I kept my pc for the purpose of playing mmorpgs, I don't like mobas, but mmorpgs have become pretty undesirable, as a result, I ditched my pc and am just focusing on ps4 games mmorpgs or not I don't care either way. As much as I hate eso I'm actually rooting for it to be awesome on consoles. With reference to dinosaurs though, an mmorpg evolved is not an mmorpg, you can call it that but I will refuse to consider it. [mod edit]
MMOs used to be games you stuck with. Now huge numbers of players shift around from game to game. I feel like the golden era of MMO has passed. When we had games with lasting appeal, games that built up community, games that offered true variety.
Magnificent article... well done, and I believe it's the absolute truth. Something you might include in another article is the time it takes to develop a game, that the community more often than not desires to see games before they're ready for release and that companies are compelled to release games somewhat earlier. This may be as a result of their benefactor's desire to gauge continuing interest, or it may be true community desire to just have SOMETHING at their fingertips.
MechWarrior Online, for example, while not an MMO in the most traditional sense, remains in development, released LONG before even two of the four design pillars of the game were completed, and yet the development that continues, the hope you hear from the developers about what they would like to see in the future, and more, can be intoxicating. Yet, they were all but forced to release the game early, with nothing more than a combat engine and powerful plans to continue development.
So, to give relevance, here, development, pre-readiness releases due to pressure, and more is what the development cycle of many games have grown into, leaving the days of a solid release in the past. That doesn't mean MMORPGs are, by any stretch of the imagination, dying, nor that developers have to release early for money, it is simply an evolution of development.
Originally posted by Jyiiga MMOs used to be games you stuck with. Now huge numbers of players shift around from game to game. I feel like the golden era of MMO has passed. When we had games with lasting appeal, games that built up community, games that offered true variety.Now it feels like speed dating.
Every mmo out right now has players who have been there since launch.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Originally posted by observer If there were 2 things i could name that is evolving the genre, it's the "events" system (warhammer online's Public Quests, and GW2's Dynamic Events), and User Generated Content (such as Neverwinter's Foundry), and to a lesser degree the "Action Combat".
I think all three of those things are worth mentioning as things that are evolving the genre.
I do think MMO's are evolving but I have to question the few the article mentions. WoW was mentioned over and over because it's the biggest and has certainly had a big impact, but it's not the only one of it's time that did things a certain way and none of the rest were mentioned. And the paragraph from Wildstar was out of left field. It almost sounds like an advertisement for Wildstar, especially considering the lack of any other specific examples of other games following that paragraph. Very oddly written. If you're trying to say Wildstar is evolving the genre, I'll have to disagree. It actually does a lot of old things which is why so many people like it. Beyond that, the combat is not new, either. GW2 and to an extent The Secret World both did similar things years ago.
A game that does something to evolve the genre is a game that does something new and unique and succeeds with that idea. Not a game that merely tweaks things that have come before. Most games of the past several years have merely tweaked. But there are things that have evolved the genre and developers that have done interesting things in their games to fix things they thought were broken or needed to be improved upon. In terms of leveling content, games like The Secret World, GW2, and ESO all succeeded in doing something meaningfully different. Neverwinter's Foundry system is a new way to add content that we haven't really seen before. Games like TERA have done something completely different with the action combat idea that hasn't been copied in the same way in any other game quite yet. Vindictus did a slightly different version of action combat years ago with lots of combos and no trinity that we're seeing in games like Blade and Soul and Black Desert now. Games like The Secret World and FFXIV are challenging the idea of classes and progression in different ways that other new games are editing to their needs.
The problem for me is that games aren't always excelling with the things that should be most important like combat, class design, and graphics and they're changing things that don't need to be changed like trinity roles, or they're spending wads of cash on things that won't sustain a healthy game like leveling content (while the games mentioned above have awesome leveling, it's not the focus of a game long term), or they're not sticking to their vision for a game and making too many big changes late in development (or in westernization for some) in order to please a certain audience or attempt to make a more widely appealing game and that always fails. So a lot of games come up short for me and many others.
wow a post I agree with wholeheartedly it's a tough market out there. gamers are generally reluctant to change. anything new is received with almost equal parts love/hate hopefully comparing games will give way unbiased opinions. (kind of why mmorpg.com "reviews" are going to become less relevant).
