They've easily made profit. Only, not as much as they hoped.
People are still delusional... if they were making a profit they wouldn't have fired so many devs.
Someone obviously has no idea how the industry works. They dump devs to increase the profit margin plus you don't need anywhere near the same number of employees to fix bugs and make expansions as you do to create a game from scratch.
People are still delusional... if they were making a profit they wouldn't have fired so many devs.
Someone obviously has no idea how the industry works. They dump devs to increase the profit margin plus you don't need anywhere near the same number of employees to fix bugs and make expansions as you do to create a game from scratch.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Originally posted by Scot I would never call casuals lazy, but they are casual and that has led us to this point.
So.. What would you call a character in EQ that wanted to get from Halas to Freeport, but didn't want to spend the 20-30 minutes running it, or paying someone to port them there? I'm just curious.. Oh.. is this a good time for me to say how much I hated the installment of PoP books? LOL
Semi-casual.
I have to agree on the concept that devs going does not mean that much for a game comments, but it is a industry news item every time it happens like it is a surprise to all concerned. "MMO X is the 8th MMO this year to loose devs after launch, what a shock!" It is not a surprise at all.
Auto-magic 'group finders' (more like: 'group creators') fill me with so much hate. But I will attempt to avoid a pure rant, and instead discuss the LFG system as a whole.
I don't have anything against a good player-driven LFG system. My favorite out of the games I have played is the LFG system in Dungeons & Dragons Online, as it was a very good system for you to post yourself & what you were looking for, or to have your group post what it was planning and what it was looking for. I wish other games would look towards DDO's LFG system. I haven't played DDO in years, but I have yet to find a game that is its equal in LFG systems. DDO's was the closest to the AutoMagic Creator as possible, while still leaving the final decision up to the players... which allowed the players to find exactly what they were looking for, and not having to simply hope the AI picked well.
Simple LFG systems that do nothing more than flag a player LFG just aren't enough, so I can understand the cry for a better LFG system in that circumstance, but I (obviously) dislike the opposite end where you flag yourself LFG and the AI Group Creator crams everyone looking for the same thing into a group. There's so many situations that can lead to Group Creator Fail (sticking a first-timer into a group of pros that wants nothing more than to speedrun an instance, for example, or sticking someone who doesn't identify themselves as a healer into a group AS the healer because their class has the ability to heal).
I don't want an AI to decide the particulars of my group, I prefer some interaction and thought by the players for that. Player interaction in creating a group tends to also lead to more player interaction while IN a group, and I'd rather have that interaction than have a group full of people who never say a word besides acronyms and terse terms like 'rdy?' 'r' 'k' 'go', if you even get that much chatter. Situations like that make the game feel like a lobby system waiting for the AI to match you up with others who might as well be little more than AIs themselves... and I prefer to feel as if I am playing in a world filled with other players. Something about the Group Creator system nullifies that feeling for me.
And anyone saying its a good thing, well... never played a good mmorpg. And is probably not that old.
NO offense ofcourse!
To be honest, there will never come a mmorpg again, which i will enjoy, sad as it is, cause i used to love the genre, all the way back to Ultima Online.
Im pretty sure Lord Of The Rings would be just as epic if they just had Gandalf teleport Frodo into Mordor in the start of the first movie so they could destroy the ring right away.
I'm sure LOTR would be just as epic if Gandalf went to hit the Balrog but discovered that Radagast had tagged him first and so Gandalf hat to wait 5 hours in hopes of the Balrog respawning.
Or or or! they could have worked together, you know, like real people do.
Real people bickers. Why do you think solo-ing is so popular in MMOs. Do you realy think people want to work together all the time when they relax in a entertainment product?
