Well, money pays the bills and keeps food on the table. I'd say that if you where in the same position, you'd choose money over making some random people on the internet happy with a virtual world. Oh, and even if devs want to do it, the production cash doesn't come from them. It coms from suits which feel that way.
Don't get me wrong, i would love for companies to improve the genre, but that's no going to happen.
And that's what the American economy is coming to in a nutshell...lol
...and for some of us... when our society and economy comes to this then society isn't worth it anymore. I have pretty much quit all online entertainment and I am now considering leaving American society completely due to America's overzealous emphasis on money and profit, leaving one way or the other. I cannot tolerate the money emphasis on everything anymore. Money has its place and it's boundrys on how much it should influence life, and it has exceeded those boundrys by a long ways.
Business, Profit, Marketing, Advertising.... it's seeped into every part of our lives now. There is nowhere now in American life where you can turn and not find some aspect of "money" involved in it. THAT is not natural. It's not right. ... and for damn sure it wasn't this much a part of American life ever before.
THAT is what the American economy is doing to people, at least some of us. It's driving us to desire to abandon it and the people left will be the ones that see nothing wrong with Money being the central focus of everything.
MMOs just got caught up in it like everything else in society. MMOs when they began were an escape from that kind of thing, but they are nolonger. MMOs are now just another tool for the Money people to make that Quarterly report better.
You seem unable to understand that there are people who want a more virtual world aka as what we had instead of what we have now. We do know about all the bugsback then or other game related issue's, does it make us wrong to want most of what we had but then fairly bugfree and minus the issue's from back then?
Oh i understand you want something different than today's MMO. However, that does not make you superior, or that your preference should superceed mine. It also does not mean that we cannot talk about all the problems in previous VW games.
You, however, do not seem to understand that time has changed.
Where are the 32 classes?, where are all the none-combat professions.
Why do we need 32 classes? Why do we need all the non-combat professions? It boils down to what people enjoy. EQ has more classes than WOW but it is a much worse game. I won't have time to play 32 classes ANYWAY. Why do i care if it goes beyond 10?
I for one enjoy all sorts of genre's in gaming, yet MMORPG is the only genre that isn't able to satisfied my needs.
The answer is clear. If it is not satisfying YOUR need, it is not for you and you should move on. You don't see me bitching & moaning about genres that does not satisfy my gaming needs (like horror survival). I simply don't play them.
I personaly just feel that this genre has become incredible limited compared to games of the old style MMORPG. You might say there are some indie developers or already with released games or in development, but can't you understand that due to our age within gaming that we also want a AAA title to be more virtual world like then the simple online co-op games that MMORPG's have become?
And the new ones are much more assessible, easier to get into, less commitment and not like a job. No wonder old style MMORPGs are "old" and not made anymore. Oh, i know you want one .. you have repeated that 10 times. But a) i don't, and b) no amount of ranting can create games. You need a business plan and millions of dollars.
[mod edit]
Well, i played UO & EQ too and i think people who want them back are on rose-colored glasses ignoring many many problems. Camping, training, time-sink (sitting staring at a spellbook in a GAME!!!!) ... were all there. Do you actually remember those?
And if you really want a game with those problems, i don't want any part in it, and i wish you good-luck convincnig devs that games with those problems still should be made.
You seem unable to understand that there are people who want a more virtual world aka as what we had instead of what we have now. We do know about all the bugsback then or other game related issue's, does it make us wrong to want most of what we had but then fairly bugfree and minus the issue's from back then?
Oh i understand you want something different than today's MMO. However, that does not make you superior, or that your preference should superceed mine. It also does not mean that we cannot talk about all the problems in previous VW games.
You, however, do not seem to understand that time has changed.
I am certainly not aiming at being superior, not at all, you already seem to have plenty of MMO's to enjoy, it shouldn't be that hard to understand some people want something different, doesn't mean everything has to be the way I want, be no lenght, but for those who want more shouldn't there be choice?
Where are the 32 classes?, where are all the none-combat professions.
Why do we need 32 classes? Why do we need all the non-combat professions? It boils down to what people enjoy. EQ has more classes than WOW but it is a much worse game. I won't have time to play 32 classes ANYWAY. Why do i care if it goes beyond 10?
That's the thing with options, you DON'T have to play all 32 classes
I for one enjoy all sorts of genre's in gaming, yet MMORPG is the only genre that isn't able to satisfied my needs.
The answer is clear. If it is not satisfying YOUR need, it is not for you and you should move on. You don't see me bitching & moaning about genres that does not satisfy my gaming needs (like horror survival). I simply don't play them.
You seem to forget we are discussing things on forums, you don't see me bitching unless sharing a personal opion is bitching to you?, perhpas read other reply's I made in this topiuc.
I personaly just feel that this genre has become incredible limited compared to games of the old style MMORPG. You might say there are some indie developers or already with released games or in development, but can't you understand that due to our age within gaming that we also want a AAA title to be more virtual world like then the simple online co-op games that MMORPG's have become?
