares what MANY people do in WOW? The point is you don't HAVE TO do what others do. How is that hard to understand? You don't HAVE TO do the quests. You don't HAVE TO group. You dont' HAVE TO solo. You dont' HAVE TO craft. You dont' HAVE TO PvP. You don't HAVE TO collect pets or wear a particular piece of armor or use a particular sword or go to a particular zone or be a particular class or use a particular mount, ect. You choose to do what you want to do. The only thing you're FORCED to do is level up and by forced to, I mean its a freakin RPG. Its all about the level or skills or whatever number that has to grow to make your character better.
Who chooses to play Tennis, but feels forced to hit the ball with a raquet? I'm playing tennis because I WANT TO hit the ball and run around. People play WOW because they want to quest and level up and kill bosses or PvP, ect. People don't feel FORCED to do it. If you're playing WOW and feel forced to quest, you're an idiot IMHO. Its like being forced to do well in school if you want to be a doctor. I don't play Eve because I truly am forced into waiting weeks and weeks for a skill to train up. Or, I have to wait around for extended periods of time to travel any place. Thats why I don't play it. But people obviously are OK with it. I don't play games where I feel forced to do anything I don't want to do. Because if you're feeling forced to do something in a videogame you can't be enjoying it very much. Why play it?
In WoW, at end game a lot of people just socialize. Many other's RP. Most of these people could care less about gear progression.
You can get some good pvp gear through pvp now so if you want to pvp you don't have to raid much.
Socializing and RPing aren't exclusive to WoW, and therefore arguably cannot be considered as participating in gameplay for the game in question. So that doesn't change the fact that the main thing to do in the game that is explicitly part of the game, is to progress in gear.
Let me fix this for you, just so you can understand how it actually reads.
"I don't care if you can do other things in WoW that don't involve gear grinding. The only thing that matters to me is whether my gear is better than yours, and therefore the only thing anyone is able to do is get gear, period. If you try to do anything different in the game than getting gear, you are simply playing it wrong."
That is exactly what you just said.
No, I'm saying that you can't use RP/social related activities as 'something to do' in the game, because they transcend any single game, and even gaming as a whole. You aren't required to be in-game to socialize, but you're required to be in WoW to progress your WoW character's gear. Socializing isn't part of the game in WoW in the sense that it's content, it's just possible to do through WoW because it has an ingame chat.
Sitting around in WoW chatting isn't anymore playing the game than a bunch of baseball players sitting around the field and chatting is playing a game of baseball.
Again, you just reiterated what I already said you wrote, which is amazing because you are ignoring the entire point of choice. What is stopping you from going and picking herbs, to earn money so you can buy 115 mounts? It is as much a goal as getting gear is, is it not? What about doing all the BG PvP achievements? That doesn't require a lot of gear, but they are a goal you can choose to do.
You have taken the game, boiled it down to one goal, and said that doing anything else is not playing. So, leveling alts, pvping, questing, going to 5 mans with friends, working on achievements, or crafting/gathering none of that counts as playing the game if the person doesn't simply aim to get better gear?
When will you admit the fact that you simply see the game as a gear grind, and that while others don't, you simply think they aren't really playing the game.
I have 10 80s, have gotten tons of achievements, all of the dungeons, most of the raids, played with friends, RPd, PvPd, gathered, crafted, quested, etc, and I've been playing since 1 month after it was first released. I used to feel there was a lot more to the game, but seeing patch after content patch, and each expansion, the focus on content is mostly about gear, because that's the only way to progress your character.
Different mounts, achievements, they mean little in the grand scheme because it's just fluff. Yes I'm jaded, but that's what 5+ years of a gear treadmill and watering down of gameplay will do to someone who previously loved the game.
Really, link all your characters please. I am guessing you are simply another disgruntled player who never got into a top end guild, has probably 4-5K achievement points and simply hates Blizzard because they stopped catering to what you wanted to be -- a hardcore player. Guess what, gear means very little in the grand scheme of the game, because it is constantly being replaced. Would you be as discontent if rather than adding new gear to the game, they simply had mobs drop the same gear over and over and lowered the difficulty of every mob?
You say they are watering down gameplay, but previously said that without good gear you won't be able to do certain raids. So which is it, watered down or difficult? Progress is still what you make of it, some people think that achievements are a means of progress, some think vanity pets, some think that having the most friends in game is progress. YOU THINK GEAR IS. Again, you have made your choice.
I am curious, how is there any less to the game now, then there was in Vanilla? Vanilla had levels 1-60, you got to 60 ran some dungeons, and then did some instances. There were like 30 mounts, 3 battlegrounds (added later not from the start), few vanity pets, less skills, less gear, 4 40 mans at the end of Vanilla.
BC added on to all of that, and sure they reduced 40 mans to 25 mans, but the biggest issue was 40 mans was that you had 5 or more people who got carried through anyway -- which is why 3% of the population saw Naxx in Vanilla. How many 25 mans to BC have? Gruul's Lair/ Magtheridon, TK, SSC, Hyjal, BT, SW. Then add in the 10 mans Kara and Zul'Aman. 8 raid instances. Counting ZG and AQ20, you had 6 in Vanilla. Now, you have Naxx, Ulduar, ToC and Icecrown in Wrath, but each has a 10 man version you can run. So 8 again.
The game has grown so much, and Blizzard realized that some people didn't want to raid with 25 people, some people didn't want to raid with 10, some people don't like Pugs. So they went out and created a way for people to play the game the way they want to play it. You can 5 man for gear, 10 man for gear, 25 man for gear, BG/Arena for gear. Do dailies and normal quests for gear, you can craft for gear, you can buy your gear from the AH. And because gear has become so easy to get you can actually go and do whatever you want to do. Gear has essentially become a side endeavor, playing has taken priority. You are bored of the game, stop raiding for a while. Instead, go out and make some friends and do some 5 mans. Go and do some daily quests with them. Set up times to have little adventures, reroll alts on a different server. The choices are endless, the game is what you make of it. You choose to believe gear grinding is the only thing you can do, even knowing that the expansion will make all your gear obsolete by level 85... seems like you just don't get the point of playing a game.
Some more to support my theory on why Blizzard is making a sandbox... There are two dominant styles of mmo, themepark and sandbox. Before WoW came about they were roughly equal, Wow has since made themepark the dominant style of mmo, many say WoW took a lot from Everquest. There is one sandbox mmo which is doing well right now, EVE online, i'd even say it's doing as well as Everquest was before WoW came about. Could blizzard be coming up with their own EVE online? Ok it probably won't be quite like that, but you get the idea. I say that Blizzard is working a big sandbox mmo.
It didn't take a lot, it took about 90% from EQ.all WOW is another EQ with cartoon Warcraft graphics.
As far as EVE goes,it's only success is derived from the same things you don't want ,a VERY boring simplistic game.EVE is all about doing very little,and any thinking you might need is now done with addons,so really nothing left to do except PVP,pretty much all WOW is good for.
As far as Theme parks go,i have yet to see very many,doing quests to advance a level number then raiding so you can get your PVP gear ,is nothing close to a Theme park,it is just a cheap game ..period.
A GOOD Theme park will have lots of rides,something i doubt players even want,all they want is to run around bragging about their level and their Tier 585 gear.Would you call that a game?or that player a gamer?I for sure would not.
RIDE=Content something almost every game misses out on.Creating mini maps/Instances is not creating content,that is such cheap game material,it should be laughed at.You are SUPPOSE to design a WORLD,in that world you design the game,having all these instance maps ,deters from a game world,it is like playing Guild Wars,a cheap wannabe MMORPG.
So when these game ..err so called developers learn to fill their Theme park in with actual rides,maybe we can look to go to the NEXT level,right now ,we are far from that stage.Heck they can't even design a properly laid out map design for PVP,do i expect these dimwits to be able to create content?No way,i think there is too many language coding nerds and business people making these games,there is no true gamers behind the scenes,not at the CEO level anyhow.
You could Google around gaming topics and see just how much incredible talent is out there,so we know making a great game is quite possible,so it is obviously the corporate nerds that are holding back these games.
Right now we have an incredible new program the Ageia PHYS X engine,EVERY game should be using it,you think we will see that?NOPE,they would rather feed us more cheap garbage,because they know there is a lot of dummies out there ready to buy it no matter what.Just the fact that the AGEIA engine can do physics calculations faster than your PC is a MUST have for a game,but they are cheap ,they won't spend the bucks,to give you a better quality game.So in reality ,the developer does not care about quality,they want a fast easy game to develop to turn a huge profit.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Personally, I'm sick of these pro-themepark or pro-sandbox threads. A lot of the reasons these indie games are either straight sandboxes or straight themepark games is because you people don't think they can mix at all.
I'm still waiting for a game that can successfully make a sandbox, with a storyline told through questing that provides the same benefits for both sandbox players and the players that go questing for their "themepark" experience and manage to do it right.
WOW in its end game is as sandbox as EVE. I can craft helicopters, flying carpets and motorbikes in WOW while in EVE I can't even see my own feet. ... Sandbox is there for ANYONE who wants to see it and play it. If you don't see it, it means you don't play it like it can be played.
