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Have MMORPGs progressed at all over the last 7 years?
sekira
Member UncommonPosts: 76
The public stress testing (off and on) of WoW began in early 2004.
2004: WoW
(all the games inbetween that tried to appeal to WoW's market)
2011: WoW
Why is it that all new MMORPGs are always measured (even before they are released) in how similar they are to WoW?
One answer, "too similar to WoW" comes to mind, because who still wants to play that?. It also means your average MMO gamer will eventually go crawling back to WoW anyways, especially if the new game is deemed incomeplete or unpolished; or won't want to waste their time (Why start all over there when I can already play WoW?)
In earlier years, I never felt as though one MMO was similar to another. Not once did I find AO similar to DAOC, or SWG similar to either of those. They all felt fresh and very different than any previous MMO I had played, and there was never any feeling that the game was designed specifically to appeal to a sudden market boom focused around another competing game.
After all these years, It would be nice to have a new game that offers a deeper, more rewarding, and challenging experience. A mmorpg without training wheels, one where not every player is a winner and requires one to do more than press a button to effortlessly get gear.
Comments
I honestly dont know why theres been such little innovation over the past few years.
Every time an ammo is released I think to myself "Nice it looks kind of like WoW but better!"
Then I try it and think to myself after a few days "Why bother with all of this grindy questing and leveling when I already have 10 level 80's in another game that's pretty much the exact same if only slightly different "? And inevitebly find myself playing WoW again...
"We have barred the gates, but can not hold them for long...
They have taken the Bridge and the Second Hall...
We can not get out. The end comes.
Drums, drums in the deep. They are coming..."
For me MMORPG's were about world simulators... so that would be a 'no' as far as I'm concerned.
Back in the early days, there were fewer established standards in terms of game design which was guarenteed to generate large sub success. The EQ model however seemed to gain the most traction in the early going, with more and more games emulating it until WOW came along and basically "pefected" them model.
Much like the Windows interface has become the standard for all operating systems (in terms of look and feel), same thing is true with MMORPG's, they are all standardizing on what the market has come to expect from their games.
Just try to build a MMO with no quest helpers and watch how much screaming the greater majority of potential players will do. I recall when Vanguard tried to return some of the older game mechanics, such as death penalties, corpse runs, long travel times and multiple starter areas people screamed about them and demanded changes that made the game follow the more traditional model.
So if standardization of interface and game mechanics is progression, then yes, they defintiely have progressed.
However, that said, in terms of how I envisioned them evolving, no, they regressed actually, but that's because the greater majority of players do not have the same tastes as I do. I live in the niche and at this point in time, no large developer will cater to the niche.
"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
WoW made a lot of game companies think - "Hey we can do that and make a lot of money". When they did release their games and they failed, for a variety of reasons, this made all game companies risk adverse and so many of them tried to distill the alchemy that they thought made WoW a success.
I don't like WoW, I didn't play past my free 30 days, but I cannot deny their success and so it is not unusual that so many companies tried to ride that success. It is however unfortunate for the gaming public because it means that we get a lot of the same thing over and over again.
I'd point to all the MMOs that aren't like WOW which've been made over the years, but you'd probably come back with "But that's not an MMORPG."
...and then you'd realize that when you only look at MMOs like WOW you only see MMOs that look like WOW.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Of course there have been games that are not like WoW, but you can't talk about MMO's post WoW without mentioning WoW. It really is the reason we have so many large game companies making MMO's these days.
I'm starting to think this is all we've talked about for seven years. Of course games have changed over the years.
The bottom line is the money and WOW is a proven model. Where you find inovations is in indie games like wurm online. while its sorta like uo but 3d it has teraforming which to me was the next big thing. Now I dont think you will ever see a major mmo a tripple AAA game come out with teraforming. While we do have Xyson which does have teraforming to me its just a better looking wurm online.
But it all boils down to that money and they cant get the money backing unless they have a WOW clone. The one thing about wow is it did nothing new it added nothing new what it did was polish the game like nobody had ever seen. It runs on just about any pc because the graphiics are not demanding. It also gave a very fast progression and they actualy had end game content where most of the tripple A games release with out any end game or very little. Thats why wow was so popular.
