Is it a case of players with lives and families or is it (as I have always believed) a case of the unguilded DPSers tears to Blizz cus they couldn't get groups without change or easymode?
Why do I think it was bad? Because it's just like F2P MMO's, you can act the asshat and be a clown if it suits you, as there is zero comeback. After all not never likely to see the same players again.
So the only pro's were to feed the anti-social. Another reason why MMO's are fast becoming "This could be a great game, if it wasn't for the other players!!!".
No trials. No tricks. No traps. No EU-RP server. NO THANKS!
Where WoW won over every other MMO of the time was in it's ease of ability to play the game solo. To the best of my knowledge, very few, if any, MMORPG of the time allowed for solo play. It was definitely a breath of fresh air over games like FFXI and EQ where the majority sat around for sometimes hours on end looking for a group before being be able to play the game. And playing the game at the time meant finding a camp spot where the group would sit for hours on end pulling mobs for XP and hoping for a "ding."
The dungeon finder also advanced group play in this regard. Now I understand some would argue that it ruined community but that is arguable. No matter how you look at it having the ability to play the game soon after logging on will always beat having to wait around and spamming LFG chat for long periods of time trying to find a group before being able to play.
Even more questionable is thinking that today's MMO player is even interested in establishing or building community. As dungeons have evolved, it has become apparently clear that this generation's MMORPG player is more concerned and interested with amassing loot and completing content than making friends or establishing community. Sadly, community is something that is cherished by the older MMORPG generation who played for community and enjoyed its benefits. This generations MMORPG player is more inclined to play with personal RL friends, and not so much the odd player they meet online. Building online acquaintances was a welcomed novelty back in the day. Today, not so much.
I'm going to have to disagree with anyone saying that Final Fantasy XIV: ARR is healthy. There are two simple things that are keeping it from bleeding out entirely due to copy pasting the mistakes of World of Warcraft:
1) They are pumping out fast food content as fast as humanly possible. The "dungeons" they are releasing are not dungeons. They are over-hyped gauntlets that are a genuine waste of their music and art assets. I can remember Black Rock Depths and other vanilla dungeons many years later. I find myself blocking out the entire experience of running these dungeons every time I have to run one I've done before, because its just pain having to do them hundreds of times.
2) They're planning the releases on different consoles to offset the usual mass exodus. Just as they see PC users jumping ship, they release on PS4. There will be an Xbox One release of the game. I assure you of it. As soon as PS4 users begin their mass exodus (which they hope is later than PC users), they will release on the next console.
3) Because they were willing to revamp the game, it comes with the assumption that if problems occur they will work really diligently to fix it, even if it means overturning their previous direction for the game. That sounds great and all, but the development cycle of these games makes that impossible to do on a realistic time table for gamers. If the game made a fatal mistake and they don't notice it, the game will most likely crash before they can fix it.
It's success is a result of marketing gimmicks alone. You will find not a single person who has played that game who can give you one original idea they have implemented that hasn't been done better someplace else other than the art style.
Where WoW won over every other MMO at the time was in it's ease of ability to play the game solo. To the best of my knowledge, very few, if any, MMORPG of the time allowed for solo play. It was definitely a breath of fresh air over games like FFXI and EQ where the majority sat around for sometimes hours on end looking for a group before being be able to play the game. The dungeon finder also advanced group play in this regard. Now I understand some would argue that it ruined community but that is arguable. No matter how you look at it having the ability to play the game soon after logging on will always beat having to wait around for long periods of time trying to find a group before being able to play.
Even more questionable is thinking that today's MMO player is even interested in establishing or building community. As dungeons have evolved, it has become very clear that this generation's MMORPG player is more concerned and interested with amassing loot and completing content than making friends or establishing community. Sadly, community is something that is cherished by the older MMORPG generation who played for community and enjoyed its benefits. This generations MMORPG player is more inclined to play with personal RL friends, and not so much the odd player they meet online. Building online acquaintances was a welcomed novelty back in the day. Today, not so much.
