What are these other imaginary guidelines that you speak of?
When a publisher oversteps their boundry you get issues such as (COE John Riccitiello) destroying a game (SIM City). If you want a successful product you must allow the studio full creative control of that product until the release date. If the boss comes down and starts screwing with the games design during the developement process. Then that's where you run into major issues.
SIMCITY is destroyed? It may got problems and bad press. But selling 1.1M in 2 weeks is a pretty big success.
I think it is, a lot of those old behemoths did good jobs of being massive multiplayer. It is good to have choice, but it has swung the other way, and not enough massive titles out there, that are worth playing. They are more MORPGs, instead of MMORPGs. Lobby gaming is ok in some stuff, but in my mmo, I prefer the open world massive approach. Open/large worlds, dungeons that are open, quality and indpeth harvesting/crafting, player economy/non-instanced housing... I like my LoL and other lobby stuff, when I want to do that type of thing, but I look for a world in a MMO, not a lobby dungeon matchmaker.
A lot of the added systems in the lobby stuff is slapped on, just to say they have it, it is a big turn off, not worth doing. So you are left just doing the hack n slash, it can only keep your attention so long...Some say this is good, then you just go play the next hack n slash and so on...But serial game jumping with gamer ADD is not my thing. It is the opposite of enjoyment for me, because I can see the writing on the wall whenever I play one of these games, knowing that my dissatisfaction and leaving is right around the corner.
And i prefer lobby gaming .. which MMO is increasingly doing a good job. In fact, if not for LFD and LFR, i would have quit WOW a lot sooner.
And this strange notion of "writing on the wall" .. heck ... every game will get boring sooner or later. The trick is to have fun, then move on. I was stuck in EQ for a year frankly because of few choices in the market. Now is much better. I can game hop .. and sometimes i even hop back.
Well, I played both UO and EQ for 6-8 years each, DAoC over a year (got tired of the huge nerfs and changes so late into release, not the game), I actually had never played a MMO for less than a year, prior to Rift (left with 3-4 months paid, but world was too small, and systems too shallow, wasn't my thing, but had paid for a 6 month account, due to my history and nice discount). Money has never been a issue that factors into my enjoyment, if I don't like something f2p isn't going to make me say it is free, so I will like it due to not paying....Same as if it is pay. I will try f2p stuff, but a lot of them have cash shops I find too aggressive and either p2w or borderline.
Non-mmo, I find the shops like in LoL fine, you can get everything but skins by playing, and no one really needs that skin to play better.
I like to play all aspects in a mmo, pve, pvp, craft/harvest, non-instance housing (putting stuff in it, side quests/skills to get stuff for it), side games, raid... If the crafting/harvesting is bland and not worth doing, it is usually a big hit for me, as I generally only play 1-2 mmos at a time, usually 1. I will play other non-mmo stuff, but if it is a good mmo, with quality systems, I don't feel the need to play a second mmo.
Only mmo that I have played recently that fails many of my musts, that I actually liked was TSW, I thought a lot of the quests and stories were very well done and it felt different. I played until I ran out of content and got tired of clearing quests and such in transylvannia too many times. The invesitgation quests were different, I thought the makers did a good job on it. It just didn't do good enough to probably pump out content at the pace needed to keep it updated better.
The user and all related content has been deleted.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
The user and all related content has been deleted.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Thats why there are more then 200 MMO's in development in any given year.
Yup MMO's are dying!!!!! On the otherhand, maybe there arent games you want to play but to say they are dying is hyperbole at best.
What's the OP is saying that that those games you're talking about aren't really MMO's. I tend to agree with him.
The problem started when they stopped building worlds, and started building games. Honestly, the gameplay is NOT the important part, it's the world that is more important. An MMORPG can have crappy gameplay, but still thrive if the overall world you inhabit is good. Games like Everquest had AWFUL gameplay, but they were fascinating, and they challeneged people to work together to accomplish a goal. Just surviving was a struggle. That's what's missing now. Recent MMO's are just glorified chat rooms with shallow, flashy combat. Their worlds are hollow and empty.
The user and all related content has been deleted.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Thats why there are more then 200 MMO's in development in any given year.
Yup MMO's are dying!!!!! On the otherhand, maybe there arent games you want to play but to say they are dying is hyperbole at best.
What's the OP is saying that that those games you're talking about aren't really MMO's. I tend to agree with him.
The problem started when they stopped building worlds, and started building games. Honestly, the gameplay is NOT the important part, it's the world that is more important. An MMORPG can have crappy gameplay, but still thrive if the overall world you inhabit is good. Games like Everquest had AWFUL gameplay, but they were fascinating, and they challeneged people to work together to accomplish a goal. Just surviving was a struggle. That's what's missing now. Recent MMO's are just glorified chat rooms with shallow, flashy combat. Their worlds are hollow and empty.
