Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
General: Why Not RPGs on MMORPG.com?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In her inaugural column at MMORPG.com, Associate Editor Suzie Ford talks about RPGs as the foundation for MMOs and wonders why we don't talk about them more here. Check out Suzie's thoughts about RPGs and our site. Add your thoughts to the discussion in the comments.
Many of us simply moved on to MMOs because of a yearning for quality roleplaying experiences. We missed the days of feeling heroic in a world torn by strife. MMOs provided us a haven, virtual comfort food in a manner of speaking. Anyone who had ever played a single player RPG was instantly at home in any MMO. While it was good, we generally never totally lost our affection for the RPG.
Read more of Suzie Ford's The Random Gamer: Why Not RPGs on MMORPG.com?
)
Comments
I'm still of the opinion that i'd rather they weren't lumped in with the general sections of the site/forum simply because this site is first and foremost where we all come to discuss MMO's, having to wade through a mixture of MMO's and RPGs if the floodgates are opened would be annoying to say the least.
However, if you were somehow able to segregate them instead of having them all listed in the one A-Z game forums and they had their own general discussion section then I would no longer see the harm. Afterall, other than the few big titles releasing over the next year it's not as though we are overwhelmed with MMORPG's to play, the genre has been pretty barren of anything worthwhile for a few years now, IMO of course.
As to why we don't discuss them very often the general gaming section, there have been very few good RPG's that are worthwhile disussing for any length of time other than a handful scattered across the past decade or so. There is only so long people stay passionate about them enough to want to continue discussing them years down the line. For the most part they are games played for no more than a month then discarded, unlike MMO's and a few notable RPG exceptions.
I think it makes sense, especially for things like the Kingdoms of Amalur RPG that gives an introduction to the world of the upcoming mmorpg from the same guys. I think if it's of interest to mmorpg players, there's no reason it shouldn't be on this site.
For the 40% of people who are pathologically opposed to anything but mmorpg news, you might want to put up a warning signs, some flashing lights and one of those light up signs on the interstate that get hacked saying, "RPG AHEAD, TURN BACK NOW". It would be awesome if you could make those signs hackable too, so occasionally we'd get signs that said, "ZOMBIE INVASION, RUN!"
** edit **
Oh hey, speak of the devil. There's an article on Kingdoms of Amalur up there. Where's my hackable sign?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
The question is pretty much a rhetorical one, is it not? I think you guys will do what you want to do with your website, as you should, and I'm pretty sure I can guess what the answer to that rhetorical question will be.
If you asked my opinion then I would say that there are already MMOFPSs on the site, so that means that you have games that are MMOs, but not RPGs, so why not put up games thatb are RPGs and not MMOs? I voted "yes" to Diablo III and I vote "yes" to Skyrim, Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age III as well.
Let's put the RPG into MMORPG, I see no problem with that. There will be a few haters who will complain, but they will be a vocal minority.
Also, Miss Ford, I like your writing and I'd like to see more of it. Why don't you have a regular column or something?
Edit: Oh, this is the first of your new regular column, haha, my bad!
I gravitated toward MMOs (WoW first, then later others) because I have always enjoyed SPRPGs. To a large extent, many MMOs can be played and enjoyed as SPRPGs that just happen to have other players running around in their respective virtual worlds.
For many of us primarily SPRPG players, MMOs provide a welcome "fix" between releases of our favorite single-player RPG games: Mass Effect, Dragon Age, The Witcher, etc.
So, yeah. To that extent I would agree with the OP. There's a lot of overlap of interest among your readers.
HOWEVER, I think mmorpg.com's coverage should focus only MMO/CORPGs that all have a massively multiplayer component. (I define "massively" as "lots of players in the same game world with the potential for grouping with one another.") In other words, I think you should cover ONLY multiplayer games that are accessible to large ("massive") numbers of players online. This umbrella would comfortably include games such as Diablo 3, Guild Wars 1, STO, DDO, Neverwinter, etc., (which you already cover anyway) even though many of these games are predominantly instances and/or played as SPRPGs, with only MMO "lobbies" or staging areas.
I do NOT think mmorpg.com should start covering strictly single-player games such as The Witcher, etc., unless and until these games offer online multiplayer CORPG-type content of the type I just described (something ME3 may be planning???).
What about games that are introductions to the MMORPG version of the game like Kingdoms of Amalur?
** edit **
Good grief, where did all your carriage returns go?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
It sounds like the decision has been made before asking for comments.
I use this site to find out about and discuss MMO's, the weaker the focus on those the greater the likelihood of me finding another dedicated site.
Actually no decision has been made. We genuinely want to know. And if you read the last paragraph, these games probably won't be placed in the games list or even heavily covered. An occasional mention is what we're talking about, particularly with games that have co-op or multiplayer options or are tied into MMOs such as Kingdoms of Amalur.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That isn't what the last paragraph said, it said "We aren't going to start adding every game to the List, we aren't going to start covering every little detail" which leaves the assumption that some will.
I say go for it with your news articles but please do not add any of them to the MMO A-Z, add a secondary one for that if need be.
Why do you bothing asking us? The direction this site is taking is clear enough. You have decided to turn it into a site devoted exclusively to [anything that gets us more adverting $].
This used to be my favorite source for news about mmorpgs. Now I only come here if I'm still bored after reading news at your competition.
I love music and sports cars. Most people reading this do too. But If I want comentaries on those topics I will go to a site that will focus on those topics. I don't play single player RPG's or FPS or MOBA's. I play mmorpgs.
I'm only telling you my thoughts on the subject because you keep asking :-)
I would love for RPG's to be covered here. I think its a great idea, but I think that there should be a seperate game list so we can browse correctly for what we are looking for.