MMOs today are played mainly by FPS and action gamers. Trying to attract wider audience, these games lost most of their original player base and it was replaced with a new one. Even Blizzard have written in forums something like 'we have to figure out what our new customer base want'. This was soon after they had implemented new quests 1-60.
So it's not about generation of gamers, but type of players. MMOs are not made for the same group of people than before. The new player base want accessibility and convinience. They want to get everything as soon as possible, and see everything the game has to offer. And that's what they will get.
The original player base is still there, not playing anything and waiting a game coming for them. It's been a long wait, let me tell you..
Lets go Way back. MMOs were still new and not completely refined. We had UO and EQ1 but they were rough drafts in a time where Dialup was the best we could use.
Around 2003 Blizzard developed World of Warcraft in with competition of Everquest 2 by Sony to be the next generation MMO. Everquest 2 lost with it's poor graphics engine and just plain ugly world and zoning.
This left us with only World of Warcraft, with perfect timing of EVERYTHING.
- Faster internet with DSL and Cable modem.
- Non instanced game world.
- Community based tools and quest hubs.
- Slow leveling, allowing everyone to stay that level for longer periods to make friends with a mutual goal.
- Cartoon, but stable for lower end computers.
- Quick fixes to bugs.
- Non-Zoned Areas to play, with a theme for each one along with music to set the mood.
- 6 starting areas for freedom and replay.
- PvP that worked.
- Low competition
- No costly expansion's for years, adding they were not needed for years
The list could go on and on. EverQuest 2 fans could argue forever but WoW was it, hands down. The money was rolling in. Marketing was not structured enough to interfere yet, not that it had to !......Millions of people were rolling in, kids in school had a major fade. " if you don't play WoW your behind ".
OK, now that I set the stage, I'll go into the downhill slide :
Around the EXACT SAME TIME maybe 2008 or so ( don't hold me to that ) three things happened.
1) Developers began mass producing mmos to hop on the action
2) Marketing took over.
3) World of Warcraft developed the dungeon finder. The beginning of Lobby game. This idea was met with mixed reactions. I could safely say 50/50. This killed the community. You no longer needed that guild, or a friends list THIS WAS THE REAL BOTTOM LINE OF THE END OF DEEP FRIENDSHIP.
Deep friendship is what makes you log in day after day for months or years. It's why people don't stop playing after they learn all them cool abilities and have seen all the world has to offer.
Marketing departments began studying Blizzards World of Warcraft. They took it upon themselves to copy the Dungeon Finder not knowing it was a downfall, thinking Bilzzard was still making millions. They in braced this extremely new feature without the understanding that it will destroy long term gameplay that only World of Warcraft could overcome with its monopoly............This is when the 30 day non-social mmo came to life.
Other factors that killed the mmo experience were Dynamic events, personal story lines and instanced zones. This turned mmos into just games.
Not many players play games longer than 30 days, but mmos they will !
been saying this ish for years! WoW pushed the genre mainstream because of its success.Now the market is flooded with copy cat mainstream garbage.happens in every industry,everyone wants a piece of the pie now.
Where WoW won over every other MMO at the time was in it's ease of ability to play the game solo. To the best of my knowledge, very few, if any, MMORPG of the time allowed for solo play. It was definitely a breath of fresh air over games like FFXI and EQ where the majority sat around for sometimes hours on end looking for a group before being be able to play the game. The dungeon finder also advanced group play in this regard. Now I understand some would argue that it ruined community but that is arguable. No matter how you look at it having the ability to play the game soon after logging on will always beat having to wait around for long periods of time trying to find a group before being able to play.
Even more questionable is thinking that today's MMO player is even interested in establishing or building community. As dungeons have evolved, it has become very clear that this generation's MMORPG player is more concerned and interested with amassing loot and completing content than making friends or establishing community. Sadly, community is something that is cherished by the older MMORPG generation who played for community and enjoyed its benefits. This generations MMORPG player is more inclined to play with personal RL friends, and not so much the odd player they meet online. Building online acquaintances was a welcomed novelty back in the day. Today, not so much.
