To each his own. I'm sorry you can't seem to find what you want in MMOs today, but not all MMOs should be the way you say either.
More diversified classes? Sure, sign me up for that. As long as each and every one of them is viable in PvE.
PvP - Don't care for it in the slightest. This goes for RvR or any kind of battlegrounds you can think of. I have always and will continue to ignore every "duel?" that's offered me. If pvp is not in an MMO I'm playing, I'll never miss it. And if it is, keep it the hell away from interfering with my PvE experience in every way; no class changes, no ganking, no killing NPCs I need, etc.
Story? I love story. Story is the number 1 reason I'll be playing Bioware's new game.
Harsh penalties? Yawn. When I die in an single player game, I reload at the last save, as fully intact as I was when I saved. I like that. I'd like to have the same feature in an MMO, but a minor to non-existant penalty is as close as I can hope for. I see harsh penalties as nothing more than a timesink.
Is my opinion more right than yours? No, it's just right for me. The only thing that's "wrong" with your post is saying that MMO's suck if they don't meet your definition. Good luck in your search.
Be careful, you'll probably be called a "noob" or a "carebear" or an "idiot" and be told to go back to WoW and stick to console games and then something about single player chat rooms etc. etc. etc.
Dissenting opinion is not tolerated!
Hey! I resemble that remark!(fluffs CareBear fur). ^^
I've "gone back to" WoW over and over again... Thats how I ended up with four 80's and some 60's. Then I take a vacation and play something else for a few months. I treat these games as a hobby. They are entertainment to me. When they start being like work, I move on.
Far as I know, DAOC, EQ1, AC haven't shut down yet....servers are still up. Go play them. Easy solution rather than ranting.
Thank you so much for making a fool of yourself. Why both coming into a thread like this with absolutely no knowledge of the subject? If we could go back to those games, we would.
I dont' know why you think it's a fool comment. I can go to the lineage 1 forum in my small country Taiwan of 2million people and see 2000 post counts a day. And as far as I know lineage 1 have been out for 12 years.
I dont' deny I'm trying to make a somewhat sarcastic comment. But you guys don't really see the problem. It's the life span of the MMO.
All you guys wants is for developer to keep making "new" and fun games for you. But you forget how fast you guys desert your current game to move to the next game.
The only thing the OP see is AC and DAOC is fun. What he don't see is how fast he quit those games for other games.
I stayed with Dark Age of Camelot for 5 years. I've tried multiple times to go back, but it isn't the same game at all. I can't go back to DAoC, just like people can't go back to pre NGE SWG, or pre Trammel Ultima Online. The games NO LONGER EXIST. That's why its a fool comment. The games in their current state are unsupported/changed from what they once were. That's why people left DAoC, because it stopped being the same game that 250 thousand people were subscribed to. Once it totally changed focus into a PvE grinding game, everyone left. We can't go back. How is this hard to understand?
So the problem with all those game is developer are too dumb to change it just so people'll quit.
And the developer are also too dumb to support a game which makes them money?
I always thought the developer have no choice to change because people are quiting. And they stop supporting it because it no longer makes them money.
I'm wrong I guess. I'll move away and stop posting here.
The thing is that you guys who are agreeing with the OP are only a majority on these forums. In reality most mmo players do not want that type of gameplay. They are perfectly happy with the current crop of games and what they give. Most game developers want to make a lot of money just like Blizzard developers do. They want a very successful game that will be played by milions. They will not achieve that dream by custom tailoring a game to your needs. 1million subs > 50k subs any day of the week. That's just how MMO's have evolved.
amen games are all so stupid now its almost an insult to my intelligence to play with the same lines of bs from each sucessive publisher offering the next wow clone.
Far as I know, DAOC, EQ1, AC haven't shut down yet....servers are still up. Go play them. Easy solution rather than ranting.
Thank you so much for making a fool of yourself. Why both coming into a thread like this with absolutely no knowledge of the subject? If we could go back to those games, we would.
I dont' know why you think it's a fool comment. I can go to the lineage 1 forum in my small country Taiwan of 2million people and see 2000 post counts a day. And as far as I know lineage 1 have been out for 12 years.
I dont' deny I'm trying to make a somewhat sarcastic comment. But you guys don't really see the problem. It's the life span of the MMO.
All you guys wants is for developer to keep making "new" and fun games for you. But you forget how fast you guys desert your current game to move to the next game.
The only thing the OP see is AC and DAOC is fun. What he don't see is how fast he quit those games for other games.
I stayed with Dark Age of Camelot for 5 years. I've tried multiple times to go back, but it isn't the same game at all. I can't go back to DAoC, just like people can't go back to pre NGE SWG, or pre Trammel Ultima Online. The games NO LONGER EXIST. That's why its a fool comment. The games in their current state are unsupported/changed from what they once were. That's why people left DAoC, because it stopped being the same game that 250 thousand people were subscribed to. Once it totally changed focus into a PvE grinding game, everyone left. We can't go back. How is this hard to understand?