"comfort food" gaming has made the actual experience of a game secondary to the XP of a game. I think there are a different generations mixing (or failing to mix) within communities. it's evident that after WoW, no 1 game will satisfy everyone. those who havnt gotten tired of the repetitive aspects of the traditional mmo wouldn't have attempted to playa game with steeper learning curves and or higher difficulty games. or if they have, they havnt enjoyed it. I can imagine the growth in choice and genre will steer gaming down the same road as the music industry. purely personal choice.
We live in a world where free time is divided into short, little increments. 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there, maybe an hour if we're lucky. Asking people to sit in queues, organize raids, grind away on mobs just isn't feasible anymore.
Sorry what is different to how busy people are now days compared to 14 years ago? People still have jobs, kids and responsibilities how you came to the conclusion that life has suddenly become so busy I don't know. The only thing that has changed in gaming is the people wanting "Instant gratification", MMO's used to be niche games and the people who played them all understood that the game was for the long haul.
issue here is that mmo has been stale not for 10 years but 15.
those of us that played everquest in 1999 met the same sort of game in wow just better done.
Problem is after 15 years even if there is improvement on that system it is still the same and gets boring .
I play from time to time wildstar which is actually an imporvement of the system but it is the SAME system.
I think SoE has had most of the innovation of the genre not just because of everquest but SWG.
In SWG there was certainly an idea to move with(i admit they did take some from UO).You actually live in a virtual world that felt like it was living and breathing.Where not everyday involves bring out your blaster and tapping a button to go to some raid or dungeon.
It felt alive.Sadly poor marketing skills of soe,coming out very buggy ,high demand on the pc specs,coming out before mmo went mainstream showed poor figures but even then it sold 1.5m copies and had almost 500k subs at its peak which was a success.but SoE/LA read it all wrong.
Though not a new idea since dayz and rust already exist, but a proper surivival mmo also coming from SoE holds the future.
I don't feel that we are all going to wake up one morning and find there are no new MMORPGs. So I do agree they aren't "dying" as it were.
However I'm not sure I would view the current MMO market's transmogrification into something different as a completely positive step. Most of what is happening is that games and game companies are being forced by the very volatile uncertainty of the gaming market to make adaptations for survival. Now in the real world when organisms are faced with the choice to adapt or die, I seriously doubt many of them are sitting around cheering because they feel the idea of forced change vs total extinction is a good thing.
Also I feel the author of the article needs to delve much deeper into the funding changes we've seen in the recent MMORPG industry. While Star Citizen is certainly an anomaly among the rise of crowd funded MMOs it's far from the only success story.
Also the MMORPG gaming market does not exist in a vacuum. Changes outside this particular gaming genre are having an impact on MMOs as well and those changes need to be included in the discussion.
The innovation argument is stale... and kind of dumb. MMORPG is a genre it is repeatable and different stories and worlds and better done is all that is required. Just like fighting games (is the newest Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat revolutionarily different than the ones that came before it?) or FPS games (Isn't Halo pretty much just Doom with better graphics and some cooler effects?). Why do we expect that the MMORPG should jump evolutionary mountains?
We live in a world where free time is divided into short, little increments. 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there, maybe an hour if we're lucky. Asking people to sit in queues, organize raids, grind away on mobs just isn't feasible anymore.
Sorry what is different to how busy people are now days compared to 14 years ago? People still have jobs, kids and responsibilities how you came to the conclusion that life has suddenly become so busy I don't know. The only thing that has changed in gaming is the people wanting "Instant gratification", MMO's used to be niche games and the people who played them all understood that the game was for the long haul.
People spend more time working now compared to 14 years ago.
The internet has created alternative avenues for the type of social interaction that existed in MMORPGs, but nowhere else.
The internet has created alternative avenues for social interaction that simply didn't exist prior to 2006 or so.
The internet has created alternative avenues for entertainment that would have been impossible 14 years ago.
Cell phones are ubiquitous now, bringing the alternative methods of socialization where ever the person is.
