Originally posted by Scot There was a thread about regular content updates in GW2 on here. As I said there no MMO has done regualar content updates of the sort most players seem to demand, ever. Lotro did well in its first two years mind you, but I don't think it would have done enough to appease the content hungry locusts we have today. So I really can't see GW2 pulling this off, they will not have the money to fast track the development needed to a timescale that suits todays players.
I guess AC was unique in this aspect then, since it was monthly for more than a decade. That being said, they rarely actually added anything new, it was just regular story updates with various associated changes to the game world that were fairly minor. I guess that speaks to the power of a good plot: if you tell a good story, you can satisfy a lot of people for a very long time without having to roll out massive expansions all the time.
Honestly if you are after a Fantasy MMORPG you are going to be hard pressed to find anything that even remotely compares to Everquest 2. You cant beat the graphics, content, game play, feature set and its one of the best F2P cash systems I have seen and I have seen many. From your typical PVE hack and slash to extremely in depth stories with instance changes, actor dialog, etc to the crafting system that you can do rather than adventure and which can possibly kill you in the process to the building of your own dungeons for others to play and earn points or owning houses, keeps etc and decorating them, the game aspects are immense. The downfall of EQ2 is the player base is fairly small and this is, in my experience, by in large due to the inaccurate information disseminated by the general MMO public as well as lack of marketing on behalf of Sony. Get on the Freeport server and find a guild and 92 levels later you still will have content. Even if it involves chronoing down and going back to lower content with the challenge all preserved. Anyhow, its worth a try and you simply can not beat this game. I came back to this game after about a decade away from EQ1 and it already had a mark against it in my book because I was very displeased with sony. After about 130GB of downloads and trying MMOs for months on end I finally broke down and tried EQ2. I about fell out of my chair. Hands down best fantasy (possibly any) MMORPG on the market, period.
PS. No matter what you play its going to repeat. Life is the same way. It just happens.
Originally posted by JoeyMMO What you want hasn't been released yet. August 25th for early access, Actual release on the 28th. The name of the game: Guild Wars 2.
You know the honest question I have for everyone offering GW2 as the best option is will there be regular content updates? I've been looking for an answer to this one, but mostly I've only been able to find references in the comments sections of various articles to some content updates for the first version. As I've laid out before, if the game isn't going to have a compelling storyline and regular content updates, I'll tire of it very quickly, which then tells me I shouldn't bother with it in the first place.
On a side note, I did read something today that best exemplifies my desires. In a discussion of GW2 vs. SWTOR, the author mentioned that the ultimate goal of a lot of MMORPG's these days is to race to the level cap so you can join in all of the scheduled raids and events. This is the antithesis of my gaming style. Lower level caps are ok, but if the end game content is raids, I won't enjoy it. I am an adventurer in MMO's so if I run out of new stuff to explore I get bored, which is also the case if the main end game activities revolve around scheduled events / raids. Sure these might be fun once, but for me, once is enough.
For this bit: I can't really do much else than direct you to the update notes of the original game (Linkage: http://www.guildwars.com/support/gameupdates/), they've done a good job of updating content/pushing out new content since launch. Of course, if you're a hardcore player, no game developer can keep up in pushing out new content. But taking all things into account, I'd say they've done a good job in the past, with a number of free content updates as welll as paid ones. As for GW2 itself, devs have said they'll be dropping in new content (=dynamic events most likely) all over the world regularly. Also, the amount of content currently in at launch is...a lot. Factor in upcoming expansions (we know there will be expansions), and you should have plenty of content to go for. If you burn through it before next expansion, remember that there's no sub fee. Nothing stops you from putting the game down for a while, and coming back at no additional cost (other than expansion pack) at a later date.
As for this bit: This is not what GW2 is about. There is no reason to rush to level cap, as your level gets scaled downwards when you return to lower level areas. That way, you will never outlevel any areas, and even the starting zones maintain some challenge, as you won't be able to one-shot the mobs. At level cap, the entire world is open for you, and meaningful in terms of experience and loot (you always get level-appropriate loot even if you're in low level areas). There are dungeons and gear grind in some form, however the grind is purely cosmetic. You'll do just fine with that max level armor set you can get from a vendor or crafters, dungeon armors won't provide any statistical advantage over the more common armor sets.
I would say GW2 or TSW. I think GW2 will have more staying power than TSW. While TSW has a lot of quests with good story it feels like a game that will not keep you for the long term like GW2 will however it is still a great experience.
GW2
Personal Story: The personal story is interesting. Each choice you make branches the story in a different way so that there are thousands of possible personal story branches. You can also join people in their personal stories so that you can experience different stories without creating new characters.
Story in dynamic events: The dynamic events are in the open world and have more story than many people realize. Some people go in and kill stuff then leave, but if you stay around often times the NPCs involved will continue on with their lives and you see their story unfold. That often leads to new dynamic events. See this video it shows it well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CyqGJHTjes&feature=channel&list=UL
Open world: GW2 has the most open world content I have seen out of any game. I would say 95% of the game is open world. Personal story and some dungeons are instanced, but there is a lot of great open world story and open world dungeons as well.
Updates: They said they would continuously relersae new content. There is no specifics about this yet though.
TSW
Story: TSW has the best story I have seen in any MMO so far. It is definitely its strength. The main quest line is made of instances in the world though so it is not a story that is experienced with others. However there are tons of other great stories which you can experience in the open world.
Updates: They have committed to monthly updates and so far they have done so. The first month had 6 new missions and a bunch of other content. This months update looks similar.
Again like many people I would recommend GW2 for you. Your main reasons is that you want a game that lasts with regular updates.
Well GW2 is perfect for you. It has a huge world to expore, PvP for hardcore and casual. There is down leveling so you can always go back to lower levels and it'll still be tough and fun for you. The devs has stated an area might have 100 Dynamic events now, years from now it might have 300.
They've also said they'll be tweaking Dynamic events regularly. So even if you had done a DE multiple times it might have a different ending. There are tons of achievements and things to hold your attention. Jumping puzzles, mini games etc
You also do not want grinding , again this is perfect for you. The leveling in GW2 is scalar, that means level 40-41 will take about the same time from 79-80 which is about 1.5 hours (according to Anet). Since there isn't any gear grind for "Uber" gear, you won't be forced to "grind" rather you can choose if you want cosmetic upgrades. Don't get me wrong, it might still be a grind (dungeon gear) but YOU aren't forced to grind. In other MMOs if you don't keep up the latest tier of gear you're quickly left behind.
THE BEST PART? You only need to pay a $60 fee one time to play it, no sub fee. In a Q&A , a dev stated "All content created by our live team will be free to play"
Hijacking the thread into a war between TSW and GW2 is a bit lame.
AC was quite unique, but as you said it rarely made big graphical changes. So mobs would change, or an event would start somewhere. But there was a lot of story behind it and the story determined where players wanted to be. Imagine trying to sell that to the player graphic addicts of today. You would be laughed at by the industry and ranted about on forums.
MMO’s now require no imagination to play and so do not inspire it in their players. Its rather like the difference between a book and a film.
Give TERA a try...you might be surprised. Even in spite of the negative comments this reply is gonna get! Personally I am loving it and have been playing since release and still am (only lvl 34) Not a power lvl race to end cap kind of guy...And for me to play a single MMO for this long is something I havent done in a long time. What with TSW and GW2 looming right around the corner and I am presently content and not interested in another game right now. And I really wanted to play TSW at some point before they go and dumb it down like so many games these days tend to do.