Yup exactly. Recent mmos all have been GAMES and not IMMERSIVE WORLDS. unfortunately it seems casual gamers atm are happy with their 20 minute in and out GAMES and are happy to throw their money at devs to make em.
Thats why there are more then 200 MMO's in development in any given year.
Yup MMO's are dying!!!!! On the otherhand, maybe there arent games you want to play but to say they are dying is hyperbole at best.
What's the OP is saying that that those games you're talking about aren't really MMO's. I tend to agree with him.
The problem started when they stopped building worlds, and started building games. Honestly, the gameplay is NOT the important part, it's the world that is more important. An MMORPG can have crappy gameplay, but still thrive if the overall world you inhabit is good. Games like Everquest had AWFUL gameplay, but they were fascinating, and they challeneged people to work together to accomplish a goal. Just surviving was a struggle. That's what's missing now. Recent MMO's are just glorified chat rooms with shallow, flashy combat. Their worlds are hollow and empty.
This guy just summed up everything that is wrong with "modern" MMOs.
Massive/Massively Multiplayer Online...That is all MMO means. It is a stem in the form of an acronym that needs an affix (sometimes prefixed sometimes sufixed) to have any meaning beyond being an umbrella term. To say that 'MMO's' are 'Dying'....I am reminded of a dialogue between 2 popular fictional characters.
“Good Morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.
"What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"
"All of them at once," said Bilbo. "And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain.
...
"Good morning!" he said at last. "We don't want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water." By this he meant that the conversation was at an end. "What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!" said Gandalf. "Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won't be good till I move off.”
Well that's my conclusion after thinking about it.
While MMO do well and sell well, they are not really MMO anymore, they're all small scale dungeon instancers (LoL, Vindictus), solo quest grinders (WoW SWOTOR), , or glorified action Hack & Slash multiplayer games (Tera, GW2).
I haven't seen a game with a true community where the primary focus was the world and human interaction and the gameplay came second in MMO in a number of years. Now the gameplay is frist and if it isn't too much trouble maybe you'll be interacting with someone too, and if no ones interacts, join an artificial bubble called a guild and interact in the bubble.
Most people don't need MMO to interact online, there are plenty of chat opportunities, facebook, twitter, disqus, liveFire, forums, email, messengers, smartphones, youtube. You have all these ways to interact with people you want, there is way too much noise to make a world where people will be truly immersed and willing to spend time with each other in a game outside of gameplay.
There's no need for it anymore, there are thousands of other and arguably better ways to interact online.
I think the term MMO lives on even though the games are now becomes multiplayer action games, but the idea behind MMO is long gone I think, it's replaced by other communities online that are far easier and more effective way to interact.
MMO companies are clueless now days. Every MMO advertises that they are about to revolutionalize the gaming industry, then the game is just another flop. Companies can't get it right. Simple things that these companies need to realize do not happen. For example, in this day and age, games should have a pvp and a pve server, yet so many are just making one or the other. I get this in some cases, but the masses should see that both servers draw in different crowds, make a true pve server and a true pvp server, and not like the tard games like Tera where they have pve servers then pvp servers which are nothing more than pve servers and every chance they take with pvp, they gimp by making it casual for the pver.
Also, things like making players run a dungeon over and over and over to get a piece of gear...really? That's fun? Games that do nothing to correct botting to the point a game is overrun by bots, thats fun?
I have little hope...at this point I'm hoping that ESO or Black Desert will hit the spot..but doubt it.
Incognito www.incognito-gaming.us "You're either with us or against us"
Yeah... that's how I respond to doom and gloom posts from all kinds of topics too. Sure, they can have some merit but they rarely tell the whole story, nevermind see the bigger picture, and mostly only use examples that prove their point without addressing counter arguments nor mentioning how they have tried to reverse the trends.
Sighs. Yes, I've read similar articles from this user before. Now, I must point out a little flaw in this argument:
It assumes that it is up to the developers to build the community. I'm sorry, but community building is on the shoulder of people/gamers within a media space. This is true of social media like facebook, forums, multiplayer games, andMMOs. If I or another person just expects the community to come to you instead of going out and actually make it via some of the stuff the OP mentioned like walking up to a person to ask if you want to do something, actually saying hi to the people you group up with and try to make conversation, and/or building a thriving guild community then don't be surprised if the results are little to no community. After all, no one is forcing me to use Group Finder is in SWTOR or WOW. I can choose to walk up to a person and ask for help as well as use the said tool. Note both/and are happening on my server and it is far from a dead community.
That was a very good read and I agree with all of what you had to say. I didn't read the whole thread, but I've been reading enough similar ideas expressed around here to know what a lot of the rebuttals and counter points will be. People will say that they are, in fact not dying and point to the success of current games. The idea here is that they are actually evolving from what you and I enjoyed, into something better. I understand that point of view, but if the games that the OP and I liked are going away to make room for the newer more "evolved" games, then they are dying in a way. Either way, it starts to step into the realm of arguing semantics, which will devolve further into people using derogatory terms to describe what someone else enjoys playing, and then I have to bow out of the conversation.
