MMO genre became mainstream. And while WoW may have been the catalyst its not to blame really.
Once companies began to see how much profit could be made off MMO's then the generic mainstreaming began. Why cater to a small niche crowd and make some money when you can cater to everyone and wipe your ass with $100 bills for life?
Maybe this will make sense. It is my opinion only tho.
Take the Black Eyed Peas. I remember listening to them back in the day when their very 1st album was released, and then their 2nd album. These guys put out some really good music then but were hardly known, I introduced alot of my friends to them off the album Bridging the Gap and Behind the Front. Great music IMO, especially for the time.
Now they put out generic top 100 pop music. IMO because of their popularity they have changed to suite the masses. Just like the MMO genre.
I think that I have outgrown the genre. I liked MMOs better when they were niche games with smaller populations, where your name and rep actually meant something, where you actually had to group for content, there was no instant gratification.
The genre has changed, I have changed. Maybe time to move along and let the next generation have the instant gratification generic MMO's that soloing is the norm.
I have a few games I am keeping an eye on. But if those dont do it for me then I am done I think. Maybe go back and play some PnP with a few old buddies.
I couldn't have said it better than this. Game developers got big and with that, they lost their touch with humanity. All they see is $$$ now and they are compelled to push out mass produced trash to keep investors around. Basically they sold their souls and it shows in their products, they are shallow and devoid of life. I have been an avid gamer since the late 80s through the early 2000's but, somewhere in the middle of the last decade these developers just stopped giving a crap. Occasionally they will do something that impresses an audience; but, it can be summed up as dangling a shiny object to wow spectators. Think of them as an experienced cars salesman. A lesser experienced one would probably try to get to know you on a personal level, in order to cator too your personal interests; but, when you have a more experienced salesman who's use to working with larger numbers, he's going to be doing things more effeciently at the cost of humility.
The more experienced salesman will WoW you with shinies long enough to get your money, as soon as you hand it over, they could care less if you existed. That's the kind of relationship you'll find with large, overgrown companies in general. SOE could be used as a perfect example of how a gaming company can go bad and the sad thing is that nothing was learned from their mistakes. EA is in hot pursuit to be the next SOE with their shady business schemes. Who's after that I wonder, Blizzard?
I have almost all my interest in video games in the last several years; could be attributed to age; but, I doubt that. I just don't see anything appealing in the industry anymore, the horrible communities that surround it sure doesn't help either. It's like being trapped in my Freshman year at highschool when I log into any MMO. Would be nice if some new company popped up and reignited my interests; but, till that day comes, I think I'll stick to mountain biking, at least it keeps me grounded in the real world where I have some control.
Gah, the heresy of neckbeards is thick in this thread. "Statistically...." Everytime a neckbeard speaks, a cute girl gets a pimple. And, seriously, who wants to make a cute girl sad? Not me and certainly not you.
MMO's suck because they became complacent and stale. MMO's will stop sucking when they lose said complancecy and staleness.
I have no doubt that we'll get to our honest to god real VR virtual worlds and the bus stop before that is Sandbox MMO St.. This is all about recruiting WoWers and speeding things up.
Good luck.
How far are you on this endeavor? Is there a MILLION player virtual world yet? Personally, i think this is a case of wishful thinking. However, you obviously will disagree.
So tell which is the AAA sandbox game with a million players, ok?
Minecraft would be one, 4 million sales or more. That's twice SWTOR sales. Why the obsession with AAA, a good game is a good game.
The answer to this is VERY simple. Unfortunately a huge majority (small number of people really) refuse to accept the answer.
EQ1, Ultima Online... These "hard-core" "good" MMO's you guys keep talking about had 100k maybe 200k total people playing them. That was GOOD back in the day. Modern MMO's have to push MILLIONS of people otherwise they're a modern day failure.
Er, EQ had about 500k, SWG had about 700-800k. That's better than the majority of modern day MMOs, and that was back in dial up days when almost no one was playing MMOs. So imagine what those games would have nowadays? And considering the budget and teams of those games were much smaller, I'd venture to say the success of those early games dwarf anything modern MMOs have acomplished other than WoW.
As for modern hardcore MMOs not getting many players, there haven't BEEN any hardcore AAA MMOs. You have a very warped memory I think. And because YOU enjoy modern MMOs, that's great! Play them! We're here because we're a massive chunk of people WITHOUT a game to play.
The answer is simple. MMORPGs went mainstream and when doing so started cater to people like in Jersey Shore rather than the fantasy/sci-fi geeks and other gaming nerds.
Is this a good thing? I certainly think not but unfourtunately it is what it is and all we can do is wait for the bubble to burst so that all the Suits with money leaves the genre and gives it back to us.
I was perfectly happy with games like EQ 1, AC 1 and UO which were produced for the fraction of the budget of SW:TOR. I don't see what good WoW did to the genre. Bringing in all these casual people who want everything to be easy and accessible and resulting into endless WoW clones. Who needs that crap?