It is a combination of things, but the "ADD Gamer" is not a myth. They may not have ADD, but their attention is certainly divided between more things than it was 14 years ago. Watching a movie involved going out and renting it. Now it involves bringing up Netflix or hitting the "On Demand" button on the remote. Instead of only being able to talk to people on AOL or in your MMORPG, people just surf to Facebook, or scroll through a Twitter feed on their phones. Even books are easier to carry around with the Nook or Amazon e-Readers. And people are spending more time working than they did 14 years ago, though that might not be the biggest factor. The people and the environment is not the same compared to 14 years ago.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
It seems more the psychology behind the games is what is changing. They are changing to appease the generation Y'ers. The generalizations of that generation is what games are portraying. Less face to face communication. More brief text based chatIis needed. Grouping is not choosen but assigned so none feel left out. Being part of something to achieve is minimized and the ability to jump groups at will is not penalized. Rewards for participation. Generalized rewards for winning. No penalties for losing.
Developers are not stupid. They know the same research job trainers, teachers, and psychologist know. Games reflect this movement.
if you consider playing with constant gold spam and hackable clients an MMO, then yea... but in case you actually played an mmo before these shitty practices evolved, then no, mmos are dead. After this long and game studios cant make games that detect and control hacks or gold spam, I think its safe to say they are just out for the quick buck and nothing else.
In my opinion, the true MMO era is long gone & we can thank WoW for killing it. MMOs used to be a niche market that didn't have to appeal to every player. When that was the case, what they did provide was challenge, exploration, risk & reward, socialization, etc.
Today's generation of MMOs should use the word "multiplayer" very loosely, as the vast majority of their content is designed for a single player. Just yesterday, Zenimax changed their veteran content, which is over 60% of their content to make it "easy" for a single player to complete. Why did they have to do this? Because that is the expectation of today's MMO gamer...to be able to solo the vast majority of content.
Today's MMO gamer expects reward without risk, penalty, or consequence. They expect to find a sense of exploration, yet with no opportunity to miss something. They expect to sell their wares while they're offline. They expect a marker on the map to show them where to pick up their quests, another to show them where to achieve the quest objectives, and yet another to show them where to hand in their quests. They expect to reach a new level every couple of hours and expect to have their hands held along the way.
You may say the genre is not dead, but I say it is long gone. The MMO genre that I loved is no more, and today's MMO gamer, introduced to the genre by WoW, will not tolerate a game that forces you to earn your rewards, achievements & loot. Today's MMOs are nothing more than singleplayer games with overlaid Guild, chat & auction systems, and other players interfering in our work space.
In my opinion, the true MMO era is long gone & we can thank WoW for killing it. MMOs used to be a niche market that didn't have to appeal to every player. When that was the case, what they did provide was challenge, exploration, risk & reward, socialization, etc.
Today's generation of MMOs should use the word "multiplayer" very loosely, as the vast majority of their content is designed for a single player. Just yesterday, Zenimax changed their veteran content, which is over 60% of their content to make it "easy" for a single player to complete. Why did they have to do this? Because that is the expectation of today's MMO gamer...to be able to solo the vast majority of content.
Today's MMO gamer expects reward without risk, penalty, or consequence. They expect to find a sense of exploration, yet with no opportunity to miss something. They expect to sell their wares while they're offline. They expect a marker on the map to show them where to pick up their quests, another to show them where to achieve the quest objectives, and yet another to show them where to hand in their quests. They expect to reach a new level every couple of hours and expect to have their hands held along the way.
You may say the genre is not dead, but I say it is long gone. The MMO genre that I loved is no more, and today's MMO gamer, introduced to the genre by WoW, will not tolerate a game that forces you to earn your rewards, achievements & loot. Today's MMOs are nothing more than singleplayer games with overlaid Guild, chat & auction systems, and other players interfering in our work space.
i still think mmo place lies in creating basically a virtual reality.no we do not need to have 3D glasses for that.
to breath new life into the genre you want to log in and exist in a breathing living world where unlike EQ or WoW you are forced to live a certain path and then log off in a pointless place.
I still think the freedom and diversity in SWG was the answer.It came way too soon which was SWG failure but it had the right idea.
I log into this amazing futuristic fantasy world and decide i want to build houses for a living and then i want to make a mall in a player build city next to a major spaceport and then go to the local cantina and watch strange looking girls dance and play music .
Then next month i decide to give my shop away and adventure .I drop all my skills and make a creature handler and tame all those wild beast i was scared of before and use them to fight an evil empire.Then i go look for a doctor in town to help mend my wounds and listen to music to relax and interact, before retiring to my new house in a player run city in the middle of this dangerous desert.While there i can put up a few new pictures and activate my sell drone to market my lovely new trophies .