I've pretty much been in the same situation and asking myself the same questions as the OP lately, and these are what I've come up with as options for a plan of action going forward.
1. Wait for that game, the game that best fits what I would like to play. EQ next, Arch age, maybe something really cool that I don't even know about. There is hope there but I know better than to get my hopes too high. In the meantime, I can enjoy some other games for what they are. I'm still enjoying Vanguard, and I would love it if EQ would open up another progression server.
2. Admit that I'm just plain getting old and these games, as well as the majority of their population, have passed me by. There are not enough people like us that would enjoy the older style mechanics and value depth over convenience, to support a new game.
Right now I'm doing the first thing, however, I'm prepared to admit that the second thing might be true. If it is then I'll just bite the bullet and play older games, or play the newer games with a few close friends only. Or just throw in the towel and play single player games.
It's a little sad, because I've had so much fun with MMOs over the years, but they are changing and right now it is a direction that I don't like at all. I am, however, willing to admit that I am in the minority. Such is life.
My son and I are currently trying to figure out whether we want to play EQ, EQ2 or Vanguard together. He played EQ on my account and really liked it which was interesting considering I started playing it when he was born 10 years ago lol.
While I like the Facebook analogy that you can socialize in any game there is a deeper comparison to me. There are features in FB such as "people you may know" that further interaction beyond your friends. This to me is what seperates some of the older games from the newer ones. The need for others was an additional catalyst for socialization. Many do not like that and that's okay but I for one like it.
The problem started when they stopped building worlds, and started building games. Honestly, the gameplay is NOT the important part, it's the world that is more important. An MMORPG can have crappy gameplay, but still thrive if the overall world you inhabit is good. Games like Everquest had AWFUL gameplay, but they were fascinating, and they challeneged people to work together to accomplish a goal. Just surviving was a struggle. That's what's missing now. Recent MMO's are just glorified chat rooms with shallow, flashy combat. Their worlds are hollow and empty.
Good. MMORP-GAME .. should be game first. They are entertainment products.
You are wrong. Gameplay *is* the important part ... and you are right EQ has aweful gameplay (asking players to wait 10 min before doing anything ... ack!). That is why i am glad i have choices, and don't have to play EQ type "gameplay again".
It is missing because this kind of design made bad games (for me, and many), and the market has spoken.
You don't even need a world to make a good game. Look at the success of D3, LOL, WOT ... all without even the pretence of making a world. If MMORPGs evolves in this direction, it is only because it is responding to market demand.
Oooo the good old days, everything was awesome back then. Sorry wrong. I have been MMOing for 14 years and I love deeply the old days but we are quick to forget what is new and how its made things great. Simple things like if you wanted to sell an item you had to yell for hours in general chat WTS. There was no casual gaming back then, you raided 5-8hrs 3-5 nights a week or you could not be part of a MMO community that functioned.
Sure there are some new problems we are dealing with because of the advancment of MMOs but we have put behind us old problems for new ones. MMOs are not dead, tech is getting to the point MMOs dont take 8-10 years to make and things are just now getting really intresting. Devs just need to learn from their mistakes is all and by the looks of some of the new MMOs it looks like they are. Best is yet to come!!!!
I agree with the fact that devs should learn from their mistakes, but there is also a responsibility with the gamers who make the community: they've become so rude the last few years, in word and in deed. No help is given when first doing an instance (stupid noob etc. And other trolling). it's easy to point the finger at someone else (ie the devs) but they are incapable of looking at their important negative role in building a community in a MMO.
Originally posted by Cliff1963 I agree with the fact that devs should learn from their mistakes, but there is also a responsibility with the gamers who make the community: they've become so rude the last few years, in word and in deed. No help is given when first doing an instance (stupid noob etc. And other trolling). it's easy to point the finger at someone else (ie the devs) but they are incapable of looking at their important negative role in building a community in a MMO.
Yup, devs are starting to change how they make their games to add more social tools. Elder Scrolls mega server where it filters like minded people together is what we need. Wildstar and a few other newer MMOs are really working to make more social tools but players do need to start acting like a community or MMOs will never fly. I think the biggest problem is in the old days your name/player rep was everything. You were a KSer you were known and it got to the point you could not find a guild. Switching servers and changing your char name didnt work. Was reroll or quit. GW2 and a few others has it right, where you /ignore someone, its their account.
Originally posted by Cliff1963 I agree with the fact that devs should learn from their mistakes, but there is also a responsibility with the gamers who make the community: they've become so rude the last few years, in word and in deed. No help is given when first doing an instance (stupid noob etc. And other trolling). it's easy to point the finger at someone else (ie the devs) but they are incapable of looking at their important negative role in building a community in a MMO.