MMOs today are played mainly by FPS and action gamers. Trying to attract wider audience, these games lost most of their original player base and it was replaced with a new one. Even Blizzard have written in forums something like 'we have to figure out what our new customer base want'. This was soon after they had implemented new quests 1-60.
So it's not about generation of gamers, but type of players. MMOs are not made for the same group of people than before. The new player base want accessibility and convinience. They want to get everything as soon as possible, and see everything the game has to offer. And that's what they will get.
The original player base is still there, not playing anything and waiting a game coming for them. It's been a long wait, let me tell you..
Had to underline this part.
WRONG!
It wasn't that they made a new leveling experience, but that...
A) The leveling experience was so unbalanced that people found themselves outleveling the zones before they could even finish the quest chains. That was without xp boosting legacy items or rested experience.
They screwed up the story entirely. They tried to reenvision the horde as a bunch of raving lunatics led by an equally lunatic madman. Instead of looking at where the horde and alliance were post Lich King and working with that, they tried to reinvent the horde into the "old horde" of Warcraft II and some of Warcraft III. The entire affair reeked of terrible writing and backtracking that no one asked for or wanted.
This is what I mean about "marketing" being so devastating to the genre. Its infected the design specifications of MMORPGs.
The amount of things WoW "copied" from EQ pales in comparison to the amount of things it IMPROVED from that basic design. WoW succeeded because it was a massive improvement over every other game in the genre. So much so that it opened the genre up for the casual player, for better or worse.
Saying WoW copied from EQ or was the beneficiary of fortuitous timing or good marketing is simply lazy thinking by people who don't want to give credit where it's due.
No, those things in your last sentence are pretty easy to demonstrate while saying "WoW was just a massive improvement on everything else." is just an opinion which can't possibly be proven one way or the other (and please don't try to use a popularity=quality fallacy argument)
Yeah because it is written in stone that if something is popular it can not be of quality. Thanks for this nugget of wisdom.
Yeah because it is written in stone that if something is popular it can not be of quality. Thanks for this nugget of wisdom.
Except I never said that anywhere. I said that popularity doesn't prove quality.
Are you saying WoW wasn't the best game on the market at the time in terms of quality? If that's your contention, give reasons why you believe this.
Btw, when your game is the sole reason an entire genre goes from unpopular to mainstream over the course of a few years, chances are pretty high that there is some quality involved in what you are doing. I don't give a good shit what you think popularity implies, the numbers back up what I'm saying.
Once again, implying WoW only got to where it is by marketing and dumb luck is lazy thinking by lazy people. I stand by that statement.
Except I never said that anywhere. I said that popularity doesn't prove quality.
And it does not disprove quality. Plus, quality is pretty subjective anyway. Don't you think if something is popular, a lot of people think of it as high quality?
You have to define why it is popular. Fast food is popular because it is cheap. Sports because of the action/betting/controversy of team competition. Etc...
Once I discovered this really cool thing called "outside" and these things called "wife" and "children" I've found that dungeon finders are quite helpful now that I don't play games 9 hours per day.
The only thing WoW killed was the necessity to spend 40 hours a week playing a freaking video game. Good riddance.
Funny you should say that " Time to play ".
I'm playing Vanilla World of Warcraft now. It's long and hard. Dungeon crawling takes sometimes hours.
I play 45 min at a time.....Often I don't play at all for a week or more. I only do a dungeon IF I HAVE TIME.
Life can easily come first !
Now here's the best part, I can still make memories. This only comes with playing with others. I have a long drive to work everyday, I can fill that drive with good times of playing my mmo with friends
I have to leave here in about 20 min, I'm going to Kung Fu. I have to be there I'm an instructor, I like being their. I don't neglect nothing !
I agree OP I also dont have a ton of time but I too do not need a LFD tool because its not needed never will be needed. If players play MMO properly and make friends and create a network of friends they will almost never need to find a random person. The problem is the people who feel its needed come up with 50 million excuses, however the fact still remains. They dont want to play an MMO and they would be better off in a single player game.
