I started MMORPG gaming in early 2004. I saw a lot of innovation and creativity. I also saw a lot more responsiveness to players.
Now, I see small, broken, highly instanced games loaded down with fees for everthing from playable races to respecs. We used to work to stamp out gold-selling. Now the MMO companies themselves are selling us xp in their own cash shops. We used to get content updates and bug fixes. Now we get stuck with age-old bugs, and the latest content is available only in some kind of virtual card game that we probably don't even want to play.
Games used to be what this industry was all about. Now the games are just a way to create demand for virtual junk so that corporate fat cats can access our credit cards. Remeber that commercial that shows bankers always trying to get their hands in your pockets? Well, MMO CEOs remind me of that.
Apart from companies like CCP (EVE online) and Blizzard, and perhaps a few others it really does seem seem like MMOs have lost their mojo. I don't think they'll get it back until making fun video games for people like you and me becomes the priority again.
Apart from companies like CCP (EVE online) and Blizzard, and perhaps a few others it really does seem seem like MMOs have lost their mojo. I don't think they'll get it back until making fun video games for people like you and me becomes the priority again.
This just goes to show you how subjective all this virtual introspection is.
I'm sure you realize that there is a contingent of people who would hang blizzard out for the crows to pick on because of their mega-game?
At some point people are going to have to realize that SOMEONE is having fun with these games regardless of their personal feelings.
So you think wow has mojo? good for you. As you should. Just remember that all these games that people are pointing to as being failures might actually be what others are looking for in a game.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Simple. It went from "Hey, let's make a fun game that we would like to play. As a bonus, we'll make money doing it!" to "Let's make money.".
Exactly
and the problem there is you have to to make things too simple etc, to campture the largest number of players, and the other problem is that the well written storylines and such dont pay as much as just a ton of generic quests
The watered down version have a higher profit for the company even if not as enjoyable and with many companies working on a revolving door model they really just have to make some thing that can keep a players attention for just a few months and not years.
It is inevitable. A MMO is a big production costing tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of people. Of course you need people who know how to manage large teams to make it work.
Just look at the dot com bust. Amateurs running companies, no matter how good their original ideas are, is a recipe for business disaster. An MMO involves a large development effort, and ongoing customer service .. I don't think some game designer can run all that.
Apart from companies like CCP (EVE online) and Blizzard, and perhaps a few others it really does seem seem like MMOs have lost their mojo. I don't think they'll get it back until making fun video games for people like you and me becomes the priority again.
This just goes to show you how subjective all this virtual introspection is.
I'm sure you realize that there is a contingent of people who would hang blizzard out for the crows to pick on because of their mega-game?
At some point people are going to have to realize that SOMEONE is having fun with these games regardless of their personal feelings.
So you think wow has mojo? good for you. As you should. Just remember that all these games that people are pointing to as being failures might actually be what others are looking for in a game.
If they were actually what others are looking for in a game, they wouldn't be failures. I think they are what some marketting "expert" thinks will make them a wad of cash with less invested in good development.
Technically speaking Warhammer was a fantastic game. I enjoyed it all the way to 40. Though the lower levels were definately paid more attention and flushed out.
The main problem was that once you hit 40, there really wasn't very much to do beyond large-scale PvP and scenarios. Now that been said some of my fondest MMO memories (up there with my mage/bard/tamer in UO), was running scenarios in Warhammer. I loved the combat, it was really well thought out and executed. The PvE dungeons were a mess, but they were challenging and rewarding. Warhammer suffered from A a lack of things to do at cap, and B being advertised as something it wasn't.
Sometimes I feel like I've "been there, done that"... ok, quite a bit actually. *shrugs*
I think things have become stagnant. We haven't really had a mind-blowing change in thinking outside the box in making more games or sub-genres.
Wolfenstein was a massive step up,
Diablo was a massive step up
Ultima Online was the mainstream opening for most of us who played MMO's
Everquest or AC showed the world it could be a profitable market and a devoted though fickle playerbase to those kinds of games.
EVE shown that dispite flaws in initial launch that there were people who really wanted a MMORPG aspect that didn't involve elves and there was a sub genre for MMO's other than fantasy.
DAoC introduced RvR style of combat.
Guild Wars introduced an idea where you didn't have to level every single toon if you wanted to PvP or to gear them up, and introduced the concept of AI "henchmen" and instances.
This is at least my "opinion", not historical fact... but what I'm trying to get at is for say... what, the last 5 years or so it's been a rehash of what most of these games that I can personally recall. Sure, there's more lens flare eyecandy, direct X9000 motionblur, voice acting by major movie stars ect... but no one has really expanded on what's been done. Different body and paint job with extra flare on the same frame.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
Apart from companies like CCP (EVE online) and Blizzard, and perhaps a few others it really does seem seem like MMOs have lost their mojo. I don't think they'll get it back until making fun video games for people like you and me becomes the priority again.
This just goes to show you how subjective all this virtual introspection is.
I'm sure you realize that there is a contingent of people who would hang blizzard out for the crows to pick on because of their mega-game?
At some point people are going to have to realize that SOMEONE is having fun with these games regardless of their personal feelings.
So you think wow has mojo? good for you. As you should. Just remember that all these games that people are pointing to as being failures might actually be what others are looking for in a game.
If they were actually what others are looking for in a game, they wouldn't be failures. I think they are what some marketting "expert" thinks will make them a wad of cash with less invested in good development.
And what is a failure? If you take WoW out of the equation there really aren't a lot of mmo's that break the 200k mark.
Quite frankly, if they can pay their bills, attend to game development and have a player base I don't really see them as a failure.
The only failures are the games that have closed down. And even in that respect one might see the hand of the corporation just saying "you didn't bring in the money we wanted" (I'm looking at you NC Soft).
But actual failures? I mean DAoC is still running and I highly doubt there more than 100k players let alone 200k. Last I looked the entirety of their servers not counting the pve server was about 1000 or so players per evening. That's between all their servers. But they still develope the game and there are still players.
So sure, an individual might think that a particular game is a failure and he/she would have every right to as it is his/her taste. But I'm not sure I've seen many actual failures.
If people are playing them and the game is open then it is a success. Players have just skewed their idea of success.
