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Will MMORPGs ever return to the Everquest/UO Days?
Matt1128Y
Member Posts: 26
I recently bought and played Star Wars The Old Republic, leveled up a Bounty Hunter to 35, and then realized... this game is basically exactly the same thing as WoW. Their themes are different, and the quests and dialogue are voiced in SWTOR, but besides that, there is no difference between the two.
What makes matters worse, WoW trumps SWTOR where they are similar (battlegrounds, dungeons, world pvp, etc.).
That being said, I don't like either of these games.
I just wonder if there will ever come a time when another well-done Ultima Online or Everquest will be released.
My issues with these newer MMORPGs (older MMORPGs lacked in some of the following ways too though) are as follows:
1. The leveling experience is unchallenging. Weak death penalties and easy leveling make for a boring game. It wouldn't be so bad if the death penalties were stricter, or if the leveling were more difficult, but neither is the case with these newer MMORPGs.
2. Linear zone design. I didn't have this problem in WoW, but in SWTOR, the zone designs are terrible. It feels like you're stuck on a train of boredom going to hell.
3. Focus on canned PVP. I enjoy community-driven spontaneous World PVP as opposed to being teleported to some arena and being told to capture a flag. Nuff said. By the way, there is practically no World PVP going on in SWTOR.
4. Nothing to do but grind quests, level up your crafting, and grind "Battlegrounds" and "Dungeons." I can't believe there were MMORPGs released in 2011 where all you can do is the aforementioned.
5. Lack of character customization. Not many choices for faces, hair, etc.; and few species/race options--or the differences between species/race options are purely aesthetic (like in SWTOR).
Regardless, I'm done with these kinds of MMORPGs. Some call them theme park MMORPGs, but my problems with current MMORPGs are beyond that. For instance, a sandbox MMORPG could have weak death penalties too.
Going back to my original question, do any of you know of any MMORPGs that will be released in the future that will coincide with my tastes? Thanks.
Comments
I completely agree.
MMOs have taken a turn for the worst. The MMO standard has lessened into some mold of linear and solo gameplay, e.g., mini-pvp games, funneled maps, simplicity, too much guidence, and too much verbage.
My next favorite will probably come from some small company who's in it for the love the game. These big AAA MMOs? They play it safe and design such things for the largest probable age group: What age is the majority who plays WoW. They want PvP? Let's find a way to give it to them while spending the least amount of money possible.
I mean this, but I am really curious why you aren't playing Darkfall and Vanguard. Damn even L2... so what's up?Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Are Vanguard, Darkfall, and Lineage 2 well-made games whose respective companies have a tough stance against hackers/botters?
I've played Lineage 2 and thought it was cool until I found out 50% of the playerbase were botters and the company that developed Lineage 2 (forgot the name) doesn't care.
Vanguard is dead in terms of population, last I heard. If it wasn't, then I'd be playing. I'd definitely be playing it over games like WoW and SWTOR.
Darkfall seems to be perpetually in beta.
Well there's the next Everquest but that's donkeys years off yet I'd say and who knows what that will be like. I doubt they'll deviate too far from the current model as they'll be appealing to the same audience.
I am enjoying Old Republic at the moment but, like a lot of people who are posting here, I am finding myself getting bored an awful lot faster that I would have with similar games such as wow 6 years ago - and I haven't even reached the dreaded end game yet! So, in my own case, I can't see it having staying power on my desktop in the coming months. In some ways it's not the fault of the game per se but it is an issue with the timing of the game methinks. There's a general wow/rift/insert similar gamename-format-jadedness on the wind, you need only take a random sampling of opinion from a random sampling of gaming forums to see this. This could be slightly biased as people who are unhappy with something post more often than satisfied customers, though I doubt it's not reflective of at least a reasonably large section of community opinion.
Personally I think they made a mistake overall going with the populist model and not doing somthing afresh but new is risky and why do that when there's an unprecedentedly successful model already in place. Anyway, what's done is done and undoubtedly they have likely made a profit already so they probably don't care in those terms. One thing you can't buy though is corporate reputation. Bioware have always been an innovative lot and this game is definitely a step backwards for them in terms of how they will be seen in the future.
Are Vanguard, Darkfall, and Lineage 2 well-made games whose respective companies have a tough stance against hackers/botters?
I've played Lineage 2 and thought it was cool until I found out 50% of the playerbase were botters and the company that developed Lineage 2 (forgot the name) doesn't care.
Vanguard is dead in terms of population, last I heard. If it wasn't, then I'd be playing. I'd definitely be playing it over games like WoW and SWTOR.
Darkfall seems to be perpetually in beta.
Is WoW and Aion and every other AAA MMO a well funded game that doesn't have bots/hackers?again are you being sarcastic? Please put a /sarcasm next time.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
You better quit the fourms then, brah, because about 99% of the topics posted have already been covered somewhere else on the forum in one form or another.