Anyone who has a family to take care of and has wife and kids (those are the majority of gamers now days) would never claim that LFD is not needed. Why? because at this point in your life time is money.
How can anyone here with a straight face say i am a family man and yet out of two hours that he gets to play the game he is willing to spend atleast an hour just spamming LFG?
Only those people would understand for whom time is a luxury..and you are just pretending to be one.
The problem isn't cross-server party building tools and I agree with you on that. People who played as damage dealers were having trouble getting groups and it was the only solution for dealing with the role disparity that seemed to work. The problem is that MMORPG devs failed to pick up on the toxic mixture created by mixing that with heavy vertical progression.
When everything is reduced to a rat race for the latest gear before the next patch invalidates it, people try to get stuff as fast as possible. The only thing that kept people socializing with one another was that such tools were not available. The second they added that feature, the gaming landscape changed and the rest of the MMORPG structure has yet to accommodate for it.
It's one of the reasons I'm just about to explode like a land mine after I've played FFXIV for a while.
If you go by your own post, it's marketing departments that have "killed everything" and not World of Warcraft. That would actually be a conclusion I can somewhat get behind. Although with less drama.
Marketing and marketing speeches have started to sicken me lately. They just analyse trends blindly and draw conclusions based on that, instead of making the difference with creativity. To make matters worse, those conclusions often seem to be forced into the development process by the big publishers.
Marketeers shouldn't be developing games, they should only be selling them.
But aside from that. We're starting to see quite a few new things. MMO's lag behind because they're such big, complex and costly projects. But we'll start to see new things for them too, especially if the market becomes more global and games pass over language borders more easily.
So no, not everything is killed.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Are you saying WoW wasn't the best game on the market at the time in terms of quality? If that's your contention, give reasons why you believe this.
Btw, when your game is the sole reason an entire genre goes from unpopular to mainstream over the course of a few years, chances are pretty high that there is some quality involved in what you are doing. I don't give a good shit what you think popularity implies, the numbers back up what I'm saying.
Once again, implying WoW only got to where it is by marketing and dumb luck is lazy thinking by lazy people. I stand by that statement.
I'm saying there are very few ways you can objectively measure MMO quality.
I do not think WoW is the most fun or highest quality MMO on the market (obviously since I stopped playing it long ago ) but my reasons for this are subjective just as yours are for thinking it is the highest quality game. Unless you can provide some measurable objective facts that demonstrate how WoW is higher quality than other games you are just giving your opinion.
Yeah because it is written in stone that if something is popular it can not be of quality. Thanks for this nugget of wisdom.
Except I never said that anywhere. I said that popularity doesn't prove quality.
Again you are talking in absolutes which is the worse thing you can do while making your argument.
And if WOW has not set standards for polish and quality then i don't know what MMO has.
Exactly. WOW is the reason the word 'polish' ever surfaced when describing MMOs. It provided a reasonably complete, stable and feature rich game at release.
"...saying "WoW was just a massive improvement on everything else." is just an opinion which can't possibly be proven one way or the other " -iridescence
Actually, that isn't opinion. WOW genuinely did improve on almost every aspect of gameplay. often introducing features that we now expect in an MMO. An example would be the comparison panel that shows your respective equipped item when hovering over an item on a vendor.
That's not opinion. It's fact, and it was a core design goal when creating the game.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Exactly. WOW is the reason the word 'polish' ever surfaced when describing MMOs. It provided a reasonably complete, stable and feature rich game at release.
"...saying "WoW was just a massive improvement on everything else." is just an opinion which can't possibly be proven one way or the other " -iridescence
Actually, that isn't opinion. WOW genuinely did improve on almost every aspect of gameplay. often introducing features that we now expect in an MMO. An example would be the comparison panel that shows your respective equipped item when hovering over an item on a vendor.
