Pinnacle of AAA MMORPGs??? No, no, no. That was back in 1999-2001 era with the release of EQ, DAOC and AO(note how they are all significantly different from each other). There hasn't been a good MMOs released in years. We may see some in GW2, SWTOR, TERA, or RIft, but I won't hold my breath.
I understand, and I'm sorry if I went off topic there, but your problem is still with WoW, since that's the top dog. It's the thing that's sapping all the customers, but that's how marketing and business works; this isn't a grim future we see here, it's simple economics at work. Some games thrive others don't.
There's no grim future for the genre, there's a grim future for games like Rift that are just falling into this category of "why does this exist"? There's no reason for it to exist, that's not grim, that's just obvious.
I think I expected the wrong thing going into this thread: a prediction for the corruption/downfall of the genre...instead, it's more like the downfall of something that never existed anyway: TONS OF MASSIVE GAMES DYING! Well, we never had tons of massive games in the first place.
------------------------ Everyone on this site: 1: MMORPGs are DOOMED, and I have the answers to save them! 2: THIS game's gonna kill WoW! 3: I wish things would go back to the Golden Age of MMORPGs, which only existed in my mind...
I also see a grim future,but not for long,soon some intelligent producer will come along and make a true rpg,not some questcraft or raiding exhibition.
Interesting. I gave up on that idea a few years ago. I see we have around the same join date. I will assume you've been playing MMOs since about their release like me. Its clear to me we will never see what you're suggesting. It would require too much effort. Devs just want to slap new skin on old, failed games.
I enjoyed the first Assassin's Creed and the second/brotherhood blew me away. Thier sales numbers speak volumes about how recieved the games are.
I'm not so sure about sales figures being indicative of a game's quality or reception. There are a lot of people that will buy a game that's been hyped all to hell, be disappointed, then turn around and sell it to Gamestop. Also keep in mind that rental outfits buy these things in bulk according to what they believe the demand will be. If a game is hyped enough, or there's some special arrangement with the publisher and the rental chain, then even crappy games like Kayne & Lynch will have ungodly amounts of copies sold. If I was so inclined, I would look compare the number sold on launch day with the total number sold to date. It's the games that consistently sell beyond the three month retail window that are good. I don't think that any of the single player games you listed really fall into that catagory.
Call of Duty Black Ops sold rediculiously as well, more than MW2. Dudebros just don't care that much and they will continue to sell well.
Yeah, but that's really a combination of multiplayer and branding. Most of the multiplayer crowd want the latest and greatest version of their favorite online mosh pit, so the purchase is automatic. Others are just branded and will pick up the latest installment of a franchise without even playing it first. Again, retail sales are not the litimus test for a game being good or bad.
I agree old school is coming back in the indy crowd but to think the blockbuster titles are bombing is kind of mind boggling after how well they have sold this year. Hyper critical gamers like you and I may see the faults in some of these games and read the message boards and believe we know the pulse of the industry. But COD20 will still sell 4million copies and leave us shaking our heads.
Bombing? No. I think it's more like what's happening to the radio and cable TV industry. People are abandoning radio for their own personal playlists and podcasts. People are abandoning cable and satalite for Hulu and Netflix. There are a lot of us that are abandonding mainstream gaming for retro and indie games. The numbers of "retired" gamers gets larger every year. The reasons for the switch are the same accross all three media. We don't see the point of paying for shit we've been listening to, watching, and playing for over a year or more. Seriously, why should I pay for Unreal Tournament 3 when I can get the same experience from Nexiuz or Warsow free? Why should I keep dishing out money for reskins of the same game when I can just play the original game and call it a day? Starcraft 2? I have TA Spring and a shit ton of mods. Sure there isn't an open source version of Borderlands or Left 4 Dead, but trust to know that someone is working on it. Open source projects take a long time to mature. If you don't have money, you have to spend time.
I agree BLOPS is trash, BF:BC2 all the way!!!
We haven't even touched on the F2P / Freemium / ad revenue business models yet. The first Freemium game ever made was Runescape and it isn't going away any time soon. Love it or hate it, Runescape rakes in about $50 million a year and it was made by two guys in their basement. Which do you think is easier?: Getting $200 a year out of people, Or getting $60 a year? Hell, ad revenue games are an even sweeter deal since you support the game by playing it. Yeah, the money that traditional retail games make is going to look like small change when someone actually does this right. Also keep in mind that games that suck will die faster in this kind of market. There won't be any offloading to rental outlets or huge printing runs to keep them around. No players, no game.
The current system of making games is unsustainable. Despite the huge number of sales being made, the profit margins for game developers and publishers has never been slimmer. And that margin is shrinking with every upgrade to technology. Is it any wonder why hardware development has practically slid to a full stop? We're headed for another crash along the lines of 1983.
Everything is unsustainable, thus why everything dies. =P Accept it.
------------------------ Everyone on this site: 1: MMORPGs are DOOMED, and I have the answers to save them! 2: THIS game's gonna kill WoW! 3: I wish things would go back to the Golden Age of MMORPGs, which only existed in my mind...
In the place of the MMORPG, will be born an new type of MMO game. It will be created to capture the console market of Call of Duty, Gears of War and Uncharted fans. This genre of MMOAction games will be fast paced and competitive and once the interenet begins to lower latency across the board you can expect to play an MMO that handles just like a single player action game. While there will obviously be RPG mechanics they will be much more akin to Mass Effect than any old school MMORPG.
Sounds ****ing awesome.
I can't wait for the death of tab-targeting hotbar spam fests, instancing, and all of the class/level acoutrement trash that go with them.
RPG elements are great; the 324,856,725,076,234,628,394,672nd take on the "Warrior" class isn't.