And the new ones are much more assessible, easier to get into, less commitment and not like a job. No wonder old style MMORPGs are "old" and not made anymore. Oh, i know you want one .. you have repeated that 10 times. But a) i don't, and b) no amount of ranting can create games. You need a business plan and millions of dollars.
Actually you should really read my former replies
So please stop the nonsense about "retro" or rose-colored glasses as it only shows you do not understand what is is we want.
Well, i played UO & EQ too and i think people who want them back are on rose-colored glasses ignoring many many problems. Camping, training, time-sink (sitting staring at a spellbook in a GAME!!!!) ... were all there. Do you actually remember those?
Same as above
And if you really want a game with those problems, i don't want any part in it, and i wish you good-luck convincnig devs that games with those problems still should be made.
What makes you even consider I want a game with those problems? serieously, just comes to show you really don't understand what it is what we want even if explain numerous times we often get the same sort of replies you just gave.
Hydrogen cells are not innovative because they do not use use fossil fuels, and not using fossil fuels is nothing new.
I'm pretty sure there's a fault in your logic somewhere.
Sorry for not getting back to this earlier.
Personally, I think you have that statement backwards. Fossil fuels are not the main focus; It is the Hydrogen Cells. In regards to that, the -concept- behind Hydrogen Cells being used for power may not be anything new, but the implementation of how the Hydrogen Cells are used is vastly different, because of obvious increases in technology over the years. Ideas are not innovation if they are not acted upon. They are merely creativity and imagination at work. However, this is going into semantics and a very grey area, which is a horrible discussion to take part in on a forum. So I would rather stay away from that, if it can be helped.
Building upon my above statement for clarity, the problem with the Trinity is that it is currently a core mechanic; It is either there, or it is not. That is what has been ingrained into our minds, because there has been absolutely no innovation. That is what the current truth is. Because of this, both the concept of the Trinity and the implementation of the Trinity is unchanging. It's either in a game, or it isn't. And if it is, it is the same Trinity of old. And if it is not, then it is simply not there. Neither of those are anything new. They're literally recycling old ideas without implementing them in a new fashion. The issue is that there has been absolutely -no- innovation in regards to the Trinity. Absolutely none. Because the gaming industry tends to find one thing that works and stick to it as if it were its one and only lifeline.
Now, in regards to Guild Wars 2 itself, I -do- believe it has some innovative features; The idea of having an ever-changing environment isn't anything new, per se, but the way Arena Net manages to do it in such an all-encompassing manner is very much new to the MMO genre. I would claim that portion to be innovation, amongst a few others that I don't really feel like detailing out.
However, like I said in my previous post, Arena net is an enormous outlier in the MMO industry and they probably shouldn't be looked at as to whether or not the industry as a whole is innovating. Because it is not. One company may be, but until the industry catches onto that and takes a part in said innovation, it will continue to stagnate. And that is the fault of the players for buying into the exact same product, and the Publishers for continuously pushing it out. The Developers are the closest thing we have to an innocent bystander in this scenario, in my honest opinion.
Before I start I would like to clarify that you=all those who share the same or similiar opinions as the OP.
TBH I think you expect to much from mmo's.
There are tonnes out there and you can't find one and just play it.
TSW just released and is probably the best new game I have played this year.
Darkfall just introduced 20x skill gains. It's not for everybody, but if you like sandboxes and getting your adrenline pumping, it's the best game on the market for it
GW2 is set to release and from what I 've played of the Beta's it should have a pretty stellar launch.
Planetside 2 is going into beta and if you want to you should be able to get into it.
There are probably at least 100+ mmo's in the list on mmorpg and usually at least 1 or 2 new ones released a month. If you can't find at least one or two to play, maybe, just maybe, its not game developers. Maybe if you are looking for the guilty party, you need only look in the mirror.
Originally posted by Badnesso As I got older I figured games would get better with technology, but I look around and all the true gamers are either not gaming cause the latest games are lame or playing retro or old school games?!
There are probably at least 100+ mmo's in the list on mmorpg and usually at least 1 or 2 new ones released a month. If you can't find at least one or two to play, maybe, just maybe, its not game developers. Maybe if you are looking for the guilty party, you need only look in the mirror.
My take is that they have more fun ranting here than really playing a game.
It is also interesting that they use the word "innovation" in the same sentence in reviving failed OLD ideas.
Fact, LFD is a much newer addition to MMO gaming than the old virtual world idea. Now which one is an innovation?