Its not an MMO anymore though if they never want to work with other people. They are playing a single player RPG at that point with a chat lobby. Now don't get me wrong, single player RPGs have been trending this way for a while with limited comunity interaction for games like D3 or Dark Souls and the like. D3 specifically tried to add all of the good things a comunity brings while getting rid of all the bad things (More people selling stuff on ah, yet you do not need to meet them. Can group to join others on a dungeon but its clearable by yourself). There are facebook games that would be single player games except to include a social media aspect, most of which you don't really need to know who anyone is, rather you just need a large friends list or to click a popup for you to progress in your solo RPG.
But that is the single player RPGs doing that. MMOs SHOULD be about interacting with people. You should want to play with other people. Raid and dungeon finders are some of the things used by these single player rpgs to give the illusion of community when there is none. I get why these features are popular, I just don't understand why EVERY genre has to trend to it.
Social media based RPGs, Single Player RPGs and MMOs are becoming blended more and more because of features like this.
And this is why people complain about old school MMOs not really existing now, because emphisis on living world and community are being replaced by other things more important to the average gamer.
And what's so good about long term? GEE I DON'T KNOW, why the hell would a company want a stable increasing income over time?
What is so bad if they can make the same amount of money by making many short term games?
And from a player perspective, isn't more games, more variety better?
Except we don't have more variety. There's been less variety than ever in the last 8 years of the MMO genre. We had variety in 2002, we don't have variety now.
And a growing company with a strong core is much better as a business plan than one that just shits out a quick game and then implodes on itself.
We don't have more variety? How many more MMOs in different settings aer released in the last 10 years? Or you define "variety" only as those games you like?
Real people bickers. Why do you think solo-ing is so popular in MMOs. Do you realy think people want to work together all the time when they relax in a entertainment product?
Its not an MMO anymore though if they never want to work with other people. They are playing a single player RPG at that point with a chat lobby. Now don't get me wrong, single player RPGs have been trending this way for a while with limited comunity interaction for games like D3 or Dark Souls and the like. D3 specifically tried to add all of the good things a comunity brings while getting rid of all the bad things (More people selling stuff on ah, yet you do not need to meet them. Can group to join others on a dungeon but its clearable by yourself). There are facebook games that would be single player games except to include a social media aspect, most of which you don't really need to know who anyone is, rather you just need a large friends list or to click a popup for you to progress in your solo RPG.
But that is the single player RPGs doing that. MMOs SHOULD be about interacting with people. You should want to play with other people. Raid and dungeon finders are some of the things used by these single player rpgs to give the illusion of community when there is none. I get why these features are popular, I just don't understand why EVERY genre has to trend to it.
Social media based RPGs, Single Player RPGs and MMOs are becoming blended more and more because of features like this.
And this is why people complain about old school MMOs not really existing now, because emphisis on living world and community are being replaced by other things more important to the average gamer.
Not a MMO anymore? So? ... who gets to decide what a MMO is? It is just a label anyway.
By your definition, WOW is not a MMO .. and more a Diablo clone since most play it as a lobby game. If you really want to change the name .. well .. you have to convince a lot of people to change the usage.
The "MMOs" are moving in that direction because that is what people want. A lot of them are already changing to be more like online co-op RPG instead of virtual world game. I don't see that as a bad thing. If i find it fun, i will play it, and i don't play games to socialize.
Raid/group finders may have ruined MMOPRG's (whatever those are - I'm no expert in that acronym), but MMORPGs seem to be going strong even with these tools.
Maybe they ruined MMORPGs for a select group of people. That would be a more accurate / less sensationalist thread title.
By your definition, WOW is not a MMO .. and more a Diablo clone since most play it as a lobby game.
Honestly that little piece of fiction is yet another sign of how divorced most of those arguing endlessly around here are from actual games and gameplay.
The notion that everyone just logs in and stands around Org/Stormwind (or Dal/Shat/Whatever) queueing is, and always has been, pure BS. People don't run dailies from Org. They don't farm crafting mats from Org. They don't capture new mini-pets from Org. They don't do a hundred different things that most of the playerbase engages in on a regular basis from Org.