Just because WoW is owning the genre right now, and there's nothing else rivaling it really, doesn't mean there's a "grim future" for MMO games.Really? Because when there is only ONE type of game on the market, that's pretty bad. People will ALWAYS play what's good and popular, and if something truly has the magic of lasting appeal, then it will last. That was true in the MMO Golden Age, not true now. Now marketing is the only thing that matters. This is all mindless speculation, and the worst case scenarios:
1: Things will stay the same with no innovation, which we can already see that isn't true yes it is, the only innovation in the last 5 years was public quests, and even that wasn't really new; Guild Wars 2, TERA, and Rift are all bringing their own unique elements to the genre, whether it's active combat already been done numerous times or dynamic content already been done numerous times.
2: MMO genre will become even more segregated, but that's nothing new, and there will always be a top dog I wish things were segregated, there aren't, there's everyone in one giant pile playing WoW and its clones, and then the veteran MMO gamers slumming with half baked indie projects, desperate for something new.
3: You'll become bored of the way things have become and, GASP, have to make your REAL LIFE more exciting/get a new distraction since you're unsatisfied with the new era. So you're saying "If you don't like it, leave!" That's great. Next time your favorite hobby gets a total face lift, and you don't like it, I 'll just laugh and tell you to get with the times.
There is NO grim future for MMORPGs
No, there isn't a grim future. It's a grim present. It's been a grim present for 5 years where no big budget games offer anything new, and most of them crash and burn.
In the place of the MMORPG, will be born an new type of MMO game. It will be created to capture the console market of Call of Duty, Gears of War and Uncharted fans. This genre of MMOAction games will be fast paced and competitive and once the interenet begins to lower latency across the board you can expect to play an MMO that handles just like a single player action game. While there will obviously be RPG mechanics they will be much more akin to Mass Effect than any old school MMORPG.
Sounds ****ing awesome.
I can't wait for the death of tab-targeting hotbar spam fests, instancing, and all of the class/level acoutrement trash that go with them.
RPG elements are great; the 324,856,725,076,234,628,394,672nd take on the "Warrior" class isn't.
Bring on shooter combat and class-less gameplay!
All that already exists.... ever heard of Darkfall?
OP: I can't really argue with what you've said. Matter 'o fact, quite a bit of it is along my lines of thinking about the MMORPG genre.
I will differ on one thing though. You say the end will be in 2011. I say the end began in '04 or '05. The signs were posted up when WoW became the undisputed king in that time frame. A number of players complained about how the MMORPG genre will be, and 'lo and behold, that's exactly where we are at now.
When it occured, I was happily playing my MMORPG at the time (I'll leave it unnamed, but it wasn't WoW). I heard friends and other players talk about it, but I figured them to be just overreacting or being dramatic. How everything was going to try and copy WoW. I didn't care. I just wanted to keep playing my MMORPG.
But my MMORPG had sweeping changes and **tried** to become WoW and completely failed.
Ever since then I've been a nomad in the MMORPG desert. Occasionally I came across some watering holes but they usually and quickly dry up. Or I hear about some Oasis some where and upon arrival, it isn't anywhere near what it's supposed to be.
2011 will be an interesting year. Lots of big name MMORPGs will be out, but that meteor is still coming. I'll be out of the USA for just more than the first half of the year and when I come back, I'm going to be curious to see how the wasteland looks.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
your post seems to argue that all MMO game developers are following the shadow of WoW making in many ways games that just hold to the stigma's WoW has created; basically only doing what they know works from WoW. But not all companies are doing that, there are some ambitious comapanies taking risks with MMO's that break out of the mold; to name a few:
FireFall
The Secret World
and Guild Wars 2
also RIFT (but only to some degree)
And there are probubly more that I just cant think of off the top of my head. These games are taking risks with the way they play something that the games following WoW's shadow never fully took and so failed. You say that MMO's are dying out, but only MMOs that refuse to evolve, WoW can hold on pretty well because of its expansions and its huge player base, but other MMOs that refuse to try anything new and go for it will fall.
Do some research into these games, and You might find something you like, something to beleive in. The MMO isnt going away as long as there in a community like us willing to buy and play their games; we just gotta invest in the right products that evolve the mmo.
Just because WoW is owning the genre right now, and there's nothing else rivaling it really, doesn't mean there's a "grim future" for MMO games.Really? Because when there is only ONE type of game on the market, that's pretty bad. People will ALWAYS play what's good and popular, and if something truly has the magic of lasting appeal, then it will last. That was true in the MMO Golden Age, not true now. Now marketing is the only thing that matters. This is all mindless speculation, and the worst case scenarios:
1: Things will stay the same with no innovation, which we can already see that isn't true yes it is, the only innovation in the last 5 years was public quests, and even that wasn't really new; Guild Wars 2, TERA, and Rift are all bringing their own unique elements to the genre, whether it's active combat already been done numerous times or dynamic content already been done numerous times.
2: MMO genre will become even more segregated, but that's nothing new, and there will always be a top dog I wish things were segregated, there aren't, there's everyone in one giant pile playing WoW and its clones, and then the veteran MMO gamers slumming with half baked indie projects, desperate for something new.
3: You'll become bored of the way things have become and, GASP, have to make your REAL LIFE more exciting/get a new distraction since you're unsatisfied with the new era. So you're saying "If you don't like it, leave!" That's great. Next time your favorite hobby gets a total face lift, and you don't like it, I 'll just laugh and tell you to get with the times.
There is NO grim future for MMORPGs
No, there isn't a grim future. It's a grim present. It's been a grim present for 5 years where no big budget games offer anything new, and most of them crash and burn.
