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I just hope this game has the DEPTH that all these new MMO's Lack..
Slavakk
Member Posts: 36
In about the past 5 years or so most of these new MMO's emerging on the market that are the supposed WoW killers or were the next big thing lack one thing today "Depth".. I started out on MMO's on EQ1 right when RoK dropped on Fennin Ro.. We had to work with a lot less back then but on the other hand didn't seem we used to get more?? I remember walking through Nek Forest or the FoB for the first time and I was blown away.. But didn't it make more sense back then... You pick this race and boom this is your home city and depending on what you pick determines where you are KOS in the world..
Then boom WoW and EQ2 drop.. So I jumped on the Neriak Server staying to my DE roots which later got lost in the massive server merges.. But both these games even though the WHOLE focus of MMO at that point was Good vs Evil.. Blah Blah no more starting citys or newbie zones connected to it.. Just one city "Freeport or Qey" BUT even these games kept the Depth, Questing, AA, PvP, Lore, you name it both this games still had it...Tho it was dumbed down just a little..
Now moving on to the future.. After my crazy long EQ1 and 2 stint I never played WoW.. I jumped into WAR online... a game with 95% PvP focus BUT the depth went right out the window.. I loved the game for the CoH type of simplicity but coming from EQ2 or WoW all the games after these titles feel incomplete or just really really basic dumbed down or cheap... I tried Aion as well.. There once again felt like it was an incomplete game... like they could of done WAY more with these games...
Then I jumped on to Rift.. I love Rift don't get me wrong its a great concept and the time the PvP was killer.. and the Raids were amazing requiring EVERYONE in the raid to be on the same page at all times.. Move as one, think as one... I think that raiding in Rift was WAY more difficult than Eq2 and some people say WoW.. But... Still the game lacks the depth that anything pre WoW had..it just to me feels incomplete or cheap..
Call us the pioneers of the modern MMO we suffered through all the patches, nerfs, ninja nerfs, server rollbacks, rule changes, bugs, crashes and what ever the company you played under felt was right,,, and now the tech is available to THE most amazing stuff now compared to what we had to deal with 14 years ago... I just hope the game is BIG as it is WIDE.. I just want another EQ that I can dump some serious time into and explore with all the systems in place that made the original 2 EQ's very deep games.. Bring back complexity vs. the new CASUAL model everyone now seems to adopt...
Comments
I didnt read this wall of text but i agree with the general title of the post, and that MMO's are far too easy and simple (Linear, hand-holding bullshit).
I want to see an intelligent MMO again, like Original EQ or Pre-Cu SWG, something thats not just a family friendly adventure that the average 7 year old can play competently.
J-Hun Lookin to Creep Yall!
/agree
"Brute force not work? It because you not use enought of it"
-Karg, Ogryn Bone'ead.
+1
+2
Killing dragons is my shit
Just wanted to extract this sentence. I find it pretty sad that with all the tech advancements and computing power we have now, that the deepest, most complex games in the genre are still the ones from the early days 10-16 years ago. How pathetic is that really?
I mean, sure, you can blame modern graphics requirements for some of the drawbacks in other areas of the games, but there is a genuine reason why everyone is waiting around to see a revival of the old systems like UO, SWG, EQ, etc. That reason being that we are actually seeing less(options, freedom, choices, skills, exploration, etc.) out of these games the stronger our computers get =x This genre badly needs some more free worlds like the genre started out with.
I still go play Ultima Online, with the 2D client, and it doesn't bother me one bit....Now the new skill systems/combos....Not a big fan of them, if their was an official classic type server, I would be playing it.
Sometimes, people can't accept that people know what they like, and the current generation of lobby mmos isn't it.
I can totally agree with that in some respect.. BUT then we had these systems in place that became the fundamentals of all MMO's, Today we have the Devs telling us we are not trying to make an MMO.. Or we don't like using the word MMO..That these fundamentals basic building blocks are getting tossed out the window in favor of some new "Brilliant" Ideas that will take us into the future of gaming..