Oh before i log off i really should go to the player town centre and check who is running for local mayor and see what ideas he has for the place and cast my vote.Did i remember to mend my weapon ? better give the local weaponsmith a call.
Its interaction,its living a life of freedom ,it is a life but in a much more amazing place,its feels alive.Its a virtual life!
SWG failed yes but for other reasons i stated before .
Devs should understand the plastic and well overdone world of everquest style of play made famous by WoW is not the future.
I don't have to re role 1000 toons with no attachment to do this .When SWG launched with one character slot per server i was very annoyed but now i get it.
Originally posted by Horusra It seems more the psychology behind the games is what is changing. They are changing to appease the generation Y'ers. The generalizations of that generation is what games are portraying. Less face to face communication. More brief text based chatIis needed. Grouping is not choosen but assigned so none feel left out. Being part of something to achieve is minimized and the ability to jump groups at will is not penalized. Rewards for participation. Generalized rewards for winning. No penalties for losing.
Developers are not stupid. They know the same research job trainers, teachers, and psychologist know. Games reflect this movement.
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head here with this observation. They are catering to the playing habits of a newer generation, who consume their entertainment in a much different fashion than their predecessors.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Originally posted by Horusra It seems more the psychology behind the games is what is changing. They are changing to appease the generation Y'ers. The generalizations of that generation is what games are portraying. Less face to face communication. More brief text based chatIis needed. Grouping is not choosen but assigned so none feel left out. Being part of something to achieve is minimized and the ability to jump groups at will is not penalized. Rewards for participation. Generalized rewards for winning. No penalties for losing.
Developers are not stupid. They know the same research job trainers, teachers, and psychologist know. Games reflect this movement.
Fascinating, accurate, and incredibly relevant post. Thank you for that.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
The MMO market is becoming saturated now with every concievable variation of the current MMO technology being available to players. Future titles though - if they can manage to find a way to jump forward and create more immersive and varied worlds - remain almost dangerous in their potential to take over the gaming community and grow it to unprecedented levels.
Its just a really hard task from a software standpoint..MMOs are incredibly large and complicated projects that we haven't been able to improve in the last 10 years or so..
Comments
MMOs used to be games you stuck with. Now huge numbers of players shift around from game to game. I feel like the golden era of MMO has passed. When we had games with lasting appeal, games that built up community, games that offered true variety.
Now it feels like speed dating.
I think the more correct statement is MMORPG's are dead... MMOs are alive and kicking. FPS and MOBAs are taking over and RPG's are slipping away.
Help support an artist and gamer who has lost his tools to create and play: http://www.gofundme.com/u63nzcgk
Magnificent article... well done, and I believe it's the absolute truth. Something you might include in another article is the time it takes to develop a game, that the community more often than not desires to see games before they're ready for release and that companies are compelled to release games somewhat earlier. This may be as a result of their benefactor's desire to gauge continuing interest, or it may be true community desire to just have SOMETHING at their fingertips.
MechWarrior Online, for example, while not an MMO in the most traditional sense, remains in development, released LONG before even two of the four design pillars of the game were completed, and yet the development that continues, the hope you hear from the developers about what they would like to see in the future, and more, can be intoxicating. Yet, they were all but forced to release the game early, with nothing more than a combat engine and powerful plans to continue development.
So, to give relevance, here, development, pre-readiness releases due to pressure, and more is what the development cycle of many games have grown into, leaving the days of a solid release in the past. That doesn't mean MMORPGs are, by any stretch of the imagination, dying, nor that developers have to release early for money, it is simply an evolution of development.
Every mmo out right now has players who have been there since launch.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
So, is this article about mmo's in general or WoW?
You brought it up 15 times..
I think all three of those things are worth mentioning as things that are evolving the genre.
I do think MMO's are evolving but I have to question the few the article mentions. WoW was mentioned over and over because it's the biggest and has certainly had a big impact, but it's not the only one of it's time that did things a certain way and none of the rest were mentioned. And the paragraph from Wildstar was out of left field. It almost sounds like an advertisement for Wildstar, especially considering the lack of any other specific examples of other games following that paragraph. Very oddly written. If you're trying to say Wildstar is evolving the genre, I'll have to disagree. It actually does a lot of old things which is why so many people like it. Beyond that, the combat is not new, either. GW2 and to an extent The Secret World both did similar things years ago.