So the problem with all those game is developer are too dumb to change it just so people'll quit.
And the developer are also too dumb to support a game which makes them money?
I always thought the developer have no choice to change because people are quiting. And they stop supporting it because it no longer makes them money.
I'm wrong I guess. I'll move away and stop posting here.
I can hardly even follow what you're saying, it doesn't make any sense.
The developers introduced big changes to their games that the people didn't like, so they left, and instead of fixing the problems, the developers moved on to make WoW clones.
The NGE was introduced into SWG because they thought it'd bring in new subs. Instead it killed the game. They could change it back, but they don't. Same for most other games.
The thing is that you guys who are agreeing with the OP are only a majority on these forums. In reality most mmo players do not want that type of gameplay. They are perfectly happy with the current crop of games and what they give. Most game developers want to make a lot of money just like Blizzard developers do. They want a very successful game that will be played by milions. They will not achieve that dream by custom tailoring a game to your needs. 1million subs > 50k subs any day of the week. That's just how MMO's have evolved.
And yet no WoW clone has broken the 1 million mark, and many of them were MASSIVE failures. Maybe the devs should aim at a more realistic 500k niche.
I am sorta glad though. I think that if MMOs kept progressing and having new interesting features to create dynamic immersive worlds then I probably would have never done all the things I have done in the last 5 years... Instead I would have been playing MMOs. But lucky for me they have all been trashy themeparks and I haven't been able to enjoy them since SWG CU/NGE.
Thanks for your long well written rant!
And from a business perspective all these game companies are fools. WoW isnt successful because of its formula, although that is part of it. It is successful because it is popular and it has the funding for marketing and expansion that has lead to a positive feedback loop of more and more players... It is the same thing with sites like Facebook and Twitter. Hell its even the same as programs like Microsoft Word... Theres not really much that make these things 'better'... That is just where everyone is and that gives the company money to make the game even bigger which in turn gets more people in. Its a monopoly-making feedback loop. Any developer who thinks they can emulate this are FOOLS.
The thing for me is this. I have played just about every game described here unless it is very PvP-centric. Pre-trammel UO was the exception, I guess, though I didn't really know I was playing a PvP game then. I thought I was playing a game with rich crafting/fishing/housing/treasure hunting. Sure, I got ganked a few times, but I created my "bad guy" later on in the game and went pirating on the high seas, but I digress. What I want is a combination of many of the old school games with a sprinkling of the new. I've got a week of vacation coming up...maybe putting this all down on paper would do me some good.
1st, it must be skill based. Some combination of AC/UO/SWG where you could pick and choose how you create your character and must make hard choices. I absolutely hated the fact that they made SWG one character per server, but understand why they did it. It wasn't because of drive space (like they originally stated), but rather to make us make choices. Of course, I had three accounts to counter that, but that is another discussion.
2nd, it has to have a fun PvP element, but not forced. As I stated earlier, I'm not a PvP'er, but many are and it really helps to drive the economy. Either something like SWG or RvR like DAoC.
3rd, it has to have the depth of crafting that SWG had. UO was good, SWG was great in that the materials you used to create your goods mattered a bunch and had very specific stats on them. The hard part here is balance and restricting how good those components are so you don't make players too powerful for the PvE content.
4th step is make the mob's you fight in PvE have some depth and back story. For me, Asheron's Call did this better than anyone. Olthoi, mattys, tuskers, ash gromnies and tons of others really made the world seem rich and added tremendously to the immersiveness of the game. I haven't had this discussion much with other old-schoolers, but I don't think I'm on an island here.
5th is something that the game shouldn't be and that is based on an IP. Too many people to answer to and too many restrictions.
6th is housing. Nothing in modern games compares to my houses in UO and SWG. No instancing. No apartments. Yes to vendors and 1000's of ways to decorate the place.
7th (and this is where I may lose some of you) is SOME questing and instanced dungeons. Although I long for those old-school games, I still think that the dungeon finder is an amazing innovation in WoW. Surely it can be implemented without making it "all about the loot." Blend it in with the other factors and make it ONE way to better yourselves. Not the ONLY way.
8th is beatiful graphics. This is subjective, but I'd point to AoC as an example. To me, that is one beautiful game.
I'm probably missing a few steps, but you get the idea. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. There are enough good parts that have already been invented, we just need them mashed together into a cohesive, original game that makes you choose which of the 20 things that you want to accomplish you are going to work on tonight.
That's all I've got and sorry for the giant wall o' text.
Let's take a stab at an exercise in debate, since you conveniently sidestepped the biggest obstacle to your reasoning:
- You will counter the validity of Project 1999
- I will support the assertion of 'people'.
Only once we have both done our half will we pursue further. We will wait, as it were, for the other to finish.
I'll start:
'People'. I could put down a claim of 20 screen names offhand I've seen make this direct proposition on MMORPG. More if I cared to consider other sites with which I've had extensive history (EJ, FFXI guild, several WoW guilds...). This is 1 man's sample. A proper industry poll would obviously yield far great numbers. But to 'what extent'?
