I remember the MMOs 15 years ago where there were LFG / Phasing / Instancing / boss that was challenging due to mechanics and not because it had 100 million HP...
Hang on a sec.. LOLWUT?
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Hmm...wouldn't that depend on how you define progress?
I can sit down for 1 to 2 hours now and feel that I accomplished something - I couldn't do that 15 years ago.
I have options to play solo when I couldn't get into a group - I couldn't do that 15 years ago.
I am able to get into dungeons with much less downtime - I couldn't do that 15 years ago.
I can see moving shadows, grass blowing in the wind, reflections off the water and numerous other graphical improvements - I couldn't do that 15 years ago.
I can use voice chat - I couldn't do that 15 years ago.
I am able to have multiple builds for my character - I couldn't do that 15 years ago.
I am able to see all of the content I am paying for as a casual player - I couldn't do that 15 years ago.
I can retrieve my corpse after death in a timely manner - I couldn't do that 15 years ago.
I can spend time with my friends and family irl and still be uber in game - I couldn't do that 15 years ago.
There are a bazillion games online to choose from - I had very few choices 15 years ago.
So depending upon your own personal needs/wants for a game - there have been lots and lots of improvements.
But if you really don't think the game development has progressed in 15 years - many of those games are still live.....if those games are soooooo super special - you could play them, still - but don't. Why? Because you know as well as I do that each time you log into EQ you say to yourself....'well, I don't have time for this. I don't have time to spend a year + catching up. I don't want to invest in truly socializing to gain friends and partners in crime. I can't afford to block out 8 am to 2 pm PST to raid each Saturday. I can't afford to raid from 7 pm to midnight on Wednesday, cuz I have to work early.'
And if you aren't saying those things, and you do indeed have the time to invest. Guess what, you are already playing one of the hardcore earlier games.
What people don't understand is the trade off. What they want is all the modern conveniences with the same 'feel' of investment they had in those older games. If you know how to do that, by all means, design a game for us. Because for the last 15 years, developers have been desperately trying to provide you a game that does all that. But it is hard to get a feeling of investment when you demand to keep the game convenient.
Again - if you have the time - go play an older game. It is exactly what you want. But my suspicion is, just like everyone of these posts that is a copy/paste image of this one - what you want, may not be possible - due to causes having effects.
I'm not posting as an argument or anything against your likes and points made. I'd just like to point out that the 90% of the stuff you couldn't do 15 years ago could be done and was. Just mostly in single player games, which realistically is all that most current MMO's are now.
So the tradeoff for progress is turning MMO into SPO, and there's been plenty of progress in that department.
Only if people stop expecting to " WIN " MMO's, maybe then we will start to see some innovation.
Good way to put it really.
There have been improvements to the MMO market, however it is more towards themepark MMO's. We chose to play these over other types which caused the industry to go where it has gone.
In other words, it's our fault. Had sandbox game been the most played, then I suspect we would have tons of them everywhere and probably complaining that there are not enough themepark MMO's.
If you haven't noticed yet, your running on a hamster wheel in game. They figure if you're happy doing the same thing over and over again, why reinvent the wheel. I mean... what's more exciting than more dailies to allow you to buy more gear to allow you to do more dungeons that unlock even more dailies that give you more gear that allows you to do even more dungeons? That hamster wheel could light the city of New York every day for life.
I'd contend that (horse == rat) should evaluate to false, even if both the horse and the rat are dead. In that case, either (horse == dead) or (rat == dead) needs to evaluate to false, and I'd argue that both should. Perhaps something like:
while (horse.isDead()) {
horse.beat();
}
or maybe:
while (horse.dead) {
beat(horse);
}
Because who says that a conversation about how best to beat a dead horse can't itself degenerate into figuratively beating a dead horse?
But what if finding innovative ways of beating dead horses is the future of MMO design? Would that be progress? Or is that also the past of MMO design?
I'd contend that (horse == rat) should evaluate to false, even if both the horse and the rat are dead. In that case, either (horse == dead) or (rat == dead) needs to evaluate to false, and I'd argue that both should. Perhaps something like:
while (horse.isDead()) {
horse.beat();
}
or maybe:
while (horse.dead) {
beat(horse);
}
Because who says that a conversation about how best to beat a dead horse can't itself degenerate into figuratively beating a dead horse?
But what if finding innovative ways of beating dead horses is the future of MMO design? Would that be progress? Or is that also the past of MMO design?
"Excuse me kind sir, but could you help me for a moment?"