There never was a golden age of mmorpgs. They've pretty much always sucked. Back in the day we just put up with it because there were no other choices. Now we have a thousand choices and guess what? They suck too. Nothing can ever stand up to the nostalgia blinders.
Glad I'm not wearing em.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Just because WoW is owning the genre right now, and there's nothing else rivaling it really, doesn't mean there's a "grim future" for MMO games.Really? Because when there is only ONE type of game on the market, that's pretty bad. People will ALWAYS play what's good and popular, and if something truly has the magic of lasting appeal, then it will last. That was true in the MMO Golden Age, not true now. Now marketing is the only thing that matters. This is all mindless speculation, and the worst case scenarios:
1: Things will stay the same with no innovation, which we can already see that isn't true yes it is, the only innovation in the last 5 years was public quests, and even that wasn't really new; Guild Wars 2, TERA, and Rift are all bringing their own unique elements to the genre, whether it's active combat already been done numerous times or dynamic content already been done numerous times.
2: MMO genre will become even more segregated, but that's nothing new, and there will always be a top dog I wish things were segregated, there aren't, there's everyone in one giant pile playing WoW and its clones, and then the veteran MMO gamers slumming with half baked indie projects, desperate for something new.
3: You'll become bored of the way things have become and, GASP, have to make your REAL LIFE more exciting/get a new distraction since you're unsatisfied with the new era. So you're saying "If you don't like it, leave!" That's great. Next time your favorite hobby gets a total face lift, and you don't like it, I 'll just laugh and tell you to get with the times.
There is NO grim future for MMORPGs
No, there isn't a grim future. It's a grim present. It's been a grim present for 5 years where no big budget games offer anything new, and most of them crash and burn.
There never was a golden age of mmorpgs. They've pretty much always sucked. Back in the day we just put up with it because there were no other choices. Now we have a thousand choices and guess what? They suck too. Nothing can ever stand up to the nostalgia blinders.
Oh yes, I'm sure it's all just nostalgia. Hey it's possible to have nostalgia about games you played 2 years ago, right?
Just because WoW is owning the genre right now, and there's nothing else rivaling it really, doesn't mean there's a "grim future" for MMO games.Really? Because when there is only ONE type of game on the market, that's pretty bad. People will ALWAYS play what's good and popular, and if something truly has the magic of lasting appeal, then it will last. That was true in the MMO Golden Age, not true now. Now marketing is the only thing that matters. This is all mindless speculation, and the worst case scenarios:
1: Things will stay the same with no innovation, which we can already see that isn't true yes it is, the only innovation in the last 5 years was public quests, and even that wasn't really new; Guild Wars 2, TERA, and Rift are all bringing their own unique elements to the genre, whether it's active combat already been done numerous times or dynamic content already been done numerous times.
2: MMO genre will become even more segregated, but that's nothing new, and there will always be a top dog I wish things were segregated, there aren't, there's everyone in one giant pile playing WoW and its clones, and then the veteran MMO gamers slumming with half baked indie projects, desperate for something new.
3: You'll become bored of the way things have become and, GASP, have to make your REAL LIFE more exciting/get a new distraction since you're unsatisfied with the new era. So you're saying "If you don't like it, leave!" That's great. Next time your favorite hobby gets a total face lift, and you don't like it, I 'll just laugh and tell you to get with the times.
There is NO grim future for MMORPGs
No, there isn't a grim future. It's a grim present. It's been a grim present for 5 years where no big budget games offer anything new, and most of them crash and burn.
There never was a golden age of mmorpgs. They've pretty much always sucked. Back in the day we just put up with it because there were no other choices. Now we have a thousand choices and guess what? They suck too. Nothing can ever stand up to the nostalgia blinders.
Oh yes, I'm sure it's all just nostalgia. Hey it's possible to have nostalgia about games you played 2 years ago, right?
Get a grip on reality man. It's not nostalgia.
If the games that you played 2 years ago were so great why did they fail/not be popular?
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Just because WoW is owning the genre right now, and there's nothing else rivaling it really, doesn't mean there's a "grim future" for MMO games.Really? Because when there is only ONE type of game on the market, that's pretty bad. People will ALWAYS play what's good and popular, and if something truly has the magic of lasting appeal, then it will last. That was true in the MMO Golden Age, not true now. Now marketing is the only thing that matters. This is all mindless speculation, and the worst case scenarios:
1: Things will stay the same with no innovation, which we can already see that isn't true yes it is, the only innovation in the last 5 years was public quests, and even that wasn't really new; Guild Wars 2, TERA, and Rift are all bringing their own unique elements to the genre, whether it's active combat already been done numerous times or dynamic content already been done numerous times.
2: MMO genre will become even more segregated, but that's nothing new, and there will always be a top dog I wish things were segregated, there aren't, there's everyone in one giant pile playing WoW and its clones, and then the veteran MMO gamers slumming with half baked indie projects, desperate for something new.
3: You'll become bored of the way things have become and, GASP, have to make your REAL LIFE more exciting/get a new distraction since you're unsatisfied with the new era. So you're saying "If you don't like it, leave!" That's great. Next time your favorite hobby gets a total face lift, and you don't like it, I 'll just laugh and tell you to get with the times.
There is NO grim future for MMORPGs
No, there isn't a grim future. It's a grim present. It's been a grim present for 5 years where no big budget games offer anything new, and most of them crash and burn.
There never was a golden age of mmorpgs. They've pretty much always sucked. Back in the day we just put up with it because there were no other choices. Now we have a thousand choices and guess what? They suck too. Nothing can ever stand up to the nostalgia blinders.
Oh yes, I'm sure it's all just nostalgia. Hey it's possible to have nostalgia about games you played 2 years ago, right?
Get a grip on reality man. It's not nostalgia.