Also, don't expect me to pretend and "role-play" and make up my own fun inside the game. Modern Graphical Video games should supply everything we need to enjoy them. Players should not have to pretend, imagine, or otherwise do anything but play the game that is provided.
no man, you have forgotten that a game has to engage you, immerse you. That means you do have to use your own brain. Honestly, if you dont want to use your imagination, well all you end up with is a series of 2d visual images and some psychology tricks to get you hooked. You think your brain reacts more pleasurably to images? - wrong, go look at the studies on that one, you would be very surprised.
Translate this to any other medium, lets say books. Do you want a book that is just full of pictures, or a book that has pictures and and an absorbing story to provide context to those pictures?
+1 Graphics are a nice to have but they are nothing compared to gameplay and immersion.
Originally posted by Quizzical So you go out of your way to cherry-pick WoW clones to play, and then you complain that they're WoW-clones? If you want something different, then go play something different. Try Uncharted Waters Online. Try A Tale in the Desert. Try Spiral Knights. Try Puzzle Pirates. Maybe you'll like them or maybe you won't, but if you don't, it won't be because they're WoW clones.
agreed. I see you post this in almost every whiny thread about the genre and nobody ever listens.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
Really an average out of 8 Million players and you think you know the demographic at all? You're just saying whatever you can to be right. There are 8 million players from age 8-80. Geez I wonder what the average age of everyone who watches the Fox Network.
I know a 70 year old man that plays and I know an 8 year odl who plays. That is all I need to back it up.
LOL .. you don't know how to read a normal distribution. The data clearly states that the average is 28.3 and the standard deviation is 8.4. You know what a standard deviation is, right?
If you assume normality, then 84.2% of the population is older than average-SD = 19.9. Thus, 84.2% of the wow players are ~20 and older. It is quite conclusive that a large MAJORITY of wow players are adults.
So 15.65% are younger than 19.9.
However, you still see 34.35% are between 19.9 and 28.3.
WoW is how old? 8yrs old or so.
So adding that in on top of the 15.65% that are currently still kids. An additional 34.35% of those were between 11.9-20.3 years of age when wow came out. As I do not have the data they used I cannot specifically see how many were under a certain age but still that leaves 50% of the population was under 20.3 years of age at 1 point in time assuming your data was collected recently and is accurate.
So as I stated, it introduced MMOs to many young kids. I never stated the word majority.
Of course your statistic tells us nothing as it does not tell us when this data was collect nor any information about its relevance.
Blizzard did wreck the genre by pushing polished simplicity out to casual gamers. They also heavily use audio visual techniques with subliminals to brain wash people into playing their garbage.. its well documented just go research it.
The mmo community of today is comprised of gamers who only knew world of warcraft. it was their first game and everything that comes after it has to be just like it or close to it. Then you have greedy developers just simply chasing the mythicla 10 million wow users which is simply not true and I wish more people would wake up to this very real fact. Asian wow users are forced to use game cards based on hourly playtime. Each time they key in a time card number which could be 5 or 6 times a week, blizzard then turns around and counts that as unique users...
So, we have been sold a lie on so many varying levels it was all perpetrated by blizzard and bliazzard has gone to crap lately because half their original dev team left to form runic and other various companies.
Rift was a solid game but yes a wow clone because it was comprised of a lot of ex sony/eq devs... Once they were out from under the thumb of Smedley, they could make the game they wanted and they were betting on millions of users flocking to their very polished wow clone with unique class system... It didn't pan out for them though but that game is way better than wow ever was and will be. It all just goes back to how blizzard uses illegal brainwashing on its users to get them addicted to their game. I don't care how many of you think Im nuts for saying it, I've seen the evidence and researched how they did it.. Had trion done the same technique, wow would be dead in the water but Trion, much like all of you, have no clue what blizzard did and continues to try to do in all their games...
Gamers that make games because they love games will continue to do so, and hopefully with middleware becoming quite advanced and more available we'll start to see more and more projects from people that are making a game because they have a passion for it, believe in their design and are banking on a good game turning a profit.
Of course this will all happen under the shadow of the soulless triple A 'everyones a winner all the time and nothing bad ever happens - oddly enough in this world overrun with demons, monsters & aliens' clones that keep oozing out of the big development house spreadsheets, which are more obviously more concerned with attempting to replicate the bullet point features of WoW than actually crafting a solid game.
Yea, it sucks that big business dragged our hobby out into the light and got it all covered in moron drool. They probably will carry on making big budget disposable trash for years to come, there certainly seems to be a market for it, but at least it's looking more and more as if we won't have only them to look to for our gaming wants.
For me, there are more exciting sounding titles on the way than there has been in years, and a lot of them are smaller titles with smaller budgets. I'm ok with that. In fact, a lot of my favorite games weren't even made on anything even approaching a 50+ million dollar budget.
We are just now starting to see innovation, Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World both take quite alot from DAoC in terms of PvP.
Not to mention the other things they have in store, dynamic events and exploration is Guild Wars 2 is looking really good.
Digging up old ideas isn't exactly innovation. It's a nice start though. I just wish they'd follow through. GW2 doesn't go as large scale with its RvR as DAoC did and TSW is instanced to hell and back. Barely even an MMO.
