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mipbar
Member Posts: 12
Since World of Warcraft's complete and utter success for many years, developers (read businesses), have been systematically mandated to reproduce this success (read income)
Understandably so.
Along with the good, having such a good game to play for many years, you also get the bad.
This means, the 'norm' has been the norm for so many years, and not so many companies are actually looking ahead and thinking of creating the next generation online gaming world. This has caused mass stagnation.
How many of you have been waiting for another GOOD game to play, for how long? I've been waiting four or five years, and like the rest of you have tried a lot of the 'clones' like aion, rift, warhammer online, on and on. Most are/were just bad clones of WoW without the quality or the sheer size and features that WoW has built over 6+ years.
I, for one, am DONE killing 6 of that or gathering 7 of those. DONE.
I'm sure there is some business terminology for this situation. Someone on this site should write an actual article on this 'WoW Stagnation Effect'
I think this game's developers are looking forward to the next generation of online gaming, finally.
Comments
Lets wait till GW2 come out and play it. Im sure there will be some kind of grind (titles maybe). I'm also sure there will be good amount of people who will find disturbing and will miss "gringing". Just for the sake of doing something in the game. If they dont implement some kind of grind I think they will lose some players in time (depends on expansion rate).
I hate grind myself, but there is always time when I go and vanquish some area, or when I decided to do cartographer titles in GW1.
Will see
@mazut
It's not at all fair to compare optional grind (ten hour sessions of Team Fortress 2) with enforced grind (Everquest). This is what people are talking about when they refer to the progression treadmill. It means that they have to do so much grinding to get to a point where they have to do more grinding to get to another point, and what do they do there? More grinding! Now, TF2 isn't a game that one might associate grind with, but if you play it for ten hours to try and get hats/achievements, then that's grinding, but that's optional grinding.
The ethos of Guild Wars since '05 has been optional grinding, and never enforced grinding. It's important to make the distinction. There is a demographic of people who want to grind. It's not a massive one and it pales in comparison to the casual demographic, which is, quite frankly, humongous. But it's large enough to cater to providing it doesn't impact negatively upon the larger demographics. What happens there is you get optional grinding. That's what titles are.
You can't compare titles with a traditional MMORPG because you can enjoy all the content in Guild Wars 1 without having to gain a single title. However, you cannot progress in a traditional MMORPG like Everquest without grinding, and because of this grinding becomes the game in and of itself. It is grinding as a means to an end. But grinding doesn't really obey the rule of fun, and that's what games should always primarily be about.
I don't think that the sans grind thing is new. ArenaNet did it with Guild Wars 1 already. They'll just continue that trend with GW2. But for most people who skipped GW1 due to it being a CORPG, this'll be new and refreshing for them.
Guild Wars 2 looks extremely revolutionary for one reason; It's the step in the right direction.
That doesn't mean it's the godliest of all MMO's and MMO's to come, it means it finally took a step AWAY from the WoW route.
Gaming companies were in such awe from wow's production quality and concept that they didn't know where to START in the MMO industry and simply made cookie cutter copies because they didn't know they could explore the creation of MMO's with it still being an MMO the way Guild wars 2 did. (wow, that's a lot to take in.)
What does this mean for the future of MMO's? It could mean two things:
1) Developers WAKE UP from their WoW Coma's and finally realize they can innovate and revolutionize the MMO world by generalizing the definition "Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game" instead of looking at the sequence of words and see "World of Warcraft".
2) Developers find Guild Wars 2 a much more optimal version of World of Warcraft and effeciently get to work on their crappy carbon cookie cutter copies for a quick buck and a shamelessly bad reputation and name in the MMO industry.
Guild Wars 2 is what the market need. We need new mechanics or maybe just old mechanics that have been remastered. We need "innovation" in the mmo-genre. The "WOW-era" will soon be over and devs have to think more "revolutionary" to make a good game that will keep it's playerbase up for many years. GW2 is most definitivley a step in the right direction.
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Was there a reason you posted this in the GW2 section then?
You will definitely have to kill 6 of that or gather 7 of those in GW2. The only difference is the presentation.
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Although it will be in GW2, it'll also be a smaller part of the game than in other games. With the whole DE and "as little grind as possible" approach to this game, I think I can overcome it.