I think devs are short changing themselves by not being more inovatng and taking some risks. There are still a lot of things MMOs have not tried or given up on. like Perma death, no leveling( you get better at it as you do it) I think these devs need to take a look at Ultima online. Look how long that game has lasted And the graphics are horable. its not all about the flare and sparkles. its about an online world where you can become anything you want and excape your boring outside life. I think for MMOs sand box is the best way to go poeple want to explore and go anywhere not be dragged along a maze. I think the most key important things to have in an mmo are charactor Customization, Player housing, risk of losing your stuff, crafting, economy, the way of combat, and deplomacy. I think that they need to quit trying to make sure its fair for all and make the game challanging. wow has ruined the mmo industry it was new and unique thats why they succseded. now everyone just wants to copy it becuase it made big money. The dev to be a hero will be some one who takes a risk and does something different. there is so much more money to be made when you sell something that creates loyal customers that trust your word if you say its going to be good and your customers believe it you well sell it before you build it.
Well as I am sure others have said or just thought about. It is not just the developers that are runining the MMO experience.
The players (in general as a population) need to shoulder half of the blame.
I still remember the days of the old MMORPG community clearly (It was only a decade or so ago really). It wasn't big, but everyone shared the similar values in terms of MMORPG gaming. People enjoy different things, but the idea about MMORPG was for it to be interesting, as a world that players would want to spend time in. Winning or losing was secondary to fun. Developers were allowed to be more creative and take more risks in designing MMORPG since there were no real recipe to follow in order to make money. The focus was on fun and creativity, as long as they don't go bankrupt and make a little money doing it, that was fine with most developers.
However in modern days it seems to be different. Games are no longer mainly reviewed by many individual players as a community, instead it is reviewed by people paid to do it as part of an organization. Winning and losing become symbolic with fun or not. The incessant complaining from the few about how XYZ MMO does not match their ideal MMO. The big developers became in essence a brand name bag that people buy to carry (play) around because it is a brand name bag. Developers saw this and realize if they follow a certain recipe they would be able to make money regardless if they are being creative or craft a massive persistent world that is interesting or immersive. The modern focus is on profit, often at the cost of creativity and fun, much worse are the investors who seek only short term gain and release a game incomplete.
Don't get me wrong, I am sure many developers have their dream MMORPG they want to make in their mind, but the reality of profits does not allow such a game to even come to the drawing board. Even indie developers can rarely fight this trend, as developers answers to investors more so than they do players. However the MMO player populations are also making harder and harder for developers to convince investors that making an interesting game is more profitable in the long run.
So are game developers ruining the mmo experience? Yes, but even the developers only became this way due to the player base pushing them into it. Summing it up, it is the players that shape the developer's philosophy toward creating a MMORPG, and it is no easy task to create one, thus both the players as a population and developers are both to be blame. Of course that includes myself as well, even though I do not share the same value as most players, but as a population it takes much more than a few to change the trend.
How come these threads always start of with a bunch of civil like minded folks discussing the virtues and failings of old MMO design...and then it gets bombed by people who never played old games screaming "lolol if you like old games go play, they're still there" or "lol those ideas failed because they're not as popular as wow!" or "you don't deserve a good product! so entitled!"
Why are there so few civil themepark fans? What do they have to be bitter about? It's like the rich spitting on the poor.
How come these threads always start of with a bunch of civil like minded folks discussing the virtues and failings of old MMO design...and then it gets bombed by people who never played old games screaming "lolol if you like old games go play, they're still there" or "lol those ideas failed because they're not as popular as wow!" or "you don't deserve a good product! so entitled!"
Why are there so few civil themepark fans?
Because MMORPG moved on from hardcore/underground to more mainstream. And in mainstream companies realized that for a game to be successful in that market it should actually be appealing to the masses and not the hardcore. So game development switch to focus on that crowd while trying to herd more casual players to the hardcore, so they can sucker them into paying more money.
The problem with threads like these is that player like to assume they represent a significant amount of the market and tend to cry and whine about companies not caring about their [mod edit] views.
Let me ask you this question instead:why are they so many elitist sandbox fans? The "sandbox" player [mod edit] seem to like to put labels on games. What happen to playing games because it is fun and not worrying whether, it fulfills some abstract definition that VERY few games have ever met? [mod edit]
How come these threads always start of with a bunch of civil like minded folks discussing the virtues and failings of old MMO design...and then it gets bombed by people who never played old games screaming "lolol if you like old games go play, they're still there" or "lol those ideas failed because they're not as popular as wow!" or "you don't deserve a good product! so entitled!"
Why are there so few civil themepark fans?
Because MMORPG moved on from hardcore/underground to more mainstream. And in mainstream companies realized that for a game to be successful in that market it should actually be appealing to the masses and not the hardcore. So game development switch to focus on that crowd while trying to herd more casual players to the hardcore, so they can sucker them into paying more money.
The problem with threads like these is that player like to assume they represent a significant amount of the market and tend to cry and whine about companies not caring about their [mod edit] views.