Once gamers stop paying for garbage they'll stop feeding it to us.
But it seems like a chicken or egg arguement to me. Gamers buy it because its all there really is, companies create it because gamers buy it.
People want to play MMOs and will buy whats on the market, especially with the marketing and hype machine that makes every new MMO to come out look like the second coming of jesus.
Clever marketing, bias reviewers, beta gimmicks and unfulfilled promises by developers have all fueld this as well.
It's not a chicken or egg situation, it's a "You're weak and need to make excuses for your weakness", man up!
After my lastest forray into SWTOR I've finally had it with the genre. That is, I can't really comprehend what's happened over the last 10 years or so. Is this really all a result of WoW? Is this the result of investors wanting the companies to play it 'safe'? What has happened?
A little about me: I started playing mmo's in 98 with Ultima Online, from there I went to Everquest, Asherons call, Shadowbane/DAOC and on and on. I've played every single AAA mmo to have come out over the years as well as many smaller ones. I've watched the genre go from extreme hardcore (Everquest 1 death penalty, Ultima online full loot) to theme parks with 3 or 4 battlegrounds. PvP has clearly taken a 'min-game' type feel to it. Death penaltys are long gone from most MMOs. Real challenge is found in the form of raids that take entire days and are made up of min/maxers.
I guess I'm asking how the genre ended up here? 8 years or so ago when Star Wars Galaxies was released it was a full loot, merciless game...2 months ago when TOR was released it was a WoW clone with the Star Wars IP attached. Even games with successful past as more hardcore games have taken the WoW route..Mythic is a prime example of this: DAOC with 3 factions and a massive end game open world pvp area was replaced by Batrtleground heavy and cartoonish Warhammer. Lord of the Rings online could have had epic PvP with such a solid storyline, instead we get some strange monster play.
Rift is no different, its a WoW clone with a twist on professions. Everquest 1 is another prime example, one of the most hardcore PvE games ever made was turned into a cartoony solo-friendly (and far less popular) Everquest 2.
I just don't understand. It seems the demand is certainly there, and Guild Wars 2 shows lots of promise but why has it taken so long? I look over the game list at left and all I see are WoW clones with different twists on the unimportant aspects. The genre hasn't grown stale, it's been stale for the last 10 years.
A company like Bioware should have known better: In the Star Wars universe which at its core is a story of good vs evil, dark vs light, Jedi vs Sith, we instead are given Huttball and a terrible designed small open world area where there is no death penalty and you can insta spawn and run right back into the fight.
So I guess I leave this with a few questions: Why did the genre take this route? the route of safety, the route of WoW cloneing? And more importantly, why do the gamers continue to support this? (I'm as guilty as anyone)...Seemingly every new AAA game gets super uber hyped by the mmo community (just look at TOR) releases and is a major let-down. Population tanks and that's that. Rinse and repeat with the next MMO.
This is what happend....
"No longer are MMOs are created with the expectation that anything can happen. Those days are long past. If players were left to forge their own destinies it would result in chaos and conflict which would be unacceptable to the story obsessed new breed of video game designer who insists that every aspect of what a player does should be tightly controlled and scripted. You see, you as a player can’t be trusted.
Instead MMOs have become virtual sausage factories where the spectator-like player sits back and enjoys the ride. Game design has been reduced to process of crafting every moment of the player experience — nothing is left to chance — a philosophy that would make amusement park tycoon Walt Disney proud."
- Wolfshead
Sausage factories that is what we are left with 8 years after WoW release... People did warn us though.. Myself Included we have been complaining for years now.. but Im glad more of you are waking up... I think it might be time for us to "RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE".... Stand up and fight!!!!
remember what happened to rocky in rocky 3? the beginning? thats whats happening to the genre. they are believing their own hype.
I dont blame wow, they innovated (I know it's all eq/w.e ... but they changed things) ... but the rest of them should all be shot for just rehashing the same crap over and over. right after we all shoot ourselves for buying the rehashed crap over and over.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
first off sorry to drunk to go through all 15 pages of this but all onlinew games seem to suck now a days...no mateer what genre it's full of scumbags and cheaters trying to get to the top asap...play any fps and you get the same 2 maps with 1 team spaWn camping, any mmorpg bg 1 team constantly gy camping...wtf happened to fair competetivness..yeah probabaly just masde a new word up
LIke anything that becomes popular among the masses, big business takes over. We've all seen it, MMOs launched unfinished, and buggy, the dollar is all they care about now.
Back in the day, it was more of pride, out-doing your rival game devs but still keeping it real. Those days are gone, its just a big corporate giant, souless and devouring.
FIrst off I agree with you and your comments. Second, you wnat to know what happened to the genre? Read this entire thread after your post, not what is being said, but how it is being said. Over half the posts are made by todays version of a gamer, selfish, uneducated, mouthy, and down right rude to anyone that speaks their mind. It is on the forums and in the games today, the respect and tolerance of yesterday are gone.