As usual, just some plain crazy talk on these forums. They aren't even close but this isn't the time nor the place to discuss. (again) Have to laugh at anyone attempting to compare WOW crafting with EVE's..... talk about night and day.
All I can say is, if anyone really feels sandbox games are the way to go, why not go out an play one? EVE, Ryzom, UO, or Darkfall to name a few. (and I realize there are few).
Sure, would I like to see a major, AAA title be a sandbox, yep, but I'm not going to sit around waiting for one.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The thing about player freedom is that it is only as good as the options available. And sandboxes being largely concerned with creating "worlds" I think often deliver lots of sim like options that are also very mundane and boring.
Sure you can farm lots of materials and make stuff then sell on a player driven economy that revolves around player crafted goods and that is awesome right? No, no it is not it is a grind and would be a grind in any other circumstance but since it is in a player ran economy it is magically deep and interesting content all of the sudden right?
But don't forget crafting, it requires lots of steps and there are a bunch of different materials that items with different items, cool right? Again no it is just a slight more complicated grind, the basic mechanic is stil as unsatisfiying as before.
Or what about player made cities? Well if you like generic and dull cities littering the landscape with absolutely no purpose history or any memorable feature then we have plenty of that, if you actually want well made cities with depth, tough.
There is nothing wrong with adding more options, MMOs could use more of that but what sandboxes do is create a poor adventure game and fill it with a ton of distractions like crafting etc. that don't offer compelling enough gameplay to be anything more than a minigame or side quest. Then they make these features the main star of the game, all in this pretense of making a realistic world.
Now if you don't get a big stiffy over the concept of marching your guild in and fighting another guild in an area to control and extract a rare mineral to corner the market on it and want to do something more interesting then a sandbox probably will not deliver on that front.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
I'm talking about being steered along a set path that the game designers want you to follow, they have you follow this path by giving you quests and making it rewarding enough to do them that you have little choice but to do them. You complete one quest or set of quests, only to be sent to the next npc/area for a bunch of new quests. In many games you will be herded through the game from level 1 right up to max level in this way, and it's very boring. A person who is fairly new to mmos might slightly enjoy this, but anyone who has played them for a while is going to get bored real fast. I thought about why games are like this and if it's possible to change it, and it is, the very first mmo (uo) gave you a great number of options on things to do from the moment you created your first character. You didn't need xp to level up in this game, what you really needed was money, because without money there was little you could really train. There was many ways to make money in UO as a newly created character, you start out with almost nothing, the most important thing in your inventory being the small quanity of starting gold you received. This is where players had options, you didn't need to speak to the quest giver npc and kill 5 snakes, to then be told to goto X and receive the quest to kill 5 goblins (repeat this step about 10,000 times with various different npcs and quests and boom you're max level) You could use the starting gold to purchase a weapon and a skinning knife and choose to hunt and skin wild animals, the meat and skin you gather being sold on at a tidy profit to player crafters. You could buy a pickaxe or a woodaxe and gather logs or ore, which you could sell to player crafters for a probable 10 fold return on your investment.
Nah .. it is fun as long as there is depth in combat (like scripted boss fight). Games are like this because players like this.
And it is NOT just MMOs. Look at the best selling FPS (COD Modern Warfare 2, Halo, Gear of War ...), they are all on "rails" with some but not a lot of freedom to move forward and they are BIG sellers.
Furthermore, if you look at WOW, you have total freedom of what to do .. except you are nudged along side a path if you WANT guidance.
Easily, because in EVE you have multiple choices on what to do from the moment you log in, you don't have to follow the pre-set path set for you by the developers. There is no set path. That is a sandbox.
Multiple choices on HOW TO MAKE ISK!!! Thats ALL YOU DO!! Thats all the game is about. Everything you do is related to making ISK because everything is dependent upon it. In WOW its all about leveling up, UNTILL you cap out. THEN, you can do a whole bunch of things not related to leveling up at all. You can make money, collect things, craft, run dungeons, PvP, ect.
So please explain an acitivity in Eve that doesn't revolve around ISK? I'd love to hear it. If you say Rping, I can do that in every MMO.
Your choices in Eve...
1. Run missions for ISK just like WOW, except WOW's has a much better quest system.
2. Randomly kill things for ISK, just like WOW
3. Craft things to make ISK, just like WOW
4. Sell things on the market to make ISK, just like WOW, except its the AH. The economy is more player dependant in Eve. But for most people thats a BAD, BAD thing and its not like players don't effect WOW's economy. They have a huge impact. Its just more controlled.
5. You can go exploring, but lets face it, theres NOTHING to actually find in Eve. Another indenitcal system with asteroids but with a different background map is not exploring? C'mon...exploration is a pretty loose term in Eve. In WOW you actually expand your map, can open acheivments and get EXP for exploring, making it a far more in-depth feature.
6. You can mine of course for ISK, but WOW actually has a lot more variety on this front, with different things to find for different uses. In Eve, its all just rocks and ore and you can do it without even being at the computer, which most people do.
7. You can buy and collect ships which requires ISK, but you can reroll different characters in WOW AND have a huge assortment of mounts. You're not rerolling in Eve unless you make a second account, which everyone does=)
8. You can go start a corp in order to make more ISK. In WOW you can start a guild which isn't about making gold.
9. You can go build a space station to make more ISK, but you're not doing that alone. WOW doesn't let you build any stuctures, mostly because people don't care enough to. Its not like Blizzard couldn't have designed housing years ago. They chose not to.
10. You can PvP, but you're not actually doing that effectively for a few months. In WOW, you can PvP in a few hrs if you want. You can go destroy a space station, but how often does that occur? You can go destroy a fortress in WOW all the time.
11. You can choose which skills to train in Eve, plotting what you want. You do the same thing in WOW, except its more hands on and requires actually PLAYING the game.
The only pre-set path in WOW is being confined to a level(until you cap), but if you think Eve doesn't have those same confinements in the skill system, you're blind. Skills=levels In Eve, you still have to do X before Y like any MMO. There are FAQs that explain why you have to do A, then B, then C, ect in order to acheive D.
So again, please explain how EVE has more choices than WOW again? I'd love to hear it=)
I'm not a WoW fan, I actually like EVE a little bit (not by much) more. I don't play either. However you brought up good points that I would like to see the more hardcore EVE players counter what you said without flaming you.
extreme pvp: this isn't your basic 1 on 1 match, it's a full out war between one empire and another
extreme crafting: you don't "buy" stuff to make things, you start with ore and make powerful ships and weapons all for you to use or sell
you need brains, your not randomly given skills as you level up, you need to plan ahead. if you don't you get lost
you need skills, you don't just equip the most powerful weapon you get, you have to put cetain weapons and skill togeather to make a stratagy, nothing but weapons would help you, a few EMP or satisis web will give you a big advantage.
Nah .. it is fun as long as there is depth in combat (like scripted boss fight). Games are like this because players like this. And it is NOT just MMOs. Look at the best selling FPS (COD Modern Warfare 2, Halo, Gear of War ...), they are all on "rails" with some but not a lot of freedom to move forward and they are BIG sellers. Furthermore, if you look at WOW, you have total freedom of what to do .. except you are nudged along side a path if you WANT guidance.
Gears ftw! Can't wait for the 3rd one. They're saying it'll have some RPG elements. I'm psyched. =D
Anyways, yeah, I agree with the combat thing. I'm still waiting for boss fights to become more puzzle-like rather than "tab-target-let's kill it!"
And I have to say that if you're going to say WoW is like that, then any MMORPG is like that. The difference is that without quests in a "themepark" game like WoW, it becomes a huge grind, it's harder to get some of the more mundane things and, well, you're a LOT more limited than in a "sandbox" type game because the roles you can choose from are decided by the game, not by the player. In a game like WoW, you don't see people being specifially crafters. For one, it's hard. You have to be a certain level and you'r forced to get there through combat. Second, it just isn't feasible.
Open explorable world would be nice but if its FFA pvp might as well just plan on it going under. Now if they had open world with different nations for some kind of rvr combat that could probably work.
A great development team that is properly funded and is not rushed to throw an MMO project out the door. I'd say the minimum of 5 years to make a good MMORPG instead of so many just throwing it out the door for people to flock to until the run to the next one.
The genre isn't running out of ideas or solutions, They are rushed, ill-funded, and strained to just get it out for the quick bucks and nothing long term.
People need to realize, that an MMORPG is a HUGE project, the biggest gaming has to offer. So if your company decides to make one, you better be ready for a LONG HAUL and put some PASSION behind it.
I'm looking forward to a day and age where MMORPGs can launch without tons of bugs. Can't be done? Sure it can. Get funded. No reason 150+ MMOs should exist. Think of the TIME mmorpgs take. It's ridiculous for that many to exist. That many exists because people jump around to much from these halfbaked, illmanaged teams that rushed a project out the door to make money and sucker the people for money through social connectivity.