Yes.
"Oh! That's so kind of you! I'm in the need of a great hero that can go to the next town over, beat 10 dead horses, then return to me."
Edit:
If this ever happens, I just hope the NPC name is Smedley >.>
One reason that progress is slower than we'd like is that creating games is slower than we'd like.
Work on WildStar began in 2005, for example. Yes, that WildStar, the most recent AAA MMORPG launch in 2014. By 2008, there were probably a number of things baked in that would have been very hard to change.
If in 2009, it became obvious that one such thing was an enormous mistake, what to you do? It bloats the budget in both time and money to go back and redo it differently. It will probably also break a lot of other, interconnected systems, which can easily turn fundamental changes to the game into a nightmare. Trying to do this is reportedly what killed Tabula Rasa. And remember, this is still several years before launch.
Now suppose that two games have a similar, innovative idea that looks good on paper and that the games are largely built around. They both work on it for several years. You're in charge of one of the games. The other game launches six months before you do, and it's clear that the innovative idea is a disaster in practice. What do you do about it?
If you decide to scrap that idea, you've just gutted the core of your game. Try to still release in six months and you'll release an incoherent mess of a game, as a lot of other things are built around an idea that you removed and thus make no sense whatsoever.
Take the time to remove the idea that is now known to fail and rebuilt everything around it properly and instead of six months from release, you're now a few years from release. That breaks so much financial and hiring planning that you've just pushed the game over budget by tens of millions of dollars without making the game a grander project than it was before.
You might just try to compensate as best as you can with minor tweaks and forge ahead, knowing full well that your game is a probable failure. Players will see that your game suffers from the same problems as another that just released and criticize you heavily for it throughout the beta. You'd love to change it, but you can't. It's too late.
Some things can easily be tacked on late in development without too much fuss. But a lot of things can't. If a bunch of people in the industry independently figured out today some really great way to make MMORPGs awesome, we wouldn't see a bunch of games implementing this idea launch tomorrow. Or next year.
A lot of things take years to implement properly. Things that are trivial to do if you have them in mind before writing a single line of code can easily be only slightly shy of impossible to tack onto a game already in beta testing.
I remember 10-15 years ago how I was longing for "future" games that would blow my mind when it comes to AI, scope, features, longevity etc. Still here I am with the same longing about to give up on the whole industry. Why is everything the same and why arn't we seeing the progress and evolution of gaming as we should have by now? The resources are there so is it something to do with capitalism? I'm not sure.
We got OR and Project Morpheus around the corner. Could it become the next revolution in gaming? All I know for sure is that MMOS are currently dead and Watch Dogs is crap. Where is the AI that actually behaves like real people??
Players don't want it?
WOW tried a more realistic approach to AI back in WOTLK in an encounter called Champion Faction. The NPCs will cc players. They will not follow an aggro table and take out healers first. They will use all kind of player abilities?
What happened? Players complained. They nerfed it. And it was never tried again.
More realistic AI does not mean players like it more.
Tank don't have any skill to hold the enemy down ?
When i tanking in PVP , i don't tank by aggro but using CC skills.
My armor make me hard to kill while my skill keep enemy from attack healer and allies .
If you give tank enough of skill , one tank can hold 3 players to one full party as same time , mob even easier
If the game don't use aggro to hold mob , but don't give player skill to hold mobs down then it fail design .
I remember 10-15 years ago how I was longing for "future" games that would blow my mind when it comes to AI, scope, features, longevity etc. Still here I am with the same longing about to give up on the whole industry. Why is everything the same and why arn't we seeing the progress and evolution of gaming as we should have by now? The resources are there so is it something to do with capitalism? I'm not sure.
We got OR and Project Morpheus around the corner. Could it become the next revolution in gaming? All I know for sure is that MMOS are currently dead and Watch Dogs is crap. Where is the AI that actually behaves like real people??
Players don't want it?
WOW tried a more realistic approach to AI back in WOTLK in an encounter called Champion Faction. The NPCs will cc players. They will not follow an aggro table and take out healers first. They will use all kind of player abilities?
What happened? Players complained. They nerfed it. And it was never tried again.
More realistic AI does not mean players like it more.
Tank don't have any skill to hold the enemy down ?
When i tanking in PVP , i don't tank by aggro but using CC skills.
My armor make me hard to kill while my skill keep enemy from attack healer and allies .
If you give tank enough of skill , one tank can hold 3 players to one full party as same time , mob even easier
If the game don't use aggro to hold mob , but don't give player skill to hold mobs down then it fail design .