1. We will never know, until it is actually done. Reference 'models changing only when finances go red'. It won't be done, until the existing model fails.
2. It's already happening. Reference again: Project 1999. The time, as well as personal cash, and the community's role (not necessarily directly financial in nature) all represent more than a simple 15/mo. Well beyond it, if all the experts involved were billed at industry wages, and the community directly partook in the financial system.
3. Free trade. This is my catch-all. Premiums. Is there a need for a cross-stitched white wifebeater marked at $120 a pop? Nope! But wait! After that Twilight poster came out, I personally can vouch for a distributor operating out of her home that has shipped more than 30 authentic units (exact replicas) worldwide. Do people want a 'niche game'? Absolutely. Can it be made 'financially viable' through markups? Absolutely. Apple does it compared to PCs. Lambo does it compared to Honda. And the MMORPG industry is different in what way? That last one was a rhetoric.
So there we have it. 'People' has been supported. I'll kindly wait for your refute of 'Project 1999'.
Worldserver Name:
Project 1999 - Classic Legit PVE Progression
Server Version:
0.8.0
Server Status:
UP
Players Online:
508
Average Players:
412
Max Players:
776
Congrats to all 776 of you. That is actually quite impressive for a free 3rd party server I'm not lying or joking. But it's not like this is being developed by a dev studio. And it's not like they are funded by anything other then donations or volunteer programming work at the hands of a few.
And UO has had free private shards for 10 years. WoW has had them for 4-5. Many other games like Lineage 2 have had free shards for a while.
So your point is? I could probably find you 10 UO and WoW and L2 free shards with higher populations.
Though I'll say again I'm GLAD this project exists and can help support the MMO needs of a segment of the community.
Worldserver Name:
Project 1999 - Classic Legit PVE Progression
Server Version:
0.8.0
Server Status:
UP
Players Online:
508
Average Players:
412
Max Players:
776
Statistics are fun! 776 max indeed. Which represents what- 1/500th? of the EQ playerbase at the time. Considering the monumental task of going about it legit (of which, UO, WOW, L2 shards are all illegit) and the extreme amount of coordination, focus, donations... shoot- just getting wind of project 1999 takes 'being in the community' a decade after the launch.
What's the point? The point is the market is absolutely there. Where you might point to fraud (illegit shards), here is a living, breathing classic version of a game entirely scrapped together by enthousiasts who've taken painstaking care to not piss anyone off legally (hi SOE!) in the process.
What, for example let's deal with a hypothetical, if SOE instead of saying 'oh that's interesting' with regards to Project 1999 but instead supporting the cause themselves- funding, media exposure etc? One can only speculate, but if you have 1/500th of the community that existed a decade ago grassrooting this up, you'd prolly pull easy 50x that amount if it had coorporate backing- without batting an eye. We'd be back in the 50k player range. Oh damn, 50k people on 15 bucks a month equates to 9 million annually. Looks profitable to me.
Would it happen? Clearly not. SOE has taken the game in a seperate direction and it would be direct competition with their own EQ business model (not that EQ2 didn't botch it up to begin with). You'd easily be able to roll over many of the current EQ players into a 'classic server' that had coorporate backing. WoW players cry for this every day, but it doesn't get recognized for the same reasons. A lot of people play a title currently wishing it was still in a previous stage, went a different direction from that stage.
Honestly, 1/500th of a community in its prime coming together uncoordinated outside of themselves, fronting undeniably more than 15/mo to basically put together a game in its former glory (rather than simply playing it for that sum), completely by word of mouth... it's almost unfathomable. It shows not only is the market screaming for a Lambo to be made, but if no one is going to buck up bronco, by George, the market will do it itself.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc. We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be. So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away. - MMO_Doubter
Originally posted by MMOrUS As soon as the OP started to complain that everyone was the same in MMO's such as WoW I just had to laugh, did you REALLY play AC? the game was a cookie cutter game from the start, and you played on a PvP server for heavens sake, it was THE ONLY WAY TO WIN, if you didn't have the cookie cutter PvP build you where a walking corpse, how does having the same build as everyone else make it more superior to todays MMO's? We've just replaced the skill choices with gear choices.
Hey, not true, you didn't need a cookie cutter build at all to win in Asheron's Call PvP thanks to the ability to dodge and the healing capacity you had. I for example had a mage when everyone was doing the Og/Battlemage bullshit, and I was spec in Mana Conversion and nothing else with just the standard magic schools and did just fine. Consider that even today, there's like one guy whose spec in sword, magic defense, and war magic with like 100 strength, focus, and endurance, and he does very well considering how spread his skills are. That free form character system simply allows players to play how they want to play and be successful at it. Yeah of course you're going to be screwed if you pick up war magic and start with 10 focus/self, but noone would do that.
However I so glad that the genre moved on, I remember countless hrs of sitting at one spawn point to lvl up, questing was pointless, the rewards where crap and the exp non-existant, so you had to find that sweet spot, and don't get me started on those hell lvls, after a week camping in CoM I died to a disconnect and lost a weeks worth of exp as I could not get an exp rez for love nor money.