Originally posted by TheDarzin Really, link all your characters please. I am guessing you are simply another disgruntled player who never got into a top end guild, has probably 4-5K achievement points and simply hates Blizzard because they stopped catering to what you wanted to be -- a hardcore player. Guess what, gear means very little in the grand scheme of the game, because it is constantly being replaced. Would you be as discontent if rather than adding new gear to the game, they simply had mobs drop the same gear over and over and lowered the difficulty of every mob?
A path of character progression that isn't just gear. AA abilities for example, to continue character development past 80 that isn't just running dungeons and raids. It doesn't take much to think outside of the box if you try.
You say they are watering down gameplay, but previously said that without good gear you won't be able to do certain raids. So which is it, watered down or difficult? Progress is still what you make of it, some people think that achievements are a means of progress, some think vanity pets, some think that having the most friends in game is progress. YOU THINK GEAR IS. Again, you have made your choice. I am curious, how is there any less to the game now, then there was in Vanilla? Vanilla had levels 1-60, you got to 60 ran some dungeons, and then did some instances. There were like 30 mounts, 3 battlegrounds (added later not from the start), few vanity pets, less skills, less gear, 4 40 mans at the end of Vanilla. BC added on to all of that, and sure they reduced 40 mans to 25 mans, but the biggest issue was 40 mans was that you had 5 or more people who got carried through anyway -- which is why 3% of the population saw Naxx in Vanilla. How many 25 mans to BC have? Gruul's Lair/ Magtheridon, TK, SSC, Hyjal, BT, SW. Then add in the 10 mans Kara and Zul'Aman. 8 raid instances. Counting ZG and AQ20, you had 6 in Vanilla. Now, you have Naxx, Ulduar, ToC and Icecrown in Wrath, but each has a 10 man version you can run. So 8 again.
So few people got to see Naxx because BC came out 6 months later, when most raiders were still in BWL and AQ40. That and the fact that vanilla Naxx was tuned to be extremely unforgiving and challenging, and of course, require extremely good gear for tanks to survive, healers to keep everyone up, and DPS to beat the enrage timers.
Yes they've added more instances, more areas, but in the end most of the content is the nearly the same gameplay with a different background.
The game has grown so much, and Blizzard realized that some people didn't want to raid with 25 people, some people didn't want to raid with 10, some people don't like Pugs. So they went out and created a way for people to play the game the way they want to play it. You can 5 man for gear, 10 man for gear, 25 man for gear, BG/Arena for gear. Do dailies and normal quests for gear, you can craft for gear, you can buy your gear from the AH. And because gear has become so easy to get you can actually go and do whatever you want to do. Gear has essentially become a side endeavor, playing has taken priority. You are bored of the game, stop raiding for a while. Instead, go out and make some friends and do some 5 mans. Go and do some daily quests with them. Set up times to have little adventures, reroll alts on a different server. The choices are endless, the game is what you make of it. You choose to believe gear grinding is the only thing you can do, even knowing that the expansion will make all your gear obsolete by level 85... seems like you just don't get the point of playing a game.
Actually I have stopped raiding, about 6 months ago. I'm in a social guild with other RPers. I've made many, many alts but the quests are the same and I've leveled every class to 80 so it's the same experience over again. I group with my friends from time to time, but it's rare that the right combination of us class wise are on at the right time.
And you apparently are missing my point.
I know that the gear will become obsolete with each content patch and expansion, that's actually part of the problem. The problem is that once you hit max level, the only way to advance your character in a meaningful way is through gear. Sure the fluff like achievements is fun for some people, but most people enjoy actually progressing their character more than any of the fluff.
Hell even if they had player housing I'd be a little more content, but the best Blizzard can come up with is recolored mounts, non-combat pets, and checklists called "achievements" to run down if you're bored.
The main difference between Themepark and Sandbox MMOs:
Themepark MMOs: The game 'world' exists to influence players. Sandbox MMOs: The game 'world' exists for players to influence it. WoW is a static game world, where anything and everything a player does has no lasting impact on the game world. There are very infrequent and slight exceptions to this, such as the AQ gate event, but even that was predetermined with only a single outcome, which was forced to occur if players took to long to do it themselves. WoW is by no means a sandbox MMO, because it's entirely too static.
Only Second Life fits your definition. The thing about MMOs is that everyone wants to be the hero, everyone wants to kill the dragon or defeat the evil empire. And if everyone wants to do it, the event or quest has to reset to get ready for the next person.
In Second Life, if you stop paying, even your changes will be removed from the world.
Except if you let everyone be the hero, suddenly being the hero is completely meaningless and pointless. This is another things that leads to people becoming bored of themepark games.
As opposed to Sandbox games where no one is a hero because everyone can do everything and there is no goal? So your choice is either you want to be a hero, in which everyone can be a hero and therefore no one is unique and different. Or -- no one can be a hero because everyone is exactly the same and there isn't anyone to actually fight, but other non-heroes? Tit for tat!
I take it you've never played a sandbox game before then? One of the freedoms for player choice in sandboxes is usually the choice to kill other players. Bad guys and good guys emerge, you end up with some really bad guys who mass murder everyone, but at the same time you get the anti-pks, the protectors who hunt the murderers, you get exceptionally great players on both sides, so not only in a sandbox can you have heroes, but you can also have villains, aswell as average players and everything in between. In themepark games you just have a game full of average players, if you want to call them all heroes, that's fine, but since they're all heroes, they're really nothing more than average.
You mean like I never played UO and AC : DT server, both of which I played? Guess what, it's the same exact thing. You just rewrote what I said and tried to make it sound dramatic... you get to kill people!!!! You get to kill people in WoW!!!! You get exceptionally great players, because you say they are great... not because they really are. But rather, you like sandbox games and therefore anyone playing a sandbox game is just plain better, where as anyone playing a theme park game is simply average... btw, who are the best FPS teams and what MMO game do they play?
Would it be -- SK Gaming? Ya I hear they are pretty damn good, but since they play WoW they must simply be average and everyone they play just sucks.
Replacing NPCs with PCs does not change the fact that you are still grinding by killing. It just changes what you happen to grind on! In a sandbox game, you will simply have a bunch of min-maxers running around with the best gear/skills to make it easier to grief other players, and yes, you may have anti-pks, but what does that actually provide? They aren't heroes really, each side has an agenda, and heroes and villians are simply interchangeable based on your perception of them. There of course are true villians, but not in a video game. Not until one side can control every NPC, and convince every PC to kill every single person who plays the game over and over.
Again, in WoW everyone can be a hero, in a sandbox game no one can be a hero because everyone can do exactly what the other guy does. It doesn't change anything.
The difference between killing a player in either of the full loot games you mentioned can be great from killing a player in WoW. The same goes for EVE. There are people in EVE who have lost over £1000 real life worth of items from a single death to other players, and many other similar epic moments. No such thing will ever be heard of in a themepark game.
Originally posted by mrmeloni The difference between killing a player in either of the full loot games you mentioned can be great from killing a player in WoW. The same goes for EVE. There are people in EVE who have lost over £1000 real life worth of items from a single death to other players, and many other similar epic moments. No such thing will ever be heard of in a themepark game.
That goes both ways though, and I'm sure it depends on how "hardcore" you are.
Personally, I don't see the appeal in a game where some jackass can just come along and cause me to lose hours, if not months or years of work, based on their whim of wanting to cause someone else frustration. Especially if say, they used an exploit to go about doing it.
Easily, because in EVE you have multiple choices on what to do from the moment you log in, you don't have to follow the pre-set path set for you by the developers. There is no set path. That is a sandbox.
Multiple choices on HOW TO MAKE ISK!!! Thats ALL YOU DO!! Thats all the game is about. Everything you do is related to making ISK because everything is dependent upon it. In WOW its all about leveling up, UNTILL you cap out. THEN, you can do a whole bunch of things not related to leveling up at all. You can make money, collect things, craft, run dungeons, PvP, ect.
So please explain an acitivity in Eve that doesn't revolve around ISK? I'd love to hear it. If you say Rping, I can do that in every MMO.
Your choices in Eve...
1. Run missions for ISK just like WOW, except WOW's has a much better quest system.
2. Randomly kill things for ISK, just like WOW
3. Craft things to make ISK, just like WOW
4. Sell things on the market to make ISK, just like WOW, except its the AH. The economy is more player dependant in Eve. But for most people thats a BAD, BAD thing and its not like players don't effect WOW's economy. They have a huge impact. Its just more controlled.
5. You can go exploring, but lets face it, theres NOTHING to actually find in Eve. Another indenitcal system with asteroids but with a different background map is not exploring? C'mon...exploration is a pretty loose term in Eve. In WOW you actually expand your map, can open acheivments and get EXP for exploring, making it a far more in-depth feature.
6. You can mine of course for ISK, but WOW actually has a lot more variety on this front, with different things to find for different uses. In Eve, its all just rocks and ore and you can do it without even being at the computer, which most people do.