GW2 while i'm sure to end up being a good game for some reason I'm just not interested and not buying into all the hype.
Hijacking the thread into a war between TSW and GW2 is a bit lame.
AC was quite unique, but as you said it rarely made big graphical changes. So mobs would change, or an event would start somewhere. But there was a lot of story behind it and the story determined where players wanted to be. Imagine trying to sell that to the player graphic addicts of today. You would be laughed at by the industry and ranted about on forums.
MMO’s now require no imagination to play and so do not inspire it in their players. Its rather like the difference between a book and a film.
You know most games nowadays have a great graphical basis to support something like what AC did, its just a lack of imagination on the part of the devs and probably also a loathing on their part to mess with the world they've already built. In AC, when a big change in the story brought a change to the world, players would log on after the patch day to find a whole town leveled, or built, or alien structures dotting the landscape. Even though they were fairly small changes in the grand scheme of the game world, they were enough to give context to what was going on in the game and give everyone something new to explore. Even though newer games are much more graphically complex, I doubt it would take much to blow up a town or build a new volcano into the landscape and then build a whole new story and set of quests around it. Instead, it seems like most, if not all, modern MMO's are build around a 100% static landscape that the devs are unwilling to change in any way. Even when a major game update is put out, they are almost always centered around adding new territory while leaving the original game world as it always was. I'm not sure why they do this, though I'm guessing its somewhere between the cost of making changes to the game world and trying to keep the overal game experience the same for every new player. The latter was always a problem with AC because veteran players had lots of interesting stories about past world events that the new players would just never get to experience. I know this eventually really discouraged new players joining the game, but the way I always saw it, you'd still be able to participate in new world events, and after a couple of years, you're not really going to get many new players anyway. When all is said and done though, I think that the modern MMO community could easily get into that kind of story based game that requires you to have an imagination and a committment to see where each new plotline goes. Sure there would be the "raider" types that wouldn't want to participate because they wouldn't have a real end game to be uber, but they are not the entire community.
On a different note, I did go ahead and try TSW since they have a free 3-day trial and, while the story is interesting, the game is just too faulty for me to have an interest in playing. I didn't feel like I was playing an MMO so much as a single player game which just happened to have other people there. Add in to that the graphics glitches which are everywhere, and a weird combat model where your character just ends up standing in front of a mob not reacting while it takes a long time to kill them with a gun (no offense, but if you're going to have a modern or future shooter, you can't expect a mob to take 4-5 point blank blasts and still be attacking... Instead combat needs to be much faster paced with more damage going both ways more quickly), and you've got a game which just won't work for me.
Anyway, it seems like GW2 might be worth a try, though I'm still very skeptical about what sort of content these dynamic events are really going to have. Right now, Rift has dynamic events all over the place in the form of zone invasions, and aside from giving everyone something to kill, they carry absolutely no weight in relation to the storyline and winning / losing them has absolutely no effect on anyone other than providing some rewards if you win. If this is what the makers of GW2 are planning on doing with their DE's, and DE's are primarily what they are going to be updating, I doubt the content updates will be worthile for me. That being said, at least its going to be FTP after you've bought it, so if it goes sour after a couple of months, I'm not out more than the purchase price, too bad I'll have to wait for them to offer a free trial of some sort before I'm willing to plop down the $60 for the game, which, if it follows certain other releases timetables means that I might not get a chance to even try it for 6 months to a year.
Sadly, I'm starting to believe what some of you have said that nothing exists, or will exist in the near future, that is going to live up to what I want from a MMO. Sure different games have parts of what I'm looking for, but I'm not about to start playing 3-4 different games with 3-4 different subs just to get a whole set of gaming needs filled. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should just try putting together a development house to build the game myself so that in 5 years it finally exists (as if that would ever work...).
The concept of world changing events did not disappear from the MMO designers building blocks. But it was hit by the problems of making alterations to ever more graphically intensive games. This has been talked about by the guys who did Dwarf Fortress, it is a lot easier to scrap and rebuild when your game is in Ascii code!
But the other factor is that world changing events and easymode do not go hand in hand. The easymode way is to make them like Rift did, they are short term events, having local effects, often linked to dailies.
If you are going to do real world changing events it effects the flow of gameplay, and easymode design hates anything that effects gameplay. When that town gets reduced to rubble what happens to the quest givers and NPC vendors? Todays players just would not be able to handle it: Can’t finish your quest for a couple of days until the town is rebuilt? OMFG get on the forums and complain, send in a help request every day until the devs sort it!!!!!
Even doing something like changing the route you need to use to get from A to B would now be seen as causing frustration in players, as is any sort of puzzle. Anything which might cause confusion or delays is ironed out of the modern ezMMO. So having world changing events which necessitate players to do some reading before the go online or even just have ask what is going on in general chat is avoided. The game play is casual and becoming ever more casual, won’t be long before your five year old brother will have no problems playing an ezMMO.
Hijacking the thread into a war between TSW and GW2 is a bit lame.
AC was quite unique, but as you said it rarely made big graphical changes. So mobs would change, or an event would start somewhere. But there was a lot of story behind it and the story determined where players wanted to be. Imagine trying to sell that to the player graphic addicts of today. You would be laughed at by the industry and ranted about on forums.
MMO’s now require no imagination to play and so do not inspire it in their players. Its rather like the difference between a book and a film.
And we pen and paper players always said you needed little imagination to play a MMO, even before AC came out.
Really not a good argument, if you want to imagine things there are better ways than not so great graphics. AC did have other good points though and gameplay Vs graphics is always a hot topic.
I can play a fun game with bad graphics but I dont make excuses for it. Computer games is just a different medium.
I have to disagree with the whole EVE has no storyline bit. I wager EVE has the best storyline out of any MMO because it's all playermade and constantly changing from one day to the next.
Once you get involved in the 0.0 storylines, you get hooked on what the game has to offer. It's not so much about what the devs want you to experience as it is the outcomes of interactions with other players/groups.
I understand that you're mainly after PvE, so that's probably why you couldn't get into EVE.
I honestly feel like I should set up an EVE recruitment program here. So many people that would love EVE simply don't get to experience what it really has to offer because they don't end up in the right corp.
The concept of world changing events did not disappear from the MMO designers building blocks. But it was hit by the problems of making alterations to ever more graphically intensive games. This has been talked about by the guys who did Dwarf Fortress, it is a lot easier to scrap and rebuild when your game is in Ascii code!
But the other factor is that world changing events and easymode do not go hand in hand. The easymode way is to make them like Rift did, they are short term events, having local effects, often linked to dailies.
If you are going to do real world changing events it effects the flow of gameplay, and easymode design hates anything that effects gameplay. When that town gets reduced to rubble what happens to the quest givers and NPC vendors? Todays players just would not be able to handle it: Can’t finish your quest for a couple of days until the town is rebuilt? OMFG get on the forums and complain, send in a help request every day until the devs sort it!!!!!
Even doing something like changing the route you need to use to get from A to B would now be seen as causing frustration in players, as is any sort of puzzle. Anything which might cause confusion or delays is ironed out of the modern ezMMO. So having world changing events which necessitate players to do some reading before the go online or even just have ask what is going on in general chat is avoided. The game play is casual and becoming ever more casual, won’t be long before your five year old brother will have no problems playing an ezMMO.
Originally posted by Loke666
Originally posted by Scot
Hijacking the thread into a war between TSW and GW2 is a bit lame.