Although you're talking about everquest here, I'd like to point out that in AC you also spent a lot of time repeatedly killing monsters. However, being on a PvP server made this way more exciting. (no xp loss on death, just a temporary penalty called vitae which was reduced with xp)
The old MMO's had alot of frustrations, ALOT, and the forums where full of "What if's", well those what if's eventually found there way into the modern MMO's we see and play now, and I'm thankful the genre has moved on, from games that had brought in a few hundred thousand we now have hundreds of MMO's that has the support of millions.
I think the problem the op is outlining is that the new generation of gamers are absolutely retarded and incapable of doing anything that's even remotely challenging, and thus most modern MMORPGs are easy as hell.
The thing is that you guys who are agreeing with the OP are only a majority on these forums. In reality most mmo players do not want that type of gameplay. They are perfectly happy with the current crop of games and what they give. Most game developers want to make a lot of money just like Blizzard developers do. They want a very successful game that will be played by milions. They will not achieve that dream by custom tailoring a game to your needs. 1million subs > 50k subs any day of the week. That's just how MMO's have evolved.
And yet no WoW clone has broken the 1 million mark, and many of them were MASSIVE failures. Maybe the devs should aim at a more realistic 500k niche.
Well, there can be any number of reasons for that. Look at AoC and Warhammer for examples. Both rushed out, with little attention to detail(little polish), cut features(just so they could launch faster), and poor design and integration. That tends to lead to spikes at launch, and then major problems with retention. What is needed is good design, and enough time to polish the features. But the time element is variable, which means that the money types panic and start making ultimatiums. Which of course makes things worse, with predictable results.
It is hard not to agree with the OP - these are very accurate observations regarding the MMORPG. I think the simple explanation is that the MMORPG has become a form of entertainment that exists in the mainstream. Back in the days of UO, and even when FFXI and WoW came out, the MMORPG was a relatively small, niche market. The stakes were smaller, the customer base more specific, and the development exacting and explorative - you might call it the golden age of the MMORPG, the age we all miss so much. The trouble is that with the paradigm shift over the past 15 years making personal computers common place, and the popularity and accessability of wildly successful titles like WoW, the MMORPG is no longer a niche market, but instead has become a form of mainstream enterntainment.
You were once considered a video game geek for playing MMO's, now it is widely recognized as a normal form of entertainment. MMORPGs used to grow by word of mouth and small advertising campaigns - now you have Mr. T and Ozzy Osborne shoving WoW down your throat on TV. A tight nit, sophisticated and discerning group has been watered down by the teaming masses of our largely retarded, consumer based society. In a sense, we have been zerged by casual gamers - they outnumber us probably something like 100 to 1. This drastically changes the target demographic; publishers want to appeal to the largest share of customers as possible, and now that the majority of the customer base is dumb, these games have been progessively dumbed-down over the years. Developers have to make games that will keep the largest share of drooling idiots playing and paying for the longest period of time. The truth is, this happens with everything - something will come about, have a dedicated and independent group of people who are into it, and if that something can be made profitable, it will be taken over by "big business" and made "accessable" to the rest of the population. This is exactly what has happened to the MMORPG, they aren't making these games for us anymore, they are making them for everyone. It used to be just us playing WoW, now we have to play the game with these other morons and their goddamn brain dead kids, hence the complaint that the WoW community has gone to hell. Of course it has, it's full of all the idiots that have jumped into computer gaming over the last 5 years.
Now the real gamers are banging our heads together, trying to figure out why games keep getting worse, when it's simply the result of a completely inevitable socio-economic cycle that happens to everything. So many brilliant and sophisticated movie scripts never see the light of day because film producers know that 90% of the slobbering idiots in the audience don't have the attention span to keep up. Instead you got rediculous folks like Michael Bay making fortunes off of complete drivel (and ruining a precious piece of childhood nostalgia in the process). The good news is that indipendent film companies come about, things like the sundance film festival come about, reminding people that movies can be cathartic and inspiring rather than just entertaining. The same will happen with MMOs in time. We will get our independence back when the developers have recovered their own, and they will be able to once more offer the high quality online gaming that got us hooked in the first place, while the moronic masses busy themselves with the newest WoW expansion, the newest hero class, and Transformers 3, 4, 5 add infinitum.
I do kind of agree with some of the points the OP is getting at, and i do still have my strongest MMO memories from games like AC, in particular The Myth Of Soma which was doing similar things, even earlier.
I don't necessarily require some developer to dig up that same old style of play, but in the past few years i havn't played a game where i have felt like i was stepping into the unknown, experiencing nwe things etc.
Maybe that's a personal thing though more than something to do with MMO's, maybe i'm just burned out.
If FFXIV fails it's highly likely i'll be taking a long break from the MMORPG market, possibly i'll nip back to give Guild Wars 2 a go because i neve did get into the original early on. Other than that though i'm not interested at the moment.