Honestly, most of what gets said here is such BS that it's hard to imagine anyone taking these arguments seriously.
Raid/group finders may have ruined MMOPRG's (whatever those are - I'm no expert in that acronym), but MMORPGs seem to be going strong even with these tools.
Maybe they ruined MMORPGs for a select group of people. That would be a more accurate / less sensationalist thread title.
I agree. And luckily i do not belong to that small group of people. In fact, i won't play a game without raid/group finder. I went back to WOW precisely because it put in a LFR.
And what's so good about long term? GEE I DON'T KNOW, why the hell would a company want a stable increasing income over time?
What is so bad if they can make the same amount of money by making many short term games?
And from a player perspective, isn't more games, more variety better?
Except we don't have more variety. There's been less variety than ever in the last 8 years of the MMO genre. We had variety in 2002, we don't have variety now.
And a growing company with a strong core is much better as a business plan than one that just shits out a quick game and then implodes on itself.
We don't have more variety? How many more MMOs in different settings aer released in the last 10 years? Or you define "variety" only as those games you like?
I define variety as games that are different from one another. You know, how everyone defines variety.
If a shop has 20 colors of paint, but only 40 paint cans, it still has more variety than a giant megaplex that has 3000 cans of paint, but they're all white.
Originally posted by Ban_Khaeros
Raid/group finders may have ruined MMOPRG's (whatever those are - I'm no expert in that acronym), but MMORPGs seem to be going strong even with these tools.
Maybe they ruined MMORPGs for a select group of people. That would be a more accurate / less sensationalist thread title.
After almost the 100% failure rate of the last 8 years of AAA MMOs I wouldn't say "going strong". And no, I'd say they ruined MMOs. The new games are not what most would call MMOs.
Real people bickers. Why do you think solo-ing is so popular in MMOs. Do you realy think people want to work together all the time when they relax in a entertainment product?
Its not an MMO anymore though if they never want to work with other people. They are playing a single player RPG at that point with a chat lobby. Now don't get me wrong, single player RPGs have been trending this way for a while with limited comunity interaction for games like D3 or Dark Souls and the like. D3 specifically tried to add all of the good things a comunity brings while getting rid of all the bad things (More people selling stuff on ah, yet you do not need to meet them. Can group to join others on a dungeon but its clearable by yourself). There are facebook games that would be single player games except to include a social media aspect, most of which you don't really need to know who anyone is, rather you just need a large friends list or to click a popup for you to progress in your solo RPG.
But that is the single player RPGs doing that. MMOs SHOULD be about interacting with people. You should want to play with other people. Raid and dungeon finders are some of the things used by these single player rpgs to give the illusion of community when there is none. I get why these features are popular, I just don't understand why EVERY genre has to trend to it.
Social media based RPGs, Single Player RPGs and MMOs are becoming blended more and more because of features like this.
And this is why people complain about old school MMOs not really existing now, because emphisis on living world and community are being replaced by other things more important to the average gamer.
Not a MMO anymore? So? ... who gets to decide what a MMO is? It is just a label anyway.
By your definition, WOW is not a MMO .. and more a Diablo clone since most play it as a lobby game. If you really want to change the name .. well .. you have to convince a lot of people to change the usage.
The "MMOs" are moving in that direction because that is what people want. A lot of them are already changing to be more like online co-op RPG instead of virtual world game. I don't see that as a bad thing. If i find it fun, i will play it, and i don't play games to socialize.
I would argue that WoW changed its design philosophy. Vanilla WoW is not like current WoW at all except for the storyline. You agree it is more of a lobby game now with players hanging around the major hubs. It was not like that to start with. So yes I would argue that with every patch WoW has become more like a single player RPG with a chat room and trending farther and farther away from its EQ+AC2 roots. The patch that added group and dungeon finder was definately a landmark point on this journey (to try and get this back on topic).