AC was quite unique, but as you said it rarely made big graphical changes. So mobs would change, or an event would start somewhere. But there was a lot of story behind it and the story determined where players wanted to be. Imagine trying to sell that to the player graphic addicts of today. You would be laughed at by the industry and ranted about on forums.
MMO’s now require no imagination to play and so do not inspire it in their players. Its rather like the difference between a book and a film.
And we pen and paper players always said you needed little imagination to play a MMO, even before AC came out.
Really not a good argument, if you want to imagine things there are better ways than not so great graphics. AC did have other good points though and gameplay Vs graphics is always a hot topic.
I can play a fun game with bad graphics but I dont make excuses for it. Computer games is just a different medium.
Originally posted by helthros
I have to disagree with the whole EVE has no storyline bit. I wager EVE has the best storyline out of any MMO because it's all playermade and constantly changing from one day to the next.
Once you get involved in the 0.0 storylines, you get hooked on what the game has to offer. It's not so much about what the devs want you to experience as it is the outcomes of interactions with other players/groups.
I understand that you're mainly after PvE, so that's probably why you couldn't get into EVE.
I honestly feel like I should set up an EVE recruitment program here. So many people that would love EVE simply don't get to experience what it really has to offer because they don't end up in the right corp.
Is it just me, or does this editor really not allow placing reply text in between multiply quoted messages without manually recoding the html tags for the whole post?
Anyway, I agree that a big part of the problem is that game designers attempt to cater to the lowest common denominator when dealing with their potential player base. A lot of players want ex-mode, and so they make easy mode games. Unfortunatly, this is basically creating a "race to the bottom" so to speak for the level of game quality, at least in my opinion. Sure, the graphics are getting really great, and there is plenty of uber gear to be ground out for bragging rights, but the real substance of the MMORPG is being excised to the point where there isn't actually any point in worrying about the story anymore because it has no effect on you and you have no effect on it and the only real decisions you have to make deal with your character build and what they look like with all their gear on. I understand that this is a dollar driven decision, as it would be bad business for a company to sink the kind of money it takes to develop a heavy hitting MMORPG while only targeting it at a niche market. You need at least some of the ez-moders to come buy the game and pay some subscription fees in order to make the game profitable enough to have justified its existance. After participating in this convorsation for a while though, I'm starting to think that its the player base thats to blame more than the devs. Sure, I would love to see a renaissance of the real RPG built into MMO form, but even if it was developed, it would have to be seriously hyped to catch the attention of the masses, and then the devs would have to throw down the gauntlet and tell the people who want the game dumbed down to go suck an egg to have even a slight chance of preserving the RPG part of the game.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not mr. RPG. I've never played on an RPG-only server, and I don't play in an RPG style, but that doesn't mean I don't care about the story. I too used to play pen and paper RPGs (Primarily Cyberpunk, but a few forays into D&D and Mechwarrior), and still would, but for lack of the requisit other players and hours of free time needed to get everyone together, get set up, and then work your way through the story the GM came up with for that night. The key, more than anything else, for a game like that was always the story... If you didn't have a good story, the game amounted to a group of people sitting around a table talking and nothing more. While MMORPG's are only the latest version of this (I still play the legend of zelda occasionally on an emulator) they are the first since those tabletop games that actually allows for more than just you or maybe one other person to participate. The sad thing is that it seems like the player base as a whole just isn't iterested in that aspect of the game anymore. I have a feeling this is the result of the newer generations of players never really experiencing that play style. If they've never had to follow the story and make decisions based on it which then affect the next part of the story, that concept then becomes foreign to them and ultimately uninteresting.
In response to another thing you've mentioned, I really believe that the idea that the increasingly complex graphical environment is a reason not to chance that environment is a red herring. The issue, I'm guessing, is that the art designers are not building the game from the ground up to be modular, or at least not very modular. Sure it was much easier in a game like AC where there were maybe 100 models of each type of environmental object for the entire world, but that doesn't mean the same ease of alteration can't be achieved with some good front end planning. That being said, I think the second point about players pitching a fit if something changed and they weren't expecting it is a much more valid argument. Because the MMO market has become fairly saturated with titles, the publishers need to keep a death grip on every possible paying customer, so if blowing up a town and moving the NPCs to a nearby tent camp (all of the NPCs were still available the day after patch in that AC event, not even a 30 second run from the original location) is enough to cause a player to threaten to leave the game, they probably wouldn't risk it. On the other hand, that was what was so great about AC and what kept the world populated for so long. Patch day was like christmas, with tons of players running around all over the place trying to figure out what was new and where that plot line was going in the new month. When the town was blown up, everyone wanted to know why and what had happened, which led to a 6-month story line that culminated in the town being rebuilt and an invasion being repelled. Sure, there's no easy mode there, but the fun was in the search and exploration rather than just killing a bunch of new mobs and winning some uber loot / bragging rights.
I'm not an EVE carebear as you seem to have assumed. I started way back in Dec. 2004 and have been an "on again, off again" player since then with about a solid 5 years in game. Of those 5 years, I've lived in nullsec for the last 3, would PvP on a daily basis, and have been an active member of a great PvP corp and have participated in the Northern Coalition, though that was back when they actually owned most of the north. That all being said, life was always very repetetive, and while a very few ops did get into heavy terriroty contests or do some real behind the lines black ops, the vast majority was little more than roaming aound looking for some pew pew. So while, yes, there is a story built by the players (as I've pointed out in my op), you have to be a member of a major corp / alliance / coalition to even think about participating in that story. And, as I'm sure you know, joining one of the majors often comes with all sorts of nasty strings or time obligations, depending on who you decide to throw your lot in with, and thats completely ignoring the black marks you can get against you if you happen to pick the wrong one... cough... cough... goons... cough... And all of that is predicated on if you can get in at all, don't forget, people don't trust people in that game, so the big names don't just hand out membership like its candy on Halloween.
I'm not saying I don't like EVE, after all, I keep coming back time after time. It has great potential if you get yourself into the right situation, the problem is getting yourself into that situation. Not only that, but even the best ship replacement programs keep you running through isk like water, so if you're not PvPing you're almost always grinding isk (running incursions is the epitomy of repetetive grinding, no matter how you try and slice it). The end result is a game where you have to work to make money to buy ships so that you can work for your corp losing those ships so that you can have some semblance of the word play fitting into all that work.
It sound slike you want a Sandbox style game with a storyline. The problem with stories is that they always have an ending. I'd also say try GW2 or wait for Archeage that one sounds like it will have what you are looking for.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
Originally posted by Gorwe OP: This is VERY important! So listen and remember!
"That was then, this is now"-Dawn of War
Leave the past where it belongs(in the past derp). Live in the present and enjoy Life. Otherwise you will have a Life wasted only due to chasing some utopia from the past you do not know if it caused the good memories to exist. I'd bet that it was a lucky set of circumstances that caused happiness rather than AC(but Hey! What do I know right?)...
Also stop comparing games and start experiencing them. Because you see this: past>>>present. Therefore if you try comparing EVERY modern game is going to feel lackluster. Solution? Stop comparing. Simple nough, eh?
I'd recommend GW 2. Do a lil gamble with it. You will not lose and are going to thank me...
Anyways, Cheers Mate!
p
I don't have to experience a lobotomy to know I don't want one.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
Originally posted by Gorwe OP: This is VERY important! So listen and remember!
"That was then, this is now"-Dawn of War
Leave the past where it belongs(in the past derp). Live in the present and enjoy Life. Otherwise you will have a Life wasted only due to chasing some utopia from the past you do not know if it caused the good memories to exist. I'd bet that it was a lucky set of circumstances that caused happiness rather than AC(but Hey! What do I know right?)...