If the games that you played 2 years ago were so great why did they fail/not be popular?
Ah, the age old fallback excuse from a newbie who never played in the MMO Golden Age.
First let me get this out of the way, when I say Golden Age, it doesn't even have to refer to the quality of the MMO. In my opinion, the MMOs then were a lot better, and a lot more in touch with what it meant to be an MMO. That being said, what made it a Golden Age was the fact that almost every game was different from one another. "Oh" you say "But thats because there were so few games". Actually, there were quite a lot of games then. There were at least 5 AAA MMOs that all had similar subscription numbers and were running well. This cannot be said for today's market.
Each of those AAA games was vastly different from the other, offering a new experience each time you loaded the game. The modern AAA MMOs are all so similar that you can learn one, and know what to do in all of them without 2 minutes.
In the Golden Age, new features and innovations were popping up every few months or so. Now, we've gone 5 years where the only new thing done by a AAA company was... public quests. Oh boy we're stuck.
As for why these games aren't popular? Well... they were popular, actually. At their peak, many of them had MORE subscriptions than modern games like AoC and LotRO have. EQ at its peak in 2001 was somewhere around 600k subs, that was a LOT back then! And it still is now. What eventually happened is, the companies that made these MMOs did one of two things, sometimes both.
They saw how much money WoW was making and, not understanding their own players, changed their games to be like WoW, or introduced some big change that angered a lot of their players, and didn't fix it. This happened in so many games, EQ, DAoC, SWG, it was a mess.
Then, the companies that got rich off these pioneer MMOs would try to make a new one, leaving their old one behind in a broken mess. The new MMO would spend more money on advertisement than development, and they'd pump out a WoW clone, and then watch it fail, because players don't wanna play WoW. They have WoW for that.
So now, instead of the Golden Age of innovation, new games, new ideas. We have... one MMO, one idea.
Good post ....a rare thing nowadays on these forums. I've been playing wow since release ..and will continue to do so untill their next game. Played mmo's prewow era and they were nothing close in terms in gameplay and polish.Also know a lot of other wow players from came older games that feel the same way.
The simple question for me is: why should I care how many people play WOW, or if WOW players know the MMO I play? How is that related to me having fun in the MMO?
Companies need to stop trying to copy WOW without going into the other extreme just to artificially avoiding to make even the smallest thing like WOW. When the MMO I like has only 100k or 300k, what does it matter to me what WOW does or doesn't do?
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Everything is unsustainable, thus why everything dies. =P Accept it.
I FEEL THE WARP OVERTAKING ME!!!!!
IT IS A GOOD PAIN!!!
I too feel the crash coming in gaming. I have posted as much on other forums. Games have become to expensive to be sustainable. Going forward there will be fewer big buget releases and more indy games.
Problem is that I LOVE a lot of these big budget titles (AC, Tomb Raider, Battlefield, Gears of War, etc) and I don't want them to go away. I do not see the mass exodus to indy games or F2p versions either. The F2P games are always of much lower quality and cannot hold my attention as much (esspecially graphically).
your post seems to argue that all MMO game developers are following the shadow of WoW making in many ways games that just hold to the stigma's WoW has created; basically only doing what they know works from WoW. But not all companies are doing that, there are some ambitious comapanies taking risks with MMO's that break out of the mold; to name a few:
FireFall
The Secret World
and Guild Wars 2
also RIFT (but only to some degree)
And there are probubly more that I just cant think of off the top of my head. These games are taking risks with the way they play something that the games following WoW's shadow never fully took and so failed. You say that MMO's are dying out, but only MMOs that refuse to evolve, WoW can hold on pretty well because of its expansions and its huge player base, but other MMOs that refuse to try anything new and go for it will fall.
Do some research into these games, and You might find something you like, something to beleive in. The MMO isnt going away as long as there in a community like us willing to buy and play their games; we just gotta invest in the right products that evolve the mmo.
I have done research but, other than rift, all I can find about those games is words and promises. I am sorry, but I do not believe developers anymore. Not a single one and esspecially not MMORPG developers. For that reason alone I will not view any of those games a saviors until I actually get my hands on them, in beta.
I listened to an interesting podcast with Ken Levine (irrational games, BioShock) and Cliffy B (Epic games, Gears of War). In that podcast they both descibed that as game developers their first job is to make kickass games but there second job is to market and hype their product.
When you listen to what these guys say you realise that game developers are talented sales men. They have to get you to "champion" their game so that you will buy it in droves. So yeah, moral of the story is to always be skeptical of a game until you actually play it. Becoming a fanboy or getting hyped off words will only lead to dissappointment.
In the place of the MMORPG, will be born an new type of MMO game. It will be created to capture the console market of Call of Duty, Gears of War and Uncharted fans. This genre of MMOAction games will be fast paced and competitive and once the interenet begins to lower latency across the board you can expect to play an MMO that handles just like a single player action game. While there will obviously be RPG mechanics they will be much more akin to Mass Effect than any old school MMORPG.
Sounds ****ing awesome.
I can't wait for the death of tab-targeting hotbar spam fests, instancing, and all of the class/level acoutrement trash that go with them.
RPG elements are great; the 324,856,725,076,234,628,394,672nd take on the "Warrior" class isn't.
Bring on shooter combat and class-less gameplay!
Yeah it does sound awesome. I will enjoy those games, but just like my single player tastes (wide range from shooters to slow RPGS) I still want more tradition RPGs to be around and be more than buggy indy projects with low budget everything.
In the place of the MMORPG, will be born an new type of MMO game. It will be created to capture the console market of Call of Duty, Gears of War and Uncharted fans. This genre of MMOAction games will be fast paced and competitive and once the interenet begins to lower latency across the board you can expect to play an MMO that handles just like a single player action game. While there will obviously be RPG mechanics they will be much more akin to Mass Effect than any old school MMORPG.