That's not opinion. It's fact, and it was a core design goal when creating the game.
Yes, I agree with that. It is quite a bit less extreme than what the other person I was replying to was saying and you are backing it up with something tangible unlike them.
But DF is literally "LFG" automated. It's literally the same thing. LFG tools were always in MMO's, even pre-WoW mmo's. You just had to manually send the invite to the people on the list. Now, a system does it for you. I don't see any difference at all and how that "killed" mmo's. It really seems like a stretch.
Honestly MMO players have become lazy, almost everything that a Modern day mmo has is really what we been screaming about for many years - and now that its here, we are complaining its not like how it used to be. What do you want? If EQ is so awesome, its still there to play. If your like me and have moved on, then you will find the light in the newer MMO's. I currently play FF:ARR, im having a blast. Is it perfect? No. Does it have flaws? Many. Am I having fun? Yes. It's basically what I expected it to be: a FF single player game with a multiplayer mode tacked on. People complain about community, well, when was the last time you strike up a random convo with a person? sent them a Tell about how cool there armor looks are if they wanted to join a group to do X content? I have found the community and the bonding is still there you just have to be more outgoing to find it, its not gonna fall in your lap anymore like the ol' days.
I enjoy undercutting people in the market place - it's the only PvP a crafter gets.
I've pretty much have given up on MMO's all together and even went as far to go back to console gaming to fix my gaming needs! Wow was a great run for me., but every MMO afterwards is nothing but a clone! I tried several including the Final Fantasy: A Relm Rehashed! After the Sqenix game Murdered Soul Suspect I have officially quit purchasing all future games and all MMO's for them and all MMO's!
Below is where we can disscuss and come up with new ideas for Sandparks!
But DF is literally "LFG" automated. It's literally the same thing. LFG tools were always in MMO's, even pre-WoW mmo's. You just had to manually send the invite to the people on the list. Now, a system does it for you. I don't see any difference at all and how that "killed" mmo's. It really seems like a stretch.
Actually we can't blame DF-tool directly, it's more like how the game design changed because of the DF-tool.
In order to make every class combination viable for 5-man dungeon run, Blizzard had to nerf dungeons drastically from what they were before. They homogenized classes, so there was a better chance for each random group to have some valuable group abilities. They gave you a 'goody pack' after the dungeon run to ensure everyone get loot in the end. And most importantly, they allowed you to join dungeons from anywhere in Azeroth and then come back changing the game effectively to a lobby game. Players didn't have to leave towns for playing the game, and they didn't have to do quests or kill mobs if they didn't want to. Dungeons became AoE-fests..
They took this even further and redesigned the classes once again. They gave every class some AoE skills to make them more desirable for dungeon runs. At the same time they had to balance classes around PvP as well, which had become a mess. I could go on and on, but i stop here.
The point is, they redesigned the entire game around this new tool. Should they have kept the game as it was at the beginning of WotLK and let the DF-tool only search players for a group, and nothing more, everything would be just fine. They just made too much compromises in terms of gameplay to make Random Dungeon Finder to work.
Yes, because being beholden to the schedules of others to do what you want to do is good, right? Sorry, but dungeon finders are a lifesaver. I can't tell you how many times I logged into WoW wanting to do a dungeon, but was unable to find enough people to do one... or at least do the one I wanted to do. Dungeon finder lets me play on my own terms, and experience the content when I want to. Sure, dungeons with friends are much better, but differing schedules make that very difficult sometimes.
- Extremely small zones, even split cities.
Not a big deal. Other than city zones, they're a pretty good size. Not huge, but certainly not 'extremely small'.
- 250 part solo quest line.
And your point is? There are group quests too. While some are generic and boring, plenty of others are rather entertaining, and serve to flesh out the world and the people in it.
- 45 min times dungeons.
Because everyone has the time to slog through group after group of trash mobs for four hours, right? Leave the long completion times for the raids. Furthermore, while they may be short, many do have interesting mechanics in their progression. Short, but definitely sweet.