I constantly see players decrying devs for creating games in the likeness of wow in order to garner huge sub numbers. Yet if a game has 90-200k subs and doens't have wow numbers they consider it a failure.
It's just feeding the monster in my opinion.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
MMOs moved from being simple entertainment marketed at a select group to being a massive fashion trend marketed to a very broad spectrum of individuals (IE anyone with a pulse). This same marketing/investment shift happened to the music and film industry. Personally I think this strategy will end in disaster for MMOs in general. Considering the amount of time, effort, and money it takes to create a new MMORPG, and considering how fickle minded the fad following group of consumers are, combined with more and more MMOs being released, the slice of the pie in the sky is going to get smaller and smaller.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Apart from companies like CCP (EVE online) and Blizzard, and perhaps a few others it really does seem seem like MMOs have lost their mojo. I don't think they'll get it back until making fun video games for people like you and me becomes the priority again.
This just goes to show you how subjective all this virtual introspection is.
I'm sure you realize that there is a contingent of people who would hang blizzard out for the crows to pick on because of their mega-game?
At some point people are going to have to realize that SOMEONE is having fun with these games regardless of their personal feelings.
So you think wow has mojo? good for you. As you should. Just remember that all these games that people are pointing to as being failures might actually be what others are looking for in a game.
If they were actually what others are looking for in a game, they wouldn't be failures. I think they are what some marketting "expert" thinks will make them a wad of cash with less invested in good development.
And what is a failure? If you take WoW out of the equation there really aren't a lot of mmo's that break the 200k mark.
Quite frankly, if they can pay their bills, attend to game development and have a player base I don't really see them as a failure.
The only failures are the games that have closed down. And even in that respect one might see the hand of the corporation just saying "you didn't bring in the money we wanted" (I'm looking at you NC Soft).
But actual failures? I mean DAoC is still running and I highly doubt there more than 100k players let alone 200k. Last I looked the entirety of their servers not counting the pve server was about 1000 or so players per evening. That's between all their servers. But they still develope the game and there are still players.
So sure, an individual might think that a particular game is a failure and he/she would have every right to as it is his/her taste. But I'm not sure I've seen many actual failures.
If people are playing them and the game is open then it is a success. Players have just skewed their idea of success.
I constantly see players decrying devs for creating games in the likeness of wow in order to garner huge sub numbers. Yet if a game has 90-200k subs and doens't have wow numbers they consider it a failure.
It's just feeding the monster in my opinion.
You used the word failure to begin with, and said that these games might simply be what others are looking for. I was simply pointing out that this statement appears to contradict itself.
How do I classify failure? Well, I could list a bunch of games that have closed because no one would play them. I'd probably start there. Massive server closures and plummetting subscription rates would be other indicators to me that all is not well. Games with horrific launches, that generate more controversy than fun, would be on my list as well, especially those that have never recovered from the bad launch.
People won't touch these games, won't stay in these games, and/or they hate the games and the companies that make them. I'd say that's a fair definition of failure from my point of view. I've seen a lot of this lately, and I think Scot's onto something with his theory.
Apart from companies like CCP (EVE online) and Blizzard, and perhaps a few others it really does seem seem like MMOs have lost their mojo. I don't think they'll get it back until making fun video games for people like you and me becomes the priority again.
This just goes to show you how subjective all this virtual introspection is.
I'm sure you realize that there is a contingent of people who would hang blizzard out for the crows to pick on because of their mega-game?
At some point people are going to have to realize that SOMEONE is having fun with these games regardless of their personal feelings.
So you think wow has mojo? good for you. As you should. Just remember that all these games that people are pointing to as being failures might actually be what others are looking for in a game.
If they were actually what others are looking for in a game, they wouldn't be failures. I think they are what some marketting "expert" thinks will make them a wad of cash with less invested in good development.
And what is a failure? If you take WoW out of the equation there really aren't a lot of mmo's that break the 200k mark.
Quite frankly, if they can pay their bills, attend to game development and have a player base I don't really see them as a failure.
The only failures are the games that have closed down. And even in that respect one might see the hand of the corporation just saying "you didn't bring in the money we wanted" (I'm looking at you NC Soft).
But actual failures? I mean DAoC is still running and I highly doubt there more than 100k players let alone 200k. Last I looked the entirety of their servers not counting the pve server was about 1000 or so players per evening. That's between all their servers. But they still develope the game and there are still players.
So sure, an individual might think that a particular game is a failure and he/she would have every right to as it is his/her taste. But I'm not sure I've seen many actual failures.
If people are playing them and the game is open then it is a success. Players have just skewed their idea of success.
I constantly see players decrying devs for creating games in the likeness of wow in order to garner huge sub numbers. Yet if a game has 90-200k subs and doens't have wow numbers they consider it a failure.
It's just feeding the monster in my opinion.
You used the word failure to begin with, and said that these games might simply be what others are looking for. I was simply pointing out that this statement appears to contradict itself.
How do I classify failure? Well, I could list a bunch of games that have closed because no one would play them. I'd probably start there. Massive server closures and plummetting subscription rates would be other indicators to me that all is not well. Games with horrific launches, that generate more controversy than fun, would be on my list as well, especially those that have never recovered from the bad launch.
People won't touch these games, won't stay in these games, and/or they hate the games and the companies that make them. I'd say that's a fair definition of failure from my point of view. I've seen a lot of this lately, and I think Scot's onto something with his theory.
That's true, I suppose I was equating the term "lose their mojo" with the idea that they were failures. And with that said when the topic of Blizzard was mentioned it seemed interesting to say they haven't lost their mojo when many people would burn wow and its dev's at the stake.
As far as failures I would of course agree with your first statement.
I'm unsure if I would agree with the second regarding plummetting subs and server closures. I know, on the surface it would seem to make more sense to consider these games failures. But I think there is a trend of large numbers of players going to a game, checking it out, realizing it is not their type of game and leaving.
Unfortunatley the game company has to add servers because if these players stay then of course they are going to need a home. But many of these games really should only appeal to smaller crowds. For instance, let's say that a cool looking permadeath game came. All of its features seemed great but of course they had permadeath. You might get a large group of people checking it out only for them to realize that permadeath was never really their cup of tea. So they leave. subs go down servers have to be merged. However, there is a group of people who are clamoring for permadeath. They are perfectly happy to stay and play this game as it is the game that they have been looking for.