You should have started posting on forums in the 1990s back when they were new and the topics were more original.
{mod edit}
First, let's look at what I wrote: "Are Vanguard, Darkfall, and Lineage 2 well-made games whose respective companies have a tough stance against hackers/botters?" Now where did I say WoW, Aion, etc., are bot/hacker free? No where.
Second, wouldn't you agree that Blizzard's stance against botting/hacking is different from, let's say, NCSoft's?
{mod edit}
Oh yeah bud. I agree.WoW sure combat them hackers/botter. Like I never see constant streams of hackers floating in the air to advertise a website, nor do I see bots in a warfront, nor do I see hackers steal crafting nodes from underground, or speed hacking. Nope never.... Maybe it's because I don't play WoW. But who knows...
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Since generic themies are the way to design for fast cash crab. we are not in innovating times as we were many years ago. I firmly beleive the entire industry must fail. as long as people support free to play, we will never see that day to be honest.
It's all a very tightly controlled souless ride. right now you can almost fully predict with assurity each game's development. it's all focused on end game with no mind for the journey or the start.
You know when you log in that it will remain the same it never changes. the disconnect you feel with your avatar is the same connection you have with a jar of pickles.
when you log in to a new game or create that first character you are supposed to be given options that allow you to make an emotional connection with that avatar.and the way to allow that connection is to have options both in creation and upon entry to the game.
with many trashparks you get a preset series of limited options and a generic class that gets on his treadmill for a endless series of controlled quest and roped off areas that circumvent you to each new zone. the purpose is to get you to max level were if your lucky you can gain the false sense of achievement, by gaining pre-defined gear that gives you another false sense of progression until the next xpac fall's and they get another 50 bucks from you.
It won't end my friend. as long as games are made for profit first and fun/innovation 2nd we won't see another UO another EQ or another SWG
Since WoW didn't really do anything beside tweak leveling speeds does that mean that everything is a EQ lite clone?
One can only hope.
Tweak? They destroyed leveling speed.
They also simplified classes, led players by the hand from one area to the next, turned faction gains/losses into a joke, reduced max-level advancement to pure gear grinding, did away with armor cusomization, eliminated 90% of the incentive to be social with other players, and created a compact world comprised of playpens with mountains for bars.
I whole-heartedly believe that if WoW had been the exact same game WITHOUT the Warcraft name attached to it, it would not still be around today.
I'm not allowed to express the proper amount of rage and hatred i have for mmorpgs today on this forum because the slightest negative thing i say i get banned for.
This is has always been my train of thought. The saddest part about it was the fact that so many people wanted exactly this when it came out. Blizzard essentially "fixed" all or most of the problems people had been complaining about for years. Forced grouping, not knowing what to do next without spending hours on forums, the losing faction being screwed constantly, insanely time consuming and harsh death penalties. All those things were major complaints about the games prior to WoW.
So blizzard fixed it and now that all the complainers got what they wanted the rest of us who like those "problems" are stuck out to dry. Or we continue playing games that are 8-12 years old even when all these new shiny games comes out, all the while the people we loved playing with over the years slowly fade away. The genre had a paridigm shift in 2004 and the games that have tried to shift it back have been considered failures. Even games that were out like SWG quickly changed to fit this new model of success.
I think statements like this thread's title makes people sound like old farts. "Will music come back to the glory days of the 60s" "Movies aren't the same anymore as they were in the past".
The thing is, any art form changes with time. As people change, so do anything that they create and consume. Games won't stay in the state that they are now forever. They will change. But asking for them to return to an old style is silly. They will change in ways that we can't predict.
You want to keep playing games? You have to adapt to how they are or move on. Same with music, movies or anything else. Either that or you can keep listening to that elvis vinyl over and over again. I'm not saying that listening to old music or playing old games is bad. I'm just saying it's unreasonable to want current media to adopt those old styles.
Preface: I agree and would like to see games more like the older titles as well, so please don't see this as an argument against that, moreso things to think about.
1. Detractors of this idea will be quick to say that difficult games don't appeal to the majority of gamers. They will back this up by saying "look how many difficult MMOs are out there" assuming that devs are all-knowing about what gamers want and how many of them. Any attempts to call them on this result in hyperbole and strawman arguments. I personally would love to see a game more like FFXI with difficulty and need for groups but with a more traditional UI and controls meant for keyboard and mouse rather than console controllers.
2. Zone design can be a difficult area to do well. On one end you have WAR where players were so spread out it was ridiculously time consuming to find players in the same area to group with and on the other side you have Rift where once you've played a toon on either faction you're bored to death of what the zone paths.
3. I have no idea how a MMO can make world PvP work- obvious problems of population imbalance. I never played DAOC- the worst world PvP I experienced was on Sullon Zek in EQ1, the best I experienced was on a brand new PvP server in vanilla WoW leveling with friends when everyone was more or less the same level (i.e. no capped toons just running around f*cking lowbies). I'm open to PvP in MMOs but one thing I have accepted from numerous MMOs is that two faction PvP games suck ass and I'll never expect a good PvP experience from them.