Not failed design. Failed players. They weren't able to think outside the box themeparks have molded for them and adapt to something new.
I'd contend that (horse == rat) should evaluate to false, even if both the horse and the rat are dead. In that case, either (horse == dead) or (rat == dead) needs to evaluate to false, and I'd argue that both should. Perhaps something like:
while (horse.isDead()) {
horse.beat();
}
or maybe:
while (horse.dead) {
beat(horse);
}
Because who says that a conversation about how best to beat a dead horse can't itself degenerate into figuratively beating a dead horse?
But what if finding innovative ways of beating dead horses is the future of MMO design? Would that be progress? Or is that also the past of MMO design?
can we just make a class
maybe something like
beat.deadhorse
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Once again I'm left dumbfounded by the people on this forum and have to wonder are you all crazy or am I.
Lets see we have gone from no quests and sit in spot and grind, to tons of quests, to personal stories, to phasing, to automatic group type quests (gw2), to the game actually asking you to search for clues on the web (tsw), to voxel based building things (eqn). All those things require fundamental differences in how the game is designed.
Seriously people there is a crapload tonne of progress in mmo design. Yes it may be slower than other games but it takes a long time to build these games. Still there is a tonne of progress in mmo design
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
I haven't gone through the 5 pages of text, but I read some and I'll replay to those. Anyone here who said "it's consumer, players fault and so forth is death wrong.
The old saying goes "it's nobody elses fault but your own for your own failure of your creation". Those who try to find blame on someone else for their failure is the main reason why they will never be successful.
The market does not exist for the game until the game is created. If the creation is successful the market will flood to it automatically and naturally. It's people thinking that the market is not there, people are not going to buy my product so I'm afraid to invest is one of the reasons. If you are too afraid, too scared you should probably just stick to your capabilities and deliver games for certain audience with certain scale.
Let the big boys come over and take over the rest of the market. The ones who understand that you can't get apples until you dig a hole, plant the seed and nurture it over the years. If you look at many well known MMORPG companies, you see them developing multiple MMORPG's simultaniously while their current ones are failing apart because that's what they choose to do and I'll continue to choose to avoid companies with such reputation.
World of Wacraft has went downhill too for good and bad. It's most evident in the amount of $ they invest in other project beside their primary cash cow and imo it was their huge mistake. Starcraft II, Diablo 3, Hearthstone and now some "WOW movie.
Alexander the Great once conquered Europe, Asia, Africa, but he quickly lost it all cuz he spread on too many places while being uncapable to rule over what he already had. I just feel sad for gamers in general who have to find other, more old fashioned ways to entertain themself. We clearly are going backward in time.
Just think about it if you were thrown in a world with just monkies who would know nothing to do but make loud screams through the nights, what would you do? Scream with them or create something on your own to entertain yourself?
People shouting for F2P on every game, then if they charge the ungodly sum of 15 whole USD per month, they MUST add content at a breakneck pace. If we were all willing to pay $30-50 a month we'd once again have games we could play for years on end. I spend more than that on coffee per week.
Originally posted by Utinni People shouting for F2P on every game, then if they charge the ungodly sum of 15 whole USD per month, they MUST add content at a breakneck pace. If we were all willing to pay $30-50 a month we'd once again have games we could play for years on end. I spend more than that on coffee per week.
Hehe, people want games for the price of a cup of coffee, and then they won't stay longer than it takes to drink it.
I can tell you why there is no progress and people leave in droves once they hit cap.
Developers are focused on creating 75% of their time and resources on end game and are forgetting the actual game experience.
Look to the effort Blizzard have put into Mythic armor sets for WoW. They have focused all their efforts on something 1% of the player base will ever wear during the xpac cycle.
People are sick to death of running the same raids, dailies, dungeons over and over for 12 months. Basically paying money for nothing.
What the player base i crying out for is a game that takes years to cap, it should be something that is a MASSIVE achievement.
Other things i would like to see it open world questing, treasure hunts, random powerful loot drops, and a good solo progression mechanic.
Create content for ALL players, not for the special snowflake 1% of people with time on their hands.
Seriously, if players want to run through developer created content, then they are going to run out of content.
There are two alternatives:
Allowing player created content--which will ruin that "it's a world" feeling because, well, flying dildos.
Making a world where players can build and tear down, where the history progresses by player actions against world actions, where fortunes are made and lost, where new evils rise and are stamped down by coordinated player effort, where civilizations rise and fall.