I would say that the initial influx of players was more a fluke and had the game company not needed to add all those servers at launch they might be looked at as a successful niche game.
Controversial games "might" be failures. I mean, Dark Fall had a very controversial launch but I can't say that was a failure. Neither was AoC. Vanguard might be considered a failure because even though there are many players standing around looking in and saying that it's the best pve game on the market, no one wants to go in because there are few people there. If no one goes in then there will always be few people there.
For me it's hard to tell with Warhammer. They don't have the servers they once had but there are quite a few people in T4 and a decent amount in T1 (because of the trial no doubt). They seem to be enjoying the game and seem dedicated.
So my thought with them is that it was never clear as to what type of game they were going to be. On top of that people thought they were going to be the spiritual sucessor to DAoC which of course they are not. So in their case I would say they failed to reach out to the correct audience, drew in a huge amount of people who probably would never have played the game. This is not to say they didn't have thier problems but many of those problems were minor or silly bugs and most of those from what I can see are fixed.
I sometimes think that games "lose thier mojo" (in the correct spirit of the thread and not my mistake of counting it "failure") because the deves don't have a clear idea on developing the game over the course of years. So they lose their way just adding things. My opinon is that this happened to Lineage 2 as well as LOTRO.
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Posts like this often make me wonder, why is it that so many literate and educated people cannot spell the word "lose" in a header?
But on a more serious note, what are you on about?
The "loss" of mojo, assumes that MMORPG's ever had any, in fact with the singular exception of WoW almost all Western MMO's cater for a niche market of punters, many of whom bleat about any minor tweak to a game's dynamic no matter how irrelevant it is in the scale of things.
Subscription fees and game shops deter millions from entering the world of these games in the first place, apart from Guild Wars there's not much real F2P content out there and many others game to get away from people not to share an experience. So it's a miracle that this market survives given the complexities of delivering a reasonably interesting game that you can drop in and out of, along with all the others who play, and still deliver some sort of coherent reason for playing.
The one thing I miss most in MMO universes is the chance to be a hero of any kind, the gains are smaller, more systematic and less big WOW! than I usually demand. WoW is fun because it's cartoon fantasy and doesn't involve any deep immersion for me, it's a bit like a very complex version of Minesweeper, lots of repetitive action for little pay off, but it does clear my head and it is prettier than Minesweeper.
When you look at the demand for games on consoles it's clear that people love to play games, the GTA franchise has clearly underscored that by outgrossing top movies, MMORPG's aren't even close to that rterritory. It's a genre generally run on the love of those who support it, most MMO's aren't profitable concerns they cater to a group of people and hope to pay the wage bill.
Until they become more accessible and attract a less hard-core crowd they will always be hit and miss with not a lot of long staying high quality titles. Because the money is always going to say, sell a few hundred thousand boxes, keep a 100K subscribers? Stuff that who's got Rockstar's number I want to buy a slice of billions...
In the early days of automobiles, people would run out of their houses to look at the new fangled contraptions going down the road. This doesn't happen today.
Cars used to break down every ten miles, flat tire or something else. People put up with it.
MMOs have gone from gee wiz this is new and cool, to 'is it fun to play?'
Of 5 MMO's that have near 1million or more subscribers...the ones that make the list are WoW, Aion, Lineage, Lineage 2 and Runescape.
Aion is failing, Lineage and Lineage 2 have been strong, but Lineage 2 had its huge problems (bots, ebay, grind) that never made it a success in North America. Nonetheless even NCsoft fired the team that made Lineage and Lineage 2 before Aion, and Aion is a dull and contentless game destined to fall. (That team is the one making TERA).
While WoW might be rather easy, the hardmode content really isnt...I dont have a huge beef with WoW, I mean I enjoyed EVE, L2, GW, etc... all more than WoW, but WoW is still not a bad game, its missing a few meaningful goals, like PvP being confined to meaningless and impersonal minigames and arenas, but overall it is still fairly decent.
The problem is games trying to emulate WoW, but releasing with a fraction of its content. Yes WoW didnt have content when it released, but there was no WoW when WoW released. Dev's need to know this, and when they implement some instancing or raid systems, there'd damn well better be enough so you can progress through them and be able to different ones whenever you want. If you release a game with 2 or 3 isntances, and your players end up repeating them over, over, over and over again with nothing else to do, it doesn't really take a degree to figure out they'll get bored and quit.
How did MMO’s lose their Mojo? They didn't. In the early days of automobiles, people would run out of their houses to look at the new fangled contraptions going down the road. This doesn't happen today. Cars used to break down every ten miles, flat tire or something else. People put up with it. MMOs have gone from gee wiz this is new and cool, to 'is it fun to play?' The bloom is off the rose.
ooooo excellent post and completely correct.
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I disagree completely with the automobile analogy. I still love cars, I enjoy driving mine every time I get in it, I enjoy playing racing games (iRacing), etc... I've been playing hockey for almost 20 years, I still love it, play it when I can and play NHL games online.
Your analogy is like saying video games are old now, they lost their flare, its not the case.
I disagree completely with the automobile analogy. I still love cars, I enjoy driving mine every time I get in it, I enjoy playing racing games (iRacing), etc... I've been playing hockey for almost 20 years, I still love it, play it when I can and play NHL games online. Your analogy is like saying video games are old now, they lost their flare, its not the case.
No.
What he is saying is that when Cars were first on the road they had problems. but people overlooked those problems because they were new.
There was a time even into the 70's when you would worry about your car starting in the cold.
Nowadays we don't put up with the problems that our earlier car lovers had to put up with. At least not on the same scale. We just wouldn't.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I play sinds 99 started with ac1 then ac2 lineage2 after i stop with lineage2 i tryed for very short time wow ok that was for me a mistake terible game, then few years later AoC also terible game at launch that was anyway.
I was already sinds 2003 waiting for Darkfall, so finally in march i start playing and not have stopped still playing almost a year everyday at least 6 hours or more.
I say no mmo's dont have lost there MOJO Darkfall is a great MMO ive found my pleasure back again with Darkfall!!!