I'm an "old skool" MMORPG gamer and I won't say that the early games were perfect, and I do think many of the changes incorporated into MMOPRG"s today are improvements in the genre.
Unfortunately, it seems they had to throw the baby out with the bathwater in order to draw in the more casual player and simplify or remove completely some of the core gameplay mechanics that I (and many others) really enjoyed.
No one really enjoys forced downtime between fights, (especially if they are soloing) but I certainly understand that it was not put in the early games be just a time sink, it existed to encourge players who were grouping to form social bonds between them.
Long travel times have their place as well, but acheiving the right balance can be a challenge. Doesn't mean modern games have to remove them entirely, but that is the tact most games are taking these days.
Good crafting mechanics designed to provide the best items in the game (rather than dropped items in dungeons) seems to have gone completely out the window these days, so in a game like WOW its either raid or go home. It didn't have to be that way, the game could have been designed so that both crafters and dropped items were similar and people would have had a choice to fight for their gear, or earn it in other ways.
That's what seems to be really going away, the choice to do other things besides fight constantly all the time, and I feel MMORPG's are poorer for it.
I know, I'm part of the niche world and out of touch with the mainstream and no major developer is likely to ever create a game to my liking again.
But as someone else said, doesn't mean I have to like it, doesn't mean I'll change my tastes in how I enjoy my MMO's (thank God for EVE) and it certainly doesn't mean I'll stop subjecting readers on this forum to my rants on the subject.
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
Basically, I call Savage 2 progressive, cause its “just” like modern MMO's, except that I dont have to worry about some bloke entering the battle having superior equipment than me cause he lives with his mother and has no job. Cause he spent 400 hours raiding compared to my 200.
Your rant would be more entertaining if you didn't contradict yourself quite so much. What you describe above - having to raid 400 hours and have no life - is exactly what he old games were about and the main reason that new games have gone in the direction that they have. The people who used to live in basements grew up, got jobs and lives and now - in the new crop of MMOs - the raiding is more dependant on skill and co-ordination than on spending 400 hours. If you missed this, you have to be blind or maybe you just played the wrong one of the "new" MMOs.
I agree that the games have gone away from innovation and creativity. But as far as being more accessible and not requiring a lifelong commitment in order to accomplish something, they've actually gone in the right direction. If you want to go back to the world of camping for 10 hours, then having 200 people on auto-pilot pound away at a mob for another 10 hours, all for 1 item, you can keep that s**t.
But hey, the good news is that most of those old games are still available and you can still play them if that's what you enjoy. For example, I enjoy SWG, so I just went back to playing it (despite it being a sad watered-down shell of its former self).
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
I do very much agree with Kyleran that the original MMOs were not perfect but they did have certain elements, elements that gave those games "soul."
I do think that modern MMOs were very successful at removing the bits we didn't like from the older games, but they did that and failed to also transport that same "soul" into the newer generations.
We lost a lot of crap that the old school games were filled with and were given some really great and innovative things instead, which I think is good and has moved the genre forward.
But we did lose a lot of the "soul" that made MMORPGs what they were.
So how do you recapture that same soul, the essence of the classic MMORPGs, and still include some of the advancements the genre has made?
Your rant would be more entertaining if you didn't contradict yourself quite so much. What you describe above - having to raid 400 hours and have no life - is exactly what he old games were about and the main reason that new games have gone in the direction that they have. The people who used to live in basements grew up, got jobs and lives and now - in the new crop of MMOs - the raiding is more dependant on skill and co-ordination than on spending 400 hours. If you missed this, you have to be blind or maybe you just played the wrong one of the "new" MMOs.
I agree that the games have gone away from innovation and creativity. But as far as being more accessible and not requiring a lifelong commitment in order to accomplish something, they've actually gone in the right direction. If you want to go back to the world of camping for 10 hours, then having 200 people on auto-pilot pound away at a mob for another 10 hours, all for 1 item, you can keep that s**t.
let the so called "publishers" know that 500k is an impressive success
getting rid of limited character-customization
return of deep and impressive gameplay
making sure you have to eat, drink while resting in order to regain health, mana if you aren't a healer
having to read the spellbook to load your spells
bring back the 72men raids
return of risk vs reward: more challenge and risk -> better reward
no effort no reward, no gain remove instances remove officially forums most are just filled with spoiled whinners so useless brinb back xp lost in combination with corpse runs remove: bind of equip/pickup remove fast paced combat be honest with your audience and stick with them! bring back intense crafting rewared group players instead of egomaniac soloers the more classes the better: tank, healer, dd, supporter, scout, pet classes (hybrid) bring back life events remove autostats: I want to decide where I'M putting my points
I'm always amazed at people like this who argue in favor of timesinks and inconvenience.
- quests do not have to be braindead, quests can be a lot of fun.
- why remove automaps/minimaps? Even in pnp D&D, players drew maps as they went
- having to eat, drink, etc is fun how? How about having to sleep for at least 6 hours or go to the bathroom?