Sounds ****ing awesome.
I can't wait for the death of tab-targeting hotbar spam fests, instancing, and all of the class/level acoutrement trash that go with them.
RPG elements are great; the 324,856,725,076,234,628,394,672nd take on the "Warrior" class isn't.
Bring on shooter combat and class-less gameplay!
Yeah it does sound awesome. I will enjoy those games, but just like my single player tastes (wide range from shooters to slow RPGS) I still want more tradition RPGs to be around and be more than buggy indy projects with low budget everything.
Trues-ville.
The dilemma I see with the concept of fast paced action MMOs is player fatigue. The idea of playing fast paced action games for hours and hours regularly like many play an MMO now... I think it's not likely for people to keep playing as much as they used to. Now, this might be a positive thing for many peoples marriages...
The simple question for me is: why should I care how many people play WOW, or if WOW players know the MMO I play? How is that related to me having fun in the MMO?
Companies need to stop trying to copy WOW without going into the other extreme just to artificially avoiding to make even the smallest thing like WOW. When the MMO I like has only 100k or 300k, what does it matter to me what WOW does or doesn't do?
I doesn't matter to you directly. Unless a game you love shuts down due to low pop. The real issue I was trying to get at is that IMO devs for some reason think there is this vast customer base for MMOs. When in actuality there is a very small niche customer base and then WoW players that probably will only ever play WoW. So in other words, developers are creating games that have no place and no reason for existance.
Lets take Rift for example. Seems like a cool game with some decent ideas but just who is it marketed towards? Where are Rifts consumers? Its going to be a good product that nobody buys because there are already 5 other "Rifts" on the shelves next to it. It is not different than any of the others except for a couple bullet points on the box.
Conversly I went along and stated that SWTOR would fall into this same category but instead of going after the niche MMORPG crowd it is going to create its population from non-mmorpg gamers and fans of BioWare, SW and sci fi. Just like WoW did with Blizzard fans, fantasy fans and casuals.
You are right that companies need to stop copying WoW and I will go one step farther and say that companies need to STOP MAKING GAMES. Right now there is just not a market for 5 AAA MMORPGs in 2011. The player base just does not exist.
In the place of the MMORPG, will be born an new type of MMO game. It will be created to capture the console market of Call of Duty, Gears of War and Uncharted fans. This genre of MMOAction games will be fast paced and competitive and once the interenet begins to lower latency across the board you can expect to play an MMO that handles just like a single player action game. While there will obviously be RPG mechanics they will be much more akin to Mass Effect than any old school MMORPG.
Sounds ****ing awesome.
I can't wait for the death of tab-targeting hotbar spam fests, instancing, and all of the class/level acoutrement trash that go with them.
RPG elements are great; the 324,856,725,076,234,628,394,672nd take on the "Warrior" class isn't.
Bring on shooter combat and class-less gameplay!
Yeah it does sound awesome. I will enjoy those games, but just like my single player tastes (wide range from shooters to slow RPGS) I still want more tradition RPGs to be around and be more than buggy indy projects with low budget everything.
Trues-ville.
The dilemma I see with the concept of fast paced action MMOs is player fatigue. The idea of playing fast paced action games for hours and hours regularly like many play an MMO now... I think it's not likely for people to keep playing as much as they used to. Now, this might be a positive thing for many peoples marriages...
I think the first hit MMOAG will be part Demon Souls, part Farmville and part RPG.
It will be a vast persistant world with combo/dodge/block based combat and very few 'stats". Basically the typical RPG set up with int, end, hlth, mana, armor, etc will be hidden deep within the UI. The casual player will only ever care about health, armor, damage and mana. With that basic knowledge they will be able to button mash through the game and have a blast. For people that care we will be able to view these stats but min-maxing is not really going to be as prevelant.
I do think some of the combo systems will be pretty deep though. Easy to use and tough to master will be the tag line.
The world itself will have A LOT of farmville in it. In fact, it wouldnt surprise me at all to see people play the entire game as a farmer and just make their little farms and never do combat or Raid/PvP.
AI will finally come out of the stone ages and make combat more interesting and deadly. No longer will you be able to single pul a mob out of a group and the concept of stealth will be forever changed. Think Mass Effect, Demon souls, etc for combat/AI.
The other big change will be Raid bosses being soloable. Yeah, I know, but the ENTIRE game will be soloable or groupable. It will scale just like Borderlands. The more people in your group, the harder the content and the better the drops.
Originally posted by BioNut Originally posted by Robsolf
Originally posted by BioNut
Originally posted by lkavadas
Originally posted by BioNut In the place of the MMORPG, will be born an new type of MMO game. It will be created to capture the console market of Call of Duty, Gears of War and Uncharted fans. This genre of MMOAction games will be fast paced and competitive and once the interenet begins to lower latency across the board you can expect to play an MMO that handles just like a single player action game. While there will obviously be RPG mechanics they will be much more akin to Mass Effect than any old school MMORPG.