7. You can buy and collect ships which requires ISK, but you can reroll different characters in WOW AND have a huge assortment of mounts. You're not rerolling in Eve unless you make a second account, which everyone does=)
8. You can go start a corp in order to make more ISK. In WOW you can start a guild which isn't about making gold.
9. You can go build a space station to make more ISK, but you're not doing that alone. WOW doesn't let you build any stuctures, mostly because people don't care enough to. Its not like Blizzard couldn't have designed housing years ago. They chose not to.
10. You can PvP, but you're not actually doing that effectively for a few months. In WOW, you can PvP in a few hrs if you want. You can go destroy a space station, but how often does that occur? You can go destroy a fortress in WOW all the time.
11. You can choose which skills to train in Eve, plotting what you want. You do the same thing in WOW, except its more hands on and requires actually PLAYING the game.
The only pre-set path in WOW is being confined to a level(until you cap), but if you think Eve doesn't have those same confinements in the skill system, you're blind. Skills=levels In Eve, you still have to do X before Y like any MMO. There are FAQs that explain why you have to do A, then B, then C, ect in order to acheive D.
So again, please explain how EVE has more choices than WOW again? I'd love to hear it=)
I'm not a WoW fan, I actually like EVE a little bit (not by much) more. I don't play either. However you brought up good points that I would like to see the more hardcore EVE players counter what you said without flaming you.
extreme pvp: this isn't your basic 1 on 1 match, it's a full out war between one empire and another
extreme crafting: you don't "buy" stuff to make things, you start with ore and make powerful ships and weapons all for you to use or sell
you need brains, your not randomly given skills as you level up, you need to plan ahead. if you don't you get lost
you need skills, you don't just equip the most powerful weapon you get, you have to put cetain weapons and skill togeather to make a stratagy, nothing but weapons would help you, a few EMP or satisis web will give you a big advantage.
You don't have to plan or figure out squat anymore. Brains? Go check out an FAQ and it tells you how to do everything. Just a simple step by step guide, nice and easy to follow. EXTREME crafting? Adding in loads of tediuos time consuming steps does make it extreme, but it doesn't take any more brains to do it. Just a crap load of time. Its the same excuse old EQ players have been using for how HARDCORE EQ was. TIME consuming ain't hardcore. Obtaining items is just pressing a few buttons and buying them, or having to built X to get Y to make Z.. Making anything is just pressing a few buttons, like any MMO. Theres no skill. Obtaining certain crafting matierials in WOW takes more SKILL if you have to beat a dungeon to do it. In EVE its all just time. In WOW you might have to kill something tough which not everyone can do. You can try killing a boss 1000 times. If you can't do, you can't do it.
No, in Eve you might not equip the most powerful weapons. But then, depending on the situation it doesn't make a difference what you have equiped, because if you have the wrong ship or the wrong set-up up against another certain ship or set-up, you're SOL. The outcome of the fight is determined before it even starts VERY often. WOW's arenas require more skill to be the best. In EVE you just zerg....numbers will ultimately win every time. Its the problem with open PvP. Its ALWAYS numbers in the end. The bigger, richer Corp with more people willing to give up their social life WINS. Its nerd-fu.
A fight in WOW has all the strategy as a fight in Eve, but its at 50X the pace. Eve moves in slow motion and has an extreme penalty, but penalties doesn't make the fight any harder. Its just another time sink to grind more ISK to buy ships over and over again. NO skill in grinding ISK.
Its all just a whole lot of time, and for what? You think anyone cares what you've done in Eve once you quit? You think YOU'LL care what you spent years accomplishing in a videogame after you have kids and a family? It all goes poof when you cancel. Your wife won't care what you accomplished, unless you're ignoring her to go play space nerd with people she'll never meet. Your kids won't care unless you're ignoring them to go run your Corp. or defend your space station during their soccer game or piano recital. Take your extreme game. No one cares how extreme it is=)
You don't have to plan or figure out squat anymore. Brains? Go check out an FAQ and it tells you how to do everything. Just a simple step by step guide, nice and easy to follow. EXTREME crafting? Adding in loads of tediuos time consuming steps does make it extreme, but it doesn't take any more brains to do it. Just a crap load of time. Its the same excuse old EQ players have been using for how HARDCORE EQ was. TIME consuming ain't hardcore. Obtaining items is just pressing a few buttons and buying them, or having to built X to get Y to make Z.. Making anything is just pressing a few buttons, like any MMO. Theres no skill. Obtaining certain crafting matierials in WOW takes more SKILL if you have to beat a dungeon to do it. In EVE its all just time. In WOW you might have to kill something tough which not everyone can do. You can try killing a boss 1000 times. If you can't do, you can't do it. No, in Eve you might not equip the most powerful weapons. But then, depending on the situation it doesn't make a difference what you have equiped, because if you have the wrong ship or the wrong set-up up against another certain ship or set-up, you're SOL. The outcome of the fight is determined before it even starts VERY often. WOW's arenas require more skill to be the best. In EVE you just zerg....numbers will ultimately win every time. Its the problem with open PvP. Its ALWAYS numbers in the end. The bigger, richer Corp with more people willing to give up their social life WINS. Its nerd-fu. A fight in WOW has all the strategy as a fight in Eve, but its at 50X the pace. Eve moves in slow motion and has an extreme penalty, but penalties doesn't make the fight any harder. Its just another time sink to grind more ISK to buy ships over and over again. NO skill in grinding ISK. Its all just a whole lot of time, and for what? You think anyone cares what you've done in Eve once you quit? You think YOU'LL care what you spent years accomplishing in a videogame after you have kids and a family? It all goes poof when you cancel. Your wife won't care what you accomplished, unless you're ignoring her to go play space nerd with people she'll never meet. Your kids won't care unless you're ignoring them to go run your Corp. or defend your space station during their soccer game or piano recital. Take your extreme game. No one cares how extreme it is=)
A path of character progression that isn't just gear. AA abilities for example, to continue character development past 80 that isn't just running dungeons and raids. It doesn't take much to think outside of the box if you try. They could do that, but then you would simply be grinding for AA and gear at the same time, but I see we have hit the nail on the head -- you are an EQ fan trying to justify your hate of WoW.
So few people got to see Naxx because BC came out 6 months later, when most raiders were still in BWL and AQ40. And was this a good thing? Was it good that the game prevented people from seeing content? That and the fact that vanilla Naxx was tuned to be extremely unforgiving and challenging, and of course, require extremely good gear for tanks to survive, healers to keep everyone up, and DPS to beat the enrage timers. Yes they've added more instances, more areas, but in the end most of the content is the nearly the same gameplay with a different background. Games will always use the same game play, it won't whether you add AA or not. Press a button, kill mob, move on. What are you looking for, up up down down performs a dramatic attack? The game is 5 years old, there is only so much they can do with it. Actually I have stopped raiding, about 6 months ago. I'm in a social guild with other RPers. I've made many, many alts but the quests are the same and I've leveled every class to 80 so it's the same experience over again. I group with my friends from time to time, but it's rare that the right combination of us class wise are on at the right time. Claims are just claims, you can't back them up. If you have 10 level 80s you should be able to easily fill in for any missing class, unless you have 4 friends that all play very specific classes. And you apparently are missing my point. No, I haven't. Your entire point is that the only way to progress in WoW is gear. Guess what the only way to progress in any MMO is through some sort of form of collection grind. Money, AA, Gear, or piles of rock. It's all the same. I know that the gear will become obsolete with each content patch and expansion, that's actually part of the problem. The problem is that once you hit max level, the only way to advance your character in a meaningful way is through gear. Sure the fluff like achievements is fun for some people, but most people enjoy actually progressing their character more than any of the fluff. Actually most people don't enjoy playing the game for gear, people really need to stop throwing out this "most" thing. Bad assumptions are bad, Blizzard has stated that less than 20% of their subscriber base actually raids. That is far from most. Unless you are one of those people that believes 80% of their subscribers are actually gold farmers. The game doesn't have to be about "advancing your character" rather about enjoying the game, and you are confusing the two. People enjoy fluff far more than they enjoy gear. Hell even if they had player housing I'd be a little more content, but the best Blizzard can come up with is recolored mounts, non-combat pets, and checklists called "achievements" to run down if you're bored. I would love player housing, Blizzard doesn't see it as being needed, so they haven't added it, and that is one of the reasons I left. But, that doesn't mean that other people can't enjoy the game for another reason to play other than gear, even if they hit level 80.
The thing about player freedom is that it is only as good as the options available. And sandboxes being largely concerned with creating "worlds" I think often deliver lots of sim like options that are also very mundane and boring. Sure you can farm lots of materials and make stuff then sell on a player driven economy that revolves around player crafted goods and that is awesome right? No, no it is not it is a grind and would be a grind in any other circumstance but since it is in a player ran economy it is magically deep and interesting content all of the sudden right? But don't forget crafting, it requires lots of steps and there are a bunch of different materials that items with different items, cool right? Again no it is just a slight more complicated grind, the basic mechanic is stil as unsatisfiying as before. Or what about player made cities? Well if you like generic and dull cities littering the landscape with absolutely no purpose history or any memorable feature then we have plenty of that, if you actually want well made cities with depth, tough. There is nothing wrong with adding more options, MMOs could use more of that but what sandboxes do is create a poor adventure game and fill it with a ton of distractions like crafting etc. that don't offer compelling enough gameplay to be anything more than a minigame or side quest. Then they make these features the main star of the game, all in this pretense of making a realistic world. Now if you don't get a big stiffy over the concept of marching your guild in and fighting another guild in an area to control and extract a rare mineral to corner the market on it and want to do something more interesting then a sandbox probably will not deliver on that front.