Also stop comparing games and start experiencing them. Because you see this: past>>>present. Therefore if you try comparing EVERY modern game is going to feel lackluster. Solution? Stop comparing. Simple nough, eh?
I'd recommend GW 2. Do a lil gamble with it. You will not lose and are going to thank me...
Anyways, Cheers Mate!
p
Originally posted by TruthXHurts It sound slike you want a Sandbox style game with a storyline. The problem with stories is that they always have an ending. I'd also say try GW2 or wait for Archeage that one sounds like it will have what you are looking for.
I have experienced many games, and even in the course of this discussion have tried yet another. Its not about comparing one game to another, its about finding what I want in a game. It wasn't a lucky set of circumstances that caused me to have fond memories of AC, but rather the fact that AC was a memorable game. I'm also not wasting my life chasing after a utopian past... to be honest, the way I'm looking at this whole endeavor is that if I can't find a game that fits the bill, I'll probably just do something else until one exists. What I won't do though, is waste any more time and/or money on a game that I'm really not enjoying anymore, which is what brought me here in the first place. And, while GW2 sounds like it might fit some of my requirements and be worth a try, I'm going to wait until I can have that try for free, or at least an introduction to it, and even then, only time will tell if my number one requirement for a compelling story will exist within the framework of the game.
TruthXHurts
While yes, a story must always come to an end, you have not allowed for the existance of multiple story lines. When I last left AC, which I use as an example so often because it seems to be the only game to have bothered so much with the concept of story and player interaction, the game had gone through no less than eight major story arcs and many more minor story arcs, each and every one updated and advanced on a monthly basis. As far as I know, its still going along the same model to this day. The only limiting factor is really the amount of creativity found within the dev team and the ability of the playing public to re-adapt to that style of play. I'm 100% the former exists in vast quantities, unfortunately its the latter which may be in short supply, as I've come to understand through this discussion.
Originally posted by Gorwe Good luck finding what you want then. If you find such a game(idk, sounds interesting), Please DO tell!
You are not the only one looking for good games(I have HoN+GW2+CoH+DoWs+{LoL-waiting to see what they do with it in S3}, so I am not complaining). Just Like to help people
Sadly, the magic 8-ball says "Outlook not so good", though there is always hope.
“Really not a good argument, if you want to imagine things there are better ways than not so great graphics. AC did have other good points though and game play Vs graphics is always a hot topic.”
Maybe I did not explain that as well as I could. It is not the quality of the graphics; it is the fact that there are graphics. Having graphics limits the RPG MMO world; it says this is the world, no more, no less. That’s why imagination suffers. But I am not arguing for no graphic games, not saying lets go back to MUD’s. Just that there is a down side to having a graphical world in a RPG.
I would add that I use ‘sleight of hand’ when role-playing in a MMO. If we don’t want a building, mob, or event to be there it is not. Many roleplayers have problems with this though; they put immersion above role-playing as a priority. I do understand their position, but to me that makes your role-playing a slave to the game. Conversely you have to stay in lore, it’s a fine balance.
As to not designing games to be modular this has been the curse of gaming but a blessing for copyright laws since computer gaming began. It seems that every new MMO is built from the ground up. Now of course code gets stolen and appears in new MMO’s, but by and large they are created from scratch. This is an enormous investment in time and money, resulting in most MMO’s not achieving a profit decent enough to warrant regular further content funding.
Gaming houses need the copyright laws to protect what they have developed, but in turn this makes making a new game an enormous funding exercise.
Hijacking the thread into a war between TSW and GW2 is a bit lame.
AC was quite unique, but as you said it rarely made big graphical changes. So mobs would change, or an event would start somewhere. But there was a lot of story behind it and the story determined where players wanted to be. Imagine trying to sell that to the player graphic addicts of today. You would be laughed at by the industry and ranted about on forums.
MMO’s now require no imagination to play and so do not inspire it in their players. Its rather like the difference between a book and a film.
Sadly, I'm starting to believe what some of you have said that nothing exists, or will exist in the near future, that is going to live up to what I want from a MMO. Sure different games have parts of what I'm looking for, but I'm not about to start playing 3-4 different games with 3-4 different subs just to get a whole set of gaming needs filled. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should just try putting together a development house to build the game myself so that in 5 years it finally exists (as if that would ever work...).
Aaahhh, reality begins to set in......
I don't see GW2 as the game for you either Treblesum, unfortunately. The dynamic events are more concerning combat than story line. Yes they will affect the world, but I think are more intended as group quests, although that is the term they don't want you to use. Lets call them unscripted quests. I think thats a great thing and probably a lot of fun, but something tells me not exactly what you are looking for. PvP should be good as it was in GW1. Its a quality game though, it should be worth a try.
I think anyone looking for a game that will hold their interest (continously) for more than a year, is bound to be disappointed these days. And personally that why I only tend to dabble in F2P games these days. Subscription games are just too expensive for what you get IMO. Keep in mind I am your casual gamer, the type that got you into your present predicament, LOL.
My first MMO was E and B. Loved it like you love AC. But even then I could only take 6 months of it before I quit subbing only to return about 6 months before it shut down. I should have gone straight to SWG after that but unfortunately I was a little disillusioned in the way it ended. I think nowadays too, it would take more content than what AC was putting out to keep the masses happy. Very short attention spans in the world today.
Anyway, on a brighter note, I think Truthxhurts might be on to something when he suggests Archeage. It might be the game you and I are both looking for. Just wish we had some idea of when or if it might arrive.
Good luck in your search.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
“Really not a good argument, if you want to imagine things there are better ways than not so great graphics. AC did have other good points though and game play Vs graphics is always a hot topic.”
Maybe I did not explain that as well as I could. It is not the quality of the graphics; it is the fact that there are graphics. Having graphics limits the RPG MMO world; it says this is the world, no more, no less. That’s why imagination suffers. But I am not arguing for no graphic games, not saying lets go back to MUD’s. Just that there is a down side to having a graphical world in a RPG.
I would add that I use ‘sleight of hand’ when role-playing in a MMO. If we don’t want a building, mob, or event to be there it is not. Many roleplayers have problems with this though; they put immersion above role-playing as a priority. I do understand their position, but to me that makes your role-playing a slave to the game. Conversely you have to stay in lore, it’s a fine balance.
As to not designing games to be modular this has been the curse of gaming but a blessing for copyright laws since computer gaming began. It seems that every new MMO is built from the ground up. Now of course code gets stolen and appears in new MMO’s, but by and large they are created from scratch. This is an enormous investment in time and money, resulting in most MMO’s not achieving a profit decent enough to warrant regular further content funding.
Gaming houses need the copyright laws to protect what they have developed, but in turn this makes making a new game an enormous funding exercise.
I would tend to agree that copyright laws are nothing but trouble for the development end of the industry, at least as they are implemented now. Developing a game engine is heavy duty work costing a ton of money, and unfortunately, so is licensing someone elses game engine. Personally, I would love to see development houses share the tech under the collective hoods of these game more freely... sure it would lead to more similarity between games, but thats not necessarily a bad thing, and it would provide a collectively higher jumping off point for each successive generation of gaming. That all being said, nearly any graphics engine can be made to work in a modular way with a little bit of inginuity and forethought. The issue I think is less one of cost and more one of need: If the developer isn't planning on needing to rework the environment on a regular basis, they have no need to build the flexibility to do so into their engine. If, on the other hand, the same developers knew they were going to be uprooting forests or building new towns not too far down the road, they would include that ability.