Rift is falling into this category as we speak. The thing is i need more from my games i actualy need that challenge. I remember when i finally grand mastered smithing in UO after nearly a full year of playing 7 days a week up to 80 hours a week. That to me was a true accomplishment. While take rift for example in 1 week i can be level 50? come on....
blah just rambling now
played M59,UO,lineage,EQ,Daoc,Entropia,SWG,Horizons,Lineage2.EQ2,Vangaurd,Irth online, DarkFall,Star Trek
and many others that did not make the cut or i just plain forgetting about.
MMORPGS have degenerated over the last 10 years.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
How so?
Changed? Yes of course they have. Progressed? That is a matter of opinion.
Sadly players won't go through what we early MMO gamers went through. For example wihen DF came out, they could have made it like UO, which a lot of people thought they might, where it would take a year of playing to master smithing or mining or....etc. But as soon as the game came out (even in beta) people were already whining and complaining about the length of time it took to get their skills up high enough. I was fine with the slower skill progression it had at first even though it was still 10x faster then UO, but all these people that have been playing MMO's in the WOW age couldn't handle it. They want to be max lvl NOW.
The difference to me is that back in the day we wanted to play a game, where today everyone wants to beat the game. Sure we raided in EQ to be the best guild on our server or across all servers, but we also spent 5 hrs a night some times just doing corpse recovery. Now people would all quit in the first week if they fell in a hole in Black Burrow and lost their corpse, even though they were just lvl 8 and didn't have anything worth worrying about.
As to the OP, for the masses there has been very little in the way of progress over the years since WoW became the huge success it was. There are a few games out there that have tried, but they don't succeed. Then there are games that do the same thing and call it something different and people at first flock to it but then soon realize it's the same thing...RIFT!
There are a few games that have added a few small things, but nothing groundbreaking like I thought there would be after going from The Realm, to UO to Everquest...that was progress, well not even progress, it was different. To me games have been like society and just become more dumbed down in the last 15 years.
I remember when I could log into EQ one day, AC the next and AO the day after and have a different playing experience in each game. Now I log into Eve.
I think games have progressed over the years. I also think that our standards have outweighed the progression that we see produced though. People expect new MMOs to be a finished product upon release, so we get new games that are expected to have the content of a game 7 years old. Which is pretty much impossible but we still expect it.
Another thing is people don't like dramatic change, there are certain parts of MMOs that people have come to expect now and if they are not there, they get angry. So what do devs do? They put those things in MMOs because they've learned that if they don't people will become angry. The problem with that is where do they draw the line? Do they stick with the known formula to a T, stray from it with a few new ideas, stray from it a lot with and only keep a few core concepts, or do they try to re-write the book on the genre?
I've seen games that have done or tried to do all of those and been relative success and failures.
I believe so. For better or for worse, they've altered the psychological appeal of the games to fit a wider audience. Levelling is smoother, faster, less challenging, but more addictive and rewarding on a base level. There are a few TED talks that examine how game developers fiddle with drop rates and other statistics to create the 'treadmill' everyone refers to.
It's both terrifying and fascinating.
DirectX 10 has been out for years and is still the benchmark. Graphics cards introduced GPU based perlin support years ago but this was never implemented. Physics has had hardware support for at least 5 years but hasn't been enforced and improved upon. There has been no effort to improve the relationship between vertex information on the graphisc card and collision detection. Dont blame WOW; blame nVidia, AMD, Microsoft and their lack of care factor in advancing terrain generation.
It's not just graphics, AI is the worst offender in my opinion, theres been no solid GPU support for that either. Mobs milling around doing nothing until you stand right next to them and then not calling for help or running etc is riddiculous.
Also most games use engines provided by third parties, such as cryengine or UE etc. This locks the game into constraints that enforce certain game mechanics. These engines weren't even originally developed specifically for MMO's in the first place.
MMO's are in a rut big time and it's a bunch of things, many beyond the control of MMO developers.
I think thats why i liked uo so much,out the door you had ships, housing,mounts fishing and alot of crafting. Most of the games now you get part of that but never all of it.
And uo was not my first mmo M59 was but uo was so overwhelming by the sheer amount of content out the door its hard for any game to ever compete with it.