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009..... In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
I disagree completely with the automobile analogy. I still love cars, I enjoy driving mine every time I get in it, I enjoy playing racing games (iRacing), etc... I've been playing hockey for almost 20 years, I still love it, play it when I can and play NHL games online. Your analogy is like saying video games are old now, they lost their flare, its not the case.
For some they do for prolly majority not but OP is wrong indeed.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009..... In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Posts like this often make me wonder, why is it that so many literate and educated people cannot spell the word "lose" in a header? But on a more serious note, what are you on about? The "loss" of mojo, assumes that MMORPG's ever had any, in fact with the singular exception of WoW almost all Western MMO's cater for a niche market of punters, many of whom bleat about any minor tweak to a game's dynamic no matter how irrelevant it is in the scale of things. Subscription fees and game shops deter millions from entering the world of these games in the first place, apart from Guild Wars there's not much real F2P content out there and many others game to get away from people not to share an experience. So it's a miracle that this market survives given the complexities of delivering a reasonably interesting game that you can drop in and out of, along with all the others who play, and still deliver some sort of coherent reason for playing. The one thing I miss most in MMO universes is the chance to be a hero of any kind, the gains are smaller, more systematic and less big WOW! than I usually demand. WoW is fun because it's cartoon fantasy and doesn't involve any deep immersion for me, it's a bit like a very complex version of Minesweeper, lots of repetitive action for little pay off, but it does clear my head and it is prettier than Minesweeper. When you look at the demand for games on consoles it's clear that people love to play games, the GTA franchise has clearly underscored that by outgrossing top movies, MMORPG's aren't even close to that rterritory. It's a genre generally run on the love of those who support it, most MMO's aren't profitable concerns they cater to a group of people and hope to pay the wage bill. Until they become more accessible and attract a less hard-core crowd they will always be hit and miss with not a lot of long staying high quality titles. Because the money is always going to say, sell a few hundred thousand boxes, keep a 100K subscribers? Stuff that who's got Rockstar's number I want to buy a slice of billions...
Good read here. I play console and PC games. I enjoy both of them for different reasons. The PC games seem a bit deeper and more complex, so when I'm in the mood for that, that's where I look for fun. My favourite console games are shooters and sports games. They're fun, but they're very, very simple. Sometimes simple and fun is exactly what I'm looking for.
Now, enter the MMO. I agree that some devs (or their CEOs) don't really have a vision for their game. Some go from revamp to revamp (complex, simple, then back to complex) looking for the magic formula. The thing is, I don't want to play a game that is constantly changing. I don't want last month's progress to be thrown off the bus because of some new guy's "bright idea."
It's not just instability in the game that is such a pain though, the problems now include the business model. Take Free Realms for example. Some people probably wanted to play that game because it's free. Well, I guess that's tough luck because now it isn't anymore. The free trial stops at level 4 or 5 (I forget which exactly, sorry).
Some people probably enjoyed EQ and StarWars Galaxies partly because of the business model--straight monthly subscription. Well, that's changed for them now as well. Now some of the best items, buffs or xp boosters are avaible at the RMT shop. Stuff like this used to all be included in the subscription.
Cryptic seems to be following along the same path. Respecs in their previous games (CoH/CoV) were part of enjoyable quests. The respec trials were some of the funnest content in the CoX games. Now, with Champions, they made respecs avaiable at the RMT shop. There was even some controversy about whether or not they would also be available ingame.
NCsoft, started with RMT for fluff items only when they took sole possession of CoX. Now they're also selling respecs, and the new RMT costumes come equipped with unique superpowers.
I'm back mainly to enjoying console and PC games that are not MMOs. All the instability in terms of the gameplay and the ever changing business model is too much of a pain in the arse. I was playing MMOs to relax and have some fun. I don't enjoy paying for half-broken, ever-changing stuff, that is becoming more and more expensive via layers and layers of additional fees.
Thanks for the replies, it is good to see players are thinking about MMO’s, what has gone wrong and why.
I only concentrated on two related reasons in my OP; the change from creatives at the helm of gaming companies to corporates and the larger companies eating up smaller ones.
I don’t see that as the only reasons for MMO’s losing their mojo, but my post was big enough as it was. Also I had not seen these ideas thought through and backed up with evidence, so I saw a need to expand and support those reasons.
MMO’s certainly need businessmen, but having them in charge is a mistake, the drive and ethos of a MMO should stem from game designers, programmers, artists and writers. But corporates have a very important part to play in MMO’s don’t get me wrong. It is when I hear of CEO’s gloating about the way heads of creative sections are now thinking in corporate terms, being concerned more about their spreedsheets than the quality of their sections output. This is when you realise the influence of the business side, driven by the CEO is going too far.
Below I look at your counter arguments and all the other elements of where it went wrong, and try to put them in context:
Thanks for the elaboration about SCi, Drossrocket. I did realise it was part of the Squre Enix chain of takeovers but wanted to cut down on post length. I found non western companies harder to track, and it was more difficult to find out the interests/education of company founders. Where I dispute you conclusions is that every gaming company does not get taken over because it is ailing. When a large company is doing well, it looks round for other companies to acquire and strengthen its market position. Ailing companies are often avoided because they are ailing, but what you are saying does happen a lot. I just can’t believe that all these gaming companies were burnt out and ready to fold unless they were ‘rescued’. I think many were acquired, had their titles and teams cherry picked and the rest were cancelled and sacked.
Nikoliath raises the ‘we are jaded’ argument. I think we are, and we do see old MMO’s through rather rosey spectacles. But I don’t think that is sufficient for so much disillusionment. It is possible to realise we are jaded and take account of that in our appraisals. The ‘we are jaded’ argument applies to every area of our lives. Is anyone out there claiming that books or films have gone downhill as much as MMO’s in the last ten to fifteen years? They have lost more than their bloom as another poster suggested, we are enthusiasts, we love the genre, it would take more than that to make us so cynical.
As Kyleran says WoW certainly set a template, which caused a far more linear set of MMO’s to follow it. But I see the problems that stem from WoW as being just another example of the take over of corporate culture. Those early founders were not looking over their shoulders and designing from one template; WoW’s success would not have stopped them from trying something new. But when every company is being run by people with a background in Johnson and Johnson or Pepsi Cola, how can you expect anything ground breaking?