We are talking about games here .. people should be able to enjoy their gaming anyway they want. Heck ... it is not really "should be" .. but they are. There is nothign you can do to stop that.
If you don't like a certain person, put him on ignore ... that is the tool the devs provided.
I'm sorry to say but if all you remember from old MMOs is raiding, you didn't play the right ones. EQ raided, that was it.
UO did not, DAOC had some darknessfalls raids but that didn't happen all the time.
The problem is all the real old MMO players have stopped playing online games or they just play an old one because new ones are too geared towards the people who started playing MMOs with World of Warcraft.
WOW was the start of the death of MMOs. They removed skill and replaced it with gear. Now newer MMOs could have fixed this by going away from the Child friendly path of WOW but because it was popular everyone copied.
Now we have nothing by crap that you can play for a month but will be bored. When is the last time you played an online game where you couldn't make it past an area? Probably not in a long time. I know everytime i tried a new game i hardly had to think of what i was doing. Inless you stopped paying attention you could never die to an NPC. Most games you could even just run past the monsters to get the quest done.
If you want someone to blame its the people who started their online gaming life with WOW. They want easier and easier so they got it. None of them would last a week in Ultima Online. None of them would last in open world PVP of DAOC. Even EQ with its open world PVP would be too much for the babies of today. It needs to be spoon fed to them with very little skill needed, no risk of loseing anything and if its too hard they cry nerf tell its something even an 8 year old can beat.
To fix MMOs they have to go back to people being skilled at playing the game and not just getting the sword of i always win and mashing the 1 key. It won't happen. Kids now a days are lost in their entitlement. They think they deserve the world right away and shouldn't have to put any effort forward.
I'm sorry to say but if all you remember from old MMOs is raiding, you didn't play the right ones. EQ raided, that was it.
UO did not, DAOC had some darknessfalls raids but that didn't happen all the time.
The problem is all the real old MMO players have stopped playing online games or they just play an old one because new ones are too geared towards the people who started playing MMOs with World of Warcraft.
WOW was the start of the death of MMOs. They removed skill and replaced it with gear. Now newer MMOs could have fixed this by going away from the Child friendly path of WOW but because it was popular everyone copied.
Now we have nothing by crap that you can play for a month but will be bored. When is the last time you played an online game where you couldn't make it past an area? Probably not in a long time. I know everytime i tried a new game i hardly had to think of what i was doing. Inless you stopped paying attention you could never die to an NPC. Most games you could even just run past the monsters to get the quest done.
If you want someone to blame its the people who started their online gaming life with WOW. They want easier and easier so they got it. None of them would last a week in Ultima Online. None of them would last in open world PVP of DAOC. Even EQ with its open world PVP would be too much for the babies of today. It needs to be spoon fed to them with very little skill needed, no risk of loseing anything and if its too hard they cry nerf tell its something even an 8 year old can beat.
To fix MMOs they have to go back to people being skilled at playing the game and not just getting the sword of i always win and mashing the 1 key. It won't happen. Kids now a days are lost in their entitlement. They think they deserve the world right away and shouldn't have to put any effort forward.
My comment is directed to the last paragraph: It requires both skill and gear to play a class. There are plenty of people in MMOs that have the best gear but aren't putting out the best numbers because they have no clue to how to play the class so the moves use/rotation they have matches the gear they've gathered.
My comment is directed to the last paragraph: It requires both skill and gear to play a class. There are plenty of people in MMOs that have the best gear but aren't putting out the best numbers because they have no clue to how to play the class so the moves use/rotation they have matches the gear they've gathered.
This ^^^
I think lots of people are confused about the goal of MMOs. If the goal/challenge is to survive and beat the boss, then it may be "easy".
However, for a lot of players, the goal is to top the meter, or do runs efficiently. That is no longer easy. If you beat the boss 100% of the time, beating him is not winning. However, topping a DPS meter, or doing tough achievement, becomes the win.
My comment is directed to the last paragraph: It requires both skill and gear to play a class. There are plenty of people in MMOs that have the best gear but aren't putting out the best numbers because they have no clue to how to play the class so the moves use/rotation they have matches the gear they've gathered.
This ^^^
I think lots of people are confused about the goal of MMOs. If the goal/challenge is to survive and beat the boss, then it may be "easy".
However, for a lot of players, the goal is to top the meter, or do runs efficiently. That is no longer easy. If you beat the boss 100% of the time, beating him is not winning. However, topping a DPS meter, or doing tough achievement, becomes the win.
Yeah! ANd I also find that it really builds a community when I clear a ops with my progressions ops group. Just hearing the cheers and "YES!" from the people on mumble... brings a tear to my eye. Hence why I made sure all of them were invited to my main's RP wedding. Note, that all of us have to contribute in order for the progression group to work as a team and be great friends.