While todays games come out with half the content and half baked. The sad part is people have accepted the fact that these games will not come out with any polish. I think thats why Rift is doing so well as did WOW its got polish.
played M59,UO,lineage,EQ,Daoc,Entropia,SWG,Horizons,Lineage2.EQ2,Vangaurd,Irth online, DarkFall,Star Trek
and many others that did not make the cut or i just plain forgetting about.
Short answer? No.
Shortish answer? Making things easy/polishing things is not progress. Progress are big features and innovations. In 7 years the only new idea (which isn't entirely new on its own) is public quests. That's sad.
If anything, we've REgressed. Modern MMOs have about 1/4 the features of original MMOs, despite having larger teams and higher budgets. How'd that happen?
If it's all subjective then it's just people expousing their opinion. No room for debate there.
So many rose tinted glasses.
less choices. straighter pathways.
Right, which is less, not more or new. Regression, not progression.
My first main mmo was DAOC and since then I believe the genre has actually gone backwards in some areas like PVP but advanced in others.
I am honestly all for reducing grinding elements by making levelling and crafting easy and quick to allow players to get to the epic content more quickly. I do not equate time spent doing repetitive tasks as 'harder' or more skillful. They were simply a way to artifically extend the life of a game in order to keep players subscribed.
Where I think the genre has regressed is in the PVP aspects, notably in the end game. DAoC's most memorable feature was the 3 way factional warfare with capturable real estate and relic raids. Even when you got to max level and completed the epic raids the game still had endless content against other players in an effort to control the zones and it didn't get too stale because the 3 factions did a pretty good job in preventing one side from numerically dominating anyone and the zones were large enough that group vs group small scale pvp was quite common.
How no game other than Planetside has been able to recreate this, including Mythic themselves, has baffled me for basically a decade. Many games now have battleground scenario type combat where players quene up and fight in usually captrue the flag or deathmatch style matches that have no effect on the game world and are mainly there for players to farm exp or pvp points for gear rewards.
Players are not battling for map control or realm pride, they are just farming up points to grab the uber gear so they can basically do nothing except dominate the players who haven't farmed to that point yet.
The other problem with battlegrounds is that they are fun for coordinated teams since they can battle it out in a controlled level playing field environment. For the solo player however they are usually not very fun since if they go up against a coordinated team they are usually dominated and generally if one faction is continually losing battlegrounds over and over there isn't much a solo player can do about it. It is for this reason that I actually prefer zerg based pvp as a solo player since the lack of coordination has less of an impact, and the sheer numbers often prevent 'super groups' from dominating everyone.
Esssentially I like how the genre has reduced the pure grind time wasting elements, but I feel as though DAOC style endgame epic pvp, and pvp in general has no real 'role playing' element anymore and is instad a tacked on soulless point grind.
A lot of people complain about how world's don't feel alive anymore, or games have no endgame. I think if the genre went back to epic factional based pvp with capturable real estate that are not just about gear grind it would go a long way to adding life into these games.
YES. LOOK AT GW2!!
Funny, I remember looking on EQ and thinking it was rather similar to Meridian 59 in 1999 already. Humans compare things with eachother, it is how out brain works.
But it is true that the MMO market have evolved very little the last 6 or so years. The reason for that is that Wow almost had monopoly on the market and monopoly never is good for the consumers, the company having it only need to improve the product enough to keep the customers hooked.
But it is rather pathetic in all that time no AAA company even tried to make something a lot better. The next 2 years are rather critical for the future of MMOs. Several new thinking games are competing against what we seen the last 6 years and some that are a bit in between. So either the whole thing changes in a blink of an eye (well, for MMO devs at least) or we will get another 6 years more or less the same.
Heck, I will buy GW2 and WoDO even if I would hate them just to support different AAA MMOs.
GW1 released in 2005 and was very different as well. Sold pretty good too.
Still nothing changed. So for GW2 to have an impact it will at least double the sales of the first game (3,5M accounts, 7M boxes in total). Maybe even more.
That might happen, it might even be rather likely but it might not as well, making GW2 a weird thing while the rest of the genre continue as it had for the last 7 years.
But don't cork up the champagne bottle yet at least, a single game can change the genre (Wow itself proved that) but which game that will be is still to be determined.