- read the spellbook? sounds like a huge disadvantage for being a caster and another pointless timesink
- 72 man raids? Hellllllllo lag.
- define 'deep and immersive gameplay'
- so, virtually unlimited character customization? That might be nigh impossible to program
- lost xp, corpse runs. More pointless timesinks. Making stuff take a lot longer does not equate to better
To each his own.
I'll borrow Arieste's quote here:
The definition of MMORPG exists and it's really not all that complicated. It requires a persistent world that 100+ players can connect to simultaneously and create a persistent character in. People seem to have a hard time understanding that there are different kinds of MMORPGs and that just because they don't like some of them, doesn't make them any less MMORPGs.
Comments
Hey! I resemble that remark!(fluffs CareBear fur). ^^
I've "gone back to" WoW over and over again... Thats how I ended up with four 80's and some 60's. Then I take a vacation and play something else for a few months. I treat these games as a hobby. They are entertainment to me. When they start being like work, I move on.
So the problem with all those game is developer are too dumb to change it just so people'll quit.
And the developer are also too dumb to support a game which makes them money?
I always thought the developer have no choice to change because people are quiting. And they stop supporting it because it no longer makes them money.
I'm wrong I guess. I'll move away and stop posting here.
The thing is that you guys who are agreeing with the OP are only a majority on these forums. In reality most mmo players do not want that type of gameplay. They are perfectly happy with the current crop of games and what they give. Most game developers want to make a lot of money just like Blizzard developers do. They want a very successful game that will be played by milions. They will not achieve that dream by custom tailoring a game to your needs. 1million subs > 50k subs any day of the week. That's just how MMO's have evolved.
amen games are all so stupid now its almost an insult to my intelligence to play with the same lines of bs from each sucessive publisher offering the next wow clone.
I can hardly even follow what you're saying, it doesn't make any sense.
The developers introduced big changes to their games that the people didn't like, so they left, and instead of fixing the problems, the developers moved on to make WoW clones.
The NGE was introduced into SWG because they thought it'd bring in new subs. Instead it killed the game. They could change it back, but they don't. Same for most other games.
And yet no WoW clone has broken the 1 million mark, and many of them were MASSIVE failures. Maybe the devs should aim at a more realistic 500k niche.
I agree with the OP.
I am sorta glad though. I think that if MMOs kept progressing and having new interesting features to create dynamic immersive worlds then I probably would have never done all the things I have done in the last 5 years... Instead I would have been playing MMOs. But lucky for me they have all been trashy themeparks and I haven't been able to enjoy them since SWG CU/NGE.
Thanks for your long well written rant!
And from a business perspective all these game companies are fools. WoW isnt successful because of its formula, although that is part of it. It is successful because it is popular and it has the funding for marketing and expansion that has lead to a positive feedback loop of more and more players... It is the same thing with sites like Facebook and Twitter. Hell its even the same as programs like Microsoft Word... Theres not really much that make these things 'better'... That is just where everyone is and that gives the company money to make the game even bigger which in turn gets more people in. Its a monopoly-making feedback loop. Any developer who thinks they can emulate this are FOOLS.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
The thing for me is this. I have played just about every game described here unless it is very PvP-centric. Pre-trammel UO was the exception, I guess, though I didn't really know I was playing a PvP game then. I thought I was playing a game with rich crafting/fishing/housing/treasure hunting. Sure, I got ganked a few times, but I created my "bad guy" later on in the game and went pirating on the high seas, but I digress. What I want is a combination of many of the old school games with a sprinkling of the new. I've got a week of vacation coming up...maybe putting this all down on paper would do me some good.
1st, it must be skill based. Some combination of AC/UO/SWG where you could pick and choose how you create your character and must make hard choices. I absolutely hated the fact that they made SWG one character per server, but understand why they did it. It wasn't because of drive space (like they originally stated), but rather to make us make choices. Of course, I had three accounts to counter that, but that is another discussion.
2nd, it has to have a fun PvP element, but not forced. As I stated earlier, I'm not a PvP'er, but many are and it really helps to drive the economy. Either something like SWG or RvR like DAoC.
3rd, it has to have the depth of crafting that SWG had. UO was good, SWG was great in that the materials you used to create your goods mattered a bunch and had very specific stats on them. The hard part here is balance and restricting how good those components are so you don't make players too powerful for the PvE content.
4th step is make the mob's you fight in PvE have some depth and back story. For me, Asheron's Call did this better than anyone. Olthoi, mattys, tuskers, ash gromnies and tons of others really made the world seem rich and added tremendously to the immersiveness of the game. I haven't had this discussion much with other old-schoolers, but I don't think I'm on an island here.
5th is something that the game shouldn't be and that is based on an IP. Too many people to answer to and too many restrictions.
6th is housing. Nothing in modern games compares to my houses in UO and SWG. No instancing. No apartments. Yes to vendors and 1000's of ways to decorate the place.
7th (and this is where I may lose some of you) is SOME questing and instanced dungeons. Although I long for those old-school games, I still think that the dungeon finder is an amazing innovation in WoW. Surely it can be implemented without making it "all about the loot." Blend it in with the other factors and make it ONE way to better yourselves. Not the ONLY way.