The argument that MMO’s are still selling well so there is not a problem falls down rather badly. MMO’s launch and then are not able to sustain a decent player base. Some close down, this is not a picture of a thriving genre. I do think the lack of success in the last two years of MMO launches is a symptom of this, but the word failure is over used.
Thanks for pointing out the typo ascroobla, I make far too many! But I see your recipe to fix MMO’s as more of a poison. Catering to casual play, I don’t want to pay types, is not a good business plan.
People tend to see the present as forever, ignore the past and think that nothing ever changes. We have seen great change in MMO’s and solo games, much for the worse. This trend will gather pace, games becoming more commercialised, generic and dumbed down. But the graphics will get better, preserving the illusion of a dynamic, innovative industry.
But I don't know about the illusion being preserved. I think among our kind of heavier gamers, the bubble has burst. But most are still looking around for what caused the noise. We've noticed the sameness, and people are looking and unhappy with the new offerings.
The illusion is shifting now. It's starting to not maintain it's visage. It's moving towards another new crowd, just as WoW brought in millions of new MMO gamers, those who haven't been around long enough yet to wonder "is there nothing more?"
It's shifting to the even more casual new gamers, looking to the facebook crowd for the new source. This may be a good thing, in the end. The current static creation mentality won't dominate the market, and new and more imaginative types will get a foothold. From those, a new direction will arise and give us more of everything else, things gone missing in MMOs. Look at FarmVille, can we see that that would be an excellent addition to a full scale sandbox MMO?
The main focus of MMOs used to be about participating and being immersed within a virtual world with other players.
Today, the main focus of MMOs is about grinding quests and instanced dungeon content while chasing the level and gear treadmill. The gameworld only serves as a backdrop for this.
Comments
I started MMORPG gaming in early 2004. I saw a lot of innovation and creativity. I also saw a lot more responsiveness to players.
Now, I see small, broken, highly instanced games loaded down with fees for everthing from playable races to respecs. We used to work to stamp out gold-selling. Now the MMO companies themselves are selling us xp in their own cash shops. We used to get content updates and bug fixes. Now we get stuck with age-old bugs, and the latest content is available only in some kind of virtual card game that we probably don't even want to play.
Games used to be what this industry was all about. Now the games are just a way to create demand for virtual junk so that corporate fat cats can access our credit cards. Remeber that commercial that shows bankers always trying to get their hands in your pockets? Well, MMO CEOs remind me of that.
Apart from companies like CCP (EVE online) and Blizzard, and perhaps a few others it really does seem seem like MMOs have lost their mojo. I don't think they'll get it back until making fun video games for people like you and me becomes the priority again.
This just goes to show you how subjective all this virtual introspection is.
I'm sure you realize that there is a contingent of people who would hang blizzard out for the crows to pick on because of their mega-game?
At some point people are going to have to realize that SOMEONE is having fun with these games regardless of their personal feelings.
So you think wow has mojo? good for you. As you should. Just remember that all these games that people are pointing to as being failures might actually be what others are looking for in a game.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Exactly
and the problem there is you have to to make things too simple etc, to campture the largest number of players, and the other problem is that the well written storylines and such dont pay as much as just a ton of generic quests
The watered down version have a higher profit for the company even if not as enjoyable and with many companies working on a revolving door model they really just have to make some thing that can keep a players attention for just a few months and not years.
It is inevitable. A MMO is a big production costing tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of people. Of course you need people who know how to manage large teams to make it work.
Just look at the dot com bust. Amateurs running companies, no matter how good their original ideas are, is a recipe for business disaster. An MMO involves a large development effort, and ongoing customer service .. I don't think some game designer can run all that.
This just goes to show you how subjective all this virtual introspection is.
I'm sure you realize that there is a contingent of people who would hang blizzard out for the crows to pick on because of their mega-game?
At some point people are going to have to realize that SOMEONE is having fun with these games regardless of their personal feelings.
So you think wow has mojo? good for you. As you should. Just remember that all these games that people are pointing to as being failures might actually be what others are looking for in a game.
If they were actually what others are looking for in a game, they wouldn't be failures. I think they are what some marketting "expert" thinks will make them a wad of cash with less invested in good development.
Technically speaking Warhammer was a fantastic game. I enjoyed it all the way to 40. Though the lower levels were definately paid more attention and flushed out.
The main problem was that once you hit 40, there really wasn't very much to do beyond large-scale PvP and scenarios. Now that been said some of my fondest MMO memories (up there with my mage/bard/tamer in UO), was running scenarios in Warhammer. I loved the combat, it was really well thought out and executed. The PvE dungeons were a mess, but they were challenging and rewarding. Warhammer suffered from A a lack of things to do at cap, and B being advertised as something it wasn't.
Sometimes I feel like I've "been there, done that"... ok, quite a bit actually. *shrugs*
I think things have become stagnant. We haven't really had a mind-blowing change in thinking outside the box in making more games or sub-genres.
Wolfenstein was a massive step up,
Diablo was a massive step up
Ultima Online was the mainstream opening for most of us who played MMO's
Everquest or AC showed the world it could be a profitable market and a devoted though fickle playerbase to those kinds of games.
EVE shown that dispite flaws in initial launch that there were people who really wanted a MMORPG aspect that didn't involve elves and there was a sub genre for MMO's other than fantasy.
DAoC introduced RvR style of combat.
Guild Wars introduced an idea where you didn't have to level every single toon if you wanted to PvP or to gear them up, and introduced the concept of AI "henchmen" and instances.
This is at least my "opinion", not historical fact... but what I'm trying to get at is for say... what, the last 5 years or so it's been a rehash of what most of these games that I can personally recall. Sure, there's more lens flare eyecandy, direct X9000 motionblur, voice acting by major movie stars ect... but no one has really expanded on what's been done. Different body and paint job with extra flare on the same frame.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
This just goes to show you how subjective all this virtual introspection is.
I'm sure you realize that there is a contingent of people who would hang blizzard out for the crows to pick on because of their mega-game?
At some point people are going to have to realize that SOMEONE is having fun with these games regardless of their personal feelings.
So you think wow has mojo? good for you. As you should. Just remember that all these games that people are pointing to as being failures might actually be what others are looking for in a game.