Let me ask you this question instead:why are they so many elitist sandbox fans? The "sandbox" player [mod edit] seem to like to put labels on games. What happen to playing games because it is fun and not worrying whether, it fulfills some abstract definition that VERY few games have ever met? [mod edit]
[mod edit]
As a side note, despite all this talk of how "the hardcore market (stop calling it sandbox) isn't financially viable" yet we still, after 8 years of trying with the biggest budgets in the history of the genre, we STILL have yet to see a single successful AAA theme park game. They've all declined right after released, fired staff, merged servers, and in some cases went bankrupt and essentially dissolved (Funcom, Mythic)
As a side note, despite all this talk of how "the hardcore market (stop calling it sandbox) isn't financially viable" yet we still, after 8 years of trying with the biggest budgets in the history of the genre, we STILL have yet to see a single successful AAA theme park game. They've all declined right after released, fired staff, merged servers, and in some cases went bankrupt and essentially dissolved (Funcom, Mythic)
Funcom had a bad launch (not a surprise) but they still turned out profit. Over the years they improved the game and it turned out to be a fairly entertaining game. They did not go bankrupt.
Warhammer Online was an utterly failed project. You cant probably read about it if you care to google it. It did not fail because it was a themepark.
How would you feel if I took Mortal Online and Xsyon as a prime example of how unviable the sandbox market is, hmm? Many themeparks have been succesful in the past 8 years. You have a very odd definition of success.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
As a side note, despite all this talk of how "the hardcore market (stop calling it sandbox) isn't financially viable" yet we still, after 8 years of trying with the biggest budgets in the history of the genre, we STILL have yet to see a single successful AAA theme park game. They've all declined right after released, fired staff, merged servers, and in some cases went bankrupt and essentially dissolved (Funcom, Mythic)
Funcom had a bad launch (not a surprise) but they still turned out profit.
How would you feel if I took Mortal Online and Xsyon as a prime example of how unviable the sandbox market is, hmm? Many themeparks have been succesful in the past 8 years. You have a very odd definition of success.
Funcom did more than have a bad launch. Of the 3 companies involved in launching Age of Conan, only ONE still remains. The higher ups who made the game no longer have jobs. The team is much smaller. There are very few, small servers. The game was limping along losing more subs every month. The only reason it wasn't shut down was because it was at least generating SOME money. I don't think you'd be able to say it made a profit. At least not a large one.
And success usually means something is growing. There is currently no growing themepark game, but there are several growing sandbox games. Darkfall has never had to merge servers.
Well as I am sure others have said or just thought about. It is not just the developers that are runining the MMO experience.
The players (in general as a population) need to shoulder half of the blame.
I still remember the days of the old MMORPG community clearly (It was only a decade or so ago really). It wasn't big, but everyone shared the similar values in terms of MMORPG gaming. People enjoy different things, but the idea about MMORPG was for it to be interesting, as a world that players would want to spend time in. Winning or losing was secondary to fun. Developers were allowed to be more creative and take more risks in designing MMORPG since there were no real recipe to follow in order to make money. The focus was on fun and creativity, as long as they don't go bankrupt and make a little money doing it, that was fine with most developers.
However in modern days it seems to be different. Games are no longer mainly reviewed by many individual players as a community, instead it is reviewed by people paid to do it as part of an organization. Winning and losing become symbolic with fun or not. The incessant complaining from the few about how XYZ MMO does not match their ideal MMO. The big developers became in essence a brand name bag that people buy to carry (play) around because it is a brand name bag. Developers saw this and realize if they follow a certain recipe they would be able to make money regardless if they are being creative or craft a massive persistent world that is interesting or immersive. The modern focus is on profit, often at the cost of creativity and fun, much worse are the investors who seek only short term gain and release a game incomplete.
Don't get me wrong, I am sure many developers have their dream MMORPG they want to make in their mind, but the reality of profits does not allow such a game to even come to the drawing board. Even indie developers can rarely fight this trend, as developers answers to investors more so than they do players. However the MMO player populations are also making harder and harder for developers to convince investors that making an interesting game is more profitable in the long run.
So are game developers ruining the mmo experience? Yes, but even the developers only became this way due to the player base pushing them into it. Summing it up, it is the players that shape the developer's philosophy toward creating a MMORPG, and it is no easy task to create one, thus both the players as a population and developers are both to be blame. Of course that includes myself as well, even though I do not share the same value as most players, but as a population it takes much more than a few to change the trend.
I definitely agree that it is a combination of the developers and the players. I look at the old MMORPGs to what we have now or you can see how WoW has evolved over the years. I feel like every expansion of WoW that comes out, they come out with a great idea or two but with that comes four or five bad ideas included.
As a side note, despite all this talk of how "the hardcore market (stop calling it sandbox) isn't financially viable" yet we still, after 8 years of trying with the biggest budgets in the history of the genre, we STILL have yet to see a single successful AAA theme park game. They've all declined right after released, fired staff, merged servers, and in some cases went bankrupt and essentially dissolved (Funcom, Mythic)
Lotro did pretty well for a couple years, is still putting out expansions and while switching to a F2P model may seem "fail" to many people I would guess it's still profitable. Conan might not of been the blockbuster, but a small profit is still profit. Vanguard while a disaster at launch has continued and SoE is notorious for shutting down unprofitable games. I hear they even hired Brad back *shiver*. Star Wars has a viscous horde of haters, but only time will tell if it's commercially a success. TSW looks to be doing ok, and GW2 has some of the highest hype levels in recent years. If you define success as 10M players worldwide, your setting yourself up for disappointment. Themeparks are far from dead.