When you post a perfectly legit discussion only to see it turned it into a bash fest by todays generation of so called gamers, the answers to your questions become quite obvious.
I still maintain to this day and age that the closest thing we have had to an actual MMORPG turns out to not actually be an MMORPG, Neverwinter Nights.
Think about it. D&D is classic RPG with proper choice and consequences in your character builds and is filled with all sorts of clever mechanics that cover everything from pickpocketing to stealth and intimidation. Combine that with the ability for admins and DM's to generate their own content and change rules on the fly to suit the setting and it truely is the closest thing to a true multiplayer rpg experience that at least I've ever played.
MMO's are fine and all that but NWN is where it was at for me. If they could have done the second game along the same lines but polished everything and made content creation easier and then worked on getting the engine more efficient it really could have been able to support hundreds of simultaneous users instead of 50-75 at most. Face it, WoW might have 10 million subscribers but only a few thousand at most are on any one server.
Ironically EVE Online is a better MMO experience than WoW simply due to the fact the entire game is based around interaction with others and that the server regularly holds over 50 thousand users which is going to be at least 10 times more than your average MMO server handles. All this from a game which has something like 5% of WoW's subscription base...
Of course there are sandbox style games out there like Wurm and Mortal/Darkfall but even most of the features those games have could be implemented in one way or another in Neverwinter Nights by smart admins. And before anyone says you couldn't, you could. There was everything from creative crafting systems to additional sub races and entirely player create tilesets, models, textures and spell effects. Changing the 'rules' of the game simply involved opening a file in notepad and editing some values in a table. Want to change the requirements for a feat or just disable it entirely? Sure.. just open the file in notepad and do it... That's real RPG stuff right there. The ability for the players to play the game they want to play, provide the proper framework for it and watch them create things you never dreamed were even possible and watch it flourish.
I can tell you what happened -- excessive FAIRNESS.
What the early MMOs had that recent MMOs do not is that they were UNFAIR.
Note unfair was a GOOD thing....
-----
Lets look at class balance first...
Today -- everyone has to be EQUAL... Everything needs to be fair... If one class can kill monster X solo -- then another class can probably kill monster X solo as well.
Now look at something like everquest as it was at release...
SOME classes could solo really well -- other classes under some situations -- some classes couldnt solo pretty much AT ALL. Some classes pretty much even needed escort to get back to the dungeon or they would die trying to get there.
Some classes had gate and bind and speed and other classes did NOT. If you played a warrior type in everquest 1 then you had to run to get there and you had to run to get back. You did NOT have gate. If you wanted to change your bind point you had to find someone to bind you somewhere. And it had to be in a town where the caster could bind just about anywhere.
It wasnt FAIR. It didnt NEED to be fair.
That caster had far lower strength than the warrior. He couldnt carry as much stuff. Nowadays all games have just slots and everyone can carry the same amount -- it is FAIR... Fair is not always good.
----
Look at items...
It is unfair that someone can build up money and then just buy that uber item with coin... They should have to do the dungeon themselves... Hence we got BoP -- it is FAIR...
Look at racial abilities...
It is unfair that race X has power Y because that makes it better than my race... Hence to be FAIR we get homoginized races where racials do not really mean anything.
Even racial stats/class choice.
It is unfair that ogres have a huge amount more strength than an pixie. I want to play my pixie warrior and do as much damage as ogres.... Hence we ended up with losing the racial stats and we ended up all ARAP(all races all professions) instead of having classes limited to races that would logically have them.
----
What we are currently suffering from is an excess of FAIRNESS... If things were a lot more unfair then people would have a lot better time with the games.
This post, is my nomination for post of the year thus far. I agree with everything that is said in it. The problem is a lot of us did in fact complain about travel times, death penalties, not being able to get a bind, etc. etc... It's easy to see why that could happen. When you look at things in a narrow minded and selfish way, these are in fact valid complaints. Everyone has the right to do that if they want, it's their money, and it's their choice to play the game or not. The problem ends up being that nobody sees the damage being done until it is too late.
I remember back in EQ1, when I needed a bind, or a SOW, or help with a corpse run and had to ask people for help, often times it would start conversations with the people that were helping, which in turn would create a new friend. Someone to play the game with. Guilds were formed this way. A guild I was in during EQ1 for... GGod I don't even know... 5+ years, I was introduced to them in their fledgling state by asking a cleric for a res. I remember she went way out of her way to do so, and we started talking. Then I met her husband who was a monk, and they at some point needed a tank (I was a SK) and the entire long lasting relationship started of something that isn't even possible in current MMORPGs. I actually still talk to those people even today. We don't game together anymore, but a ton of my old EQ1 guild members I have kept in contact with and we still talk on a semi-regular basis. I just don't see any way that can happen in the current climate when everyone can do anything. You don't NEED anyone. Nobody needs to put their ego aside and help someone really.