For instance these new Action Oriented MMO's (GW2 , Tera) Did well in their own respect, well at least GW2 is pretty strong, but it does Improve or break the rules of traditional MMO.. Depending on how you look at it respectively.. Its all more a matter of opinion.. But when they are moving units of the shelves other companies got to get a slice.. So I hope they don't to crazy in EQN..
And then you play the beta and get the release of the game.. you spam XP to your max lvl.. BUT they have like NO endgame in the week or 2 now it takes you to max out your Lvl in games today.. It's very minimal or "Work in Progress Areas".. The lore usually sucks, and most the game is still incomplete or broken.. It's just MMO's are way dumbed down now..
I personally think there will never really be a WoW killer... They became the Microsoft Windows of MMO.. but then again those where different times.. And sometimes you are in the right place at the right time and take advantage of the situation at hand... It could of been any MMO like WoW or EQ2.. But those games today still have that Depth.. Sometimes the system is not broken and doesn't need fixing,, Sometimes it is.. It mostly depends on the consumers dollar...
I agree with the OP (I believe many today share the same view)
Even EQ2 when it launched was fairly deep.
It had the Access quests (before you could access a Dungeon you had to complete a quest), lots of Heritage quests, the Betrayal quests (if you wanted to play a different class different from the original), Crafting required interdependance, and some other cool stuff that kept you busy and made leveling challenging and satisfying.
Most of those features were scrapped, other watered down just one year after release, and the game lost a bit of its appeal, turning into a proper WoW copy few years later.
I really hope that SoE finally understood that you need some of those challenging and time consuming content that made MMO 10 years ago something different, MMOs weren't just about the End Game but also onthe Journey to get there.
The enphasys should be on the "Journey" not only on the End Game, putting Longevity back into MMOs.
It wont be, this is SOE and they'll not develop an MMO aimed at the hardcore again. SOE say a lot of things during the games development, they never deliver, even Planetside 2 is just a dumbed down Planetside and it's still broken almost a year after launch. They make an MMO, then move 70% of the dev team onto something else and the content then suffers throughout the MMOs life, they don't know how to maintain an MMO like say CCP does.
If Raph Koster was working on the game, then I'd change my mind, sadly his idea of an MMO has long been dead with SWG pre CU.
Every one of your posts I've seen is just doom and gloom ultra pessimistic drivel. If you're that angry and jaded why not just avoid any SOE game forum for the rest of your life?
Again?
Name a SoE hardcore MMO after EQ which is hardcore......................all of the games they made after EQ are as shallow and casual as it gets.
Result?
EQ is still the most popular game they have in their portfolio..................a 14 y/o game that alone kept SoE going.
Do you think that SoE is THAT blind?
They are a business remember, they do mistake but they learn from it.
They did lots of mistakes already, they can't keep making mistakes, in particular they cannot afford EQNext to be another mistake.
Also, define hardcore...................most of EQ features aren't hardcore, they just require dedication and using your brain.
Hardcore is farming Faction tokens and Epic gear in WoW...............yet 10 million people keep playing it.
When I was playing WoW I would put many more hours than when I was playing EQ.
You really need to put things into perspective............most people are NOT casual players, that's why they put up with WoW hardcore End Game.
The thing is fantasy MMOs used to be virtual world simulations. Things like travel took a long time because real travel takes time. You weren't able to sell stuff to everyone in game from anywhere. Face to face interaction was needed.
A game is sometimes more defined by its restrictions and boundaries. And I'm not promoting a clunky UI btw.
I agree that it does sound like convenience is ruining the immersion. Convenience also ruins a lot of other facets of games.
It doesn't really feel like you're far away from someone in a big world if you can take a few steps down to a dock and click on a bell and instantly teleport to where you want to be. It also doesn't feel powerful to cast a spell that gets you there quicker if you can do it just as easily without the spell. It doesn't matter how big the world is if it never feels big; it might as well all be in the same zone.