The more I think about all of this, the more I think that the biggest reason things never change in a game is because the community would throw a temper tantrum. For me, it was a great experience to be able to participate in a world event / storyline that would never be repeatable and would exist only in stories told by those who also got to participate and a few interesting trophies resulting from that participation. Sure, I missed out on some things that came before, but I knew there were still plenty of new and interesting future events that I'd be able to play a part in. I can only imagine how insane the newer generation of players would go if they found out that there was an important story event or cool looking trophy that they couldn't get because they weren't playing the game at the time or because they weren't high enough level during the event. I know at least a few people who would rage-quit in a heartbeat because of something like that, and I'm sure a large portion of the modern MMO population would raise hell with the devs to get the events re-opened. The way I see it, transient, world changing events would be a great way to keep people attached to their subs because they wouldn't want to miss out on the next great thing, but I can also see how it might be a deterrent as time goes on, which to be fair, is what happened with AC. After a couple of years, there just weren't any new players anymore at least partly because there was already so much history in the game that it was like trying to nose your way into an old friendship... Sure, you could join, but all the stories were about great things that happened in the past that you just could never live up to. I'm starting to think that the devs have seen this and decided that they would never cut anyone off from past events like that (at least the bulk of them) so that new players would have an equal opportunity for stuff that the old players got long ago.
Investment in any game is a gamble. No one, maybe not even you, can say with absolute certainty what your outcome will be in terms of satisfaction.
Do your own research, make your own decisions, man up to the consequences of peeling a few twenties out of your wallet.
And please don't turn into one of "us". We're miserably hyperfocused on flaw-hunting.
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.
Hijacking the thread into a war between TSW and GW2 is a bit lame.
AC was quite unique, but as you said it rarely made big graphical changes. So mobs would change, or an event would start somewhere. But there was a lot of story behind it and the story determined where players wanted to be. Imagine trying to sell that to the player graphic addicts of today. You would be laughed at by the industry and ranted about on forums.
MMO’s now require no imagination to play and so do not inspire it in their players. Its rather like the difference between a book and a film.
Sadly, I'm starting to believe what some of you have said that nothing exists, or will exist in the near future, that is going to live up to what I want from a MMO. Sure different games have parts of what I'm looking for, but I'm not about to start playing 3-4 different games with 3-4 different subs just to get a whole set of gaming needs filled. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should just try putting together a development house to build the game myself so that in 5 years it finally exists (as if that would ever work...).
Aaahhh, reality begins to set in......
I don't see GW2 as the game for you either Treblesum, unfortunately. The dynamic events are more concerning combat than story line. Yes they will affect the world, but I think are more intended as group quests, although that is the term they don't want you to use. Lets call them unscripted quests. I think thats a great thing and probably a lot of fun, but something tells me not exactly what you are looking for. PvP should be good as it was in GW1. Its a quality game though, it should be worth a try.
I think anyone looking for a game that will hold their interest (continously) for more than a year, is bound to be disappointed these days. And personally that why I only tend to dabble in F2P games these days. Subscription games are just too expensive for what you get IMO. Keep in mind I am your casual gamer, the type that got you into your present predicament, LOL.
My first MMO was E and B. Loved it like you love AC. But even then I could only take 6 months of it before I quit subbing only to return about 6 months before it shut down. I should have gone straight to SWG after that but unfortunately I was a little disillusioned in the way it ended. I think nowadays too, it would take more content than what AC was putting out to keep the masses happy. Very short attention spans in the world today.
Anyway, on a brighter note, I think Truthxhurts might be on to something when he suggests Archeage. It might be the game you and I are both looking for. Just wish we had some idea of when or if it might arrive.
Good luck in your search.
I loved E&B and SWG-JTL (pre-NGE), but unfortunately, those are both great examples of games which were ruined by their developers. I never really knew what happened to E&B, except I had taken a short break from it for the end of a semester and when I came back, it was just gone. SWG, as I'm sure most people know now, took what was a complex and difficult game with many of the characteristics I look for in an MMO, and turned it into world-of-jedi's.
I will have to look into Archeage, though unless its FTP, I'm guessing the only way I'll get a chance to try it in the next 6-months to a year is if I can land an open beta spot.
Investment in any game is a gamble. No one, maybe not even you, can say with absolute certainty what your outcome will be in terms of satisfaction.
Do your own research, make your own decisions, man up to the consequences of peeling a few twenties out of your wallet.
And please don't turn into one of "us". We're miserably hyperfocused on flaw-hunting.
That all depends on how many $20's you have in your wallet to begin with. I'm not going to say I'm poor, but $60 is more than I'm willing to throw away on a poorly chosen game. Sure I'll happily plop it down on the table if I like the trial of the game, as I did with Rift before I found out that it had no end game except for grinding out gear and doing raids. That all being said, even if I could happily flush $60 down the toilet, I'd be wary of ANY game that doesn't offer a free trial because it makes me wonder why they don't stand behind their product firmly enough to let me try it BEFORE they get their hands on my money. Ask yourself this: would you buy a car if the dealer refused to let you test drive it? I know they aren't exactly the same thing, but in a way, both are complex systems which can have many things wrong with them, so if you aren't given the opportunity to evaluate either on more than the external appearance or someone else's review, you can't really know if it lives up to your expectations for quality.
I'm also not living in fear, but rather putting my foot down on a few, dear to my heart, expectations from an MMORPG. If I don't find them, I've got other games to play, even if they aren't MMORPG's, but I've just gotten tired of sinking at least time, if not lots of money, into games which just don't live up to my expectations.
Comments
I guess AC was unique in this aspect then, since it was monthly for more than a decade. That being said, they rarely actually added anything new, it was just regular story updates with various associated changes to the game world that were fairly minor. I guess that speaks to the power of a good plot: if you tell a good story, you can satisfy a lot of people for a very long time without having to roll out massive expansions all the time.
Honestly if you are after a Fantasy MMORPG you are going to be hard pressed to find anything that even remotely compares to Everquest 2. You cant beat the graphics, content, game play, feature set and its one of the best F2P cash systems I have seen and I have seen many. From your typical PVE hack and slash to extremely in depth stories with instance changes, actor dialog, etc to the crafting system that you can do rather than adventure and which can possibly kill you in the process to the building of your own dungeons for others to play and earn points or owning houses, keeps etc and decorating them, the game aspects are immense. The downfall of EQ2 is the player base is fairly small and this is, in my experience, by in large due to the inaccurate information disseminated by the general MMO public as well as lack of marketing on behalf of Sony. Get on the Freeport server and find a guild and 92 levels later you still will have content. Even if it involves chronoing down and going back to lower content with the challenge all preserved. Anyhow, its worth a try and you simply can not beat this game. I came back to this game after about a decade away from EQ1 and it already had a mark against it in my book because I was very displeased with sony. After about 130GB of downloads and trying MMOs for months on end I finally broke down and tried EQ2. I about fell out of my chair. Hands down best fantasy (possibly any) MMORPG on the market, period.
PS. No matter what you play its going to repeat. Life is the same way. It just happens.