Remember Old School Ultima Online
This.
This is exactly what we're thinking. If they're added to the game list, and that's a big IF, they will have a secondary category. Users will be able to filter the Games List to reflect what they're interested in.
We ARE still MMORPG.com.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you start covering strictly single player games, then something you should be cautious of is wearing yourselves too thin. There a lot of MMOs to keep up with. There are also a lot of huge single player RPGs comming out soon that many of your readers would be greatly interested in.
But, would you be able to cover those RPGs and the MMOs without diminishing the quality of your articles and content? Would you be willing to bring in more writers and staff to sufficiently cover these games if you needed to? Would you rather remain a specialist gaming publication or expand to reach a broader audience? Would you begin posting "junk" articles and content just to have some kind of piece on the latest RPGs to get more page views (something most popular gaming sites do. IGN, Kotaku, etc.)?
These are important questions to consider and I say that you should be cautious.
Oh we're going to be very cautious. Mainly, we're just gauging if we should do major previews/reviews and news of BIG upcoming RPGs.
Obviously, Mass Effect can be covered at FPSGuru, since we cover TPS games there as well, and they have plenty of that action. But for things like Skyrim, Amalur, and the like? Should we post major news announcements here? Would you like to see us review them? Especially in the case of Amalur or Torchlight 2 even, since these games directly influence their future MMO counter-parts.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
Follow me on Twitter if you dare.
Why not Zoidberg?
Since Diablo 3 got a forum we might as well have some for others AAA RPG games (if D3 in fact is a RPG game, the first 2 were considered "action games" at the time).
While the sites major focus is MMOs it is really not a big deal tohave a few RPG games on it as well, most people here play single players games as well as MMOs.
Basically you are asking whether to consolidate MMORPGs with RPG's; A large encompassing MMO collection of games with a single genre of single player games. Seen this way it doesn't make sense if you're not adding all other single player genre's as well; unless you call the "it's my website so I'll do what I want" card.
The arguement being used in the article could easily and logically be applied to something rediculously unrelated in the computer world on the basis that we have reached this point because of it.
At the end of the day you want a website that talks to your readership and that may mean the inclusive of non-mmo games. But if that means the majority of readers like to talk about peanut butter sandwiches will you also include this?
Personally my vote is stick with MMO games, not necessarily MMORPG specifically, but not single player games.
Nope.
I come to mmorpg.com, not rpg.com.
I don't go to gamespot or ign on a regular basis, I come here specifically for news/articles on mmorpgs.
Every RPG article/review that you post is one less MMORPG article/review that we will get, it's simply a matter of you splitting your resources.
Diablo 3 is no mmo but its in the A-Z list remove it and i believe what your saying:)
I like MMOs. The fact that most MMOs today are RPG-MMOs is just a fact of gaming history. I will follow MMO news whether it biases towards RPG-MMOs or FPS-MMOs or any other less defineable form of MMO. Did I mention MMOs?
I like other kinds of games, too. Like RPGs, FPSs, RTSs, WTFs. But I can play those any time, even 10 years after release, and still have the same experience as everyone else who ever played them. MMOs are not like this. Because there's other people online with you. Massive numbers of them... at least for the first few years, anyway.
Blow RPGs and change your domain name to MMO.com.
Or, add RPGs (cos of “roots” and “foundations” and “history”) and I'll still read your news and blogs.
Signatures are a waste of space.
If youre going to do it i suggest not splitting them like that. If you did I could argue that a game such as Oblivion belongs on a seperate site to go along with Mass Effect. Granted I am Biased as I do not like the FPSguru site nor do i like how your offers and competitions now tend to link to that site requiring another sign up. I don't sign up on the principal that i partly come to MMORPG for those things.
If Mass effect were to release for the first time tomorrow and you covered it on FPSguru instead of here i would not visit the site for it or read the articles.
This site has become so diluted with shoddy games mostly from Asia, that its usefulness as a resource has become very limited. Still good for major news, though. So sure, I'm OK with RPG news. Wish the game list had a Region of Origin filter though.
Why not have an account preferences filter so people could select what they want to see? Have options of COOPRPG, ActionRPG, SPRPG, etc. MMORPG would be a default option and that stuff would show up for everyone. Then you don't even have to make an effort to filter stuff, those news articles, contests, blog posts and forums would just never be visible to people who didn't want to see it. Everyone else could see everything they want to see.
** edit **
Also, a single sign in for FPSGuru and RTSGuru makes a lot more sense to me than having separate logins for those sites.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
The site has mmo, fps and rts, why not RPG's?
It's no longer really about mmo's, despite the name. Mostly it's a general game forum with advertisements, with a slant towards mmos. That's fine, site needs to pay the bills too, and it's nice to have a known place to discuss game stuff.
It'd be nice if they stopped catering to all those contests that are meant to collect people's emails more than anything, though
(Take for instance world of tanks.. that's in no way an mmo, pretty much an fps with tanks.. yet it's listed)
If its a sub section of the site it might be for the best. I dont think you guys ought to lump them all together, and I still think your focus should be on mmorpgs. But including a place to talk about and review RPGS in general would infuse your site with some more content and give you folks some more exciting things to talk about.
I think most people would give you a little golf clap for it, myself included. But you know you're going to have members of the community freak entirely the ***** out. Just watch out for that.
You've already diluted the MMO games list by adding Diablo 3, so go nuts.
On the other hand, the better thing to do would be to create a separate game section and list all non-MMO RPGs under it. Keep in mind, you'll need to start adding a heck of a lot more games if you're going to be covering RPGs in general.