A game that does something to evolve the genre is a game that does something new and unique and succeeds with that idea. Not a game that merely tweaks things that have come before. Most games of the past several years have merely tweaked. But there are things that have evolved the genre and developers that have done interesting things in their games to fix things they thought were broken or needed to be improved upon. In terms of leveling content, games like The Secret World, GW2, and ESO all succeeded in doing something meaningfully different. Neverwinter's Foundry system is a new way to add content that we haven't really seen before. Games like TERA have done something completely different with the action combat idea that hasn't been copied in the same way in any other game quite yet. Vindictus did a slightly different version of action combat years ago with lots of combos and no trinity that we're seeing in games like Blade and Soul and Black Desert now. Games like The Secret World and FFXIV are challenging the idea of classes and progression in different ways that other new games are editing to their needs.
The problem for me is that games aren't always excelling with the things that should be most important like combat, class design, and graphics and they're changing things that don't need to be changed like trinity roles, or they're spending wads of cash on things that won't sustain a healthy game like leveling content (while the games mentioned above have awesome leveling, it's not the focus of a game long term), or they're not sticking to their vision for a game and making too many big changes late in development (or in westernization for some) in order to please a certain audience or attempt to make a more widely appealing game and that always fails. So a lot of games come up short for me and many others.
it's a tough market out there. gamers are generally reluctant to change. anything new is received with almost equal parts love/hate hopefully comparing games will give way unbiased opinions. (kind of why mmorpg.com "reviews" are going to become less relevant).
"comfort food" gaming has made the actual experience of a game secondary to the XP of a game. I think there are a different generations mixing (or failing to mix) within communities. it's evident that after WoW, no 1 game will satisfy everyone. those who havnt gotten tired of the repetitive aspects of the traditional mmo wouldn't have attempted to playa game with steeper learning curves and or higher difficulty games. or if they have, they havnt enjoyed it.
I can imagine the growth in choice and genre will steer gaming down the same road as the music industry. purely personal choice.
Sorry what is different to how busy people are now days compared to 14 years ago? People still have jobs, kids and responsibilities how you came to the conclusion that life has suddenly become so busy I don't know. The only thing that has changed in gaming is the people wanting "Instant gratification", MMO's used to be niche games and the people who played them all understood that the game was for the long haul.
issue here is that mmo has been stale not for 10 years but 15.
those of us that played everquest in 1999 met the same sort of game in wow just better done.
Problem is after 15 years even if there is improvement on that system it is still the same and gets boring .
I play from time to time wildstar which is actually an imporvement of the system but it is the SAME system.
I think SoE has had most of the innovation of the genre not just because of everquest but SWG.
In SWG there was certainly an idea to move with(i admit they did take some from UO).You actually live in a virtual world that felt like it was living and breathing.Where not everyday involves bring out your blaster and tapping a button to go to some raid or dungeon.
It felt alive.Sadly poor marketing skills of soe,coming out very buggy ,high demand on the pc specs,coming out before mmo went mainstream showed poor figures but even then it sold 1.5m copies and had almost 500k subs at its peak which was a success.but SoE/LA read it all wrong.
Though not a new idea since dayz and rust already exist, but a proper surivival mmo also coming from SoE holds the future.
New idea will bring back the players.
I don't feel that we are all going to wake up one morning and find there are no new MMORPGs. So I do agree they aren't "dying" as it were.
However I'm not sure I would view the current MMO market's transmogrification into something different as a completely positive step. Most of what is happening is that games and game companies are being forced by the very volatile uncertainty of the gaming market to make adaptations for survival. Now in the real world when organisms are faced with the choice to adapt or die, I seriously doubt many of them are sitting around cheering because they feel the idea of forced change vs total extinction is a good thing.
Also I feel the author of the article needs to delve much deeper into the funding changes we've seen in the recent MMORPG industry. While Star Citizen is certainly an anomaly among the rise of crowd funded MMOs it's far from the only success story.
Also the MMORPG gaming market does not exist in a vacuum. Changes outside this particular gaming genre are having an impact on MMOs as well and those changes need to be included in the discussion.
Help support an artist and gamer who has lost his tools to create and play: http://www.gofundme.com/u63nzcgk
People spend more time working now compared to 14 years ago.
The internet has created alternative avenues for the type of social interaction that existed in MMORPGs, but nowhere else.