Sounds ****ing awesome. I can't wait for the death of tab-targeting hotbar spam fests, instancing, and all of the class/level acoutrement trash that go with them. RPG elements are great; the 324,856,725,076,234,628,394,672nd take on the "Warrior" class isn't. Bring on shooter combat and class-less gameplay! Yeah it does sound awesome. I will enjoy those games, but just like my single player tastes (wide range from shooters to slow RPGS) I still want more tradition RPGs to be around and be more than buggy indy projects with low budget everything. Trues-ville. The dilemma I see with the concept of fast paced action MMOs is player fatigue. The idea of playing fast paced action games for hours and hours regularly like many play an MMO now... I think it's not likely for people to keep playing as much as they used to. Now, this might be a positive thing for many peoples marriages... I think the first hit MMOAG will be part Demon Souls, part Farmville and part RPG. It will be a vast persistant world with combo/dodge/block based combat and very few 'stats". Basically the typical RPG set up with int, end, hlth, mana, armor, etc will be hidden deep within the UI. The casual player will only ever care about health, armor, damage and mana. With that basic knowledge they will be able to button mash through the game and have a blast. For people that care we will be able to view these stats but min-maxing is not really going to be as prevelant. I do think some of the combo systems will be pretty deep though. Easy to use and tough to master will be the tag line.
The world itself will have A LOT of farmville in it. In fact, it wouldnt surprise me at all to see people play the entire game as a farmer and just make their little farms and never do combat or Raid/PvP. AI will finally come out of the stone ages and make combat more interesting and deadly. No longer will you be able to single pul a mob out of a group and the concept of stealth will be forever changed. Think Mass Effect, Demon souls, etc for combat/AI.
The other big change will be Raid bosses being soloable. Yeah, I know, but the ENTIRE game will be soloable or groupable. It will scale just like Borderlands. The more people in your group, the harder the content and the better the drops.
But thats just a rough idea of what I see.
The farmville thing has occurred to me too. There are 88 million people worldwide playing that game. You'd have a game that has a zone or a whole population of people who play the Farmy Farming McFarmington aspect of the game, then you'll have several other game aspects around it. One game world, but several different games.
I don't see AI improving too much until we get something like quantum computing power in our current linear digital processors. Let's use WoW as an example...the AI server would not only be running orc #213 on server #1, the AI server would be running orc #213 on servers #2 through #500 as well. It's a matter of scale. I think they could increase the complexity of the patterns the mobs follow right now but there's hard limits on what they can manage in bandwidth and processing. Ryzom does it, but they are pretty small scale and the patterns are still pretty simple (even if they are better than anything else out there right now).
I think we're going to see a return of the sandbox economy to themepark games. They've pretty much played out everything with the themepark economy...there's not really anyplace new to go.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Comments
Pinnacle of AAA MMORPGs??? No, no, no. That was back in 1999-2001 era with the release of EQ, DAOC and AO(note how they are all significantly different from each other). There hasn't been a good MMOs released in years. We may see some in GW2, SWTOR, TERA, or RIft, but I won't hold my breath.
I understand, and I'm sorry if I went off topic there, but your problem is still with WoW, since that's the top dog. It's the thing that's sapping all the customers, but that's how marketing and business works; this isn't a grim future we see here, it's simple economics at work. Some games thrive others don't.
There's no grim future for the genre, there's a grim future for games like Rift that are just falling into this category of "why does this exist"? There's no reason for it to exist, that's not grim, that's just obvious.
I think I expected the wrong thing going into this thread: a prediction for the corruption/downfall of the genre...instead, it's more like the downfall of something that never existed anyway: TONS OF MASSIVE GAMES DYING! Well, we never had tons of massive games in the first place.
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Everyone on this site:
1: MMORPGs are DOOMED, and I have the answers to save them!
2: THIS game's gonna kill WoW!
3: I wish things would go back to the Golden Age of MMORPGs, which only existed in my mind...
Interesting. I gave up on that idea a few years ago. I see we have around the same join date. I will assume you've been playing MMOs since about their release like me. Its clear to me we will never see what you're suggesting. It would require too much effort. Devs just want to slap new skin on old, failed games.
We haven't even touched on the F2P / Freemium / ad revenue business models yet. The first Freemium game ever made was Runescape and it isn't going away any time soon. Love it or hate it, Runescape rakes in about $50 million a year and it was made by two guys in their basement. Which do you think is easier?: Getting $200 a year out of people, Or getting $60 a year? Hell, ad revenue games are an even sweeter deal since you support the game by playing it. Yeah, the money that traditional retail games make is going to look like small change when someone actually does this right. Also keep in mind that games that suck will die faster in this kind of market. There won't be any offloading to rental outlets or huge printing runs to keep them around. No players, no game.
The current system of making games is unsustainable. Despite the huge number of sales being made, the profit margins for game developers and publishers has never been slimmer. And that margin is shrinking with every upgrade to technology. Is it any wonder why hardware development has practically slid to a full stop? We're headed for another crash along the lines of 1983.
But this is all a little off topic....
Everything is unsustainable, thus why everything dies. =P Accept it.
------------------------
Everyone on this site:
1: MMORPGs are DOOMED, and I have the answers to save them!
2: THIS game's gonna kill WoW!
3: I wish things would go back to the Golden Age of MMORPGs, which only existed in my mind...
Sounds ****ing awesome.
I can't wait for the death of tab-targeting hotbar spam fests, instancing, and all of the class/level acoutrement trash that go with them.
RPG elements are great; the 324,856,725,076,234,628,394,672nd take on the "Warrior" class isn't.
Bring on shooter combat and class-less gameplay!
I FEEL THE WARP OVERTAKING ME!!!!!
IT IS A GOOD PAIN!!!
No, there isn't a grim future. It's a grim present. It's been a grim present for 5 years where no big budget games offer anything new, and most of them crash and burn.
All that already exists.... ever heard of Darkfall?
OP: I can't really argue with what you've said. Matter 'o fact, quite a bit of it is along my lines of thinking about the MMORPG genre.
I will differ on one thing though. You say the end will be in 2011. I say the end began in '04 or '05. The signs were posted up when WoW became the undisputed king in that time frame. A number of players complained about how the MMORPG genre will be, and 'lo and behold, that's exactly where we are at now.