The current way of doing quests is also a problem. You have to keep exact pace with your friends or there is no point in even doing anything but trying to race to level cap so you can finially all play together without hassles. But you better have known those people before the current NNO you are playing, or there is no loyalty, and no real friendship there. People drop in and out for help with their a to b quest, and most of the time don't even speak to one another. I remember, again going back to EQ1, when it was odd and uncomfortable if someone in your group didn't talk. Now it is the norm to n ot say anything.
It's interesting to me that this site reviewed Kingdoms of Alamur. That game, is basically a MMORPG. Yes, there are no other real life player populating the world, but it illustrates the point that you don't need anyone to play a MMORPG with now. It is the same format as all these other games that are out, but without the people whining about WoW in general chat, both the pros and cons of it.
I'm at a loss for what to do about MMO's at this point. I think Micro$oft bailing on Vanguard really put the nail in the coffin for cooperative MMO gaming. That really is a good game, but the release was horrid, one of the worst ever, and it was never able to recover from it. Since then, I don't really see much in the way of games with the cooperative mentality, aside from end game raiding, which now everyone pretty much has to do or you run out of options.
I miss the community aspect of these older games. The truth is the only way to build it up is to force people to interact with one another, and the only way to do that is to make it so everyone needs one another. Games aren't made that way anymore, and it's too bad.
agree totally. To this day nothing comes close to the feeling of community and accomplishment that I had with EQ.
Your reputation mattered, your ability as a player and as a person mattered. Now it's just hang in Org and click lookingforepics and faceroll your way to purples.
I hate the whole cross realm/pvp/dungeons, I hate the way that there is no sense of community anymore. I hate the way noone speaks. I have tried pretty much every MMO on the market and gotten more and more disappointed over the years.
I don't understand why MMOs are going backwards. Nothing comes close to oldschool EQ or pre TOA DAOC.
Long time lurker, first time poster. By long time, I definitely mean 7 or more years.
Being a twenty-five year old male, I must agree with the Op. I absolutely hate the path modern MMOs have taken. I would also like to state that UO (pre-renaissance) was also my MMO and one of my first 'real' computer games: Wolfenstein 3d, DooM, Commander Keen and the like -- everyone played. What made UO so great to me was not knowing what to do, 'nor being told when to do it. It was /my/ job to discovery all of that. No, I'm not trying to continue the whole 'themepark' versus 'sandbox' arguement, I'm merely stating that MMOs have lost thier luster. You start a new MMO and you know /exactly/ what to do, where to go, whole to talk to and you even know what you'll become after your character ages past 125 hours. Sure, we had UOStratics and such then but even then, there was so much in that game to cover that you couldn't possibly read up on everything.
I miss the feeling of creating a new character and trying to find his/her identity. Like, what does it mean to be a warrior and what weapons will I wield? What foes will I face? Everything is so cookie-cutter.
I'm not trying to knock the people that enjoy modern MMOs, hey, if you enjoy them, carry on. I just cannot enjoy myself playing World of Warcraft in another universe or anime skins. There are 'alternatives' but they're not MMOs. A MMO is supposed to be a massive game.
It's been stated before but the finger to point at is not developers but rather, their investors. When you have a larger corporation funding your project, it's akin to having a pistol shoved at the back of your skull. World of warcraft is the flavor of the year, create that! Gaming is very mainsteam and popular these days. Starcraft and DotA are revered as 'sports' and are televised in certain countries. When you have mass appeal, you've got to cater to them to make money. I am afraid that us, who would like another DAoC or EverQuest 1 are a minority. People do not seem to have enough time to learn to play a game and enjoy it, they just want to reach the end as quickly as possible and move on as if MMOs were a console game.
tl;dr, I'd like to go back to the days were MMOs were MMOs, massive and epic.
Comments
I couldn't have said it better than this. Game developers got big and with that, they lost their touch with humanity. All they see is $$$ now and they are compelled to push out mass produced trash to keep investors around. Basically they sold their souls and it shows in their products, they are shallow and devoid of life. I have been an avid gamer since the late 80s through the early 2000's but, somewhere in the middle of the last decade these developers just stopped giving a crap. Occasionally they will do something that impresses an audience; but, it can be summed up as dangling a shiny object to wow spectators. Think of them as an experienced cars salesman. A lesser experienced one would probably try to get to know you on a personal level, in order to cator too your personal interests; but, when you have a more experienced salesman who's use to working with larger numbers, he's going to be doing things more effeciently at the cost of humility.
The more experienced salesman will WoW you with shinies long enough to get your money, as soon as you hand it over, they could care less if you existed. That's the kind of relationship you'll find with large, overgrown companies in general. SOE could be used as a perfect example of how a gaming company can go bad and the sad thing is that nothing was learned from their mistakes. EA is in hot pursuit to be the next SOE with their shady business schemes. Who's after that I wonder, Blizzard?
I have almost all my interest in video games in the last several years; could be attributed to age; but, I doubt that. I just don't see anything appealing in the industry anymore, the horrible communities that surround it sure doesn't help either. It's like being trapped in my Freshman year at highschool when I log into any MMO. Would be nice if some new company popped up and reignited my interests; but, till that day comes, I think I'll stick to mountain biking, at least it keeps me grounded in the real world where I have some control.