I understand your points and share some of them as I also used to think that MMORPG where the closest thing to a virtual world I could imagine and though this genre would become even better at creating believable virtual sci-fi or fantasy worlds.
But then again if you're a gamer aslong as I have been then you already could figure out what the minority(by today's standards) wants out of a MMORPG isn't what today's majority of people into this genre seem to want, we already could tell simply from reading forums back then.
Developers will create what the majority wants, so do we blame developers? or can we actually understand that it's the new majority of people into online gaming that have partialy ruined this genre for allot of us who want a deeper experiance when playing MMORPG's?
Back then we had hugh complaints about timesinks/grind (while the "GRIND" was actually a believable grind that truly immersed you into the gameworld aka virutal world, the grind has now shifted into doing the same raid/dungeons over and over and over and over again, how hard it was to group, if a MMORPG does not have some sort of LFG tool then people already shoot out fail, how hard it was to find things results into everything being fairly easy or just too easy, how complex and overwelming the first steps into a MMORPG was, now you almost get guided all the way to cap lvl. Then we got the lame excuses of people saying they didn't have time bla bla bla and here you have it the cashshops.
All this has resulted that the MMORPG genre is what it is today.
So no I honostly can not blame developers due to my experiance and reading/seeing forums even with the old school mmorpg's that explains so much what is going on these last years with MMORPG and actually with gaming in general.
So wait, are we blaming the devs, or back to blaming the forum posters now?
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.
As a side note, despite all this talk of how "the hardcore market (stop calling it sandbox) isn't financially viable" yet we still, after 8 years of trying with the biggest budgets in the history of the genre, we STILL have yet to see a single successful AAA theme park game. They've all declined right after released, fired staff, merged servers, and in some cases went bankrupt and essentially dissolved (Funcom, Mythic)
Lotro did pretty well for a couple years, is still putting out expansions and while switching to a F2P model may seem "fail" to many people I would guess it's still profitable. Conan might not of been the blockbuster, but a small profit is still profit. Vanguard while a disaster at launch has continued and SoE is notorious for shutting down unprofitable games. I hear they even hired Brad back *shiver*. Star Wars has a viscous horde of haters, but only time will tell if it's commercially a success. TSW looks to be doing ok, and GW2 has some of the highest hype levels in recent years. If you define success as 10M players worldwide, your setting yourself up for disappointment. Themeparks are far from dead.
Actually there have been several successfull ones. True they did not make as much as WoW or has much as the developers wanted, but they did make a profit, and make enough to continue the game and make enough to fund other games.
I would say there have been more successfull ones than failures.
Declining right after release, IMO is not really an indicator of failure anymore. Having 1-2 million subs is just not realistic, and devs are starting to realize this. However 200,000 - 700,000 is very realistic and many have made this and made a profit.
F2P is not an indication of failure, as many games with stable player bases such as EQ2, Lotro, CoH have had stable playerbases for years, however realized they could make even more money from F2P and so made the switch.
CoV, Lotro, Rift... are just some examples off the top of my head. I'm sure others can chime in with more.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
How come these threads always start of with a bunch of civil like minded folks discussing the virtues and failings of old MMO design...and then it gets bombed by people who never played old games screaming "lolol if you like old games go play, they're still there" or "lol those ideas failed because they're not as popular as wow!" or "you don't deserve a good product! so entitled!"
Why are there so few civil themepark fans? What do they have to be bitter about? It's like the rich spitting on the poor.
Theads like this endanger there way of life. Fearing yet another trend change, they dispern and try to discredit anyone that dont share there beliefs. Most of the time its with analogies that dont have anything to do with the subject mater.
They fear the "whats old is new again" trend. Trust me on this, my wife is freaking out about how the 80's are coming back. Hair styles and outfits. Shes not to happy. So its not the theamparkers per se, its just human nature.
Pro-tip; There is not a chance in hell that Blizzard would be even a fraction of the company they currently are if they had released their past few titles with the playerbase that they had during the time of Diablo 1/Warcraft II/ Starcraft. They would have fallen into a black abyss and been forgotten by the gaming world simply because the playerbase back then didn't buy into garbage on a plate.
That's because people used to make games THEY wanted to play.
Now they make ones that "market research leans towards"... but in a way, they are right - because the major demographic they are hitting will eat shit with a smile.
Why would i care what devs want to play? I want them to make games that *I* want to play. If "market research" is how they find out what *I* want to play, so much the better.
Because when devs make game that *They* wan't to play they give it a 110%! I can't believe that you'd rather play a game that has been made just because *You* wanted it, rather than a game that has been made with effort. The Dev's don't make the games for *You* they make them for *US*!