I agree with all of this. In fact, I made a similar post myself. There was also another post by someone about how categorizing games into "sandbox" and "themepark" is extremely unhelpful. The best sort of game would have a mix of both elements (I think my post was between that post and your post in content). We do need more options, more meaningful choices, and we also should have worlds with character and color. Player-made cities are nice, but they'd be much nicer if each could have its own character and develop unique npcs and even novel architecture. I'm pretty sure we have the technology to do this sort of thing in an MMO, at least as far as hardware is concerned, but we don't seem to be getting developers to go that way, really.
I think we could actually have a very interesting and productive conversation if people would stop fighting over WoW in this thread.
Pointless arguement. Almost every MMO has an open world and lots of game play "options". That's a given. The reall questions are: How much depth do those game play options have? How many advancement paths are there? How much can players create, change, and affect the game world?
And how much fun is it all? Because without fun, nothing else matters. Thats the problem with sandboxes. They concentrate on "stuff" but not on "is that stuff actually fun". For the vast majority, they just aren't fun to play. Make a FUN sandbox and people will come a runnin=)
I'm not even going to use the "sandbox" term. I'll just say that, eventually, some one will make a fun MMO that's much more open and much less linear than what we have now.
WoW isn't a success because it's a themepark, it's a success because of polish, accessability, and marketing. Put those three features into "more open" MMO and you could still be successful.
I agree with what others have said, the first major success on that end of the spectrum will probably be some sort of hybrid themepark/sandbox game, with elements of box mixed in.
Some more to support my theory on why Blizzard is making a sandbox... There are two dominant styles of mmo, themepark and sandbox. Before WoW came about they were roughly equal, Wow has since made themepark the dominant style of mmo, many say WoW took a lot from Everquest. There is one sandbox mmo which is doing well right now, EVE online, i'd even say it's doing as well as Everquest was before WoW came about. Could blizzard be coming up with their own EVE online? Ok it probably won't be quite like that, but you get the idea. I say that Blizzard is working a big sandbox mmo.
Are you ranting? or seriously believing that you have a valid case?
Ok you can predict that the sun is going to change to a blue ball. Can't refute it unless you specify when, if you say eventually the sun will go blue, nobody can refute it. It just looks silly.
But if you intend to sell your proposal to a developer, what you wrote borders on nonsense. What does a developer or investor look at when evaluating,commissioning or managing a funded project? Look at your last paragraph and go think about it. If you failed to see the folly, my advice to you is, do not venture into business unless you have money to waste.
An alternate theory: Blizzard could be making a themepark inside a sandbox. Doesn't have to be such a black and white choice between the two.
Yes that is very likely an option being evaluated by many. Technology and accessibility of the game (performance on old machines) to mass would be a deciding factor.
Comments
Only Second Life fits your definition. The thing about MMOs is that everyone wants to be the hero, everyone wants to kill the dragon or defeat the evil empire. And if everyone wants to do it, the event or quest has to reset to get ready for the next person.
In Second Life, if you stop paying, even your changes will be removed from the world.
Except if you let everyone be the hero, suddenly being the hero is completely meaningless and pointless. This is another things that leads to people becoming bored of themepark games.
As opposed to Sandbox games where no one is a hero because everyone can do everything and there is no goal? So your choice is either you want to be a hero, in which everyone can be a hero and therefore no one is unique and different. Or -- no one can be a hero because everyone is exactly the same and there isn't anyone to actually fight, but other non-heroes? Tit for tat!
I take it you've never played a sandbox game before then? One of the freedoms for player choice in sandboxes is usually the choice to kill other players. Bad guys and good guys emerge, you end up with some really bad guys who mass murder everyone, but at the same time you get the anti-pks, the protectors who hunt the murderers, you get exceptionally great players on both sides, so not only in a sandbox can you have heroes, but you can also have villains, aswell as average players and everything in between. In themepark games you just have a game full of average players, if you want to call them all heroes, that's fine, but since they're all heroes, they're really nothing more than average.
You mean like I never played UO and AC : DT server, both of which I played? Guess what, it's the same exact thing. You just rewrote what I said and tried to make it sound dramatic... you get to kill people!!!! You get to kill people in WoW!!!! You get exceptionally great players, because you say they are great... not because they really are. But rather, you like sandbox games and therefore anyone playing a sandbox game is just plain better, where as anyone playing a theme park game is simply average... btw, who are the best FPS teams and what MMO game do they play?
Would it be -- SK Gaming? Ya I hear they are pretty damn good, but since they play WoW they must simply be average and everyone they play just sucks.
Replacing NPCs with PCs does not change the fact that you are still grinding by killing. It just changes what you happen to grind on! In a sandbox game, you will simply have a bunch of min-maxers running around with the best gear/skills to make it easier to grief other players, and yes, you may have anti-pks, but what does that actually provide? They aren't heroes really, each side has an agenda, and heroes and villians are simply interchangeable based on your perception of them. There of course are true villians, but not in a video game. Not until one side can control every NPC, and convince every PC to kill every single person who plays the game over and over.
Again, in WoW everyone can be a hero, in a sandbox game no one can be a hero because everyone can do exactly what the other guy does. It doesn't change anything.
Darzin -- A Gnome in a Night Elf World
I think there's plenty of room for a hybrid game. The problem I have with the sandbox mindset as a player is that I don't want the players to be responsible for everything.
As a player in an MMORPG, I'd like to have choices that matter. I want to be able to affect the world in meaningful ways. I want to be able to join up with others and produce an even bigger change. I want to be able to build secret lairs, have meaningful exploration, etc. I want an economy where players have a large effect. However, I wouldn't be happy with a game that only does these things.
I want a world that reacts to me. If I pass by a village that's on fire and I put it out, I want the NPCs to react somewhat believably. If I just stand by and watch, I'd want them to yell at me, especially afterwards when they have more time. I want big plot elements going on. I want enemies more powerful than a player who use lost technology/magic and want to do epically evil things. If players don't stop those villains, then the villains should win (which really just makes them harder to defeat). I want NPC-based stuff to porgress on its own as well as respond to PC behavior. I'd like it if NPCs could have some sense of personality and memory as well -- heck, I'd like the player to develop a personality based on his actions and decisions and the NPCs respond to that.
A lot of that isn't easy per se, but some semblance of it is doable. We certainly have the technology to have players accident awaken sleeping evils and then those evils start gathering power (gaining some player allies perhaps) and start taking places over. We certainly have the technology to make sure the outcome of such a struggle isn't a foregone conclusion too.
Many of the choices you wrote either barely are very small bits of bluff or through bad wording you've re-used the same feature multiple times.
Do I just solo? You're praising the fact that players have the option to group in WoW? What mmo doesn't have that?
Do I do a quest? Actually, if you're leveling from 1 to 80 you don't have much of a choice in this, you'll severely put yourself at a handicap if you choose to ignore quest chains so doing them is not a choice unless you're some kind of hardcore fanatic set out to level without questing.
Do I do Wintergrasp? Arena? Battleground? Do I kill alliance? You turn reduce these 4 to just 1, what you really mean to say is "Do I go pvp"? If we're going to seperate each and every type of PVP into sub categories based on god knows what then i'm sure games like EVE will have a much bigger list than this.
Do I want to collect a new pet or mount? I'm not decided on this, it's one very small thing you can do and i'm sure most players won't be doing it often.
Do I want to complete an achivement? Pointless fluff, it has no effect on gameplay.
Do I want to level up another character? Erm, this isn't exactly a unique feature to WoW, and this isn't all about EVE vs WoW, but from this comment, it's obvious now that you're just trying to compare the 2 against each other.
Do I re-design the guild tabard? lol?
As for being forced down a path, you're forced down it from the moment you create your character, many people will follow the quickest route to max level and that is to do quests, these quests are designed to point you to where the next area to go is all throughout the game.
I was just listing random stuff you can do. Different ways to level up or PvP. I can LOL at people who played UO and decorated their house or wasted tremendous hours of their life in Eve running a corp that could be better spent running a REAL business. But I won't. I won't LOL at them, because thats just what you do in the game.
Go list a bunch of things you can do in Eve, DF or UO and I'll break them down into their lowest forms as well, turning them into either RPing, making money, PvE or PvP. See, I can play semantics too. Were you serious? Who cares what MANY people do in WOW? The point is you don't HAVE TO do what others do. How is that hard to understand? You don't HAVE TO do the quests. You don't HAVE TO group. You dont' HAVE TO solo. You dont' HAVE TO craft. You dont' HAVE TO PvP. You don't HAVE TO collect pets or wear a particular piece of armor or use a particular sword or go to a particular zone or be a particular class or use a particular mount, ect. You choose to do what you want to do. The only thing you're FORCED to do is level up and by forced to, I mean its a freakin RPG. Its all about the level or skills or whatever number that has to grow to make your character better.