If they were actually what others are looking for in a game, they wouldn't be failures. I think they are what some marketting "expert" thinks will make them a wad of cash with less invested in good development.
And what is a failure? If you take WoW out of the equation there really aren't a lot of mmo's that break the 200k mark.
Quite frankly, if they can pay their bills, attend to game development and have a player base I don't really see them as a failure.
The only failures are the games that have closed down. And even in that respect one might see the hand of the corporation just saying "you didn't bring in the money we wanted" (I'm looking at you NC Soft).
But actual failures? I mean DAoC is still running and I highly doubt there more than 100k players let alone 200k. Last I looked the entirety of their servers not counting the pve server was about 1000 or so players per evening. That's between all their servers. But they still develope the game and there are still players.
So sure, an individual might think that a particular game is a failure and he/she would have every right to as it is his/her taste. But I'm not sure I've seen many actual failures.
If people are playing them and the game is open then it is a success. Players have just skewed their idea of success.
I constantly see players decrying devs for creating games in the likeness of wow in order to garner huge sub numbers. Yet if a game has 90-200k subs and doens't have wow numbers they consider it a failure.
It's just feeding the monster in my opinion.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
MMOs moved from being simple entertainment marketed at a select group to being a massive fashion trend marketed to a very broad spectrum of individuals (IE anyone with a pulse). This same marketing/investment shift happened to the music and film industry. Personally I think this strategy will end in disaster for MMOs in general. Considering the amount of time, effort, and money it takes to create a new MMORPG, and considering how fickle minded the fad following group of consumers are, combined with more and more MMOs being released, the slice of the pie in the sky is going to get smaller and smaller.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
This just goes to show you how subjective all this virtual introspection is.
I'm sure you realize that there is a contingent of people who would hang blizzard out for the crows to pick on because of their mega-game?
At some point people are going to have to realize that SOMEONE is having fun with these games regardless of their personal feelings.
So you think wow has mojo? good for you. As you should. Just remember that all these games that people are pointing to as being failures might actually be what others are looking for in a game.
If they were actually what others are looking for in a game, they wouldn't be failures. I think they are what some marketting "expert" thinks will make them a wad of cash with less invested in good development.
And what is a failure? If you take WoW out of the equation there really aren't a lot of mmo's that break the 200k mark.
Quite frankly, if they can pay their bills, attend to game development and have a player base I don't really see them as a failure.
The only failures are the games that have closed down. And even in that respect one might see the hand of the corporation just saying "you didn't bring in the money we wanted" (I'm looking at you NC Soft).
But actual failures? I mean DAoC is still running and I highly doubt there more than 100k players let alone 200k. Last I looked the entirety of their servers not counting the pve server was about 1000 or so players per evening. That's between all their servers. But they still develope the game and there are still players.
So sure, an individual might think that a particular game is a failure and he/she would have every right to as it is his/her taste. But I'm not sure I've seen many actual failures.
If people are playing them and the game is open then it is a success. Players have just skewed their idea of success.
I constantly see players decrying devs for creating games in the likeness of wow in order to garner huge sub numbers. Yet if a game has 90-200k subs and doens't have wow numbers they consider it a failure.
It's just feeding the monster in my opinion.
You used the word failure to begin with, and said that these games might simply be what others are looking for. I was simply pointing out that this statement appears to contradict itself.
How do I classify failure? Well, I could list a bunch of games that have closed because no one would play them. I'd probably start there. Massive server closures and plummetting subscription rates would be other indicators to me that all is not well. Games with horrific launches, that generate more controversy than fun, would be on my list as well, especially those that have never recovered from the bad launch.
People won't touch these games, won't stay in these games, and/or they hate the games and the companies that make them. I'd say that's a fair definition of failure from my point of view. I've seen a lot of this lately, and I think Scot's onto something with his theory.
This just goes to show you how subjective all this virtual introspection is.
I'm sure you realize that there is a contingent of people who would hang blizzard out for the crows to pick on because of their mega-game?
At some point people are going to have to realize that SOMEONE is having fun with these games regardless of their personal feelings.
So you think wow has mojo? good for you. As you should. Just remember that all these games that people are pointing to as being failures might actually be what others are looking for in a game.
If they were actually what others are looking for in a game, they wouldn't be failures. I think they are what some marketting "expert" thinks will make them a wad of cash with less invested in good development.
And what is a failure? If you take WoW out of the equation there really aren't a lot of mmo's that break the 200k mark.
Quite frankly, if they can pay their bills, attend to game development and have a player base I don't really see them as a failure.
The only failures are the games that have closed down. And even in that respect one might see the hand of the corporation just saying "you didn't bring in the money we wanted" (I'm looking at you NC Soft).
But actual failures? I mean DAoC is still running and I highly doubt there more than 100k players let alone 200k. Last I looked the entirety of their servers not counting the pve server was about 1000 or so players per evening. That's between all their servers. But they still develope the game and there are still players.
So sure, an individual might think that a particular game is a failure and he/she would have every right to as it is his/her taste. But I'm not sure I've seen many actual failures.
If people are playing them and the game is open then it is a success. Players have just skewed their idea of success.
I constantly see players decrying devs for creating games in the likeness of wow in order to garner huge sub numbers. Yet if a game has 90-200k subs and doens't have wow numbers they consider it a failure.
It's just feeding the monster in my opinion.
You used the word failure to begin with, and said that these games might simply be what others are looking for. I was simply pointing out that this statement appears to contradict itself.
How do I classify failure? Well, I could list a bunch of games that have closed because no one would play them. I'd probably start there. Massive server closures and plummetting subscription rates would be other indicators to me that all is not well. Games with horrific launches, that generate more controversy than fun, would be on my list as well, especially those that have never recovered from the bad launch.
People won't touch these games, won't stay in these games, and/or they hate the games and the companies that make them. I'd say that's a fair definition of failure from my point of view. I've seen a lot of this lately, and I think Scot's onto something with his theory.
That's true, I suppose I was equating the term "lose their mojo" with the idea that they were failures. And with that said when the topic of Blizzard was mentioned it seemed interesting to say they haven't lost their mojo when many people would burn wow and its dev's at the stake.
As far as failures I would of course agree with your first statement.