Been browsing through this thread, and thought I'd clear up a few misconceptions briefly:
1) SW: TOR was a sci-fi RPG, something pretty unusual and unpopular compared to fantasy RPGs, which may explain its failure in part.
2) EVE Online is more like a simulation than an MMORPG.
2) Stop saying WoW Clone. These games are the modern MMORPG. WoW is a great game; buy an original boxed copy and find a way to play on an emulated server and you will see. The WoW of today is simply a financial property and investment; it's not itself any more than a modern Gundam anime today is related to Mobile Suit Gundam 0079, or the modern Everquest is related to the original Everquest. You can tell the loyalists of these games that the creator himself personally spit and stubbed his cigar on the original design documents and they won't care. Stop dragging the name of great games through the mud because the creators didn't fawn over it for several years. I've yet to see a good MMORPG not cannabalize itself with expansions, so I assume it's not possible and imagine Blizzard took that for granted, too. Really, if you villify even Blizzard for making WoW, who can you respect in the MMORPG industry? I'll respect people that have actually made good MMORPGs over speculative and failed ones any day.
4) Not only are MMORPGs not in their infancy, but have existed in the form of MUDs since the '90s. Also, MUDs were almost exclusively solo games--a solo MMORPG can be good (i.e. classic WoW). Just because one or two big budget games, one of which was sci-fi, roughly approximated a once-good game now supported mostly by loyalists, and in its seventh or eight year of existence, and on its fourth expansion, and failed, really means nothing. WoW: Cataclysm or Mists of Pandaria is not a good game? No kidding! The game needs a total wipe and rebalancing to be good again, not another expansion. Most serious WoW players I knew quit before even the first expansion was released, and although a few came back, I doubt many stayed long enough to see the Cataclysm or even the latter part of WotLK, both of which were in exceptionally bad taste and suggestive of very low-wage, untalented designers having something unimportant shoveled off to them.
5) Solo leveling quest-based MMORPGs can be good--virtually any kind of hare-brained, seemingly modern MMORPG can be good if the designers want it to be. But if you design according to market studies, and no one on the team has the balls to say--hey--the game needs to be designed this way, because of so and so, then you will end up with something mediocre like I imagine Rift was (and I still have my doubts as to whether that was a true 'AAA' MMORPG). What other 'AAA' MMORPGs have there been? Aion? Guild Wars 2? Maybe the former was a good game (Lineage 2 was another example of a pretty good solo MMORPG, so I would trust NCSoft), but the latter wasn't really even an MMORPG. It was a lousy mixture of hack-and-slash combat and the trivial, foolish PvP and quest system of Warhammer Online. Are these all your 'AAA' MMORPGs? Sorry, but classic WoW was from a different era. Games these days aren't cloning it, and if you think they are, you truly are not very perceptive of subtleties. WoW was fine-tuned and hand-crafted; it was still based on sound gaming principles. The modern Monty Hall style MMORPG really has no relation to it. WoW was contemporary with some of the paragons of MMORPGs like EQ2 and FFXI; if you think the games of today are even coming close to 'cloning' it, and that their failure somehow represents the lack of viability of a good MMORPG based on the age-old, tried-and-trusted mechanics of the MUDs of the '90s, you are sorely mistaken. Face it: a good game hasn't been made in the genre for at least 6 years. The genre is dead. Gaming doesn't operate in long stretches like that. If good games aren't being released at least every two years in a genre, then that genre is dead. Companies can't even get the basics right; it's like any art form today; they're so obsessed with doing something new, different and modern, yet have no classical foundation or understanding in their art, that what they ultimately design is just garbage. But why be surprised? Single player gaming has been dead for even longer than multiplayer. It was about time that this died, too. The fact that people now believe the only alternative to bad game design (what they call 'themepark') is something completely different and fairly untraditional (what they call 'sandbox') goes to show how far the industry has fallen. Which is why I only play single-player games from the 70s, 80s and 90s any more.
Comments
SIMCITY is destroyed? It may got problems and bad press. But selling 1.1M in 2 weeks is a pretty big success.
http://www.joystiq.com/2013/03/18/simcity-sales-surpass-1-1-million-in-two-weeks/
Well, I played both UO and EQ for 6-8 years each, DAoC over a year (got tired of the huge nerfs and changes so late into release, not the game), I actually had never played a MMO for less than a year, prior to Rift (left with 3-4 months paid, but world was too small, and systems too shallow, wasn't my thing, but had paid for a 6 month account, due to my history and nice discount). Money has never been a issue that factors into my enjoyment, if I don't like something f2p isn't going to make me say it is free, so I will like it due to not paying....Same as if it is pay. I will try f2p stuff, but a lot of them have cash shops I find too aggressive and either p2w or borderline.