When it occured, I was happily playing my MMORPG at the time (I'll leave it unnamed, but it wasn't WoW). I heard friends and other players talk about it, but I figured them to be just overreacting or being dramatic. How everything was going to try and copy WoW. I didn't care. I just wanted to keep playing my MMORPG.
But my MMORPG had sweeping changes and **tried** to become WoW and completely failed.
Ever since then I've been a nomad in the MMORPG desert. Occasionally I came across some watering holes but they usually and quickly dry up. Or I hear about some Oasis some where and upon arrival, it isn't anywhere near what it's supposed to be.
2011 will be an interesting year. Lots of big name MMORPGs will be out, but that meteor is still coming. I'll be out of the USA for just more than the first half of the year and when I come back, I'm going to be curious to see how the wasteland looks.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
WoW and Guild Wars were my first MMOs and now I'm playing EVE thanks to them.
So I wouldn't be so sure about many WoW players not looking for other MMOs.
your post seems to argue that all MMO game developers are following the shadow of WoW making in many ways games that just hold to the stigma's WoW has created; basically only doing what they know works from WoW. But not all companies are doing that, there are some ambitious comapanies taking risks with MMO's that break out of the mold; to name a few:
FireFall
The Secret World
and Guild Wars 2
also RIFT (but only to some degree)
And there are probubly more that I just cant think of off the top of my head. These games are taking risks with the way they play something that the games following WoW's shadow never fully took and so failed. You say that MMO's are dying out, but only MMOs that refuse to evolve, WoW can hold on pretty well because of its expansions and its huge player base, but other MMOs that refuse to try anything new and go for it will fall.
Do some research into these games, and You might find something you like, something to beleive in. The MMO isnt going away as long as there in a community like us willing to buy and play their games; we just gotta invest in the right products that evolve the mmo.
Glad I'm not wearing em.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Oh yes, I'm sure it's all just nostalgia. Hey it's possible to have nostalgia about games you played 2 years ago, right?
Get a grip on reality man. It's not nostalgia.
If the games that you played 2 years ago were so great why did they fail/not be popular?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Ah, the age old fallback excuse from a newbie who never played in the MMO Golden Age.
First let me get this out of the way, when I say Golden Age, it doesn't even have to refer to the quality of the MMO. In my opinion, the MMOs then were a lot better, and a lot more in touch with what it meant to be an MMO. That being said, what made it a Golden Age was the fact that almost every game was different from one another. "Oh" you say "But thats because there were so few games". Actually, there were quite a lot of games then. There were at least 5 AAA MMOs that all had similar subscription numbers and were running well. This cannot be said for today's market.
Each of those AAA games was vastly different from the other, offering a new experience each time you loaded the game. The modern AAA MMOs are all so similar that you can learn one, and know what to do in all of them without 2 minutes.
In the Golden Age, new features and innovations were popping up every few months or so. Now, we've gone 5 years where the only new thing done by a AAA company was... public quests. Oh boy we're stuck.
As for why these games aren't popular? Well... they were popular, actually. At their peak, many of them had MORE subscriptions than modern games like AoC and LotRO have. EQ at its peak in 2001 was somewhere around 600k subs, that was a LOT back then! And it still is now. What eventually happened is, the companies that made these MMOs did one of two things, sometimes both.
They saw how much money WoW was making and, not understanding their own players, changed their games to be like WoW, or introduced some big change that angered a lot of their players, and didn't fix it. This happened in so many games, EQ, DAoC, SWG, it was a mess.
Then, the companies that got rich off these pioneer MMOs would try to make a new one, leaving their old one behind in a broken mess. The new MMO would spend more money on advertisement than development, and they'd pump out a WoW clone, and then watch it fail, because players don't wanna play WoW. They have WoW for that.
So now, instead of the Golden Age of innovation, new games, new ideas. We have... one MMO, one idea.
Good post ....a rare thing nowadays on these forums. I've been playing wow since release ..and will continue to do so untill their next game. Played mmo's prewow era and they were nothing close in terms in gameplay and polish.Also know a lot of other wow players from came older games that feel the same way.
The simple question for me is: why should I care how many people play WOW, or if WOW players know the MMO I play? How is that related to me having fun in the MMO?
Companies need to stop trying to copy WOW without going into the other extreme just to artificially avoiding to make even the smallest thing like WOW. When the MMO I like has only 100k or 300k, what does it matter to me what WOW does or doesn't do?
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I too feel the crash coming in gaming. I have posted as much on other forums. Games have become to expensive to be sustainable. Going forward there will be fewer big buget releases and more indy games.
Problem is that I LOVE a lot of these big budget titles (AC, Tomb Raider, Battlefield, Gears of War, etc) and I don't want them to go away. I do not see the mass exodus to indy games or F2p versions either. The F2P games are always of much lower quality and cannot hold my attention as much (esspecially graphically).
We just have a difference in opinion.
Playing: Tera, BF3, ME3
Waiting on: Guild Wars 2
I have done research but, other than rift, all I can find about those games is words and promises. I am sorry, but I do not believe developers anymore. Not a single one and esspecially not MMORPG developers. For that reason alone I will not view any of those games a saviors until I actually get my hands on them, in beta.
I listened to an interesting podcast with Ken Levine (irrational games, BioShock) and Cliffy B (Epic games, Gears of War). In that podcast they both descibed that as game developers their first job is to make kickass games but there second job is to market and hype their product.
When you listen to what these guys say you realise that game developers are talented sales men. They have to get you to "champion" their game so that you will buy it in droves. So yeah, moral of the story is to always be skeptical of a game until you actually play it. Becoming a fanboy or getting hyped off words will only lead to dissappointment.