Who chooses to play Tennis, but feels forced to hit the ball with a raquet? I'm playing tennis because I WANT TO hit the ball and run around. People play WOW because they want to quest and level up and kill bosses or PvP, ect. People don't feel FORCED to do it. If you're playing WOW and feel forced to quest, you're an idiot IMHO. Its like being forced to do well in school if you want to be a doctor. I don't play Eve because I truly am forced into waiting weeks and weeks for a skill to train up. Or, I have to wait around for extended periods of time to travel any place. Thats why I don't play it. But people obviously are OK with it. I don't play games where I feel forced to do anything I don't want to do. Because if you're feeling forced to do something in a videogame you can't be enjoying it very much. Why play it?
Socializing and RPing aren't exclusive to WoW, and therefore arguably cannot be considered as participating in gameplay for the game in question. So that doesn't change the fact that the main thing to do in the game that is explicitly part of the game, is to progress in gear.
Let me fix this for you, just so you can understand how it actually reads.
"I don't care if you can do other things in WoW that don't involve gear grinding. The only thing that matters to me is whether my gear is better than yours, and therefore the only thing anyone is able to do is get gear, period. If you try to do anything different in the game than getting gear, you are simply playing it wrong."
That is exactly what you just said.
No, I'm saying that you can't use RP/social related activities as 'something to do' in the game, because they transcend any single game, and even gaming as a whole. You aren't required to be in-game to socialize, but you're required to be in WoW to progress your WoW character's gear. Socializing isn't part of the game in WoW in the sense that it's content, it's just possible to do through WoW because it has an ingame chat.
Sitting around in WoW chatting isn't anymore playing the game than a bunch of baseball players sitting around the field and chatting is playing a game of baseball.
Again, you just reiterated what I already said you wrote, which is amazing because you are ignoring the entire point of choice. What is stopping you from going and picking herbs, to earn money so you can buy 115 mounts? It is as much a goal as getting gear is, is it not? What about doing all the BG PvP achievements? That doesn't require a lot of gear, but they are a goal you can choose to do.
You have taken the game, boiled it down to one goal, and said that doing anything else is not playing. So, leveling alts, pvping, questing, going to 5 mans with friends, working on achievements, or crafting/gathering none of that counts as playing the game if the person doesn't simply aim to get better gear?
When will you admit the fact that you simply see the game as a gear grind, and that while others don't, you simply think they aren't really playing the game.
I have 10 80s, have gotten tons of achievements, all of the dungeons, most of the raids, played with friends, RPd, PvPd, gathered, crafted, quested, etc, and I've been playing since 1 month after it was first released. I used to feel there was a lot more to the game, but seeing patch after content patch, and each expansion, the focus on content is mostly about gear, because that's the only way to progress your character.
Different mounts, achievements, they mean little in the grand scheme because it's just fluff. Yes I'm jaded, but that's what 5+ years of a gear treadmill and watering down of gameplay will do to someone who previously loved the game.
Really, link all your characters please. I am guessing you are simply another disgruntled player who never got into a top end guild, has probably 4-5K achievement points and simply hates Blizzard because they stopped catering to what you wanted to be -- a hardcore player. Guess what, gear means very little in the grand scheme of the game, because it is constantly being replaced. Would you be as discontent if rather than adding new gear to the game, they simply had mobs drop the same gear over and over and lowered the difficulty of every mob?
You say they are watering down gameplay, but previously said that without good gear you won't be able to do certain raids. So which is it, watered down or difficult? Progress is still what you make of it, some people think that achievements are a means of progress, some think vanity pets, some think that having the most friends in game is progress. YOU THINK GEAR IS. Again, you have made your choice.
I am curious, how is there any less to the game now, then there was in Vanilla? Vanilla had levels 1-60, you got to 60 ran some dungeons, and then did some instances. There were like 30 mounts, 3 battlegrounds (added later not from the start), few vanity pets, less skills, less gear, 4 40 mans at the end of Vanilla.
BC added on to all of that, and sure they reduced 40 mans to 25 mans, but the biggest issue was 40 mans was that you had 5 or more people who got carried through anyway -- which is why 3% of the population saw Naxx in Vanilla. How many 25 mans to BC have? Gruul's Lair/ Magtheridon, TK, SSC, Hyjal, BT, SW. Then add in the 10 mans Kara and Zul'Aman. 8 raid instances. Counting ZG and AQ20, you had 6 in Vanilla. Now, you have Naxx, Ulduar, ToC and Icecrown in Wrath, but each has a 10 man version you can run. So 8 again.
The game has grown so much, and Blizzard realized that some people didn't want to raid with 25 people, some people didn't want to raid with 10, some people don't like Pugs. So they went out and created a way for people to play the game the way they want to play it. You can 5 man for gear, 10 man for gear, 25 man for gear, BG/Arena for gear. Do dailies and normal quests for gear, you can craft for gear, you can buy your gear from the AH. And because gear has become so easy to get you can actually go and do whatever you want to do. Gear has essentially become a side endeavor, playing has taken priority. You are bored of the game, stop raiding for a while. Instead, go out and make some friends and do some 5 mans. Go and do some daily quests with them. Set up times to have little adventures, reroll alts on a different server. The choices are endless, the game is what you make of it. You choose to believe gear grinding is the only thing you can do, even knowing that the expansion will make all your gear obsolete by level 85... seems like you just don't get the point of playing a game.
Darzin -- A Gnome in a Night Elf World
It didn't take a lot, it took about 90% from EQ.all WOW is another EQ with cartoon Warcraft graphics.
As far as EVE goes,it's only success is derived from the same things you don't want ,a VERY boring simplistic game.EVE is all about doing very little,and any thinking you might need is now done with addons,so really nothing left to do except PVP,pretty much all WOW is good for.
As far as Theme parks go,i have yet to see very many,doing quests to advance a level number then raiding so you can get your PVP gear ,is nothing close to a Theme park,it is just a cheap game ..period.
A GOOD Theme park will have lots of rides,something i doubt players even want,all they want is to run around bragging about their level and their Tier 585 gear.Would you call that a game?or that player a gamer?I for sure would not.
RIDE=Content something almost every game misses out on.Creating mini maps/Instances is not creating content,that is such cheap game material,it should be laughed at.You are SUPPOSE to design a WORLD,in that world you design the game,having all these instance maps ,deters from a game world,it is like playing Guild Wars,a cheap wannabe MMORPG.
So when these game ..err so called developers learn to fill their Theme park in with actual rides,maybe we can look to go to the NEXT level,right now ,we are far from that stage.Heck they can't even design a properly laid out map design for PVP,do i expect these dimwits to be able to create content?No way,i think there is too many language coding nerds and business people making these games,there is no true gamers behind the scenes,not at the CEO level anyhow.
You could Google around gaming topics and see just how much incredible talent is out there,so we know making a great game is quite possible,so it is obviously the corporate nerds that are holding back these games.
Right now we have an incredible new program the Ageia PHYS X engine,EVERY game should be using it,you think we will see that?NOPE,they would rather feed us more cheap garbage,because they know there is a lot of dummies out there ready to buy it no matter what.Just the fact that the AGEIA engine can do physics calculations faster than your PC is a MUST have for a game,but they are cheap ,they won't spend the bucks,to give you a better quality game.So in reality ,the developer does not care about quality,they want a fast easy game to develop to turn a huge profit.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Personally, I'm sick of these pro-themepark or pro-sandbox threads. A lot of the reasons these indie games are either straight sandboxes or straight themepark games is because you people don't think they can mix at all.
I'm still waiting for a game that can successfully make a sandbox, with a storyline told through questing that provides the same benefits for both sandbox players and the players that go questing for their "themepark" experience and manage to do it right.
Check out the MUD I'm making!
As usual, just some plain crazy talk on these forums. They aren't even close but this isn't the time nor the place to discuss. (again) Have to laugh at anyone attempting to compare WOW crafting with EVE's..... talk about night and day.
All I can say is, if anyone really feels sandbox games are the way to go, why not go out an play one? EVE, Ryzom, UO, or Darkfall to name a few. (and I realize there are few).
Sure, would I like to see a major, AAA title be a sandbox, yep, but I'm not going to sit around waiting for one.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The thing about player freedom is that it is only as good as the options available. And sandboxes being largely concerned with creating "worlds" I think often deliver lots of sim like options that are also very mundane and boring.
Sure you can farm lots of materials and make stuff then sell on a player driven economy that revolves around player crafted goods and that is awesome right? No, no it is not it is a grind and would be a grind in any other circumstance but since it is in a player ran economy it is magically deep and interesting content all of the sudden right?
But don't forget crafting, it requires lots of steps and there are a bunch of different materials that items with different items, cool right? Again no it is just a slight more complicated grind, the basic mechanic is stil as unsatisfiying as before.