Edit2:Ofc...The Devs work under exe's, as mentioned above... One day ill make a comment without anything needing to be edited
I don't care about effort. I care about the end result.
A boring game (to me) is still boring if the devs put in 120%.
A fun game is still fun if the devs put in 90%. I would rather play a game that is fun to me. That is the ONLY measure that matters.
[mod edit]
[mod edit]
They make games, because they wan't to, and seeing and understanding the work behind the game is 50% of the decision about buying it. If you buy it just because it looks fun, i have no reason, and no rights to call you anything for that.
But when you say that the makers mean nothing to you, it really shows what is strongly going wrong in gaming society today... Many people ask why games aren't free to play (The F2P thread), or why there are so many same feeling games out there (99.99% procent of threads seem to spin to this here). And at one point there will be less people intrested in making than playing. Many people seem to forget that these kinda things don't just poof out of nowhere...
If there were more people telling about the studios and developers, gamers like you would learn to appreciate the developers a little more -_-' No, i am not saying that you paying attention to the studio behind would make you any better in gaming than me. *Most likely you are better at nearly every game than me * Or that you are worse customer than me *Bad choice of words, i admit...And after 4 edits ;(* But what i say is that respecting and supporting the developers is something that pays itself on the long run. The biggest companies and studios in gaming (Sony,Nintendo,Square Enix,Blizzard...EA) have all made(/produced) so many and games and survived so long,and a big part of the survival has been that gamers wan't to say thank you, and do that by buying merchandice. The same goes with other big and smaller companies.
And yes, i have bought a couple of bad games to support the studios behind them. And i uprade time to time in some games, because, those people work hard while making those games. And just in two lines you say that as long as the game is fun, it doesn't matter who has done it, or has it been done with effort or "Just because market want's it". I find that insulting and... a good word for something world-class stupid/dumb.
*Not a native speaker, any grammatic errors likely to be included*
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...and for some of us... when our society and economy comes to this then society isn't worth it anymore. I have pretty much quit all online entertainment and I am now considering leaving American society completely due to America's overzealous emphasis on money and profit, leaving one way or the other. I cannot tolerate the money emphasis on everything anymore. Money has its place and it's boundrys on how much it should influence life, and it has exceeded those boundrys by a long ways.
Business, Profit, Marketing, Advertising.... it's seeped into every part of our lives now. There is nowhere now in American life where you can turn and not find some aspect of "money" involved in it. THAT is not natural. It's not right. ... and for damn sure it wasn't this much a part of American life ever before.
THAT is what the American economy is doing to people, at least some of us. It's driving us to desire to abandon it and the people left will be the ones that see nothing wrong with Money being the central focus of everything.
MMOs just got caught up in it like everything else in society. MMOs when they began were an escape from that kind of thing, but they are nolonger. MMOs are now just another tool for the Money people to make that Quarterly report better.
Sorry for not getting back to this earlier.
Personally, I think you have that statement backwards. Fossil fuels are not the main focus; It is the Hydrogen Cells. In regards to that, the -concept- behind Hydrogen Cells being used for power may not be anything new, but the implementation of how the Hydrogen Cells are used is vastly different, because of obvious increases in technology over the years. Ideas are not innovation if they are not acted upon. They are merely creativity and imagination at work. However, this is going into semantics and a very grey area, which is a horrible discussion to take part in on a forum. So I would rather stay away from that, if it can be helped.
Building upon my above statement for clarity, the problem with the Trinity is that it is currently a core mechanic; It is either there, or it is not. That is what has been ingrained into our minds, because there has been absolutely no innovation. That is what the current truth is. Because of this, both the concept of the Trinity and the implementation of the Trinity is unchanging. It's either in a game, or it isn't. And if it is, it is the same Trinity of old. And if it is not, then it is simply not there. Neither of those are anything new. They're literally recycling old ideas without implementing them in a new fashion. The issue is that there has been absolutely -no- innovation in regards to the Trinity. Absolutely none. Because the gaming industry tends to find one thing that works and stick to it as if it were its one and only lifeline.
Now, in regards to Guild Wars 2 itself, I -do- believe it has some innovative features; The idea of having an ever-changing environment isn't anything new, per se, but the way Arena Net manages to do it in such an all-encompassing manner is very much new to the MMO genre. I would claim that portion to be innovation, amongst a few others that I don't really feel like detailing out.
However, like I said in my previous post, Arena net is an enormous outlier in the MMO industry and they probably shouldn't be looked at as to whether or not the industry as a whole is innovating. Because it is not. One company may be, but until the industry catches onto that and takes a part in said innovation, it will continue to stagnate. And that is the fault of the players for buying into the exact same product, and the Publishers for continuously pushing it out. The Developers are the closest thing we have to an innocent bystander in this scenario, in my honest opinion.
Before I start I would like to clarify that you=all those who share the same or similiar opinions as the OP.
TBH I think you expect to much from mmo's.
There are tonnes out there and you can't find one and just play it.
TSW just released and is probably the best new game I have played this year.