For this bit: I can't really do much else than direct you to the update notes of the original game (Linkage: http://www.guildwars.com/support/gameupdates/), they've done a good job of updating content/pushing out new content since launch. Of course, if you're a hardcore player, no game developer can keep up in pushing out new content. But taking all things into account, I'd say they've done a good job in the past, with a number of free content updates as welll as paid ones. As for GW2 itself, devs have said they'll be dropping in new content (=dynamic events most likely) all over the world regularly. Also, the amount of content currently in at launch is...a lot. Factor in upcoming expansions (we know there will be expansions), and you should have plenty of content to go for. If you burn through it before next expansion, remember that there's no sub fee. Nothing stops you from putting the game down for a while, and coming back at no additional cost (other than expansion pack) at a later date.
As for this bit: This is not what GW2 is about. There is no reason to rush to level cap, as your level gets scaled downwards when you return to lower level areas. That way, you will never outlevel any areas, and even the starting zones maintain some challenge, as you won't be able to one-shot the mobs. At level cap, the entire world is open for you, and meaningful in terms of experience and loot (you always get level-appropriate loot even if you're in low level areas). There are dungeons and gear grind in some form, however the grind is purely cosmetic. You'll do just fine with that max level armor set you can get from a vendor or crafters, dungeon armors won't provide any statistical advantage over the more common armor sets.
I would say GW2 or TSW. I think GW2 will have more staying power than TSW. While TSW has a lot of quests with good story it feels like a game that will not keep you for the long term like GW2 will however it is still a great experience.
GW2
Personal Story: The personal story is interesting. Each choice you make branches the story in a different way so that there are thousands of possible personal story branches. You can also join people in their personal stories so that you can experience different stories without creating new characters.
Story in dynamic events: The dynamic events are in the open world and have more story than many people realize. Some people go in and kill stuff then leave, but if you stay around often times the NPCs involved will continue on with their lives and you see their story unfold. That often leads to new dynamic events. See this video it shows it well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CyqGJHTjes&feature=channel&list=UL
Open world: GW2 has the most open world content I have seen out of any game. I would say 95% of the game is open world. Personal story and some dungeons are instanced, but there is a lot of great open world story and open world dungeons as well.
Updates: They said they would continuously relersae new content. There is no specifics about this yet though.
TSW
Story: TSW has the best story I have seen in any MMO so far. It is definitely its strength. The main quest line is made of instances in the world though so it is not a story that is experienced with others. However there are tons of other great stories which you can experience in the open world.
Updates: They have committed to monthly updates and so far they have done so. The first month had 6 new missions and a bunch of other content. This months update looks similar.
Again like many people I would recommend GW2 for you. Your main reasons is that you want a game that lasts with regular updates.
Well GW2 is perfect for you. It has a huge world to expore, PvP for hardcore and casual. There is down leveling so you can always go back to lower levels and it'll still be tough and fun for you. The devs has stated an area might have 100 Dynamic events now, years from now it might have 300.
They've also said they'll be tweaking Dynamic events regularly. So even if you had done a DE multiple times it might have a different ending. There are tons of achievements and things to hold your attention. Jumping puzzles, mini games etc
You also do not want grinding , again this is perfect for you. The leveling in GW2 is scalar, that means level 40-41 will take about the same time from 79-80 which is about 1.5 hours (according to Anet). Since there isn't any gear grind for "Uber" gear, you won't be forced to "grind" rather you can choose if you want cosmetic upgrades. Don't get me wrong, it might still be a grind (dungeon gear) but YOU aren't forced to grind. In other MMOs if you don't keep up the latest tier of gear you're quickly left behind.
THE BEST PART? You only need to pay a $60 fee one time to play it, no sub fee. In a Q&A , a dev stated "All content created by our live team will be free to play"
Hijacking the thread into a war between TSW and GW2 is a bit lame.
AC was quite unique, but as you said it rarely made big graphical changes. So mobs would change, or an event would start somewhere. But there was a lot of story behind it and the story determined where players wanted to be. Imagine trying to sell that to the player graphic addicts of today. You would be laughed at by the industry and ranted about on forums.
MMO’s now require no imagination to play and so do not inspire it in their players. Its rather like the difference between a book and a film.
Give TERA a try...you might be surprised. Even in spite of the negative comments this reply is gonna get! Personally I am loving it and have been playing since release and still am (only lvl 34) Not a power lvl race to end cap kind of guy...And for me to play a single MMO for this long is something I havent done in a long time. What with TSW and GW2 looming right around the corner and I am presently content and not interested in another game right now. And I really wanted to play TSW at some point before they go and dumb it down like so many games these days tend to do.
GW2 while i'm sure to end up being a good game for some reason I'm just not interested and not buying into all the hype.
You know most games nowadays have a great graphical basis to support something like what AC did, its just a lack of imagination on the part of the devs and probably also a loathing on their part to mess with the world they've already built. In AC, when a big change in the story brought a change to the world, players would log on after the patch day to find a whole town leveled, or built, or alien structures dotting the landscape. Even though they were fairly small changes in the grand scheme of the game world, they were enough to give context to what was going on in the game and give everyone something new to explore. Even though newer games are much more graphically complex, I doubt it would take much to blow up a town or build a new volcano into the landscape and then build a whole new story and set of quests around it. Instead, it seems like most, if not all, modern MMO's are build around a 100% static landscape that the devs are unwilling to change in any way. Even when a major game update is put out, they are almost always centered around adding new territory while leaving the original game world as it always was. I'm not sure why they do this, though I'm guessing its somewhere between the cost of making changes to the game world and trying to keep the overal game experience the same for every new player. The latter was always a problem with AC because veteran players had lots of interesting stories about past world events that the new players would just never get to experience. I know this eventually really discouraged new players joining the game, but the way I always saw it, you'd still be able to participate in new world events, and after a couple of years, you're not really going to get many new players anyway. When all is said and done though, I think that the modern MMO community could easily get into that kind of story based game that requires you to have an imagination and a committment to see where each new plotline goes. Sure there would be the "raider" types that wouldn't want to participate because they wouldn't have a real end game to be uber, but they are not the entire community.
On a different note, I did go ahead and try TSW since they have a free 3-day trial and, while the story is interesting, the game is just too faulty for me to have an interest in playing. I didn't feel like I was playing an MMO so much as a single player game which just happened to have other people there. Add in to that the graphics glitches which are everywhere, and a weird combat model where your character just ends up standing in front of a mob not reacting while it takes a long time to kill them with a gun (no offense, but if you're going to have a modern or future shooter, you can't expect a mob to take 4-5 point blank blasts and still be attacking... Instead combat needs to be much faster paced with more damage going both ways more quickly), and you've got a game which just won't work for me.
Anyway, it seems like GW2 might be worth a try, though I'm still very skeptical about what sort of content these dynamic events are really going to have. Right now, Rift has dynamic events all over the place in the form of zone invasions, and aside from giving everyone something to kill, they carry absolutely no weight in relation to the storyline and winning / losing them has absolutely no effect on anyone other than providing some rewards if you win. If this is what the makers of GW2 are planning on doing with their DE's, and DE's are primarily what they are going to be updating, I doubt the content updates will be worthile for me. That being said, at least its going to be FTP after you've bought it, so if it goes sour after a couple of months, I'm not out more than the purchase price, too bad I'll have to wait for them to offer a free trial of some sort before I'm willing to plop down the $60 for the game, which, if it follows certain other releases timetables means that I might not get a chance to even try it for 6 months to a year.
Sadly, I'm starting to believe what some of you have said that nothing exists, or will exist in the near future, that is going to live up to what I want from a MMO. Sure different games have parts of what I'm looking for, but I'm not about to start playing 3-4 different games with 3-4 different subs just to get a whole set of gaming needs filled. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should just try putting together a development house to build the game myself so that in 5 years it finally exists (as if that would ever work...).