Playing: Tera, BF3, ME3
Waiting on: Guild Wars 2
Yeah it does sound awesome. I will enjoy those games, but just like my single player tastes (wide range from shooters to slow RPGS) I still want more tradition RPGs to be around and be more than buggy indy projects with low budget everything.
Playing: Tera, BF3, ME3
Waiting on: Guild Wars 2
Trues-ville.
The dilemma I see with the concept of fast paced action MMOs is player fatigue. The idea of playing fast paced action games for hours and hours regularly like many play an MMO now... I think it's not likely for people to keep playing as much as they used to. Now, this might be a positive thing for many peoples marriages...
I doesn't matter to you directly. Unless a game you love shuts down due to low pop. The real issue I was trying to get at is that IMO devs for some reason think there is this vast customer base for MMOs. When in actuality there is a very small niche customer base and then WoW players that probably will only ever play WoW. So in other words, developers are creating games that have no place and no reason for existance.
Lets take Rift for example. Seems like a cool game with some decent ideas but just who is it marketed towards? Where are Rifts consumers? Its going to be a good product that nobody buys because there are already 5 other "Rifts" on the shelves next to it. It is not different than any of the others except for a couple bullet points on the box.
Conversly I went along and stated that SWTOR would fall into this same category but instead of going after the niche MMORPG crowd it is going to create its population from non-mmorpg gamers and fans of BioWare, SW and sci fi. Just like WoW did with Blizzard fans, fantasy fans and casuals.
You are right that companies need to stop copying WoW and I will go one step farther and say that companies need to STOP MAKING GAMES. Right now there is just not a market for 5 AAA MMORPGs in 2011. The player base just does not exist.
Playing: Tera, BF3, ME3
Waiting on: Guild Wars 2
I think the first hit MMOAG will be part Demon Souls, part Farmville and part RPG.
It will be a vast persistant world with combo/dodge/block based combat and very few 'stats". Basically the typical RPG set up with int, end, hlth, mana, armor, etc will be hidden deep within the UI. The casual player will only ever care about health, armor, damage and mana. With that basic knowledge they will be able to button mash through the game and have a blast. For people that care we will be able to view these stats but min-maxing is not really going to be as prevelant.
I do think some of the combo systems will be pretty deep though. Easy to use and tough to master will be the tag line.
The world itself will have A LOT of farmville in it. In fact, it wouldnt surprise me at all to see people play the entire game as a farmer and just make their little farms and never do combat or Raid/PvP.
AI will finally come out of the stone ages and make combat more interesting and deadly. No longer will you be able to single pul a mob out of a group and the concept of stealth will be forever changed. Think Mass Effect, Demon souls, etc for combat/AI.
The other big change will be Raid bosses being soloable. Yeah, I know, but the ENTIRE game will be soloable or groupable. It will scale just like Borderlands. The more people in your group, the harder the content and the better the drops.
But thats just a rough idea of what I see.
Playing: Tera, BF3, ME3
Waiting on: Guild Wars 2
Sounds ****ing awesome.
I can't wait for the death of tab-targeting hotbar spam fests, instancing, and all of the class/level acoutrement trash that go with them.
RPG elements are great; the 324,856,725,076,234,628,394,672nd take on the "Warrior" class isn't.
Bring on shooter combat and class-less gameplay!
Yeah it does sound awesome. I will enjoy those games, but just like my single player tastes (wide range from shooters to slow RPGS) I still want more tradition RPGs to be around and be more than buggy indy projects with low budget everything.
Trues-ville.
The dilemma I see with the concept of fast paced action MMOs is player fatigue. The idea of playing fast paced action games for hours and hours regularly like many play an MMO now... I think it's not likely for people to keep playing as much as they used to. Now, this might be a positive thing for many peoples marriages...
I think the first hit MMOAG will be part Demon Souls, part Farmville and part RPG.
It will be a vast persistant world with combo/dodge/block based combat and very few 'stats". Basically the typical RPG set up with int, end, hlth, mana, armor, etc will be hidden deep within the UI. The casual player will only ever care about health, armor, damage and mana. With that basic knowledge they will be able to button mash through the game and have a blast. For people that care we will be able to view these stats but min-maxing is not really going to be as prevelant.
I do think some of the combo systems will be pretty deep though. Easy to use and tough to master will be the tag line.
The world itself will have A LOT of farmville in it. In fact, it wouldnt surprise me at all to see people play the entire game as a farmer and just make their little farms and never do combat or Raid/PvP.
AI will finally come out of the stone ages and make combat more interesting and deadly. No longer will you be able to single pul a mob out of a group and the concept of stealth will be forever changed. Think Mass Effect, Demon souls, etc for combat/AI.
The other big change will be Raid bosses being soloable. Yeah, I know, but the ENTIRE game will be soloable or groupable. It will scale just like Borderlands. The more people in your group, the harder the content and the better the drops.
But thats just a rough idea of what I see.
The farmville thing has occurred to me too. There are 88 million people worldwide playing that game. You'd have a game that has a zone or a whole population of people who play the Farmy Farming McFarmington aspect of the game, then you'll have several other game aspects around it. One game world, but several different games.
I don't see AI improving too much until we get something like quantum computing power in our current linear digital processors. Let's use WoW as an example...the AI server would not only be running orc #213 on server #1, the AI server would be running orc #213 on servers #2 through #500 as well. It's a matter of scale. I think they could increase the complexity of the patterns the mobs follow right now but there's hard limits on what they can manage in bandwidth and processing. Ryzom does it, but they are pretty small scale and the patterns are still pretty simple (even if they are better than anything else out there right now).
I think we're going to see a return of the sandbox economy to themepark games. They've pretty much played out everything with the themepark economy...there's not really anyplace new to go.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.