Gah, the heresy of neckbeards is thick in this thread. "Statistically...." Everytime a neckbeard speaks, a cute girl gets a pimple. And, seriously, who wants to make a cute girl sad? Not me and certainly not you.
MMO's suck because they became complacent and stale. MMO's will stop sucking when they lose said complancecy and staleness.
Now bask in the glory of Stephen Lynch D&D: http://comedians.jokes.com/stephen-lynch/videos/stephen-lynch---d-d
TRUST THE COMPUTER! THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND!
Stay Alert! Trust No One! Keep Your Laser Handy!
Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues!
Quit and go home? Oh, no way.
I have no doubt that we'll get to our honest to god real VR virtual worlds and the bus stop before that is Sandbox MMO St.. This is all about recruiting WoWers and speeding things up.
Good luck.
How far are you on this endeavor? Is there a MILLION player virtual world yet? Personally, i think this is a case of wishful thinking. However, you obviously will disagree.
So tell which is the AAA sandbox game with a million players, ok?
Minecraft would be one, 4 million sales or more. That's twice SWTOR sales. Why the obsession with AAA, a good game is a good game.Er, EQ had about 500k, SWG had about 700-800k. That's better than the majority of modern day MMOs, and that was back in dial up days when almost no one was playing MMOs. So imagine what those games would have nowadays? And considering the budget and teams of those games were much smaller, I'd venture to say the success of those early games dwarf anything modern MMOs have acomplished other than WoW.
As for modern hardcore MMOs not getting many players, there haven't BEEN any hardcore AAA MMOs. You have a very warped memory I think. And because YOU enjoy modern MMOs, that's great! Play them! We're here because we're a massive chunk of people WITHOUT a game to play.
Darkfall Travelogues!
The answer is simple. MMORPGs went mainstream and when doing so started cater to people like in Jersey Shore rather than the fantasy/sci-fi geeks and other gaming nerds.
Is this a good thing? I certainly think not but unfourtunately it is what it is and all we can do is wait for the bubble to burst so that all the Suits with money leaves the genre and gives it back to us.
I was perfectly happy with games like EQ 1, AC 1 and UO which were produced for the fraction of the budget of SW:TOR. I don't see what good WoW did to the genre. Bringing in all these casual people who want everything to be easy and accessible and resulting into endless WoW clones. Who needs that crap?
My gaming blog
no man, you have forgotten that a game has to engage you, immerse you. That means you do have to use your own brain. Honestly, if you dont want to use your imagination, well all you end up with is a series of 2d visual images and some psychology tricks to get you hooked. You think your brain reacts more pleasurably to images? - wrong, go look at the studies on that one, you would be very surprised.
Translate this to any other medium, lets say books. Do you want a book that is just full of pictures, or a book that has pictures and and an absorbing story to provide context to those pictures?
+1Graphics are a nice to have but they are nothing compared to gameplay and immersion.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
So 15.65% are younger than 19.9.
However, you still see 34.35% are between 19.9 and 28.3.
WoW is how old? 8yrs old or so.
So adding that in on top of the 15.65% that are currently still kids. An additional 34.35% of those were between 11.9-20.3 years of age when wow came out. As I do not have the data they used I cannot specifically see how many were under a certain age but still that leaves 50% of the population was under 20.3 years of age at 1 point in time assuming your data was collected recently and is accurate.
So as I stated, it introduced MMOs to many young kids. I never stated the word majority.
Of course your statistic tells us nothing as it does not tell us when this data was collect nor any information about its relevance.
Blizzard did wreck the genre by pushing polished simplicity out to casual gamers. They also heavily use audio visual techniques with subliminals to brain wash people into playing their garbage.. its well documented just go research it.
The mmo community of today is comprised of gamers who only knew world of warcraft. it was their first game and everything that comes after it has to be just like it or close to it. Then you have greedy developers just simply chasing the mythicla 10 million wow users which is simply not true and I wish more people would wake up to this very real fact. Asian wow users are forced to use game cards based on hourly playtime. Each time they key in a time card number which could be 5 or 6 times a week, blizzard then turns around and counts that as unique users...
So, we have been sold a lie on so many varying levels it was all perpetrated by blizzard and bliazzard has gone to crap lately because half their original dev team left to form runic and other various companies.
Rift was a solid game but yes a wow clone because it was comprised of a lot of ex sony/eq devs... Once they were out from under the thumb of Smedley, they could make the game they wanted and they were betting on millions of users flocking to their very polished wow clone with unique class system... It didn't pan out for them though but that game is way better than wow ever was and will be. It all just goes back to how blizzard uses illegal brainwashing on its users to get them addicted to their game. I don't care how many of you think Im nuts for saying it, I've seen the evidence and researched how they did it.. Had trion done the same technique, wow would be dead in the water but Trion, much like all of you, have no clue what blizzard did and continues to try to do in all their games...
We are just now starting to see innovation, Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World both take quite alot from DAoC in terms of PvP.
Not to mention the other things they have in store, dynamic events and exploration is Guild Wars 2 is looking really good.