I understand its popular and I love some single player RPGs from time to time. The problem is that there is no Massive Multiplayer Online World for me to play in with the key word being world. I want reasons to interact that are not just combat and reasons to meet people in a game. Current games do not have the lasting appeal for me because of the focus on the single player type of content and thus I generally do not pick them up.
My topic is about the exploration/game ruining Group finder! Now we all know what WoW has turned into...a lazy mans click fest! Why leave SW/Org when u can just stand outside the AH and click LFG/LFR till you die to get to max lvl? Where did this worlds sense of exploration and achievment go? The mmo game devs are bending over and kissing ppls you know what making there games for LAZY friendly.
Then ppl say well i dont have time to spamm LFG in a city. OR I only have 1hr a day to play!
To them i say this...MMORPG games arnt for you go play FPS, if you are looking for quick fast gameplay.
I can only PRAY/HOPE/DREAM!!!!! That Elders Scrolls, FF14 Reborn and many more new mmo's do not follow this path and ruin there game, rendering the world a compleat usless waist.
I see your post completely off. I see need for 5mans and raids as ENDGAME entertrainment. So guess world have been explored pretty good at that point (especially for altholics like me having all classes maxed out). The only thing left at some point is endgame, where you do need company. So do not see any problem standing in front of ah if no gathering on that alt. With my gatheres I have been usually out there ... well ... gathering.
LFG is best invention ever for those that want to play end game and at same time do not have real life friends in guild.
Sorry nariusseldon but you do belong to a small group of people, you have had to post 33 times in this one thread to defend your position. 33times!
You belong to a small group on here who see everything in current MMO’s through some very rose tinted spectacles. If your optimistic opinions were so widely held you would not have to post so many times, others with your thinking would post in support.
So by all means give us the rosy picture, but don’t try to pass it off as what most of us think.
Sorry nariusseldon but you do belong to a small group of people, you have had to post 33 times in this one thread to defend your position. 33times!
You belong to a small group on here who see everything in current MMO’s through some very rose tinted spectacles. If your optimistic opinions were so widely held you would not have to post so many times, others with your thinking would post in support.
So by all means give us the rosy picture, but don’t try to pass it off as what most of us think.
Do you know why you felt you needed to put that smiley in the end? -Its because you yourself know that argument is ridiculous. I don't know why your internal censor is not working, but all this post deserves is an...
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
A server wide dungeon or raid finder is fine, it is when you make it cross server the problems start.
The point of grouping is either to play with friends or to meet new players. In a cross server random group you will most likely never see anyone you play with again which both makes conversation less fun and takes out the worst in many players with ninja looting, rude remarks and insults.
Certain games needs to merge their servers but tries this instead of doing what needs to be done.
Dungeon finders is not a must in MMOs, but some people enjoy them so I dont mind, but cross servers suck.
Quirhad you are one of the everything is rosy gang, what else would you say? You have seen the polls on here for anything that asks are MMOs now better. They always say no. What more do you need? The high retail just means people are prepared to pay, not staying after two months shows they are not prepared to stay. Why won't they stay? Even MMORPG.com faced up to this recently with Bills article.
So by all means tell us what you like about today’s MMO's but the idea you are a majority is just not feasible. Otherwise MMO's would not fade after a couple of months. (No smiley as you read things into them)
I cautiously welcomed the Raid/Group finder when it came out. But even though I thought it could be a big help tp grouping I was cautious. Why? Because I have seen many new systems now put in that at first seem good and then have unexpected side effects. The Finder has turned out to be one of those, I am still not 100% sure it should totally go, but I see no way to change it and still not have unwanted effects. Certainly the cross server idea has effectivly made MMO's into a lobby where you can move around and do other stuff but teleport to an instance at need. As we have discussed so many times before streamlining does not equal better.