Or what about player made cities? Well if you like generic and dull cities littering the landscape with absolutely no purpose history or any memorable feature then we have plenty of that, if you actually want well made cities with depth, tough.
There is nothing wrong with adding more options, MMOs could use more of that but what sandboxes do is create a poor adventure game and fill it with a ton of distractions like crafting etc. that don't offer compelling enough gameplay to be anything more than a minigame or side quest. Then they make these features the main star of the game, all in this pretense of making a realistic world.
Now if you don't get a big stiffy over the concept of marching your guild in and fighting another guild in an area to control and extract a rare mineral to corner the market on it and want to do something more interesting then a sandbox probably will not deliver on that front.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
I'll bite, since I never played Eve, what is the difference in crafting that makes Eve that much more of a sandbox than WoW endgame?
Darzin -- A Gnome in a Night Elf World
Nah .. it is fun as long as there is depth in combat (like scripted boss fight). Games are like this because players like this.
And it is NOT just MMOs. Look at the best selling FPS (COD Modern Warfare 2, Halo, Gear of War ...), they are all on "rails" with some but not a lot of freedom to move forward and they are BIG sellers.
Furthermore, if you look at WOW, you have total freedom of what to do .. except you are nudged along side a path if you WANT guidance.
Easily, because in EVE you have multiple choices on what to do from the moment you log in, you don't have to follow the pre-set path set for you by the developers. There is no set path. That is a sandbox.
Multiple choices on HOW TO MAKE ISK!!! Thats ALL YOU DO!! Thats all the game is about. Everything you do is related to making ISK because everything is dependent upon it. In WOW its all about leveling up, UNTILL you cap out. THEN, you can do a whole bunch of things not related to leveling up at all. You can make money, collect things, craft, run dungeons, PvP, ect.
So please explain an acitivity in Eve that doesn't revolve around ISK? I'd love to hear it. If you say Rping, I can do that in every MMO.
Your choices in Eve...
1. Run missions for ISK just like WOW, except WOW's has a much better quest system.
2. Randomly kill things for ISK, just like WOW
3. Craft things to make ISK, just like WOW
4. Sell things on the market to make ISK, just like WOW, except its the AH. The economy is more player dependant in Eve. But for most people thats a BAD, BAD thing and its not like players don't effect WOW's economy. They have a huge impact. Its just more controlled.
5. You can go exploring, but lets face it, theres NOTHING to actually find in Eve. Another indenitcal system with asteroids but with a different background map is not exploring? C'mon...exploration is a pretty loose term in Eve. In WOW you actually expand your map, can open acheivments and get EXP for exploring, making it a far more in-depth feature.
6. You can mine of course for ISK, but WOW actually has a lot more variety on this front, with different things to find for different uses. In Eve, its all just rocks and ore and you can do it without even being at the computer, which most people do.
7. You can buy and collect ships which requires ISK, but you can reroll different characters in WOW AND have a huge assortment of mounts. You're not rerolling in Eve unless you make a second account, which everyone does=)
8. You can go start a corp in order to make more ISK. In WOW you can start a guild which isn't about making gold.
9. You can go build a space station to make more ISK, but you're not doing that alone. WOW doesn't let you build any stuctures, mostly because people don't care enough to. Its not like Blizzard couldn't have designed housing years ago. They chose not to.
10. You can PvP, but you're not actually doing that effectively for a few months. In WOW, you can PvP in a few hrs if you want. You can go destroy a space station, but how often does that occur? You can go destroy a fortress in WOW all the time.
11. You can choose which skills to train in Eve, plotting what you want. You do the same thing in WOW, except its more hands on and requires actually PLAYING the game.
The only pre-set path in WOW is being confined to a level(until you cap), but if you think Eve doesn't have those same confinements in the skill system, you're blind. Skills=levels In Eve, you still have to do X before Y like any MMO. There are FAQs that explain why you have to do A, then B, then C, ect in order to acheive D.
So again, please explain how EVE has more choices than WOW again? I'd love to hear it=)
I'm not a WoW fan, I actually like EVE a little bit (not by much) more. I don't play either. However you brought up good points that I would like to see the more hardcore EVE players counter what you said without flaming you.
extreme pvp: this isn't your basic 1 on 1 match, it's a full out war between one empire and another
extreme crafting: you don't "buy" stuff to make things, you start with ore and make powerful ships and weapons all for you to use or sell
you need brains, your not randomly given skills as you level up, you need to plan ahead. if you don't you get lost
you need skills, you don't just equip the most powerful weapon you get, you have to put cetain weapons and skill togeather to make a stratagy, nothing but weapons would help you, a few EMP or satisis web will give you a big advantage.
Gears ftw! Can't wait for the 3rd one. They're saying it'll have some RPG elements. I'm psyched. =D
Anyways, yeah, I agree with the combat thing. I'm still waiting for boss fights to become more puzzle-like rather than "tab-target-let's kill it!"
And I have to say that if you're going to say WoW is like that, then any MMORPG is like that. The difference is that without quests in a "themepark" game like WoW, it becomes a huge grind, it's harder to get some of the more mundane things and, well, you're a LOT more limited than in a "sandbox" type game because the roles you can choose from are decided by the game, not by the player. In a game like WoW, you don't see people being specifially crafters. For one, it's hard. You have to be a certain level and you'r forced to get there through combat. Second, it just isn't feasible.
Check out the MUD I'm making!
Open explorable world would be nice but if its FFA pvp might as well just plan on it going under. Now if they had open world with different nations for some kind of rvr combat that could probably work.
Actually, you know what the way forward is?
A great development team that is properly funded and is not rushed to throw an MMO project out the door. I'd say the minimum of 5 years to make a good MMORPG instead of so many just throwing it out the door for people to flock to until the run to the next one.
The genre isn't running out of ideas or solutions, They are rushed, ill-funded, and strained to just get it out for the quick bucks and nothing long term.
People need to realize, that an MMORPG is a HUGE project, the biggest gaming has to offer. So if your company decides to make one, you better be ready for a LONG HAUL and put some PASSION behind it.
I'm looking forward to a day and age where MMORPGs can launch without tons of bugs. Can't be done? Sure it can. Get funded. No reason 150+ MMOs should exist. Think of the TIME mmorpgs take. It's ridiculous for that many to exist. That many exists because people jump around to much from these halfbaked, illmanaged teams that rushed a project out the door to make money and sucker the people for money through social connectivity.
A path of character progression that isn't just gear. AA abilities for example, to continue character development past 80 that isn't just running dungeons and raids. It doesn't take much to think outside of the box if you try.
So few people got to see Naxx because BC came out 6 months later, when most raiders were still in BWL and AQ40. That and the fact that vanilla Naxx was tuned to be extremely unforgiving and challenging, and of course, require extremely good gear for tanks to survive, healers to keep everyone up, and DPS to beat the enrage timers.
Yes they've added more instances, more areas, but in the end most of the content is the nearly the same gameplay with a different background.
Actually I have stopped raiding, about 6 months ago. I'm in a social guild with other RPers. I've made many, many alts but the quests are the same and I've leveled every class to 80 so it's the same experience over again. I group with my friends from time to time, but it's rare that the right combination of us class wise are on at the right time.
And you apparently are missing my point.
I know that the gear will become obsolete with each content patch and expansion, that's actually part of the problem. The problem is that once you hit max level, the only way to advance your character in a meaningful way is through gear. Sure the fluff like achievements is fun for some people, but most people enjoy actually progressing their character more than any of the fluff.
Hell even if they had player housing I'd be a little more content, but the best Blizzard can come up with is recolored mounts, non-combat pets, and checklists called "achievements" to run down if you're bored.
Only Second Life fits your definition. The thing about MMOs is that everyone wants to be the hero, everyone wants to kill the dragon or defeat the evil empire. And if everyone wants to do it, the event or quest has to reset to get ready for the next person.
In Second Life, if you stop paying, even your changes will be removed from the world.
Except if you let everyone be the hero, suddenly being the hero is completely meaningless and pointless. This is another things that leads to people becoming bored of themepark games.
As opposed to Sandbox games where no one is a hero because everyone can do everything and there is no goal? So your choice is either you want to be a hero, in which everyone can be a hero and therefore no one is unique and different. Or -- no one can be a hero because everyone is exactly the same and there isn't anyone to actually fight, but other non-heroes? Tit for tat!
I take it you've never played a sandbox game before then? One of the freedoms for player choice in sandboxes is usually the choice to kill other players. Bad guys and good guys emerge, you end up with some really bad guys who mass murder everyone, but at the same time you get the anti-pks, the protectors who hunt the murderers, you get exceptionally great players on both sides, so not only in a sandbox can you have heroes, but you can also have villains, aswell as average players and everything in between. In themepark games you just have a game full of average players, if you want to call them all heroes, that's fine, but since they're all heroes, they're really nothing more than average.