The internet has created alternative avenues for social interaction that simply didn't exist prior to 2006 or so.
The internet has created alternative avenues for entertainment that would have been impossible 14 years ago.
Cell phones are ubiquitous now, bringing the alternative methods of socialization where ever the person is.
It is a combination of things, but the "ADD Gamer" is not a myth. They may not have ADD, but their attention is certainly divided between more things than it was 14 years ago. Watching a movie involved going out and renting it. Now it involves bringing up Netflix or hitting the "On Demand" button on the remote. Instead of only being able to talk to people on AOL or in your MMORPG, people just surf to Facebook, or scroll through a Twitter feed on their phones. Even books are easier to carry around with the Nook or Amazon e-Readers. And people are spending more time working than they did 14 years ago, though that might not be the biggest factor. The people and the environment is not the same compared to 14 years ago.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Ea is like a poo fingered midas ~ShakyMo
Developers are not stupid. They know the same research job trainers, teachers, and psychologist know. Games reflect this movement.
In my opinion, the true MMO era is long gone & we can thank WoW for killing it. MMOs used to be a niche market that didn't have to appeal to every player. When that was the case, what they did provide was challenge, exploration, risk & reward, socialization, etc.
Today's generation of MMOs should use the word "multiplayer" very loosely, as the vast majority of their content is designed for a single player. Just yesterday, Zenimax changed their veteran content, which is over 60% of their content to make it "easy" for a single player to complete. Why did they have to do this? Because that is the expectation of today's MMO gamer...to be able to solo the vast majority of content.
Today's MMO gamer expects reward without risk, penalty, or consequence. They expect to find a sense of exploration, yet with no opportunity to miss something. They expect to sell their wares while they're offline. They expect a marker on the map to show them where to pick up their quests, another to show them where to achieve the quest objectives, and yet another to show them where to hand in their quests. They expect to reach a new level every couple of hours and expect to have their hands held along the way.
You may say the genre is not dead, but I say it is long gone. The MMO genre that I loved is no more, and today's MMO gamer, introduced to the genre by WoW, will not tolerate a game that forces you to earn your rewards, achievements & loot. Today's MMOs are nothing more than singleplayer games with overlaid Guild, chat & auction systems, and other players interfering in our work space.
Well said.
Unfortunately, this is the sad truth.
+1.
i still think mmo place lies in creating basically a virtual reality.no we do not need to have 3D glasses for that.
to breath new life into the genre you want to log in and exist in a breathing living world where unlike EQ or WoW you are forced to live a certain path and then log off in a pointless place.
I still think the freedom and diversity in SWG was the answer.It came way too soon which was SWG failure but it had the right idea.
I log into this amazing futuristic fantasy world and decide i want to build houses for a living and then i want to make a mall in a player build city next to a major spaceport and then go to the local cantina and watch strange looking girls dance and play music .
Then next month i decide to give my shop away and adventure .I drop all my skills and make a creature handler and tame all those wild beast i was scared of before and use them to fight an evil empire.Then i go look for a doctor in town to help mend my wounds and listen to music to relax and interact, before retiring to my new house in a player run city in the middle of this dangerous desert.While there i can put up a few new pictures and activate my sell drone to market my lovely new trophies .
Oh before i log off i really should go to the player town centre and check who is running for local mayor and see what ideas he has for the place and cast my vote.Did i remember to mend my weapon ? better give the local weaponsmith a call.
Its interaction,its living a life of freedom ,it is a life but in a much more amazing place,its feels alive.Its a virtual life!
SWG failed yes but for other reasons i stated before .
Devs should understand the plastic and well overdone world of everquest style of play made famous by WoW is not the future.
I don't have to re role 1000 toons with no attachment to do this .When SWG launched with one character slot per server i was very annoyed but now i get it.
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head here with this observation. They are catering to the playing habits of a newer generation, who consume their entertainment in a much different fashion than their predecessors.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Fascinating, accurate, and incredibly relevant post. Thank you for that.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
The MMO market is becoming saturated now with every concievable variation of the current MMO technology being available to players. Future titles though - if they can manage to find a way to jump forward and create more immersive and varied worlds - remain almost dangerous in their potential to take over the gaming community and grow it to unprecedented levels.
Its just a really hard task from a software standpoint..MMOs are incredibly large and complicated projects that we haven't been able to improve in the last 10 years or so..