Originally posted by Scot Quirhad you are one of the everything is rosy gang, what else would you say? You have seen the polls on here for anything that asks are MMOs now better. They always say no. What more do you need? The high retail just means people are prepared to pay, not staying after two months shows they are not prepared to stay. Why won't they stay? Even MMORPG.com faced up to this recently with Bills article. So by all means tell us what you like about today’s MMO's but the idea you are a majority is just not feasible. Otherwise MMO's would not fade after a couple of months. (No smiley as you read things into them) I cautiously welcomed the Raid/Group finder when it came out. But even though I thought it could be a big help tp grouping I was cautious. Why? Because I have seen many new systems now put in that at first seem good and then have unexpected side effects. The Finder has turned out to be one of those, I am still not 100% sure it should totally go, but I see no way to change it and still not have unwanted effects. Certainly the cross server idea has effectivly made MMO's into a lobby where you can move around and do other stuff but teleport to an instance at need. As we have discussed so many times before streamlining does not equal better.
You are a purist. Great majority don't care what label you put on a game as long as its fun. And they don't spend time posting on the forums either. Battlefield Heroes' changes in payment model and the resulting complaints on the forums is just one example where the forum community does not speak for the whole playerbase.
I've seen it in many PvP games where people get worked up and speak with passion with this and that, when reality could be entirely different. In my experience, very few people are aware of the bigger picture and their voices are drowned by the cacophony of the rest. I don't claim to know the bigger picture, but I know enough to point out some of the obvious flaws in someones' argument.
Just because you are vocal, does not mean you are right.
Proof by assertion, sometimes informally referred to as proof by repeated assertion, is an informal fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction Sometimes, this may be repeated until challenges dry up, at which point it is asserted as fact due to its not being contradicted (argumentum ad nauseam). In other cases, its repetition may be cited as evidence of its truth, in a variant of the appeal to authority or appeal to belief fallacies.
I define variety as games that are different from one another. You know, how everyone defines variety.
If a shop has 20 colors of paint, but only 40 paint cans, it still has more variety than a giant megaplex that has 3000 cans of paint, but they're all white.
In that case, how can you say there is no variety?
WOW has totally different art style, and RPG rules than DDO, LOTRO. TOR is star wars. Rift has the rift mechanics. Aion has flying people.
I can point out differences in tons of MMOs. Don't tell me you think the world of Forgotten Realms is the same as Warhammer.
I would argue that WoW changed its design philosophy. Vanilla WoW is not like current WoW at all except for the storyline. You agree it is more of a lobby game now with players hanging around the major hubs. It was not like that to start with. So yes I would argue that with every patch WoW has become more like a single player RPG with a chat room and trending farther and farther away from its EQ+AC2 roots. The patch that added group and dungeon finder was definately a landmark point on this journey (to try and get this back on topic).
No disagreement here. We all are saying the same thing: WOW (and other MMOs) are turning more like lobby co-op games. I do disagree with the SP label. Lobby multi-player game != single player game. When i play dishonored, i don't see another soul. When i play Diablo 3, i group to do uber all the time.
I understand its popular and I love some single player RPGs from time to time. The problem is that there is no Massive Multiplayer Online World for me to play in with the key word being world. I want reasons to interact that are not just combat and reasons to meet people in a game. Current games do not have the lasting appeal for me because of the focus on the single player type of content and thus I generally do not pick them up.
Sure, i can see that is your problem. But that is not mine. Co-op combat (or pvp) is reason enough for me to deal with others. Once again, i don't play games to be social. I play game to enjoy co-op combat gameplay.
And lastly, lasting-appeal is totally another thing. First, if a game is fun, i don't think it needs lasting appeal. Deus Ex and Dishonored are very good games. I am glad they are over in 2 weeks. MMOs are the same to me. If it happens to be fun for 6 months (even SP games can do that .. like BL or Diablo), fine and i will ahve fun for longer time. If the fun is up in 2 weeks, so be it, and i will move on.
