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General: No RPG in my MMORPG
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In today's Coyote's Howling, venerable Coyote takes on the notion that all MMOs today are WoW clones and that innovation is rather lacking. Check out Coyote's thoughts about reading quests, deadly zones and something called "corpse zones". Leave us a couple of comments after you're finished reading.
Nobody wants to be different, unique, or risk upsetting the hack-and-slash crowd. They don't want to be new, innovative, or original - they want to be World of Warcraft. They want to copy, clone, and become the game that they envision as "perfect" because it has the largest MMORPG share on the market without ever once considering the ugly truth: Gaming has gone stupid.
Read more Coyote's Howling: No RPG in my MMORPG.
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Comments
Great Post, sadly it seems those days are gone forever
"All expectation leads to suffering" Buhhda
Hehe, good read and so true.
Warhammer fanatic since '85.
"If everything that makes an MMORPG unique bothers you, the pace isn't quick enough and the instant satisfaction eludes you, why do you play them? If you know a place called the "Steak Hut" only sells meat, why do you and your vegan friends have to go in and insist that they open a salad bar?"
Because there's more vegian then carnivore (following your drift) that plays mmo and WOW proved it? MMOs are made to make money. Balance point vegian, so you invest there. Which is sad, because I also like the risk. Not insane, pointless risk, but a real challenge.
Anyway, carnivore is a dying race, more people are leaning their diet with veggies. *sigh*
SWTOR and GW2 are both putting RPG back into MMORPG. That's actually a phrase ArenaNet has used.
Guild Wars 2 Youtube Croatian Maniacs
My Guild Wars titles
Very true. Very funny. Very sad.
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"Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
Great, great post. I agree so much last game I had any feeling of rpg or risk was FFXI. I liked the fact you could even loose levels if you died too much it made the experince much more fun. Also loved the long quest that took you getting many different grps to finish it. I now play EQ2 which is close to want your speaking of, but it still needs more risk. EQ2 does have a wonderful mature community though which is my biggest reason for playing it.
Haha ! Fuzz nuggets... lol...
Have a sense of humor, no need to get ALL MODDY !
A Simpson's quote shouldn't be worth a warning. You are lucky anyone is bothering to read this rag.
Unfortuantely, he's right.
There are for more people who want the instant gratification. They're the same people that don't like movies where if something doesn't blow up in the first 5 mintues, it's either a chick flick, or it better be a comedy. They want to be entertained, and entertained NOW.
Story? Story is so analog. Good character development? Unless it's a brief 3 minute flashback to how the guy became a ninja, what good is it?
They don't have patience, and they THINK they don't have time. And they're the majority.
People (let's face facts here, older people mostly, like myself and I suspect the author) were brought up in a different culture, where everything took time. That culture is slowly fading away - It's been replaced by a culture that measures everything by the second.
It's the double-edged sword of technology, and it's unavoidable. We can't say we'd be any different if we were brought up in this generation either, because, quite simply, we weren't. But you can always tell which is which when the power goes out.
Awesome post...
I used to lvoe the pace in EQ, only place i have had similar amount of fun in an MMO is Darkfall and im still playing that when I can tho for sure its a totally different from EQ and not for everyone... but all these clones of dumbed down MMOS is getting boring, the new SW game is going to be the next crap MMO that is released i mean come on you die and get rezzed but a magic rez droid that appears thats the DP in that game
One of the biggest reasons I left WoW was the dumbing down of content so the average schmuck with the mentality of a 10 year old could understand the quests and level quickly to get to the raiding content. I absolutely loved the game when it was vanilla WoW. There were challenges that you took pride in (soloing lvl 60-62 elites), raids that actually made you feel proud when you took down a new boss and guilds that were there to help you pick you up by the bootstraps when you failed in the attempt. There wasn't the attitude of "you're easily replaceable" or "you need to play this spec to join us". I could play the way I liked and was gladly taken along on raids and usually was one of the last to die (in the case of a wipe). I hate how the game has fallen and cannot wait for GW2.
I really despise the argument that "this is popular so it must be good" argument.
I suppose, then, that's exactly WHY you choose to listen to Justin Bieber, right?
Exactly. The argument falls apart upon close scrutiny and is, in fact, a valueless value judgement.
If the only reason that you like a game, book or movie is because everyone else does, then I feel mighty sad for your pathetic little self.
Great article.
Excellent article, Coyote! I look forward to reading more from you.
Yeah the RPG is not even present on most MMOs. Why do you think most people type it "MMOrpg"? Not laziness its because they focus more on being multiplayer WoW combat clones than to focus on something as nonsensical as role playing. I started playing Oblivion again and as i blasted mother fuckers with lighting like a mother fucker i realized "I wish MMOs were like this" enjoyable combat even at the expense of wide scale raids. Why do we NEED to have 25 man raids? Why not make raids just a harder 5 man dungeon? Or even 8 man? Why have the armies made of heroes on the non-heroic march into hells mouth when you can have the heroic slow-mo walk into hells mouth by 8 scrappy young lads with nothing to lose but time?
Because it’s easier to do and it keeps the medium stupid.
Admit it; any of you that played Oblivion has thought " I wish they made an MMO like this" Because it would be an mmoRPG. Essentially a massive multiplayer world, co-op dungeons, actually epic combat, and role playing built in instead of enforced via commissar on an RP server.
GW2 goes a long way to alleviate this and i am happy for it. The personal story, allowing all players to fight like its an actual fight not a military drill, but they fall short in quest dialogue. Even if the method of questing is superior.
SWTOR; more MMOrpg than not. Yes your quests involved the standard "RPG morality & dialogue" but it dosen't feel like enough to advance us into mmoRPGs. I It is still the standard MMO setting with RPG elements tacked on to the original schematic.