Darkfall just introduced 20x skill gains. It's not for everybody, but if you like sandboxes and getting your adrenline pumping, it's the best game on the market for it
GW2 is set to release and from what I 've played of the Beta's it should have a pretty stellar launch.
Planetside 2 is going into beta and if you want to you should be able to get into it.
There are probably at least 100+ mmo's in the list on mmorpg and usually at least 1 or 2 new ones released a month. If you can't find at least one or two to play, maybe, just maybe, its not game developers. Maybe if you are looking for the guilty party, you need only look in the mirror.
Electronic babysitters are cheaper than daycare. Don't even try to tell them to spend time with their kids, or *gasp* let them read (or read to them).
I can't seem to get into any MMO atm knowing that GW2 is coming next month.
I'd blame corporatism more than anything else.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
My take is that they have more fun ranting here than really playing a game.
It is also interesting that they use the word "innovation" in the same sentence in reviving failed OLD ideas.
Fact, LFD is a much newer addition to MMO gaming than the old virtual world idea. Now which one is an innovation?
Temp locking this thread so we can go through it.
Thread unlocked, keep it civil from here on folks.
I think devs are short changing themselves by not being more inovatng and taking some risks. There are still a lot of things MMOs have not tried or given up on. like Perma death, no leveling( you get better at it as you do it) I think these devs need to take a look at Ultima online. Look how long that game has lasted And the graphics are horable. its not all about the flare and sparkles. its about an online world where you can become anything you want and excape your boring outside life. I think for MMOs sand box is the best way to go poeple want to explore and go anywhere not be dragged along a maze. I think the most key important things to have in an mmo are charactor Customization, Player housing, risk of losing your stuff, crafting, economy, the way of combat, and deplomacy. I think that they need to quit trying to make sure its fair for all and make the game challanging. wow has ruined the mmo industry it was new and unique thats why they succseded. now everyone just wants to copy it becuase it made big money. The dev to be a hero will be some one who takes a risk and does something different. there is so much more money to be made when you sell something that creates loyal customers that trust your word if you say its going to be good and your customers believe it you well sell it before you build it.
sorry my spelling and grammer are not very good.
Well as I am sure others have said or just thought about. It is not just the developers that are runining the MMO experience.
The players (in general as a population) need to shoulder half of the blame.
I still remember the days of the old MMORPG community clearly (It was only a decade or so ago really). It wasn't big, but everyone shared the similar values in terms of MMORPG gaming. People enjoy different things, but the idea about MMORPG was for it to be interesting, as a world that players would want to spend time in. Winning or losing was secondary to fun. Developers were allowed to be more creative and take more risks in designing MMORPG since there were no real recipe to follow in order to make money. The focus was on fun and creativity, as long as they don't go bankrupt and make a little money doing it, that was fine with most developers.
However in modern days it seems to be different. Games are no longer mainly reviewed by many individual players as a community, instead it is reviewed by people paid to do it as part of an organization. Winning and losing become symbolic with fun or not. The incessant complaining from the few about how XYZ MMO does not match their ideal MMO. The big developers became in essence a brand name bag that people buy to carry (play) around because it is a brand name bag. Developers saw this and realize if they follow a certain recipe they would be able to make money regardless if they are being creative or craft a massive persistent world that is interesting or immersive. The modern focus is on profit, often at the cost of creativity and fun, much worse are the investors who seek only short term gain and release a game incomplete.
Don't get me wrong, I am sure many developers have their dream MMORPG they want to make in their mind, but the reality of profits does not allow such a game to even come to the drawing board. Even indie developers can rarely fight this trend, as developers answers to investors more so than they do players. However the MMO player populations are also making harder and harder for developers to convince investors that making an interesting game is more profitable in the long run.
So are game developers ruining the mmo experience? Yes, but even the developers only became this way due to the player base pushing them into it. Summing it up, it is the players that shape the developer's philosophy toward creating a MMORPG, and it is no easy task to create one, thus both the players as a population and developers are both to be blame. Of course that includes myself as well, even though I do not share the same value as most players, but as a population it takes much more than a few to change the trend.
How come these threads always start of with a bunch of civil like minded folks discussing the virtues and failings of old MMO design...and then it gets bombed by people who never played old games screaming "lolol if you like old games go play, they're still there" or "lol those ideas failed because they're not as popular as wow!" or "you don't deserve a good product! so entitled!"
Why are there so few civil themepark fans? What do they have to be bitter about? It's like the rich spitting on the poor.
Because MMORPG moved on from hardcore/underground to more mainstream. And in mainstream companies realized that for a game to be successful in that market it should actually be appealing to the masses and not the hardcore. So game development switch to focus on that crowd while trying to herd more casual players to the hardcore, so they can sucker them into paying more money.
The problem with threads like these is that player like to assume they represent a significant amount of the market and tend to cry and whine about companies not caring about their [mod edit] views.