Darkfall 1 was amazing game,its sad that it was infected by people who dont like that kind of games and which is even more sad is that Darkfall 2 seems to be converted for those guys,atleast thats how it looks right now.
This is my 4th post on this thread, so I don’t think I am guilty of proof by assertion: “sometimes informally referred to as proof by repeated assertion”
Meanwhile good old Nariusseldon is up to 35 posts now. I think that qualifies as proof by assertion. In light of this I don’t consider myself particularly vocal.
While I agree that forums do not always show what players care about, whenever we have asked on these forums they show players are concerned about what is happening to MMO’s. I cannot remember a poll or thread that has said otherwise. If you were right a poll would agree with you, at least once in a while.
If your argument is that we need to listen more to those who are not on the forums and that by buying the games they show they still like them. I am listening. I am hearing the dreadful silence that starts to fall after a MMO has only been out after a few months. Those players are speaking, by buying and then leaving so quickly.
Comments
Someone obviously has no idea how the industry works. They dump devs to increase the profit margin plus you don't need anywhere near the same number of employees to fix bugs and make expansions as you do to create a game from scratch.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Semi-casual.
I have to agree on the concept that devs going does not mean that much for a game comments, but it is a industry news item every time it happens like it is a surprise to all concerned. "MMO X is the 8th MMO this year to loose devs after launch, what a shock!" It is not a surprise at all.
Auto-magic 'group finders' (more like: 'group creators') fill me with so much hate. But I will attempt to avoid a pure rant, and instead discuss the LFG system as a whole.
I don't have anything against a good player-driven LFG system. My favorite out of the games I have played is the LFG system in Dungeons & Dragons Online, as it was a very good system for you to post yourself & what you were looking for, or to have your group post what it was planning and what it was looking for. I wish other games would look towards DDO's LFG system. I haven't played DDO in years, but I have yet to find a game that is its equal in LFG systems. DDO's was the closest to the AutoMagic Creator as possible, while still leaving the final decision up to the players... which allowed the players to find exactly what they were looking for, and not having to simply hope the AI picked well.
Simple LFG systems that do nothing more than flag a player LFG just aren't enough, so I can understand the cry for a better LFG system in that circumstance, but I (obviously) dislike the opposite end where you flag yourself LFG and the AI Group Creator crams everyone looking for the same thing into a group. There's so many situations that can lead to Group Creator Fail (sticking a first-timer into a group of pros that wants nothing more than to speedrun an instance, for example, or sticking someone who doesn't identify themselves as a healer into a group AS the healer because their class has the ability to heal).
I don't want an AI to decide the particulars of my group, I prefer some interaction and thought by the players for that. Player interaction in creating a group tends to also lead to more player interaction while IN a group, and I'd rather have that interaction than have a group full of people who never say a word besides acronyms and terse terms like 'rdy?' 'r' 'k' 'go', if you even get that much chatter. Situations like that make the game feel like a lobby system waiting for the AI to match you up with others who might as well be little more than AIs themselves... and I prefer to feel as if I am playing in a world filled with other players. Something about the Group Creator system nullifies that feeling for me.
100% agree about group finder.
And anyone saying its a good thing, well... never played a good mmorpg. And is probably not that old.
NO offense ofcourse!
To be honest, there will never come a mmorpg again, which i will enjoy, sad as it is, cause i used to love the genre, all the way back to Ultima Online.
Instant travel is also a bad bad thing...
Its not an MMO anymore though if they never want to work with other people. They are playing a single player RPG at that point with a chat lobby. Now don't get me wrong, single player RPGs have been trending this way for a while with limited comunity interaction for games like D3 or Dark Souls and the like. D3 specifically tried to add all of the good things a comunity brings while getting rid of all the bad things (More people selling stuff on ah, yet you do not need to meet them. Can group to join others on a dungeon but its clearable by yourself). There are facebook games that would be single player games except to include a social media aspect, most of which you don't really need to know who anyone is, rather you just need a large friends list or to click a popup for you to progress in your solo RPG.