Non-mmo, I find the shops like in LoL fine, you can get everything but skins by playing, and no one really needs that skin to play better.
I like to play all aspects in a mmo, pve, pvp, craft/harvest, non-instance housing (putting stuff in it, side quests/skills to get stuff for it), side games, raid... If the crafting/harvesting is bland and not worth doing, it is usually a big hit for me, as I generally only play 1-2 mmos at a time, usually 1. I will play other non-mmo stuff, but if it is a good mmo, with quality systems, I don't feel the need to play a second mmo.
Only mmo that I have played recently that fails many of my musts, that I actually liked was TSW, I thought a lot of the quests and stories were very well done and it felt different. I played until I ran out of content and got tired of clearing quests and such in transylvannia too many times. The invesitgation quests were different, I thought the makers did a good job on it. It just didn't do good enough to probably pump out content at the pace needed to keep it updated better.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
What's the OP is saying that that those games you're talking about aren't really MMO's. I tend to agree with him.
The problem started when they stopped building worlds, and started building games. Honestly, the gameplay is NOT the important part, it's the world that is more important. An MMORPG can have crappy gameplay, but still thrive if the overall world you inhabit is good. Games like Everquest had AWFUL gameplay, but they were fascinating, and they challeneged people to work together to accomplish a goal. Just surviving was a struggle. That's what's missing now. Recent MMO's are just glorified chat rooms with shallow, flashy combat. Their worlds are hollow and empty.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Yup exactly. Recent mmos all have been GAMES and not IMMERSIVE WORLDS. unfortunately it seems casual gamers atm are happy with their 20 minute in and out GAMES and are happy to throw their money at devs to make em.
This guy just summed up everything that is wrong with "modern" MMOs.
Massive/Massively Multiplayer Online...That is all MMO means. It is a stem in the form of an acronym that needs an affix (sometimes prefixed sometimes sufixed) to have any meaning beyond being an umbrella term. To say that 'MMO's' are 'Dying'....I am reminded of a dialogue between 2 popular fictional characters.
“Good Morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.
"What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"
"All of them at once," said Bilbo. "And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain.
...
"Good morning!" he said at last. "We don't want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water." By this he meant that the conversation was at an end.
"What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!" said Gandalf. "Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won't be good till I move off.”
MMO companies are clueless now days. Every MMO advertises that they are about to revolutionalize the gaming industry, then the game is just another flop. Companies can't get it right. Simple things that these companies need to realize do not happen. For example, in this day and age, games should have a pvp and a pve server, yet so many are just making one or the other. I get this in some cases, but the masses should see that both servers draw in different crowds, make a true pve server and a true pvp server, and not like the tard games like Tera where they have pve servers then pvp servers which are nothing more than pve servers and every chance they take with pvp, they gimp by making it casual for the pver.
Also, things like making players run a dungeon over and over and over to get a piece of gear...really? That's fun? Games that do nothing to correct botting to the point a game is overrun by bots, thats fun?
I have little hope...at this point I'm hoping that ESO or Black Desert will hit the spot..but doubt it.
Incognito
www.incognito-gaming.us
"You're either with us or against us"
Yeah... that's how I respond to doom and gloom posts from all kinds of topics too. Sure, they can have some merit but they rarely tell the whole story, nevermind see the bigger picture, and mostly only use examples that prove their point without addressing counter arguments nor mentioning how they have tried to reverse the trends.
Sighs. Yes, I've read similar articles from this user before. Now, I must point out a little flaw in this argument:
It assumes that it is up to the developers to build the community. I'm sorry, but community building is on the shoulder of people/gamers within a media space. This is true of social media like facebook, forums, multiplayer games, andMMOs. If I or another person just expects the community to come to you instead of going out and actually make it via some of the stuff the OP mentioned like walking up to a person to ask if you want to do something, actually saying hi to the people you group up with and try to make conversation, and/or building a thriving guild community then don't be surprised if the results are little to no community. After all, no one is forcing me to use Group Finder is in SWTOR or WOW. I can choose to walk up to a person and ask for help as well as use the said tool. Note both/and are happening on my server and it is far from a dead community.
That was a very good read and I agree with all of what you had to say. I didn't read the whole thread, but I've been reading enough similar ideas expressed around here to know what a lot of the rebuttals and counter points will be. People will say that they are, in fact not dying and point to the success of current games. The idea here is that they are actually evolving from what you and I enjoyed, into something better. I understand that point of view, but if the games that the OP and I liked are going away to make room for the newer more "evolved" games, then they are dying in a way. Either way, it starts to step into the realm of arguing semantics, which will devolve further into people using derogatory terms to describe what someone else enjoys playing, and then I have to bow out of the conversation.
I've pretty much been in the same situation and asking myself the same questions as the OP lately, and these are what I've come up with as options for a plan of action going forward.