Seriously, if players want to run through developer created content, then they are going to run out of content.
There are two alternatives:
Allowing player created content--which will ruin that "it's a world" feeling because, well, flying dildos.
Making a world where players can build and tear down, where the history progresses by player actions against world actions, where fortunes are made and lost, where new evils rise and are stamped down by coordinated player effort, where civilizations rise and fall.
What if you made a mmo were flying dildos fit the world?
OP is dead wrong. We went from EQ to WoW to GW2 and Wildstar. With each successive generation of MMOs we are smashing buttons faster than ever before. We've surpassed Street Fighter. If that isn't progress I don't know what is.
Originally posted by CaldicotI remember 10-15 years ago how I was longing for "future" games that would blow my mind when it comes to AI, scope, features, longevity etc. Still here I am with the same longing about to give up on the whole industry. Why is everything the same and why arn't we seeing the progress and evolution of gaming as we should have by now? The resources are there so is it something to do with capitalism? I'm not sure.We got OR and Project Morpheus around the corner. Could it become the next revolution in gaming? All I know for sure is that MMOS are currently dead and Watch Dogs is crap.
I think the next 'revolution' of gaming is going to come from a hardware technological revolution. I'd say display technology is going to be the next big step in gaming technology. We can already run any game on just about any mid-range computer as it is. Oculus is probably on the front edge of this but still rudimentary.
If not display technology, maybe input technology. Voice and gesture based input might be the way forward. Microsoft Connect, while very experimental and rudimentary (more so than Oculus), it's still another way forward that might allow games push the input focus from keyboard and mouse to eye tracking and gestures.
Originally posted by CaldicotWhere is the AI that actually behaves like real people??
Lol, what are you smoking? Do you have the faintest idea of how complicated human behavior is? There have been people working on human-like AI for decades and we probably won't see a human-like AI for another few decades and that probably has more to do with computing power or processor architecture. They are thinking that to get an AI with human-level intelligence and intuition they'll need a completely different processor that can 'learn' itself. We are so far away from that.
I think what you're talking about is NPC interaction with players and each other. That is more a lack of current developer attention as they tend to focus on player entertainment without proper acknowledgement that the little details in the environment are increasingly important for proper immersion. We are seeing more interaction, for example NPCs responding to your proximity or collision (we see that in Watchdogs and some others) but it's very basic.
All the technology is out there or can easily be built, no one needs to use it to sell games, it's just that simple. Why build a Ferrari when everyone is OK with taking the bus?
People buy games for three simple reasons.
1. Friends playing (social)
2. Reward system (psychological)
3. Pretty Cool (visual stimulation)
People need to come to grips with MMO's, they are a software business with a definitive life cycle, business plan, marketing and really big staff. Games are really hard to build and only a few are financially successful (breakeven or profitable) over a 8 year lifespan from concept to close.
Originally posted by CaldicotI remember 10-15 years ago how I was longing for "future" games that would blow my mind when it comes to AI, scope, features, longevity etc. Still here I am with the same longing about to give up on the whole industry. Why is everything the same and why arn't we seeing the progress and evolution of gaming as we should have by now? The resources are there so is it something to do with capitalism? I'm not sure.We got OR and Project Morpheus around the corner. Could it become the next revolution in gaming? All I know for sure is that MMOS are currently dead and Watch Dogs is crap.
I think the next 'revolution' of gaming is going to come from a hardware technological revolution. I'd say display technology is going to be the next big step in gaming technology. Oculus is probably on the front edge of this but still rudimentary.
Originally posted by CaldicotWhere is the AI that actually behaves like real people??
Lol, what are you smoking? Do you have the faintest idea of how complicated human behavior is? There have been people working on human-like AI for decades and we probably won't see a human-like AI for another few decades and that probably has more to do with computing power.
We don't want human AI anyway. I mean. If you want human like opponents, we can just have um human opponents. I mean one thing mmo should have in abundance is humans. Though I mean if we can't get human like AI how about an AI that is diffrent then what we have now. I would kill for an AI that didn't use agro tables even if it wasn't all that smart.
Comments
I remember the MMOs 15 years ago where there were LFG / Phasing / Instancing / boss that was challenging due to mechanics and not because it had 100 million HP...
Hang on a sec.. LOLWUT?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I'm not posting as an argument or anything against your likes and points made. I'd just like to point out that the 90% of the stuff you couldn't do 15 years ago could be done and was. Just mostly in single player games, which realistically is all that most current MMO's are now.