You mean like I never played UO and AC : DT server, both of which I played? Guess what, it's the same exact thing. You just rewrote what I said and tried to make it sound dramatic... you get to kill people!!!! You get to kill people in WoW!!!! You get exceptionally great players, because you say they are great... not because they really are. But rather, you like sandbox games and therefore anyone playing a sandbox game is just plain better, where as anyone playing a theme park game is simply average... btw, who are the best FPS teams and what MMO game do they play?
Would it be -- SK Gaming? Ya I hear they are pretty damn good, but since they play WoW they must simply be average and everyone they play just sucks.
Replacing NPCs with PCs does not change the fact that you are still grinding by killing. It just changes what you happen to grind on! In a sandbox game, you will simply have a bunch of min-maxers running around with the best gear/skills to make it easier to grief other players, and yes, you may have anti-pks, but what does that actually provide? They aren't heroes really, each side has an agenda, and heroes and villians are simply interchangeable based on your perception of them. There of course are true villians, but not in a video game. Not until one side can control every NPC, and convince every PC to kill every single person who plays the game over and over.
Again, in WoW everyone can be a hero, in a sandbox game no one can be a hero because everyone can do exactly what the other guy does. It doesn't change anything.
The difference between killing a player in either of the full loot games you mentioned can be great from killing a player in WoW. The same goes for EVE. There are people in EVE who have lost over £1000 real life worth of items from a single death to other players, and many other similar epic moments. No such thing will ever be heard of in a themepark game.
That goes both ways though, and I'm sure it depends on how "hardcore" you are.
Personally, I don't see the appeal in a game where some jackass can just come along and cause me to lose hours, if not months or years of work, based on their whim of wanting to cause someone else frustration. Especially if say, they used an exploit to go about doing it.
Easily, because in EVE you have multiple choices on what to do from the moment you log in, you don't have to follow the pre-set path set for you by the developers. There is no set path. That is a sandbox.
Multiple choices on HOW TO MAKE ISK!!! Thats ALL YOU DO!! Thats all the game is about. Everything you do is related to making ISK because everything is dependent upon it. In WOW its all about leveling up, UNTILL you cap out. THEN, you can do a whole bunch of things not related to leveling up at all. You can make money, collect things, craft, run dungeons, PvP, ect.
So please explain an acitivity in Eve that doesn't revolve around ISK? I'd love to hear it. If you say Rping, I can do that in every MMO.
Your choices in Eve...
1. Run missions for ISK just like WOW, except WOW's has a much better quest system.
2. Randomly kill things for ISK, just like WOW
3. Craft things to make ISK, just like WOW
4. Sell things on the market to make ISK, just like WOW, except its the AH. The economy is more player dependant in Eve. But for most people thats a BAD, BAD thing and its not like players don't effect WOW's economy. They have a huge impact. Its just more controlled.
5. You can go exploring, but lets face it, theres NOTHING to actually find in Eve. Another indenitcal system with asteroids but with a different background map is not exploring? C'mon...exploration is a pretty loose term in Eve. In WOW you actually expand your map, can open acheivments and get EXP for exploring, making it a far more in-depth feature.
6. You can mine of course for ISK, but WOW actually has a lot more variety on this front, with different things to find for different uses. In Eve, its all just rocks and ore and you can do it without even being at the computer, which most people do.
7. You can buy and collect ships which requires ISK, but you can reroll different characters in WOW AND have a huge assortment of mounts. You're not rerolling in Eve unless you make a second account, which everyone does=)
8. You can go start a corp in order to make more ISK. In WOW you can start a guild which isn't about making gold.
9. You can go build a space station to make more ISK, but you're not doing that alone. WOW doesn't let you build any stuctures, mostly because people don't care enough to. Its not like Blizzard couldn't have designed housing years ago. They chose not to.
10. You can PvP, but you're not actually doing that effectively for a few months. In WOW, you can PvP in a few hrs if you want. You can go destroy a space station, but how often does that occur? You can go destroy a fortress in WOW all the time.
11. You can choose which skills to train in Eve, plotting what you want. You do the same thing in WOW, except its more hands on and requires actually PLAYING the game.
The only pre-set path in WOW is being confined to a level(until you cap), but if you think Eve doesn't have those same confinements in the skill system, you're blind. Skills=levels In Eve, you still have to do X before Y like any MMO. There are FAQs that explain why you have to do A, then B, then C, ect in order to acheive D.
So again, please explain how EVE has more choices than WOW again? I'd love to hear it=)
I'm not a WoW fan, I actually like EVE a little bit (not by much) more. I don't play either. However you brought up good points that I would like to see the more hardcore EVE players counter what you said without flaming you.
extreme pvp: this isn't your basic 1 on 1 match, it's a full out war between one empire and another
extreme crafting: you don't "buy" stuff to make things, you start with ore and make powerful ships and weapons all for you to use or sell
you need brains, your not randomly given skills as you level up, you need to plan ahead. if you don't you get lost
you need skills, you don't just equip the most powerful weapon you get, you have to put cetain weapons and skill togeather to make a stratagy, nothing but weapons would help you, a few EMP or satisis web will give you a big advantage.
You don't have to plan or figure out squat anymore. Brains? Go check out an FAQ and it tells you how to do everything. Just a simple step by step guide, nice and easy to follow. EXTREME crafting? Adding in loads of tediuos time consuming steps does make it extreme, but it doesn't take any more brains to do it. Just a crap load of time. Its the same excuse old EQ players have been using for how HARDCORE EQ was. TIME consuming ain't hardcore. Obtaining items is just pressing a few buttons and buying them, or having to built X to get Y to make Z.. Making anything is just pressing a few buttons, like any MMO. Theres no skill. Obtaining certain crafting matierials in WOW takes more SKILL if you have to beat a dungeon to do it. In EVE its all just time. In WOW you might have to kill something tough which not everyone can do. You can try killing a boss 1000 times. If you can't do, you can't do it.
No, in Eve you might not equip the most powerful weapons. But then, depending on the situation it doesn't make a difference what you have equiped, because if you have the wrong ship or the wrong set-up up against another certain ship or set-up, you're SOL. The outcome of the fight is determined before it even starts VERY often. WOW's arenas require more skill to be the best. In EVE you just zerg....numbers will ultimately win every time. Its the problem with open PvP. Its ALWAYS numbers in the end. The bigger, richer Corp with more people willing to give up their social life WINS. Its nerd-fu.
A fight in WOW has all the strategy as a fight in Eve, but its at 50X the pace. Eve moves in slow motion and has an extreme penalty, but penalties doesn't make the fight any harder. Its just another time sink to grind more ISK to buy ships over and over again. NO skill in grinding ISK.
Its all just a whole lot of time, and for what? You think anyone cares what you've done in Eve once you quit? You think YOU'LL care what you spent years accomplishing in a videogame after you have kids and a family? It all goes poof when you cancel. Your wife won't care what you accomplished, unless you're ignoring her to go play space nerd with people she'll never meet. Your kids won't care unless you're ignoring them to go run your Corp. or defend your space station during their soccer game or piano recital. Take your extreme game. No one cares how extreme it is=)
you best be trollin'
Darzin -- A Gnome in a Night Elf World
I agree with all of this. In fact, I made a similar post myself. There was also another post by someone about how categorizing games into "sandbox" and "themepark" is extremely unhelpful. The best sort of game would have a mix of both elements (I think my post was between that post and your post in content). We do need more options, more meaningful choices, and we also should have worlds with character and color. Player-made cities are nice, but they'd be much nicer if each could have its own character and develop unique npcs and even novel architecture. I'm pretty sure we have the technology to do this sort of thing in an MMO, at least as far as hardware is concerned, but we don't seem to be getting developers to go that way, really.
I think we could actually have a very interesting and productive conversation if people would stop fighting over WoW in this thread.
I need direction in a MMO so I guess I'd say I totally disagree.
"I play Tera for the gameplay"
And how much fun is it all? Because without fun, nothing else matters. Thats the problem with sandboxes. They concentrate on "stuff" but not on "is that stuff actually fun". For the vast majority, they just aren't fun to play. Make a FUN sandbox and people will come a runnin=)
I'm not even going to use the "sandbox" term. I'll just say that, eventually, some one will make a fun MMO that's much more open and much less linear than what we have now.
WoW isn't a success because it's a themepark, it's a success because of polish, accessability, and marketing. Put those three features into "more open" MMO and you could still be successful.
I agree with what others have said, the first major success on that end of the spectrum will probably be some sort of hybrid themepark/sandbox game, with elements of box mixed in.
Are you ranting? or seriously believing that you have a valid case?
Ok you can predict that the sun is going to change to a blue ball. Can't refute it unless you specify when, if you say eventually the sun will go blue, nobody can refute it. It just looks silly.
But if you intend to sell your proposal to a developer, what you wrote borders on nonsense. What does a developer or investor look at when evaluating,commissioning or managing a funded project? Look at your last paragraph and go think about it. If you failed to see the folly, my advice to you is, do not venture into business unless you have money to waste.
Yes that is very likely an option being evaluated by many. Technology and accessibility of the game (performance on old machines) to mass would be a deciding factor.