8th is beatiful graphics. This is subjective, but I'd point to AoC as an example. To me, that is one beautiful game.
I'm probably missing a few steps, but you get the idea. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. There are enough good parts that have already been invented, we just need them mashed together into a cohesive, original game that makes you choose which of the 20 things that you want to accomplish you are going to work on tonight.
That's all I've got and sorry for the giant wall o' text.
Statistics are fun! 776 max indeed. Which represents what- 1/500th? of the EQ playerbase at the time. Considering the monumental task of going about it legit (of which, UO, WOW, L2 shards are all illegit) and the extreme amount of coordination, focus, donations... shoot- just getting wind of project 1999 takes 'being in the community' a decade after the launch.
What's the point? The point is the market is absolutely there. Where you might point to fraud (illegit shards), here is a living, breathing classic version of a game entirely scrapped together by enthousiasts who've taken painstaking care to not piss anyone off legally (hi SOE!) in the process.
What, for example let's deal with a hypothetical, if SOE instead of saying 'oh that's interesting' with regards to Project 1999 but instead supporting the cause themselves- funding, media exposure etc? One can only speculate, but if you have 1/500th of the community that existed a decade ago grassrooting this up, you'd prolly pull easy 50x that amount if it had coorporate backing- without batting an eye. We'd be back in the 50k player range. Oh damn, 50k people on 15 bucks a month equates to 9 million annually. Looks profitable to me.
Would it happen? Clearly not. SOE has taken the game in a seperate direction and it would be direct competition with their own EQ business model (not that EQ2 didn't botch it up to begin with). You'd easily be able to roll over many of the current EQ players into a 'classic server' that had coorporate backing. WoW players cry for this every day, but it doesn't get recognized for the same reasons. A lot of people play a title currently wishing it was still in a previous stage, went a different direction from that stage.
Honestly, 1/500th of a community in its prime coming together uncoordinated outside of themselves, fronting undeniably more than 15/mo to basically put together a game in its former glory (rather than simply playing it for that sum), completely by word of mouth... it's almost unfathomable. It shows not only is the market screaming for a Lambo to be made, but if no one is going to buck up bronco, by George, the market will do it itself.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
Well, there can be any number of reasons for that. Look at AoC and Warhammer for examples. Both rushed out, with little attention to detail(little polish), cut features(just so they could launch faster), and poor design and integration. That tends to lead to spikes at launch, and then major problems with retention. What is needed is good design, and enough time to polish the features. But the time element is variable, which means that the money types panic and start making ultimatiums. Which of course makes things worse, with predictable results.
It is hard not to agree with the OP - these are very accurate observations regarding the MMORPG. I think the simple explanation is that the MMORPG has become a form of entertainment that exists in the mainstream. Back in the days of UO, and even when FFXI and WoW came out, the MMORPG was a relatively small, niche market. The stakes were smaller, the customer base more specific, and the development exacting and explorative - you might call it the golden age of the MMORPG, the age we all miss so much. The trouble is that with the paradigm shift over the past 15 years making personal computers common place, and the popularity and accessability of wildly successful titles like WoW, the MMORPG is no longer a niche market, but instead has become a form of mainstream enterntainment.
You were once considered a video game geek for playing MMO's, now it is widely recognized as a normal form of entertainment. MMORPGs used to grow by word of mouth and small advertising campaigns - now you have Mr. T and Ozzy Osborne shoving WoW down your throat on TV. A tight nit, sophisticated and discerning group has been watered down by the teaming masses of our largely retarded, consumer based society. In a sense, we have been zerged by casual gamers - they outnumber us probably something like 100 to 1. This drastically changes the target demographic; publishers want to appeal to the largest share of customers as possible, and now that the majority of the customer base is dumb, these games have been progessively dumbed-down over the years. Developers have to make games that will keep the largest share of drooling idiots playing and paying for the longest period of time. The truth is, this happens with everything - something will come about, have a dedicated and independent group of people who are into it, and if that something can be made profitable, it will be taken over by "big business" and made "accessable" to the rest of the population. This is exactly what has happened to the MMORPG, they aren't making these games for us anymore, they are making them for everyone. It used to be just us playing WoW, now we have to play the game with these other morons and their goddamn brain dead kids, hence the complaint that the WoW community has gone to hell. Of course it has, it's full of all the idiots that have jumped into computer gaming over the last 5 years.
Now the real gamers are banging our heads together, trying to figure out why games keep getting worse, when it's simply the result of a completely inevitable socio-economic cycle that happens to everything. So many brilliant and sophisticated movie scripts never see the light of day because film producers know that 90% of the slobbering idiots in the audience don't have the attention span to keep up. Instead you got rediculous folks like Michael Bay making fortunes off of complete drivel (and ruining a precious piece of childhood nostalgia in the process). The good news is that indipendent film companies come about, things like the sundance film festival come about, reminding people that movies can be cathartic and inspiring rather than just entertaining. The same will happen with MMOs in time. We will get our independence back when the developers have recovered their own, and they will be able to once more offer the high quality online gaming that got us hooked in the first place, while the moronic masses busy themselves with the newest WoW expansion, the newest hero class, and Transformers 3, 4, 5 add infinitum.
totally agree with OP, that's why i don't play todays's MMOs anymore, they suck...