But that is the single player RPGs doing that. MMOs SHOULD be about interacting with people. You should want to play with other people. Raid and dungeon finders are some of the things used by these single player rpgs to give the illusion of community when there is none. I get why these features are popular, I just don't understand why EVERY genre has to trend to it.
Social media based RPGs, Single Player RPGs and MMOs are becoming blended more and more because of features like this.
And this is why people complain about old school MMOs not really existing now, because emphisis on living world and community are being replaced by other things more important to the average gamer.
We don't have more variety? How many more MMOs in different settings aer released in the last 10 years? Or you define "variety" only as those games you like?
Not a MMO anymore? So? ... who gets to decide what a MMO is? It is just a label anyway.
By your definition, WOW is not a MMO .. and more a Diablo clone since most play it as a lobby game. If you really want to change the name .. well .. you have to convince a lot of people to change the usage.
The "MMOs" are moving in that direction because that is what people want. A lot of them are already changing to be more like online co-op RPG instead of virtual world game. I don't see that as a bad thing. If i find it fun, i will play it, and i don't play games to socialize.
Raid/group finders may have ruined MMOPRG's (whatever those are - I'm no expert in that acronym), but MMORPGs seem to be going strong even with these tools.
Maybe they ruined MMORPGs for a select group of people. That would be a more accurate / less sensationalist thread title.
Honestly that little piece of fiction is yet another sign of how divorced most of those arguing endlessly around here are from actual games and gameplay.
The notion that everyone just logs in and stands around Org/Stormwind (or Dal/Shat/Whatever) queueing is, and always has been, pure BS. People don't run dailies from Org. They don't farm crafting mats from Org. They don't capture new mini-pets from Org. They don't do a hundred different things that most of the playerbase engages in on a regular basis from Org.
Honestly, most of what gets said here is such BS that it's hard to imagine anyone taking these arguments seriously.
I agree. And luckily i do not belong to that small group of people. In fact, i won't play a game without raid/group finder. I went back to WOW precisely because it put in a LFR.
I define variety as games that are different from one another. You know, how everyone defines variety.
If a shop has 20 colors of paint, but only 40 paint cans, it still has more variety than a giant megaplex that has 3000 cans of paint, but they're all white.
After almost the 100% failure rate of the last 8 years of AAA MMOs I wouldn't say "going strong". And no, I'd say they ruined MMOs. The new games are not what most would call MMOs.
I would argue that WoW changed its design philosophy. Vanilla WoW is not like current WoW at all except for the storyline. You agree it is more of a lobby game now with players hanging around the major hubs. It was not like that to start with. So yes I would argue that with every patch WoW has become more like a single player RPG with a chat room and trending farther and farther away from its EQ+AC2 roots. The patch that added group and dungeon finder was definately a landmark point on this journey (to try and get this back on topic).
I understand its popular and I love some single player RPGs from time to time. The problem is that there is no Massive Multiplayer Online World for me to play in with the key word being world. I want reasons to interact that are not just combat and reasons to meet people in a game. Current games do not have the lasting appeal for me because of the focus on the single player type of content and thus I generally do not pick them up.
I see your post completely off. I see need for 5mans and raids as ENDGAME entertrainment. So guess world have been explored pretty good at that point (especially for altholics like me having all classes maxed out). The only thing left at some point is endgame, where you do need company. So do not see any problem standing in front of ah if no gathering on that alt. With my gatheres I have been usually out there ... well ... gathering.
LFG is best invention ever for those that want to play end game and at same time do not have real life friends in guild.
Sorry nariusseldon but you do belong to a small group of people, you have had to post 33 times in this one thread to defend your position. 33times!
You belong to a small group on here who see everything in current MMO’s through some very rose tinted spectacles. If your optimistic opinions were so widely held you would not have to post so many times, others with your thinking would post in support.