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The dynamic event system is just an evolution of WoW's quests. If you come across a town getting attacked, you're going to have to kill a certan amount of monsters before the event will progress, just like if you had spoken with an NPC and received a quest. The next part of the event may be putting out fires around the town, and during that sequence you'll have to douse a certain number of fires before the event progresses to the next level.
Don't get me wrong. I think the way GW2 is handling level progression is fantastic. I love the dynamic event chains I've seen so far, the combat looks amazing, and I am really happy with the way group play is going to function.
But, I'm also not kidding myself into thinking that the dynamic events are more than just advanced kill 10 rats or pick 5 flowers quests.
Which, from what I've seen so far, look really, really fun. I mean... an Aston Martin is a car, and so is a Ford Focus... but I don't think anyone would get them confused. I guess my point is the OP said, "I will never drive a car again!" and all I meant by my reply was "You're still going to be driving a car."
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Your point?
Presentation is everything in an MMO.
Bottom line is, you're finally having fun rather than being forced to wade through all the boring parts to get to the good stuff.
In GW2, every ounce of experience is the good stuff. There's no waiting around to have a good time.
Well, numbers rule the universe, right? So, there's no getting away from killing 5 of whatever ultimately. So, yes, presentation, goal, intensity, purpose mean everything.
What I meant, more specifically, is this (and how you don't know what I mean is beyond me. it seems you have WoW brain infection, thinking this is the ONLY way you CAN play):
I'm done running up to a quest giver NPC who gives me some inane, 'wolves are killing my sheep, please kill 5 wolves' crap *yawn* - Then running over to kill wolves who are just roaming around in their little hexagonal, designated, virtual spots, god.
I've (we've) done thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of these, and now don't even bother reading the quests at all, because they are all just some "cookie-cutter, who gives a damn, boring, lazy storytelling" JUNK.
I'm so sick of hearing about this game, give me a break.
This game isn't "revolutionary" it just did the same thing WoW did. Take good things from other mmo's and try and expand upon it. I could literally make a list of all of its components and which mmo it took it from, but I don't have the time or need to do it.
I'm guessing there is so much talk about this game simply because the game doesn't have official forums?
I'm so sick of the people whining about how this game doesn't innovate at all, they SHOULD ALL JUST GET THEMSELVES A PERMANENT BREAK!
If you are THAT sick then stay away from mmorpg.com
Yes (well actually it is an evolution of Meridian 59s quests, I killed my 10 rats in there 9 years before anyone did in Wow), but that is why so many people are looking forward to them.
If and I say if DEs work long term it will be the first real evolution of questing in MMOs since they first appeared and that in itself is rather amazing (or pathetic, 15 years of killing the same #¤%& 10 rats, at least here the rats will eat the cheese and the village will starve and become smaller if you don't kill them).
A few other games have had a few DEs added already but theirs were more of an optional nature and not replacing regular quests.
As I said, this is untried and might suck longtime, we don't know if it will be fun or not yet but it have the potential to change questing in MMOs forever, and it is about time.
Then what the hell are you doing on the Guild Wars 2 forum??
A person doesn't live in the arctic because they're sick of the cold.
You are still going to have to kill ten of x, or gather 5 of y. In fact, quite a few articles have stated that some of these DEs are still this. The difference, as has been stated so many times in this thread, is the presentation. For one, anyone can contribute to that required number.
Nearly every game comes down to the basic principle of kill t of z. The thing that matters is the implementation and presentation. If it's implemented well, and is presented in a way that's fun, you won't see it as killing t of z. You will be seeing it as fun.
EDIT
@bunkafish:
You are hearing a lot about this game because those who have played it really enjoyed it. ArenaNet played their cards right in letting gaming news sites come to their studio and play the game. If these companies really enjoy the game, they are going to report it.
And yes ArenaNet basically took this and that from various games, both MMO, RTS, FPS, and any other genre you can think of. Again, what matters is the implementation and presentation. They are going to have to make sure those ideas they got from other games truely fit within their game. It's impossible to be "original" in todays world. Have you ever heard of the saying nothing is original under the sun. Everything within any game, WoW, GW2, CoD, has been done at some point in the past. What matters, again, is implementation.
is this true? if yes, now everything makes sense, it is actually a good way to spread the GW2's fans in the net...
There no doubt will be gathering quests in GW2. It will just be approached in a more dynamic and exciting way.