P.S. although keeping an eye for GW2...
I do kind of agree with some of the points the OP is getting at, and i do still have my strongest MMO memories from games like AC, in particular The Myth Of Soma which was doing similar things, even earlier.
I don't necessarily require some developer to dig up that same old style of play, but in the past few years i havn't played a game where i have felt like i was stepping into the unknown, experiencing nwe things etc.
Maybe that's a personal thing though more than something to do with MMO's, maybe i'm just burned out.
If FFXIV fails it's highly likely i'll be taking a long break from the MMORPG market, possibly i'll nip back to give Guild Wars 2 a go because i neve did get into the original early on. Other than that though i'm not interested at the moment.
I'm an "old skool" MMORPG gamer and I won't say that the early games were perfect, and I do think many of the changes incorporated into MMOPRG"s today are improvements in the genre.
Unfortunately, it seems they had to throw the baby out with the bathwater in order to draw in the more casual player and simplify or remove completely some of the core gameplay mechanics that I (and many others) really enjoyed.
No one really enjoys forced downtime between fights, (especially if they are soloing) but I certainly understand that it was not put in the early games be just a time sink, it existed to encourge players who were grouping to form social bonds between them.
Long travel times have their place as well, but acheiving the right balance can be a challenge. Doesn't mean modern games have to remove them entirely, but that is the tact most games are taking these days.
Good crafting mechanics designed to provide the best items in the game (rather than dropped items in dungeons) seems to have gone completely out the window these days, so in a game like WOW its either raid or go home. It didn't have to be that way, the game could have been designed so that both crafters and dropped items were similar and people would have had a choice to fight for their gear, or earn it in other ways.
That's what seems to be really going away, the choice to do other things besides fight constantly all the time, and I feel MMORPG's are poorer for it.
I know, I'm part of the niche world and out of touch with the mainstream and no major developer is likely to ever create a game to my liking again.
But as someone else said, doesn't mean I have to like it, doesn't mean I'll change my tastes in how I enjoy my MMO's (thank God for EVE) and it certainly doesn't mean I'll stop subjecting readers on this forum to my rants on the subject.
"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
Your rant would be more entertaining if you didn't contradict yourself quite so much. What you describe above - having to raid 400 hours and have no life - is exactly what he old games were about and the main reason that new games have gone in the direction that they have. The people who used to live in basements grew up, got jobs and lives and now - in the new crop of MMOs - the raiding is more dependant on skill and co-ordination than on spending 400 hours. If you missed this, you have to be blind or maybe you just played the wrong one of the "new" MMOs.
I agree that the games have gone away from innovation and creativity. But as far as being more accessible and not requiring a lifelong commitment in order to accomplish something, they've actually gone in the right direction. If you want to go back to the world of camping for 10 hours, then having 200 people on auto-pilot pound away at a mob for another 10 hours, all for 1 item, you can keep that s**t.
But hey, the good news is that most of those old games are still available and you can still play them if that's what you enjoy. For example, I enjoy SWG, so I just went back to playing it (despite it being a sad watered-down shell of its former self).
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
I do very much agree with Kyleran that the original MMOs were not perfect but they did have certain elements, elements that gave those games "soul."
I do think that modern MMOs were very successful at removing the bits we didn't like from the older games, but they did that and failed to also transport that same "soul" into the newer generations.
We lost a lot of crap that the old school games were filled with and were given some really great and innovative things instead, which I think is good and has moved the genre forward.
But we did lose a lot of the "soul" that made MMORPGs what they were.
So how do you recapture that same soul, the essence of the classic MMORPGs, and still include some of the advancements the genre has made?
True that.
I'm always amazed at people like this who argue in favor of timesinks and inconvenience.
- quests do not have to be braindead, quests can be a lot of fun.
- why remove automaps/minimaps? Even in pnp D&D, players drew maps as they went
- having to eat, drink, etc is fun how? How about having to sleep for at least 6 hours or go to the bathroom?
- read the spellbook? sounds like a huge disadvantage for being a caster and another pointless timesink
- 72 man raids? Hellllllllo lag.
- define 'deep and immersive gameplay'
- so, virtually unlimited character customization? That might be nigh impossible to program
- lost xp, corpse runs. More pointless timesinks. Making stuff take a lot longer does not equate to better
To each his own.
I'll borrow Arieste's quote here:
The definition of MMORPG exists and it's really not all that complicated. It requires a persistent world that 100+ players can connect to simultaneously and create a persistent character in. People seem to have a hard time understanding that there are different kinds of MMORPGs and that just because they don't like some of them, doesn't make them any less MMORPGs.