So the tradeoff for progress is turning MMO into SPO, and there's been plenty of progress in that department.
Only if people stop expecting to " WIN " MMO's, maybe then we will start to see some innovation.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Good way to put it really.
There have been improvements to the MMO market, however it is more towards themepark MMO's. We chose to play these over other types which caused the industry to go where it has gone.
In other words, it's our fault. Had sandbox game been the most played, then I suspect we would have tons of them everywhere and probably complaining that there are not enough themepark MMO's.
We will never be happy. We refuse.
Very good point, my bad.
That's the marketing statement used in and for every single game ever made and ever to be made lol.
I'd contend that (horse == rat) should evaluate to false, even if both the horse and the rat are dead. In that case, either (horse == dead) or (rat == dead) needs to evaluate to false, and I'd argue that both should. Perhaps something like:
while (horse.isDead()) {
horse.beat();
}
or maybe:
while (horse.dead) {
beat(horse);
}
Because who says that a conversation about how best to beat a dead horse can't itself degenerate into figuratively beating a dead horse?
But what if finding innovative ways of beating dead horses is the future of MMO design? Would that be progress? Or is that also the past of MMO design?
"Excuse me kind sir, but could you help me for a moment?"
Yes.
"Oh! That's so kind of you! I'm in the need of a great hero that can go to the next town over, beat 10 dead horses, then return to me."
Edit:
If this ever happens, I just hope the NPC name is Smedley >.>
One reason that progress is slower than we'd like is that creating games is slower than we'd like.
Work on WildStar began in 2005, for example. Yes, that WildStar, the most recent AAA MMORPG launch in 2014. By 2008, there were probably a number of things baked in that would have been very hard to change.
If in 2009, it became obvious that one such thing was an enormous mistake, what to you do? It bloats the budget in both time and money to go back and redo it differently. It will probably also break a lot of other, interconnected systems, which can easily turn fundamental changes to the game into a nightmare. Trying to do this is reportedly what killed Tabula Rasa. And remember, this is still several years before launch.
Now suppose that two games have a similar, innovative idea that looks good on paper and that the games are largely built around. They both work on it for several years. You're in charge of one of the games. The other game launches six months before you do, and it's clear that the innovative idea is a disaster in practice. What do you do about it?
If you decide to scrap that idea, you've just gutted the core of your game. Try to still release in six months and you'll release an incoherent mess of a game, as a lot of other things are built around an idea that you removed and thus make no sense whatsoever.
Take the time to remove the idea that is now known to fail and rebuilt everything around it properly and instead of six months from release, you're now a few years from release. That breaks so much financial and hiring planning that you've just pushed the game over budget by tens of millions of dollars without making the game a grander project than it was before.
You might just try to compensate as best as you can with minor tweaks and forge ahead, knowing full well that your game is a probable failure. Players will see that your game suffers from the same problems as another that just released and criticize you heavily for it throughout the beta. You'd love to change it, but you can't. It's too late.
Some things can easily be tacked on late in development without too much fuss. But a lot of things can't. If a bunch of people in the industry independently figured out today some really great way to make MMORPGs awesome, we wouldn't see a bunch of games implementing this idea launch tomorrow. Or next year.
A lot of things take years to implement properly. Things that are trivial to do if you have them in mind before writing a single line of code can easily be only slightly shy of impossible to tack onto a game already in beta testing.
Tank don't have any skill to hold the enemy down ?
When i tanking in PVP , i don't tank by aggro but using CC skills.
My armor make me hard to kill while my skill keep enemy from attack healer and allies .
If you give tank enough of skill , one tank can hold 3 players to one full party as same time , mob even easier
If the game don't use aggro to hold mob , but don't give player skill to hold mobs down then it fail design .
Not failed design. Failed players. They weren't able to think outside the box themeparks have molded for them and adapt to something new.
can we just make a class
maybe something like
beat.deadhorse
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Because in the end they end up dumbing it down and making it casual.
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD
Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE
Waiting on: Lost Ark
Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
Once again I'm left dumbfounded by the people on this forum and have to wonder are you all crazy or am I.
Lets see we have gone from no quests and sit in spot and grind, to tons of quests, to personal stories, to phasing, to automatic group type quests (gw2), to the game actually asking you to search for clues on the web (tsw), to voxel based building things (eqn). All those things require fundamental differences in how the game is designed.