1. Wait for that game, the game that best fits what I would like to play. EQ next, Arch age, maybe something really cool that I don't even know about. There is hope there but I know better than to get my hopes too high. In the meantime, I can enjoy some other games for what they are. I'm still enjoying Vanguard, and I would love it if EQ would open up another progression server.
2. Admit that I'm just plain getting old and these games, as well as the majority of their population, have passed me by. There are not enough people like us that would enjoy the older style mechanics and value depth over convenience, to support a new game.
Right now I'm doing the first thing, however, I'm prepared to admit that the second thing might be true. If it is then I'll just bite the bullet and play older games, or play the newer games with a few close friends only. Or just throw in the towel and play single player games.
It's a little sad, because I've had so much fun with MMOs over the years, but they are changing and right now it is a direction that I don't like at all. I am, however, willing to admit that I am in the minority. Such is life.
I am currently EXTREMELY happy with Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, which has now turned 8 years old.
But yeah, not even at the most distant horizont is a worthy successor to this game visible.
So I guess thats the game I will still be playing in 10 or 20 years from now. Or SOE shuts it down, then I wont be playing anything.
While I like the Facebook analogy that you can socialize in any game there is a deeper comparison to me. There are features in FB such as "people you may know" that further interaction beyond your friends. This to me is what seperates some of the older games from the newer ones. The need for others was an additional catalyst for socialization. Many do not like that and that's okay but I for one like it.
Good. MMORP-GAME .. should be game first. They are entertainment products.
You are wrong. Gameplay *is* the important part ... and you are right EQ has aweful gameplay (asking players to wait 10 min before doing anything ... ack!). That is why i am glad i have choices, and don't have to play EQ type "gameplay again".
It is missing because this kind of design made bad games (for me, and many), and the market has spoken.
You don't even need a world to make a good game. Look at the success of D3, LOL, WOT ... all without even the pretence of making a world. If MMORPGs evolves in this direction, it is only because it is responding to market demand.
Oooo the good old days, everything was awesome back then. Sorry wrong. I have been MMOing for 14 years and I love deeply the old days but we are quick to forget what is new and how its made things great. Simple things like if you wanted to sell an item you had to yell for hours in general chat WTS. There was no casual gaming back then, you raided 5-8hrs 3-5 nights a week or you could not be part of a MMO community that functioned.
Sure there are some new problems we are dealing with because of the advancment of MMOs but we have put behind us old problems for new ones. MMOs are not dead, tech is getting to the point MMOs dont take 8-10 years to make and things are just now getting really intresting. Devs just need to learn from their mistakes is all and by the looks of some of the new MMOs it looks like they are. Best is yet to come!!!!
Yup, devs are starting to change how they make their games to add more social tools. Elder Scrolls mega server where it filters like minded people together is what we need. Wildstar and a few other newer MMOs are really working to make more social tools but players do need to start acting like a community or MMOs will never fly. I think the biggest problem is in the old days your name/player rep was everything. You were a KSer you were known and it got to the point you could not find a guild. Switching servers and changing your char name didnt work. Was reroll or quit. GW2 and a few others has it right, where you /ignore someone, its their account.
We are talking about games here .. people should be able to enjoy their gaming anyway they want. Heck ... it is not really "should be" .. but they are. There is nothign you can do to stop that.
If you don't like a certain person, put him on ignore ... that is the tool the devs provided.
I'm sorry to say but if all you remember from old MMOs is raiding, you didn't play the right ones. EQ raided, that was it.
UO did not, DAOC had some darknessfalls raids but that didn't happen all the time.
The problem is all the real old MMO players have stopped playing online games or they just play an old one because new ones are too geared towards the people who started playing MMOs with World of Warcraft.
WOW was the start of the death of MMOs. They removed skill and replaced it with gear. Now newer MMOs could have fixed this by going away from the Child friendly path of WOW but because it was popular everyone copied.
Now we have nothing by crap that you can play for a month but will be bored. When is the last time you played an online game where you couldn't make it past an area? Probably not in a long time. I know everytime i tried a new game i hardly had to think of what i was doing. Inless you stopped paying attention you could never die to an NPC. Most games you could even just run past the monsters to get the quest done.
If you want someone to blame its the people who started their online gaming life with WOW. They want easier and easier so they got it. None of them would last a week in Ultima Online. None of them would last in open world PVP of DAOC. Even EQ with its open world PVP would be too much for the babies of today. It needs to be spoon fed to them with very little skill needed, no risk of loseing anything and if its too hard they cry nerf tell its something even an 8 year old can beat.
To fix MMOs they have to go back to people being skilled at playing the game and not just getting the sword of i always win and mashing the 1 key. It won't happen. Kids now a days are lost in their entitlement. They think they deserve the world right away and shouldn't have to put any effort forward.