It is best for the industry the MMO throne remains an dusty empty seat never to be filled.
I LOVE this guy. Couldn't agree more on all points.
Dumbing down, handholding, lack of serious death pennalties, cross server grouping, fast travel, serving instant gratification in 10 exciting flavors and all other horrors catering for either zealous casuals or a predominantly ADHD pubescent crowd with the attention span of a kitten are the biggest threats to mmorpgs as I like them.
My brand new bloggity blog.
RPG has never existed in MMORPG.
It's a question of scale. Too many players, most of them FPS-born-and-raised. RPers have been a tiny minority in every game that ever carried an "MMO" title, struggling to enjoy their hobby surrounded by hostiles. RP events are so rare now as to be nearly mythical. RP support (costumes, gear for something other than stats, props, etc.) is barely there. RP rules on RP servers are never actually enforced; just written in as lip-service.
"But Ice, I RP'd in (some old MMO)!" Yes, players still gather in groups and roleplay a bit, sometimes you can even find a server that's roleplayer-friendly. But you're operating on your own steam, the company isn't providing any support for it.
I pull something from my list of 30 (wow!) animated emotes, make some bad attempts at a Scots accent, and actively avoid vamps and furries. Memorize the shallow lore, you need all the help you can get. You're roleplaying in an MMO.
You look back at the MUDs, without the graphical props, look at their lists of 600 custom verbs, remember when GMs would drive the story by appearing in specially animated bodies and roleplaying with their players, remember a population of gamers composed entirely of roleplayers, remember when the lich lord invaded the town with his thousands of minions, remember individual, custom-made gear and props; and you realize that gaming experience will never exist again.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
The funny thing is that most of the people that reply to you and say "yeah, I agree with you dude"...are the same ones that say gw2...swtor...and most other 'big budget' games are going to be great. When really their just more of the same dumbed down crap, just new. And if they weren't dumbed down they would say the game mechanics are 'confusing' and it needs a patch.
If you play a game for an hour and get killed and the penalty cost you 30 minutes, or OMG you drop a piece of gear it can never make it in todays handholding game world.
Love the part about virtual worlds. Build the world first devs, not the payment model!
But but but... why thoose people that want instant gratification and fast action don't just play, say, Warcraft 3, Diablo, Angry Birds or some FPS ? It will cost them only a few bucks to play forever instead of paying a subscription every month !
Really i don't get it
Well you have a point did like vannilla wow alot more to , you didnt have that many asshats demanding this and that . It seems tho that people like this nowadays if you look at the route most mmo games are going ( fast results etc ) .
Myself i do like that speed is bit up and that you dont need to grind like a month to get a bit of progress like in the old mmos ,just dont have time for that anymore now i have wife and kids. Never realy liked hard death penalty sure it can give you the thrill of danger but in the end i dont think this is the way to go nowadays just deliver more content or whatever but dont try to give progress a halt .
Things i realy miss are like housing and just more rpg , even if the old republic will go for a casual route i have alot of hope that the voice over and story driven content can give me that for some parts , same as guildwars2 but more for their different style with the dynamic events etc.
So for myself i am happy with 2 big new mmos coming out this year or early next year and cant wait to try them , also realy hope that in the future we can get a mmo that host a 18 + server even if it means that i need to pay like 5 euro more each month. ( not saying that all teens act like idiots but they are in a different part of life than i am in )
Hmmm I don't know I guess this post is just catering to the types of gamers that flood this forum and in that case the article makes sense but that's as far as I'd go with it.
Love it or hate it devs the new "mmorpg" is not made for you it is made for your children,your younger brother and his friends etc.
I for one still read the quests never understood why people use features they claim to have a problem with as in every mmorpg I've ever played with a quest tracker/pointer has the option to turn it off which people roundly ignore only to complain about being pointed towards the next objective.
Honestly I think examples like the one above shows that maybe the rpg hasn't left mmo's but more like the players who feel this way have left rpging.
I would not opt to kill you Mr. Coyote, but I would posit that possibly MMORPG are no longer for you. Nothing remains the same, and that includes video games. If that were true, we'd still be playing Pong (which I remember my father bringing home and plugging into the color television in our wood paneled den).
MMORPG will not be what they are right now in ten years. People will probably be on these forums complaining that games are no longer like WoW.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
agreed one hundred percent! I mean one thing was sure, if you died in a real bad spot you had to get a group of friends to retrieve your corpse, (THATS WHEN YOU KNOW WHO YOUR TRUE FRIENDS ARE)
Also it was another way of teaching PKrs to stop ganking people! they would have to return for their corpse and NEGOTIATE terms before allowing him to get the darn thing.... maybe Im old school.
http://imageshack.us/a/img543/1239/feralbanner3.jpg
Haven't read the comments, but the article is great. Here here coyote!!!!
Time to address the next old trope; "I don't have time".
What this actually means is that you find no joy in playing the game other than to level. If you are enjoying the game, just being out there with your friends, not caring a whit about level or gear and just having fun, then you are enjoying the game just because you are playing it!
You don't have time for that? Don't be silly, of course you do.
Instead of the game being about the fun, then, it's about the badges of bravado you can accumulate.
So, what these people mean to say is that they have no patience for the slowness of the only thing they care about. Leveling and gear accumulation.
I guess that's some people's definition of fun.
I believe the RPG in MMORPG will make a new resurgience in the future, we must have faith as some dev's surely would love to make this happen once they have steady funds rolling in from there brainless cash cow games (have to open a bar first to supplement that awsome restaurant idea, know what i mean). Time will tell