So by all means give us the rosy picture, but don’t try to pass it off as what most of us think.
Do you know why you felt you needed to put that smiley in the end? -Its because you yourself know that argument is ridiculous. I don't know why your internal censor is not working, but all this post deserves is an...
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
A server wide dungeon or raid finder is fine, it is when you make it cross server the problems start.
The point of grouping is either to play with friends or to meet new players. In a cross server random group you will most likely never see anyone you play with again which both makes conversation less fun and takes out the worst in many players with ninja looting, rude remarks and insults.
Certain games needs to merge their servers but tries this instead of doing what needs to be done.
Dungeon finders is not a must in MMOs, but some people enjoy them so I dont mind, but cross servers suck.
Quirhad you are one of the everything is rosy gang, what else would you say? You have seen the polls on here for anything that asks are MMOs now better. They always say no. What more do you need? The high retail just means people are prepared to pay, not staying after two months shows they are not prepared to stay. Why won't they stay? Even MMORPG.com faced up to this recently with Bills article.
So by all means tell us what you like about today’s MMO's but the idea you are a majority is just not feasible. Otherwise MMO's would not fade after a couple of months. (No smiley as you read things into them)
I cautiously welcomed the Raid/Group finder when it came out. But even though I thought it could be a big help tp grouping I was cautious. Why? Because I have seen many new systems now put in that at first seem good and then have unexpected side effects. The Finder has turned out to be one of those, I am still not 100% sure it should totally go, but I see no way to change it and still not have unwanted effects. Certainly the cross server idea has effectivly made MMO's into a lobby where you can move around and do other stuff but teleport to an instance at need. As we have discussed so many times before streamlining does not equal better.
You are a purist. Great majority don't care what label you put on a game as long as its fun. And they don't spend time posting on the forums either. Battlefield Heroes' changes in payment model and the resulting complaints on the forums is just one example where the forum community does not speak for the whole playerbase.
I've seen it in many PvP games where people get worked up and speak with passion with this and that, when reality could be entirely different. In my experience, very few people are aware of the bigger picture and their voices are drowned by the cacophony of the rest. I don't claim to know the bigger picture, but I know enough to point out some of the obvious flaws in someones' argument.
Just because you are vocal, does not mean you are right.
Proof by assertion, sometimes informally referred to as proof by repeated assertion, is an informal fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction Sometimes, this may be repeated until challenges dry up, at which point it is asserted as fact due to its not being contradicted (argumentum ad nauseam). In other cases, its repetition may be cited as evidence of its truth, in a variant of the appeal to authority or appeal to belief fallacies.
-link to the wiki article
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
In that case, how can you say there is no variety?
WOW has totally different art style, and RPG rules than DDO, LOTRO. TOR is star wars. Rift has the rift mechanics. Aion has flying people.
I can point out differences in tons of MMOs. Don't tell me you think the world of Forgotten Realms is the same as Warhammer.
Darkfall 1 was amazing game,its sad that it was infected by people who dont like that kind of games and which is even more sad is that Darkfall 2 seems to be converted for those guys,atleast thats how it looks right now.
Let's internet
This is my 4th post on this thread, so I don’t think I am guilty of proof by assertion: “sometimes informally referred to as proof by repeated assertion”
Meanwhile good old Nariusseldon is up to 35 posts now. I think that qualifies as proof by assertion. In light of this I don’t consider myself particularly vocal.
While I agree that forums do not always show what players care about, whenever we have asked on these forums they show players are concerned about what is happening to MMO’s. I cannot remember a poll or thread that has said otherwise. If you were right a poll would agree with you, at least once in a while.
If your argument is that we need to listen more to those who are not on the forums and that by buying the games they show they still like them. I am listening. I am hearing the dreadful silence that starts to fall after a MMO has only been out after a few months. Those players are speaking, by buying and then leaving so quickly.