Gamers that make games because they love games will continue to do so, and hopefully with middleware becoming quite advanced and more available we'll start to see more and more projects from people that are making a game because they have a passion for it, believe in their design and are banking on a good game turning a profit.
Of course this will all happen under the shadow of the soulless triple A 'everyones a winner all the time and nothing bad ever happens - oddly enough in this world overrun with demons, monsters & aliens' clones that keep oozing out of the big development house spreadsheets, which are more obviously more concerned with attempting to replicate the bullet point features of WoW than actually crafting a solid game.
Yea, it sucks that big business dragged our hobby out into the light and got it all covered in moron drool. They probably will carry on making big budget disposable trash for years to come, there certainly seems to be a market for it, but at least it's looking more and more as if we won't have only them to look to for our gaming wants.
For me, there are more exciting sounding titles on the way than there has been in years, and a lot of them are smaller titles with smaller budgets. I'm ok with that. In fact, a lot of my favorite games weren't even made on anything even approaching a 50+ million dollar budget.
Digging up old ideas isn't exactly innovation. It's a nice start though. I just wish they'd follow through. GW2 doesn't go as large scale with its RvR as DAoC did and TSW is instanced to hell and back. Barely even an MMO.
Darkfall Travelogues!
Thanks for posting this. I hadn't read it.
It was cool to reminisce but also sad because I can't bring myself to believe that anything like that can happen again.
To those of us that were playing, at least we were there, right?
(bleh... was supposed to be a quote..)
SoW and Invis please!
It's not a chicken or egg situation, it's a "You're weak and need to make excuses for your weakness", man up!
I was responding to this
p.s. click on "expectation"
SoW and Invis please!
The genre went mainstream as company tried to make something that the people would buy.
Which is good cause this genre is experiencing some amazing growths and spin-offs like 'League of Legends'.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
remember what happened to rocky in rocky 3? the beginning? thats whats happening to the genre. they are believing their own hype.
I dont blame wow, they innovated (I know it's all eq/w.e ... but they changed things) ... but the rest of them should all be shot for just rehashing the same crap over and over. right after we all shoot ourselves for buying the rehashed crap over and over.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
first off sorry to drunk to go through all 15 pages of this but all onlinew games seem to suck now a days...no mateer what genre it's full of scumbags and cheaters trying to get to the top asap...play any fps and you get the same 2 maps with 1 team spaWn camping, any mmorpg bg 1 team constantly gy camping...wtf happened to fair competetivness..yeah probabaly just masde a new word up
LIke anything that becomes popular among the masses, big business takes over. We've all seen it, MMOs launched unfinished, and buggy, the dollar is all they care about now.
Back in the day, it was more of pride, out-doing your rival game devs but still keeping it real. Those days are gone, its just a big corporate giant, souless and devouring.
FIrst off I agree with you and your comments. Second, you wnat to know what happened to the genre? Read this entire thread after your post, not what is being said, but how it is being said. Over half the posts are made by todays version of a gamer, selfish, uneducated, mouthy, and down right rude to anyone that speaks their mind. It is on the forums and in the games today, the respect and tolerance of yesterday are gone.
When you post a perfectly legit discussion only to see it turned it into a bash fest by todays generation of so called gamers, the answers to your questions become quite obvious.
Really wish I knew I can't and wont play any MMO with a sub or F2P till we get out of the "I want it now" generation.
I still maintain to this day and age that the closest thing we have had to an actual MMORPG turns out to not actually be an MMORPG, Neverwinter Nights.
Think about it. D&D is classic RPG with proper choice and consequences in your character builds and is filled with all sorts of clever mechanics that cover everything from pickpocketing to stealth and intimidation. Combine that with the ability for admins and DM's to generate their own content and change rules on the fly to suit the setting and it truely is the closest thing to a true multiplayer rpg experience that at least I've ever played.
MMO's are fine and all that but NWN is where it was at for me. If they could have done the second game along the same lines but polished everything and made content creation easier and then worked on getting the engine more efficient it really could have been able to support hundreds of simultaneous users instead of 50-75 at most. Face it, WoW might have 10 million subscribers but only a few thousand at most are on any one server.
Ironically EVE Online is a better MMO experience than WoW simply due to the fact the entire game is based around interaction with others and that the server regularly holds over 50 thousand users which is going to be at least 10 times more than your average MMO server handles. All this from a game which has something like 5% of WoW's subscription base...
Of course there are sandbox style games out there like Wurm and Mortal/Darkfall but even most of the features those games have could be implemented in one way or another in Neverwinter Nights by smart admins. And before anyone says you couldn't, you could. There was everything from creative crafting systems to additional sub races and entirely player create tilesets, models, textures and spell effects. Changing the 'rules' of the game simply involved opening a file in notepad and editing some values in a table. Want to change the requirements for a feat or just disable it entirely? Sure.. just open the file in notepad and do it... That's real RPG stuff right there. The ability for the players to play the game they want to play, provide the proper framework for it and watch them create things you never dreamed were even possible and watch it flourish.