The concept of world changing events did not disappear from the MMO designers building blocks. But it was hit by the problems of making alterations to ever more graphically intensive games. This has been talked about by the guys who did Dwarf Fortress, it is a lot easier to scrap and rebuild when your game is in Ascii code!
But the other factor is that world changing events and easymode do not go hand in hand. The easymode way is to make them like Rift did, they are short term events, having local effects, often linked to dailies.
If you are going to do real world changing events it effects the flow of gameplay, and easymode design hates anything that effects gameplay. When that town gets reduced to rubble what happens to the quest givers and NPC vendors? Todays players just would not be able to handle it: Can’t finish your quest for a couple of days until the town is rebuilt? OMFG get on the forums and complain, send in a help request every day until the devs sort it!!!!!
Even doing something like changing the route you need to use to get from A to B would now be seen as causing frustration in players, as is any sort of puzzle. Anything which might cause confusion or delays is ironed out of the modern ezMMO. So having world changing events which necessitate players to do some reading before the go online or even just have ask what is going on in general chat is avoided. The game play is casual and becoming ever more casual, won’t be long before your five year old brother will have no problems playing an ezMMO.
And we pen and paper players always said you needed little imagination to play a MMO, even before AC came out.
Really not a good argument, if you want to imagine things there are better ways than not so great graphics. AC did have other good points though and gameplay Vs graphics is always a hot topic.
I can play a fun game with bad graphics but I dont make excuses for it. Computer games is just a different medium.
I have to disagree with the whole EVE has no storyline bit. I wager EVE has the best storyline out of any MMO because it's all playermade and constantly changing from one day to the next.
Once you get involved in the 0.0 storylines, you get hooked on what the game has to offer. It's not so much about what the devs want you to experience as it is the outcomes of interactions with other players/groups.
I understand that you're mainly after PvE, so that's probably why you couldn't get into EVE.
I honestly feel like I should set up an EVE recruitment program here. So many people that would love EVE simply don't get to experience what it really has to offer because they don't end up in the right corp.
Is it just me, or does this editor really not allow placing reply text in between multiply quoted messages without manually recoding the html tags for the whole post?
Anyway, I agree that a big part of the problem is that game designers attempt to cater to the lowest common denominator when dealing with their potential player base. A lot of players want ex-mode, and so they make easy mode games. Unfortunatly, this is basically creating a "race to the bottom" so to speak for the level of game quality, at least in my opinion. Sure, the graphics are getting really great, and there is plenty of uber gear to be ground out for bragging rights, but the real substance of the MMORPG is being excised to the point where there isn't actually any point in worrying about the story anymore because it has no effect on you and you have no effect on it and the only real decisions you have to make deal with your character build and what they look like with all their gear on. I understand that this is a dollar driven decision, as it would be bad business for a company to sink the kind of money it takes to develop a heavy hitting MMORPG while only targeting it at a niche market. You need at least some of the ez-moders to come buy the game and pay some subscription fees in order to make the game profitable enough to have justified its existance. After participating in this convorsation for a while though, I'm starting to think that its the player base thats to blame more than the devs. Sure, I would love to see a renaissance of the real RPG built into MMO form, but even if it was developed, it would have to be seriously hyped to catch the attention of the masses, and then the devs would have to throw down the gauntlet and tell the people who want the game dumbed down to go suck an egg to have even a slight chance of preserving the RPG part of the game.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not mr. RPG. I've never played on an RPG-only server, and I don't play in an RPG style, but that doesn't mean I don't care about the story. I too used to play pen and paper RPGs (Primarily Cyberpunk, but a few forays into D&D and Mechwarrior), and still would, but for lack of the requisit other players and hours of free time needed to get everyone together, get set up, and then work your way through the story the GM came up with for that night. The key, more than anything else, for a game like that was always the story... If you didn't have a good story, the game amounted to a group of people sitting around a table talking and nothing more. While MMORPG's are only the latest version of this (I still play the legend of zelda occasionally on an emulator) they are the first since those tabletop games that actually allows for more than just you or maybe one other person to participate. The sad thing is that it seems like the player base as a whole just isn't iterested in that aspect of the game anymore. I have a feeling this is the result of the newer generations of players never really experiencing that play style. If they've never had to follow the story and make decisions based on it which then affect the next part of the story, that concept then becomes foreign to them and ultimately uninteresting.
In response to another thing you've mentioned, I really believe that the idea that the increasingly complex graphical environment is a reason not to chance that environment is a red herring. The issue, I'm guessing, is that the art designers are not building the game from the ground up to be modular, or at least not very modular. Sure it was much easier in a game like AC where there were maybe 100 models of each type of environmental object for the entire world, but that doesn't mean the same ease of alteration can't be achieved with some good front end planning. That being said, I think the second point about players pitching a fit if something changed and they weren't expecting it is a much more valid argument. Because the MMO market has become fairly saturated with titles, the publishers need to keep a death grip on every possible paying customer, so if blowing up a town and moving the NPCs to a nearby tent camp (all of the NPCs were still available the day after patch in that AC event, not even a 30 second run from the original location) is enough to cause a player to threaten to leave the game, they probably wouldn't risk it. On the other hand, that was what was so great about AC and what kept the world populated for so long. Patch day was like christmas, with tons of players running around all over the place trying to figure out what was new and where that plot line was going in the new month. When the town was blown up, everyone wanted to know why and what had happened, which led to a 6-month story line that culminated in the town being rebuilt and an invasion being repelled. Sure, there's no easy mode there, but the fun was in the search and exploration rather than just killing a bunch of new mobs and winning some uber loot / bragging rights.
@helthros
I'm not an EVE carebear as you seem to have assumed. I started way back in Dec. 2004 and have been an "on again, off again" player since then with about a solid 5 years in game. Of those 5 years, I've lived in nullsec for the last 3, would PvP on a daily basis, and have been an active member of a great PvP corp and have participated in the Northern Coalition, though that was back when they actually owned most of the north. That all being said, life was always very repetetive, and while a very few ops did get into heavy terriroty contests or do some real behind the lines black ops, the vast majority was little more than roaming aound looking for some pew pew. So while, yes, there is a story built by the players (as I've pointed out in my op), you have to be a member of a major corp / alliance / coalition to even think about participating in that story. And, as I'm sure you know, joining one of the majors often comes with all sorts of nasty strings or time obligations, depending on who you decide to throw your lot in with, and thats completely ignoring the black marks you can get against you if you happen to pick the wrong one... cough... cough... goons... cough... And all of that is predicated on if you can get in at all, don't forget, people don't trust people in that game, so the big names don't just hand out membership like its candy on Halloween.
I'm not saying I don't like EVE, after all, I keep coming back time after time. It has great potential if you get yourself into the right situation, the problem is getting yourself into that situation. Not only that, but even the best ship replacement programs keep you running through isk like water, so if you're not PvPing you're almost always grinding isk (running incursions is the epitomy of repetetive grinding, no matter how you try and slice it). The end result is a game where you have to work to make money to buy ships so that you can work for your corp losing those ships so that you can have some semblance of the word play fitting into all that work.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
I don't have to experience a lobotomy to know I don't want one.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
I have experienced many games, and even in the course of this discussion have tried yet another. Its not about comparing one game to another, its about finding what I want in a game. It wasn't a lucky set of circumstances that caused me to have fond memories of AC, but rather the fact that AC was a memorable game. I'm also not wasting my life chasing after a utopian past... to be honest, the way I'm looking at this whole endeavor is that if I can't find a game that fits the bill, I'll probably just do something else until one exists. What I won't do though, is waste any more time and/or money on a game that I'm really not enjoying anymore, which is what brought me here in the first place. And, while GW2 sounds like it might fit some of my requirements and be worth a try, I'm going to wait until I can have that try for free, or at least an introduction to it, and even then, only time will tell if my number one requirement for a compelling story will exist within the framework of the game.