4. You've just defined themepark MMORPGs. That's all there is because that's what they are. *shrug*
5. I never understood this, even complete fail MMOs like Champions Online had great character generators- it's really, really lazy that games outside the superhero genre haven't adopted better options. There's really no excuse for it whatsoever.
hope so!
As long as people keep doing the above, the answer is NO. Why would MMO companies do anything different when people are perfectly willing to throw cash at these poor titles?
Stop paying for these copy/paste games and then you'll see a change.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
It will, eventually.
The problem is that the huge influx of MMO gamers over the last several years, mainly due to WoW, don't know any better. They keep throwing money at the MMOs that keep coming out that promise "innovative" gameplay, only to find out that there really isn't anything innovative, and it's just the same old shallow skinner-box gameplay at the core.
Once this latest generation of MMO gamers wisens up to the cash-grab themepark re-hash MMOs, and stops throwing their money away, the industry will stop half-assing MMO development.
If you're one of the people who plays a game like SWTOR and has fun, that's fine I have no problem with that. But there's countless more people who jump into a new MMO like SWTOR, expecting something different, and then bitch that it's the same old gameplay after the novelty of the "innovative new features" wears off.
Stop paying for these copy/paste games and then you'll see a change.
You need to convince the other 2 million+ people who bought the game to never do it again.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
There are still artists creating music and movies of every genre out there. Even new classical-style music is being composed everyday. It may not be mainstream, but it exists. Therein lies the difference with MMOs. Those old-style games no longer exist. At least not in a recognizable capacity. There's certainly a place for the easy-mode theme park MMOs that seem to be popular today, but when thats the ONLY thing being made, its a valid complaint that something different needs to come along.
Even if they did return to the things we crave in the older games it will not be the same. Because we have grown older ourselves. We are looking for that first intense "HIGH" so to speak. It just doesn't work that way.
Ever read a really really good book. Then go back and read it again a year later, then again a year after that. About the third time through do you find yourself skipping the"dull" parts and going for the parts that you actively remember..You know the parts of the story you thought were really realy cool........yeah me to. We tend to gloss over the suckage parts.
Not to mention as much as I would love to play UO 20 hours a day now while using ICQ to talk to people and stealing people's house keys, being a general douche red character bemoaning trammel and it's evil ways ...it isn't going to happen. I have a family and a job and a life now and the lessening of patience that comes from all that. So while I would love it to happen. I think I will just piss and moan about it and play whatever 30 second sound byte shyte they pump out nowadays rememebring a better time long past and die a bitter old man
Or I can act like Richard Garriot and pretend I am still relevant to today's society game wise and look like a retard in outerspace.
My choices are bleak
BUT...... I am still hoping Archage doesn't suck and I find a new gameing home to immerse myself in. If it doesn't release here or whatever I might just learn Korean and play it anyway fuck it.
You know, I think there were reasons why EverQuest will always be my favorite MMORPG in which its just not fair to judge against other MMORPGs. One of the prime reasons was it was my first MMO. It was really cool to be playing with several other players and it was just something new. I never really got high level because I was around 12 and always made new characters, so I can't so much for the higher level content. Another thing was when the game came around. While the internet was picking up steam for sure(think it was during or just before the whole .com buisness boomed), there was limited information. Sure if you knew where to look you could find the info you wanted later down the line, but intially, you basically went into each zone blind. Heck you didn't even have a map, which I think the lack of one had its own merits. Finally they didn't have instancing, which let you see a lot more of the community for better or worse(LGuk: train to zone undead side! "twiches")
Today, however, people would probably not find this acceptable. People want to have maps to find the quickest route, in addition to having quick travel stations and mounts early on. People want instancing because they don't want to wait hours killing some generic mob until they can get into a group to actually get some loot. Plus websites dedicated to any given MMO pop up before the game even leaves beta. To be fair its understandable why people don't want to wait forever. On the other hand it leaves the game being....well easy. So I'm not sure if mmos will ever go back to those days or if they even can. Perhaps once/if everyone doesn't try to copy WoW, realizes they won't be the next WoW, but can still have a very profitable population you can get close to it, but part of it might have just been it was a new type of game in general.
Your statement doesn't make much sense. Yes new classical music is being composed, but it is not the same as classical music from the 18th century. New music is completely different than Beethoven, Bach etc. People who compose in exactly the same style as Beethoven don't get much attention. It's been done before and why would you listen to some 3rd rate composer compose something in old styles when you can just listen to the masters. And I'm not saying this new music is mainstream, it's not, but it certain does not ressemble older styles of classical music, even if people still call it "classical music"
Music has moved on, and is always changing. So are games.