This post, is my nomination for post of the year thus far. I agree with everything that is said in it. The problem is a lot of us did in fact complain about travel times, death penalties, not being able to get a bind, etc. etc... It's easy to see why that could happen. When you look at things in a narrow minded and selfish way, these are in fact valid complaints. Everyone has the right to do that if they want, it's their money, and it's their choice to play the game or not. The problem ends up being that nobody sees the damage being done until it is too late.
I remember back in EQ1, when I needed a bind, or a SOW, or help with a corpse run and had to ask people for help, often times it would start conversations with the people that were helping, which in turn would create a new friend. Someone to play the game with. Guilds were formed this way. A guild I was in during EQ1 for... GGod I don't even know... 5+ years, I was introduced to them in their fledgling state by asking a cleric for a res. I remember she went way out of her way to do so, and we started talking. Then I met her husband who was a monk, and they at some point needed a tank (I was a SK) and the entire long lasting relationship started of something that isn't even possible in current MMORPGs. I actually still talk to those people even today. We don't game together anymore, but a ton of my old EQ1 guild members I have kept in contact with and we still talk on a semi-regular basis. I just don't see any way that can happen in the current climate when everyone can do anything. You don't NEED anyone. Nobody needs to put their ego aside and help someone really.
The current way of doing quests is also a problem. You have to keep exact pace with your friends or there is no point in even doing anything but trying to race to level cap so you can finially all play together without hassles. But you better have known those people before the current NNO you are playing, or there is no loyalty, and no real friendship there. People drop in and out for help with their a to b quest, and most of the time don't even speak to one another. I remember, again going back to EQ1, when it was odd and uncomfortable if someone in your group didn't talk. Now it is the norm to n ot say anything.
It's interesting to me that this site reviewed Kingdoms of Alamur. That game, is basically a MMORPG. Yes, there are no other real life player populating the world, but it illustrates the point that you don't need anyone to play a MMORPG with now. It is the same format as all these other games that are out, but without the people whining about WoW in general chat, both the pros and cons of it.
I'm at a loss for what to do about MMO's at this point. I think Micro$oft bailing on Vanguard really put the nail in the coffin for cooperative MMO gaming. That really is a good game, but the release was horrid, one of the worst ever, and it was never able to recover from it. Since then, I don't really see much in the way of games with the cooperative mentality, aside from end game raiding, which now everyone pretty much has to do or you run out of options.
I miss the community aspect of these older games. The truth is the only way to build it up is to force people to interact with one another, and the only way to do that is to make it so everyone needs one another. Games aren't made that way anymore, and it's too bad.
agree totally. To this day nothing comes close to the feeling of community and accomplishment that I had with EQ.
Your reputation mattered, your ability as a player and as a person mattered. Now it's just hang in Org and click lookingforepics and faceroll your way to purples.
I hate the whole cross realm/pvp/dungeons, I hate the way that there is no sense of community anymore. I hate the way noone speaks. I have tried pretty much every MMO on the market and gotten more and more disappointed over the years.
I don't understand why MMOs are going backwards. Nothing comes close to oldschool EQ or pre TOA DAOC.
Long time lurker, first time poster.
By long time, I definitely mean 7 or more years.
Being a twenty-five year old male, I must agree with the Op. I absolutely hate the path modern MMOs have taken. I would also like to state that UO (pre-renaissance) was also my MMO and one of my first 'real' computer games: Wolfenstein 3d, DooM, Commander Keen and the like -- everyone played. What made UO so great to me was not knowing what to do, 'nor being told when to do it. It was /my/ job to discovery all of that. No, I'm not trying to continue the whole 'themepark' versus 'sandbox' arguement, I'm merely stating that MMOs have lost thier luster. You start a new MMO and you know /exactly/ what to do, where to go, whole to talk to and you even know what you'll become after your character ages past 125 hours. Sure, we had UOStratics and such then but even then, there was so much in that game to cover that you couldn't possibly read up on everything.
I miss the feeling of creating a new character and trying to find his/her identity. Like, what does it mean to be a warrior and what weapons will I wield? What foes will I face? Everything is so cookie-cutter.
I'm not trying to knock the people that enjoy modern MMOs, hey, if you enjoy them, carry on. I just cannot enjoy myself playing World of Warcraft in another universe or anime skins. There are 'alternatives' but they're not MMOs. A MMO is supposed to be a massive game.
It's been stated before but the finger to point at is not developers but rather, their investors. When you have a larger corporation funding your project, it's akin to having a pistol shoved at the back of your skull. World of warcraft is the flavor of the year, create that! Gaming is very mainsteam and popular these days. Starcraft and DotA are revered as 'sports' and are televised in certain countries. When you have mass appeal, you've got to cater to them to make money. I am afraid that us, who would like another DAoC or EverQuest 1 are a minority. People do not seem to have enough time to learn to play a game and enjoy it, they just want to reach the end as quickly as possible and move on as if MMOs were a console game.
tl;dr, I'd like to go back to the days were MMOs were MMOs, massive and epic.