I'm unsure if I would agree with the second regarding plummetting subs and server closures. I know, on the surface it would seem to make more sense to consider these games failures. But I think there is a trend of large numbers of players going to a game, checking it out, realizing it is not their type of game and leaving.
Unfortunatley the game company has to add servers because if these players stay then of course they are going to need a home. But many of these games really should only appeal to smaller crowds. For instance, let's say that a cool looking permadeath game came. All of its features seemed great but of course they had permadeath. You might get a large group of people checking it out only for them to realize that permadeath was never really their cup of tea. So they leave. subs go down servers have to be merged. However, there is a group of people who are clamoring for permadeath. They are perfectly happy to stay and play this game as it is the game that they have been looking for.
I would say that the initial influx of players was more a fluke and had the game company not needed to add all those servers at launch they might be looked at as a successful niche game.
Controversial games "might" be failures. I mean, Dark Fall had a very controversial launch but I can't say that was a failure. Neither was AoC. Vanguard might be considered a failure because even though there are many players standing around looking in and saying that it's the best pve game on the market, no one wants to go in because there are few people there. If no one goes in then there will always be few people there.
For me it's hard to tell with Warhammer. They don't have the servers they once had but there are quite a few people in T4 and a decent amount in T1 (because of the trial no doubt). They seem to be enjoying the game and seem dedicated.
So my thought with them is that it was never clear as to what type of game they were going to be. On top of that people thought they were going to be the spiritual sucessor to DAoC which of course they are not. So in their case I would say they failed to reach out to the correct audience, drew in a huge amount of people who probably would never have played the game. This is not to say they didn't have thier problems but many of those problems were minor or silly bugs and most of those from what I can see are fixed.
I sometimes think that games "lose thier mojo" (in the correct spirit of the thread and not my mistake of counting it "failure") because the deves don't have a clear idea on developing the game over the course of years. So they lose their way just adding things. My opinon is that this happened to Lineage 2 as well as LOTRO.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Excellent post OP
Posts like this often make me wonder, why is it that so many literate and educated people cannot spell the word "lose" in a header?
But on a more serious note, what are you on about?
The "loss" of mojo, assumes that MMORPG's ever had any, in fact with the singular exception of WoW almost all Western MMO's cater for a niche market of punters, many of whom bleat about any minor tweak to a game's dynamic no matter how irrelevant it is in the scale of things.
Subscription fees and game shops deter millions from entering the world of these games in the first place, apart from Guild Wars there's not much real F2P content out there and many others game to get away from people not to share an experience. So it's a miracle that this market survives given the complexities of delivering a reasonably interesting game that you can drop in and out of, along with all the others who play, and still deliver some sort of coherent reason for playing.
The one thing I miss most in MMO universes is the chance to be a hero of any kind, the gains are smaller, more systematic and less big WOW! than I usually demand. WoW is fun because it's cartoon fantasy and doesn't involve any deep immersion for me, it's a bit like a very complex version of Minesweeper, lots of repetitive action for little pay off, but it does clear my head and it is prettier than Minesweeper.
When you look at the demand for games on consoles it's clear that people love to play games, the GTA franchise has clearly underscored that by outgrossing top movies, MMORPG's aren't even close to that rterritory. It's a genre generally run on the love of those who support it, most MMO's aren't profitable concerns they cater to a group of people and hope to pay the wage bill.
Until they become more accessible and attract a less hard-core crowd they will always be hit and miss with not a lot of long staying high quality titles. Because the money is always going to say, sell a few hundred thousand boxes, keep a 100K subscribers? Stuff that who's got Rockstar's number I want to buy a slice of billions...
How did MMO’s lose their Mojo?
They didn't.
In the early days of automobiles, people would run out of their houses to look at the new fangled contraptions going down the road. This doesn't happen today.
Cars used to break down every ten miles, flat tire or something else. People put up with it.
MMOs have gone from gee wiz this is new and cool, to 'is it fun to play?'
The bloom is off the rose.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Of 5 MMO's that have near 1million or more subscribers...the ones that make the list are WoW, Aion, Lineage, Lineage 2 and Runescape.
Aion is failing, Lineage and Lineage 2 have been strong, but Lineage 2 had its huge problems (bots, ebay, grind) that never made it a success in North America. Nonetheless even NCsoft fired the team that made Lineage and Lineage 2 before Aion, and Aion is a dull and contentless game destined to fall. (That team is the one making TERA).
While WoW might be rather easy, the hardmode content really isnt...I dont have a huge beef with WoW, I mean I enjoyed EVE, L2, GW, etc... all more than WoW, but WoW is still not a bad game, its missing a few meaningful goals, like PvP being confined to meaningless and impersonal minigames and arenas, but overall it is still fairly decent.
The problem is games trying to emulate WoW, but releasing with a fraction of its content. Yes WoW didnt have content when it released, but there was no WoW when WoW released. Dev's need to know this, and when they implement some instancing or raid systems, there'd damn well better be enough so you can progress through them and be able to different ones whenever you want. If you release a game with 2 or 3 isntances, and your players end up repeating them over, over, over and over again with nothing else to do, it doesn't really take a degree to figure out they'll get bored and quit.
ooooo excellent post and completely correct.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
if you think MMOs have lost their mojo it means you've out grown them and it's time to get a real life
I disagree completely with the automobile analogy. I still love cars, I enjoy driving mine every time I get in it, I enjoy playing racing games (iRacing), etc... I've been playing hockey for almost 20 years, I still love it, play it when I can and play NHL games online.
Your analogy is like saying video games are old now, they lost their flare, its not the case.
No.
What he is saying is that when Cars were first on the road they had problems. but people overlooked those problems because they were new.
There was a time even into the 70's when you would worry about your car starting in the cold.
Nowadays we don't put up with the problems that our earlier car lovers had to put up with. At least not on the same scale. We just wouldn't.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Lose there mojo?
Why yeh maybe for some or most here on forum.
I play sinds 99 started with ac1 then ac2 lineage2 after i stop with lineage2 i tryed for very short time wow ok that was for me a mistake terible game, then few years later AoC also terible game at launch that was anyway.
I was already sinds 2003 waiting for Darkfall, so finally in march i start playing and not have stopped still playing almost a year everyday at least 6 hours or more.