Let me ask you this question instead:why are they so many elitist sandbox fans? The "sandbox" player [mod edit] seem to like to put labels on games. What happen to playing games because it is fun and not worrying whether, it fulfills some abstract definition that VERY few games have ever met? [mod edit]
[mod edit]
As a side note, despite all this talk of how "the hardcore market (stop calling it sandbox) isn't financially viable" yet we still, after 8 years of trying with the biggest budgets in the history of the genre, we STILL have yet to see a single successful AAA theme park game. They've all declined right after released, fired staff, merged servers, and in some cases went bankrupt and essentially dissolved (Funcom, Mythic)
Funcom had a bad launch (not a surprise) but they still turned out profit. Over the years they improved the game and it turned out to be a fairly entertaining game. They did not go bankrupt.
Warhammer Online was an utterly failed project. You cant probably read about it if you care to google it. It did not fail because it was a themepark.
How would you feel if I took Mortal Online and Xsyon as a prime example of how unviable the sandbox market is, hmm? Many themeparks have been succesful in the past 8 years. You have a very odd definition of success.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Funcom did more than have a bad launch. Of the 3 companies involved in launching Age of Conan, only ONE still remains. The higher ups who made the game no longer have jobs. The team is much smaller. There are very few, small servers. The game was limping along losing more subs every month. The only reason it wasn't shut down was because it was at least generating SOME money. I don't think you'd be able to say it made a profit. At least not a large one.
And success usually means something is growing. There is currently no growing themepark game, but there are several growing sandbox games. Darkfall has never had to merge servers.
I definitely agree that it is a combination of the developers and the players. I look at the old MMORPGs to what we have now or you can see how WoW has evolved over the years. I feel like every expansion of WoW that comes out, they come out with a great idea or two but with that comes four or five bad ideas included.
Lotro did pretty well for a couple years, is still putting out expansions and while switching to a F2P model may seem "fail" to many people I would guess it's still profitable. Conan might not of been the blockbuster, but a small profit is still profit. Vanguard while a disaster at launch has continued and SoE is notorious for shutting down unprofitable games. I hear they even hired Brad back *shiver*. Star Wars has a viscous horde of haters, but only time will tell if it's commercially a success. TSW looks to be doing ok, and GW2 has some of the highest hype levels in recent years. If you define success as 10M players worldwide, your setting yourself up for disappointment. Themeparks are far from dead.
i wish i can make this my sig lol.
So wait, are we blaming the devs, or back to blaming the forum posters now?
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.
Actually there have been several successfull ones. True they did not make as much as WoW or has much as the developers wanted, but they did make a profit, and make enough to continue the game and make enough to fund other games.
I would say there have been more successfull ones than failures.
Declining right after release, IMO is not really an indicator of failure anymore. Having 1-2 million subs is just not realistic, and devs are starting to realize this. However 200,000 - 700,000 is very realistic and many have made this and made a profit.
F2P is not an indication of failure, as many games with stable player bases such as EQ2, Lotro, CoH have had stable playerbases for years, however realized they could make even more money from F2P and so made the switch.
CoV, Lotro, Rift... are just some examples off the top of my head. I'm sure others can chime in with more.
Theads like this endanger there way of life. Fearing yet another trend change, they dispern and try to discredit anyone that dont share there beliefs. Most of the time its with analogies that dont have anything to do with the subject mater.
They fear the "whats old is new again" trend. Trust me on this, my wife is freaking out about how the 80's are coming back. Hair styles and outfits. Shes not to happy. So its not the theamparkers per se, its just human nature.
They make games, because they wan't to, and seeing and understanding the work behind the game is 50% of the decision about buying it. If you buy it just because it looks fun, i have no reason, and no rights to call you anything for that.
But when you say that the makers mean nothing to you, it really shows what is strongly going wrong in gaming society today... Many people ask why games aren't free to play (The F2P thread), or why there are so many same feeling games out there (99.99% procent of threads seem to spin to this here). And at one point there will be less people intrested in making than playing. Many people seem to forget that these kinda things don't just poof out of nowhere...
If there were more people telling about the studios and developers, gamers like you would learn to appreciate the developers a little more -_-' No, i am not saying that you paying attention to the studio behind would make you any better in gaming than me. *Most likely you are better at nearly every game than me
* Or that you are worse customer than me *Bad choice of words, i admit...And after 4 edits ;(* But what i say is that respecting and supporting the developers is something that pays itself on the long run. The biggest companies and studios in gaming (Sony,Nintendo,Square Enix,Blizzard...EA) have all made(/produced) so many and games and survived so long,and a big part of the survival has been that gamers wan't to say thank you, and do that by buying merchandice. The same goes with other big and smaller companies.
And yes, i have bought a couple of bad games to support the studios behind them. And i uprade time to time in some games, because, those people work hard while making those games. And just in two lines you say that as long as the game is fun, it doesn't matter who has done it, or has it been done with effort or "Just because market want's it". I find that insulting and... a good word for something world-class stupid/dumb.
*Not a native speaker, any grammatic errors likely to be included*