My comment is directed to the last paragraph: It requires both skill and gear to play a class. There are plenty of people in MMOs that have the best gear but aren't putting out the best numbers because they have no clue to how to play the class so the moves use/rotation they have matches the gear they've gathered.
This ^^^
I think lots of people are confused about the goal of MMOs. If the goal/challenge is to survive and beat the boss, then it may be "easy".
However, for a lot of players, the goal is to top the meter, or do runs efficiently. That is no longer easy. If you beat the boss 100% of the time, beating him is not winning. However, topping a DPS meter, or doing tough achievement, becomes the win.
Yeah! ANd I also find that it really builds a community when I clear a ops with my progressions ops group. Just hearing the cheers and "YES!" from the people on mumble... brings a tear to my eye. Hence why I made sure all of them were invited to my main's RP wedding. Note, that all of us have to contribute in order for the progression group to work as a team and be great friends.
Been browsing through this thread, and thought I'd clear up a few misconceptions briefly:
1) SW: TOR was a sci-fi RPG, something pretty unusual and unpopular compared to fantasy RPGs, which may explain its failure in part.
2) EVE Online is more like a simulation than an MMORPG.
2) Stop saying WoW Clone. These games are the modern MMORPG. WoW is a great game; buy an original boxed copy and find a way to play on an emulated server and you will see. The WoW of today is simply a financial property and investment; it's not itself any more than a modern Gundam anime today is related to Mobile Suit Gundam 0079, or the modern Everquest is related to the original Everquest. You can tell the loyalists of these games that the creator himself personally spit and stubbed his cigar on the original design documents and they won't care. Stop dragging the name of great games through the mud because the creators didn't fawn over it for several years. I've yet to see a good MMORPG not cannabalize itself with expansions, so I assume it's not possible and imagine Blizzard took that for granted, too. Really, if you villify even Blizzard for making WoW, who can you respect in the MMORPG industry? I'll respect people that have actually made good MMORPGs over speculative and failed ones any day.
4) Not only are MMORPGs not in their infancy, but have existed in the form of MUDs since the '90s. Also, MUDs were almost exclusively solo games--a solo MMORPG can be good (i.e. classic WoW). Just because one or two big budget games, one of which was sci-fi, roughly approximated a once-good game now supported mostly by loyalists, and in its seventh or eight year of existence, and on its fourth expansion, and failed, really means nothing. WoW: Cataclysm or Mists of Pandaria is not a good game? No kidding! The game needs a total wipe and rebalancing to be good again, not another expansion. Most serious WoW players I knew quit before even the first expansion was released, and although a few came back, I doubt many stayed long enough to see the Cataclysm or even the latter part of WotLK, both of which were in exceptionally bad taste and suggestive of very low-wage, untalented designers having something unimportant shoveled off to them.
5) Solo leveling quest-based MMORPGs can be good--virtually any kind of hare-brained, seemingly modern MMORPG can be good if the designers want it to be. But if you design according to market studies, and no one on the team has the balls to say--hey--the game needs to be designed this way, because of so and so, then you will end up with something mediocre like I imagine Rift was (and I still have my doubts as to whether that was a true 'AAA' MMORPG). What other 'AAA' MMORPGs have there been? Aion? Guild Wars 2? Maybe the former was a good game (Lineage 2 was another example of a pretty good solo MMORPG, so I would trust NCSoft), but the latter wasn't really even an MMORPG. It was a lousy mixture of hack-and-slash combat and the trivial, foolish PvP and quest system of Warhammer Online. Are these all your 'AAA' MMORPGs? Sorry, but classic WoW was from a different era. Games these days aren't cloning it, and if you think they are, you truly are not very perceptive of subtleties. WoW was fine-tuned and hand-crafted; it was still based on sound gaming principles. The modern Monty Hall style MMORPG really has no relation to it. WoW was contemporary with some of the paragons of MMORPGs like EQ2 and FFXI; if you think the games of today are even coming close to 'cloning' it, and that their failure somehow represents the lack of viability of a good MMORPG based on the age-old, tried-and-trusted mechanics of the MUDs of the '90s, you are sorely mistaken. Face it: a good game hasn't been made in the genre for at least 6 years. The genre is dead. Gaming doesn't operate in long stretches like that. If good games aren't being released at least every two years in a genre, then that genre is dead. Companies can't even get the basics right; it's like any art form today; they're so obsessed with doing something new, different and modern, yet have no classical foundation or understanding in their art, that what they ultimately design is just garbage. But why be surprised? Single player gaming has been dead for even longer than multiplayer. It was about time that this died, too. The fact that people now believe the only alternative to bad game design (what they call 'themepark') is something completely different and fairly untraditional (what they call 'sandbox') goes to show how far the industry has fallen. Which is why I only play single-player games from the 70s, 80s and 90s any more.