Having a mount at low level may be cool, but it won't feel special if you don't have to wait for it. Having speed buff spells won't even be worth it if everyone is running around with a mount at level 1.
Being able to click three times and be placed into a group to run a dungeon with people that you'll never talk to may be very convenient, but there's no social aspect to it, and the social aspect is what will keep players coming back.
Having gear that is built in tiers to make it easier to decide what to wear is convenient, but it removes the depth from the game. Trying to figure out exactly what stats you like on a piece of gear is much more fun than just equipping something because it is higher level. For god's sake let the players decide if they want to make a glass cannon mage or something closer to an armored pistol. Make it possible to screw up your character... but I think that's another post altogether.
You really need to put things in perspective , WOW had 14 million sub players at one point now they have a hard time showing they have 2 million subs.....WOW's hardcore endgame didn't cause everyone to leave but it sure didn't keep some 12 million from leaving . Nobody is going to gamble on a hardcore game when casual players outnumber hardcore players 50 to 1
I'd like to see a truly deep mmo again. But all anyone seems to care about is combat so that's not going to happen until the demographic evolves a bit.
Since most of the MMORPGs that have released since WoW have had much more depth than WoW, I don't think that's the issue.
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I don't think any of the new games post WoW have more depth... Better technology yes, now we are able to do things better because of it yes, this also spawns new ideas that were not capable before hand.. But that is all mechanics and new game engines... that has nothing to do with a games LORE, AA Lines, Raiding, PvP, Recipes for crafting etc... its just they favor convince now.. All the systems that were in place in games WoW and pre WoW were the basic building blocks of MMORPG.. todays games DO have those systems (Maybe Upgraded or Copied from another MMO) but they are no where near as BIG or DEEP that these games had ( And still do + More) if you for instance compared the craft recipe books from EQ2 to say a game from today RIFT.. EQ2 has WAY considerably more thing in it.. Even at launch lol... its just the values for modern MMO are washed down today.. came concept but less... for Convince basically.. Kind of like the fact we all have Smart Phones now...
If you say wow is not a dumbed down mmorpg that throws your opinion completly out the window, because wow is pretty much the most dumbed down mmorpg on the planet, Hell they not to long ago bascally removed the talent system and dumbed it down so you pick 1 set every 15 levels I think. I haven't played a mmorpg as dumbed down as wow has become. The problem is most mmo's after wow are pretty much almost as dumbed down as wow has become because the devs are either A) Lazy sob's, or
they think thats going to get them subs (protip it doesn't). What a mmorpg should aim for is a deacated pack of players, making the game bascally wow won't give you this because most people with a brain (EG not the cattle that still play wow brainlessly) will just quit once they hit level cap or soon after due to nothing to do anymore. You also don't need millions of subs for a mmo to be profitable, Hell most you don't even need 50-100k subs to turn a profit every month, though this varies on whether the game has box sales or not.
I am also tired of these mmorpgs that are bascally single player games (read pretty much every wow-clone) where you can hit lv cap solo in a few days. You need to make a game that can last and allowing people to level fast is not how you do it, alot get bored pretty quickly with wow-like endgame, mostly due to a lack of stuff to do with the raid gear, I don't raid much because most games don't have any real uses for the raid gear outside more of the same raids.
Some good examples of mmo's that have stuff you can do outside of raids with raid gear: Eq2 (pvp, AA's and such, helping friends with the level sync/mentor system etc), FF11, for simmlar reasons to Eq2. Compared to wow where the gear is just a total waste of time to bother getting since its of no real use anymore to your character. I also think raid bosses should have a chance (a low chance) to drop epic quality stuff, so that when you do get something nice off a boss you feel a sense of accomplishment, but again most raids in mmo's today just hand the crap to you in droves which takes away any meaning to it.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
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