TruthXHurts
While yes, a story must always come to an end, you have not allowed for the existance of multiple story lines. When I last left AC, which I use as an example so often because it seems to be the only game to have bothered so much with the concept of story and player interaction, the game had gone through no less than eight major story arcs and many more minor story arcs, each and every one updated and advanced on a monthly basis. As far as I know, its still going along the same model to this day. The only limiting factor is really the amount of creativity found within the dev team and the ability of the playing public to re-adapt to that style of play. I'm 100% the former exists in vast quantities, unfortunately its the latter which may be in short supply, as I've come to understand through this discussion.
Sadly, the magic 8-ball says "Outlook not so good", though there is always hope.
“Really not a good argument, if you want to imagine things there are better ways than not so great graphics. AC did have other good points though and game play Vs graphics is always a hot topic.”
Maybe I did not explain that as well as I could. It is not the quality of the graphics; it is the fact that there are graphics. Having graphics limits the RPG MMO world; it says this is the world, no more, no less. That’s why imagination suffers. But I am not arguing for no graphic games, not saying lets go back to MUD’s. Just that there is a down side to having a graphical world in a RPG.
I would add that I use ‘sleight of hand’ when role-playing in a MMO. If we don’t want a building, mob, or event to be there it is not. Many roleplayers have problems with this though; they put immersion above role-playing as a priority. I do understand their position, but to me that makes your role-playing a slave to the game. Conversely you have to stay in lore, it’s a fine balance.
As to not designing games to be modular this has been the curse of gaming but a blessing for copyright laws since computer gaming began. It seems that every new MMO is built from the ground up. Now of course code gets stolen and appears in new MMO’s, but by and large they are created from scratch. This is an enormous investment in time and money, resulting in most MMO’s not achieving a profit decent enough to warrant regular further content funding.
Gaming houses need the copyright laws to protect what they have developed, but in turn this makes making a new game an enormous funding exercise.
Aaahhh, reality begins to set in......
I don't see GW2 as the game for you either Treblesum, unfortunately. The dynamic events are more concerning combat than story line. Yes they will affect the world, but I think are more intended as group quests, although that is the term they don't want you to use. Lets call them unscripted quests. I think thats a great thing and probably a lot of fun, but something tells me not exactly what you are looking for. PvP should be good as it was in GW1. Its a quality game though, it should be worth a try.
I think anyone looking for a game that will hold their interest (continously) for more than a year, is bound to be disappointed these days. And personally that why I only tend to dabble in F2P games these days. Subscription games are just too expensive for what you get IMO. Keep in mind I am your casual gamer, the type that got you into your present predicament, LOL.
My first MMO was E and B. Loved it like you love AC. But even then I could only take 6 months of it before I quit subbing only to return about 6 months before it shut down. I should have gone straight to SWG after that but unfortunately I was a little disillusioned in the way it ended. I think nowadays too, it would take more content than what AC was putting out to keep the masses happy. Very short attention spans in the world today.
Anyway, on a brighter note, I think Truthxhurts might be on to something when he suggests Archeage. It might be the game you and I are both looking for. Just wish we had some idea of when or if it might arrive.
Good luck in your search.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
I would tend to agree that copyright laws are nothing but trouble for the development end of the industry, at least as they are implemented now. Developing a game engine is heavy duty work costing a ton of money, and unfortunately, so is licensing someone elses game engine. Personally, I would love to see development houses share the tech under the collective hoods of these game more freely... sure it would lead to more similarity between games, but thats not necessarily a bad thing, and it would provide a collectively higher jumping off point for each successive generation of gaming. That all being said, nearly any graphics engine can be made to work in a modular way with a little bit of inginuity and forethought. The issue I think is less one of cost and more one of need: If the developer isn't planning on needing to rework the environment on a regular basis, they have no need to build the flexibility to do so into their engine. If, on the other hand, the same developers knew they were going to be uprooting forests or building new towns not too far down the road, they would include that ability.
The more I think about all of this, the more I think that the biggest reason things never change in a game is because the community would throw a temper tantrum. For me, it was a great experience to be able to participate in a world event / storyline that would never be repeatable and would exist only in stories told by those who also got to participate and a few interesting trophies resulting from that participation. Sure, I missed out on some things that came before, but I knew there were still plenty of new and interesting future events that I'd be able to play a part in. I can only imagine how insane the newer generation of players would go if they found out that there was an important story event or cool looking trophy that they couldn't get because they weren't playing the game at the time or because they weren't high enough level during the event. I know at least a few people who would rage-quit in a heartbeat because of something like that, and I'm sure a large portion of the modern MMO population would raise hell with the devs to get the events re-opened. The way I see it, transient, world changing events would be a great way to keep people attached to their subs because they wouldn't want to miss out on the next great thing, but I can also see how it might be a deterrent as time goes on, which to be fair, is what happened with AC. After a couple of years, there just weren't any new players anymore at least partly because there was already so much history in the game that it was like trying to nose your way into an old friendship... Sure, you could join, but all the stories were about great things that happened in the past that you just could never live up to. I'm starting to think that the devs have seen this and decided that they would never cut anyone off from past events like that (at least the bulk of them) so that new players would have an equal opportunity for stuff that the old players got long ago.
easy..... try GW2 !
Don't live in fear.
Investment in any game is a gamble. No one, maybe not even you, can say with absolute certainty what your outcome will be in terms of satisfaction.
Do your own research, make your own decisions, man up to the consequences of peeling a few twenties out of your wallet.
And please don't turn into one of "us". We're miserably hyperfocused on flaw-hunting.
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.
I loved E&B and SWG-JTL (pre-NGE), but unfortunately, those are both great examples of games which were ruined by their developers. I never really knew what happened to E&B, except I had taken a short break from it for the end of a semester and when I came back, it was just gone. SWG, as I'm sure most people know now, took what was a complex and difficult game with many of the characteristics I look for in an MMO, and turned it into world-of-jedi's.
I will have to look into Archeage, though unless its FTP, I'm guessing the only way I'll get a chance to try it in the next 6-months to a year is if I can land an open beta spot.
That all depends on how many $20's you have in your wallet to begin with. I'm not going to say I'm poor, but $60 is more than I'm willing to throw away on a poorly chosen game. Sure I'll happily plop it down on the table if I like the trial of the game, as I did with Rift before I found out that it had no end game except for grinding out gear and doing raids. That all being said, even if I could happily flush $60 down the toilet, I'd be wary of ANY game that doesn't offer a free trial because it makes me wonder why they don't stand behind their product firmly enough to let me try it BEFORE they get their hands on my money. Ask yourself this: would you buy a car if the dealer refused to let you test drive it? I know they aren't exactly the same thing, but in a way, both are complex systems which can have many things wrong with them, so if you aren't given the opportunity to evaluate either on more than the external appearance or someone else's review, you can't really know if it lives up to your expectations for quality.
I'm also not living in fear, but rather putting my foot down on a few, dear to my heart, expectations from an MMORPG. If I don't find them, I've got other games to play, even if they aren't MMORPG's, but I've just gotten tired of sinking at least time, if not lots of money, into games which just don't live up to my expectations.