I say no mmo's dont have lost there MOJO Darkfall is a great MMO ive found my pleasure back again with Darkfall!!!
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
For some they do for prolly majority not but OP is wrong indeed.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Good read here. I play console and PC games. I enjoy both of them for different reasons. The PC games seem a bit deeper and more complex, so when I'm in the mood for that, that's where I look for fun. My favourite console games are shooters and sports games. They're fun, but they're very, very simple. Sometimes simple and fun is exactly what I'm looking for.
Now, enter the MMO. I agree that some devs (or their CEOs) don't really have a vision for their game. Some go from revamp to revamp (complex, simple, then back to complex) looking for the magic formula. The thing is, I don't want to play a game that is constantly changing. I don't want last month's progress to be thrown off the bus because of some new guy's "bright idea."
It's not just instability in the game that is such a pain though, the problems now include the business model. Take Free Realms for example. Some people probably wanted to play that game because it's free. Well, I guess that's tough luck because now it isn't anymore. The free trial stops at level 4 or 5 (I forget which exactly, sorry).
Some people probably enjoyed EQ and StarWars Galaxies partly because of the business model--straight monthly subscription. Well, that's changed for them now as well. Now some of the best items, buffs or xp boosters are avaible at the RMT shop. Stuff like this used to all be included in the subscription.
Cryptic seems to be following along the same path. Respecs in their previous games (CoH/CoV) were part of enjoyable quests. The respec trials were some of the funnest content in the CoX games. Now, with Champions, they made respecs avaiable at the RMT shop. There was even some controversy about whether or not they would also be available ingame.
NCsoft, started with RMT for fluff items only when they took sole possession of CoX. Now they're also selling respecs, and the new RMT costumes come equipped with unique superpowers.
I'm back mainly to enjoying console and PC games that are not MMOs. All the instability in terms of the gameplay and the ever changing business model is too much of a pain in the arse. I was playing MMOs to relax and have some fun. I don't enjoy paying for half-broken, ever-changing stuff, that is becoming more and more expensive via layers and layers of additional fees.
Thanks for the replies, it is good to see players are thinking about MMO’s, what has gone wrong and why.
I only concentrated on two related reasons in my OP; the change from creatives at the helm of gaming companies to corporates and the larger companies eating up smaller ones.
I don’t see that as the only reasons for MMO’s losing their mojo, but my post was big enough as it was. Also I had not seen these ideas thought through and backed up with evidence, so I saw a need to expand and support those reasons.
MMO’s certainly need businessmen, but having them in charge is a mistake, the drive and ethos of a MMO should stem from game designers, programmers, artists and writers. But corporates have a very important part to play in MMO’s don’t get me wrong. It is when I hear of CEO’s gloating about the way heads of creative sections are now thinking in corporate terms, being concerned more about their spreedsheets than the quality of their sections output. This is when you realise the influence of the business side, driven by the CEO is going too far.
Below I look at your counter arguments and all the other elements of where it went wrong, and try to put them in context:
Thanks for the elaboration about SCi, Drossrocket. I did realise it was part of the Squre Enix chain of takeovers but wanted to cut down on post length. I found non western companies harder to track, and it was more difficult to find out the interests/education of company founders. Where I dispute you conclusions is that every gaming company does not get taken over because it is ailing. When a large company is doing well, it looks round for other companies to acquire and strengthen its market position. Ailing companies are often avoided because they are ailing, but what you are saying does happen a lot. I just can’t believe that all these gaming companies were burnt out and ready to fold unless they were ‘rescued’. I think many were acquired, had their titles and teams cherry picked and the rest were cancelled and sacked.
Nikoliath raises the ‘we are jaded’ argument. I think we are, and we do see old MMO’s through rather rosey spectacles. But I don’t think that is sufficient for so much disillusionment. It is possible to realise we are jaded and take account of that in our appraisals. The ‘we are jaded’ argument applies to every area of our lives. Is anyone out there claiming that books or films have gone downhill as much as MMO’s in the last ten to fifteen years? They have lost more than their bloom as another poster suggested, we are enthusiasts, we love the genre, it would take more than that to make us so cynical.
As Kyleran says WoW certainly set a template, which caused a far more linear set of MMO’s to follow it. But I see the problems that stem from WoW as being just another example of the take over of corporate culture. Those early founders were not looking over their shoulders and designing from one template; WoW’s success would not have stopped them from trying something new. But when every company is being run by people with a background in Johnson and Johnson or Pepsi Cola, how can you expect anything ground breaking?
The argument that MMO’s are still selling well so there is not a problem falls down rather badly. MMO’s launch and then are not able to sustain a decent player base. Some close down, this is not a picture of a thriving genre. I do think the lack of success in the last two years of MMO launches is a symptom of this, but the word failure is over used.
Thanks for pointing out the typo ascroobla, I make far too many! But I see your recipe to fix MMO’s as more of a poison. Catering to casual play, I don’t want to pay types, is not a good business plan.
People tend to see the present as forever, ignore the past and think that nothing ever changes. We have seen great change in MMO’s and solo games, much for the worse. This trend will gather pace, games becoming more commercialised, generic and dumbed down. But the graphics will get better, preserving the illusion of a dynamic, innovative industry.
I don't know, Scot.
First of all, good thread.
But I don't know about the illusion being preserved. I think among our kind of heavier gamers, the bubble has burst. But most are still looking around for what caused the noise. We've noticed the sameness, and people are looking and unhappy with the new offerings.
The illusion is shifting now. It's starting to not maintain it's visage. It's moving towards another new crowd, just as WoW brought in millions of new MMO gamers, those who haven't been around long enough yet to wonder "is there nothing more?"
It's shifting to the even more casual new gamers, looking to the facebook crowd for the new source. This may be a good thing, in the end. The current static creation mentality won't dominate the market, and new and more imaginative types will get a foothold. From those, a new direction will arise and give us more of everything else, things gone missing in MMOs. Look at FarmVille, can we see that that would be an excellent addition to a full scale sandbox MMO?
Once upon a time....
The main focus of MMOs used to be about participating and being immersed within a virtual world with other players.
Today, the main focus of MMOs is about grinding quests and instanced dungeon content while chasing the level and gear treadmill. The gameworld only serves as a backdrop for this.