Seriously people there is a crapload tonne of progress in mmo design. Yes it may be slower than other games but it takes a long time to build these games. Still there is a tonne of progress in mmo design
I haven't gone through the 5 pages of text, but I read some and I'll replay to those. Anyone here who said "it's consumer, players fault and so forth is death wrong.
The old saying goes "it's nobody elses fault but your own for your own failure of your creation". Those who try to find blame on someone else for their failure is the main reason why they will never be successful.
The market does not exist for the game until the game is created. If the creation is successful the market will flood to it automatically and naturally. It's people thinking that the market is not there, people are not going to buy my product so I'm afraid to invest is one of the reasons. If you are too afraid, too scared you should probably just stick to your capabilities and deliver games for certain audience with certain scale.
Let the big boys come over and take over the rest of the market. The ones who understand that you can't get apples until you dig a hole, plant the seed and nurture it over the years. If you look at many well known MMORPG companies, you see them developing multiple MMORPG's simultaniously while their current ones are failing apart because that's what they choose to do and I'll continue to choose to avoid companies with such reputation.
World of Wacraft has went downhill too for good and bad. It's most evident in the amount of $ they invest in other project beside their primary cash cow and imo it was their huge mistake. Starcraft II, Diablo 3, Hearthstone and now some "WOW movie.
Alexander the Great once conquered Europe, Asia, Africa, but he quickly lost it all cuz he spread on too many places while being uncapable to rule over what he already had. I just feel sad for gamers in general who have to find other, more old fashioned ways to entertain themself. We clearly are going backward in time.
Just think about it if you were thrown in a world with just monkies who would know nothing to do but make loud screams through the nights, what would you do? Scream with them or create something on your own to entertain yourself?
Hehe, people want games for the price of a cup of coffee, and then they won't stay longer than it takes to drink it.
Once upon a time....
I can tell you why there is no progress and people leave in droves once they hit cap.
Developers are focused on creating 75% of their time and resources on end game and are forgetting the actual game experience.
Look to the effort Blizzard have put into Mythic armor sets for WoW. They have focused all their efforts on something 1% of the player base will ever wear during the xpac cycle.
People are sick to death of running the same raids, dailies, dungeons over and over for 12 months. Basically paying money for nothing.
What the player base i crying out for is a game that takes years to cap, it should be something that is a MASSIVE achievement.
Other things i would like to see it open world questing, treasure hunts, random powerful loot drops, and a good solo progression mechanic.
Create content for ALL players, not for the special snowflake 1% of people with time on their hands.
Seriously, if players want to run through developer created content, then they are going to run out of content.
There are two alternatives:
Once upon a time....
What if you made a mmo were flying dildos fit the world?
I think the next 'revolution' of gaming is going to come from a hardware technological revolution. I'd say display technology is going to be the next big step in gaming technology. We can already run any game on just about any mid-range computer as it is. Oculus is probably on the front edge of this but still rudimentary.
If not display technology, maybe input technology. Voice and gesture based input might be the way forward. Microsoft Connect, while very experimental and rudimentary (more so than Oculus), it's still another way forward that might allow games push the input focus from keyboard and mouse to eye tracking and gestures.
Lol, what are you smoking? Do you have the faintest idea of how complicated human behavior is? There have been people working on human-like AI for decades and we probably won't see a human-like AI for another few decades and that probably has more to do with computing power or processor architecture. They are thinking that to get an AI with human-level intelligence and intuition they'll need a completely different processor that can 'learn' itself. We are so far away from that.
I think what you're talking about is NPC interaction with players and each other. That is more a lack of current developer attention as they tend to focus on player entertainment without proper acknowledgement that the little details in the environment are increasingly important for proper immersion. We are seeing more interaction, for example NPCs responding to your proximity or collision (we see that in Watchdogs and some others) but it's very basic.
All the technology is out there or can easily be built, no one needs to use it to sell games, it's just that simple. Why build a Ferrari when everyone is OK with taking the bus?
People buy games for three simple reasons.
1. Friends playing (social)
2. Reward system (psychological)
3. Pretty Cool (visual stimulation)
People need to come to grips with MMO's, they are a software business with a definitive life cycle, business plan, marketing and really big staff. Games are really hard to build and only a few are financially successful (breakeven or profitable) over a 8 year lifespan from concept to close.
We don't want human AI anyway. I mean. If you want human like opponents, we can just have um human opponents. I mean one thing mmo should have in abundance is humans. Though I mean if we can't get human like AI how about an AI that is diffrent then what we have now. I would kill for an AI that didn't use agro tables even if it wasn't all that smart.