Elders Scrolls Online makes a good second example with
- Mega servers
- No name plates.
I've never played the game, and don't intend to. However, no name plates would be awesome in PvP. Along with the stealth mechanic, it makes setting up ambushes viable. Can't tell you how many times in WoW I've tried to hide behind a rock or tree, only for my name plate to act as a giant neon 'KILL ME!' sign.
- Instanced zones
- Solo easy
- Dungeon finder
Modern my butt !!!!!!!...............This is why ArcheAge is so controversial right now. Its community based. But the Cash shop is causing panic. Lots of miss trust !.....Yet, its what players are looking for !
FFXIV isn't an MMO killer. In fact, it's arguably the most successful MMO released since WoW, and yet there are things which differ quite a bit.
MMOs are thriving. Sure there's a lot of junk out there, but there's also a lot of good stuff too. With all that's available to us, if you can't find an MMO to suit your tastes, it's not the genre's problem. It's yours.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
Yes, because being beholden to the schedules of others to do what you want to do is good, right? Sorry, but dungeon finders are a lifesaver. I can't tell you how many times I logged into WoW wanting to do a dungeon, but was unable to find enough people to do one... or at least do the one I wanted to do. Dungeon finder lets me play on my own terms, and experience the content when I want to. Sure, dungeons with friends are much better, but differing schedules make that very difficult sometimes.
- Extremely small zones, even split cities.
Not a big deal. Other than city zones, they're a pretty good size. Not huge, but certainly not 'extremely small'.
- 250 part solo quest line.
And your point is? There are group quests too. While some are generic and boring, plenty of others are rather entertaining, and serve to flesh out the world and the people in it.
- 45 min times dungeons.
Because everyone has the time to slog through group after group of trash mobs for four hours, right? Leave the long completion times for the raids. Furthermore, while they may be short, many do have interesting mechanics in their progression. Short, but definitely sweet.
Elders Scrolls Online makes a good second example with
- Mega servers
- No name plates.
I've never played the game, and don't intend to. However, no name plates would be awesome in PvP. Along with the stealth mechanic, it makes setting up ambushes viable. Can't tell you how many times in WoW I've tried to hide behind a rock or tree, only for my name plate to act as a giant neon 'KILL ME!' sign.
- Instanced zones
- Solo easy
- Dungeon finder
Modern my butt !!!!!!!...............This is why ArcheAge is so controversial right now. Its community based. But the Cash shop is causing panic. Lots of miss trust !.....Yet, its what players are looking for !
FFXIV isn't an MMO killer. In fact, it's arguably the most successful MMO released since WoW, and yet there are things which differ quite a bit.
MMOs are thriving. Sure there's a lot of junk out there, but there's also a lot of good stuff too. With all that's available to us, if you can't find an MMO to suit your tastes, it's not the genre's problem. It's yours.
Extremely small zones are a big deal, It breaks up the game and kills Imisrsion. Lots of people will agree.
250 story line keeps everyone doing there story quest, infact FF14 makes you SOLO. An don't give any crap that others can join in, cause that doesn't happen.
45 min times dungeons....So much for Dungeon crawling, and making friends, why do you even play mmos ?
No name plates, who is who? Or don't you even care, again why do you even play mmos ?
FF14 is not arguably the best mmo? Its about as popular and the last 10 mmos that people play and skip over. And thats the point of the topic. People skipping over, games dont even last 30 days
Comments
Is it a case of players with lives and families or is it (as I have always believed) a case of the unguilded DPSers tears to Blizz cus they couldn't get groups without change or easymode?
Why do I think it was bad? Because it's just like F2P MMO's, you can act the asshat and be a clown if it suits you, as there is zero comeback. After all not never likely to see the same players again.
So the only pro's were to feed the anti-social. Another reason why MMO's are fast becoming "This could be a great game, if it wasn't for the other players!!!".
No trials. No tricks. No traps. No EU-RP server. NO THANKS!
...10% Benevolence, 90% Arrogance in my case!
Where WoW won over every other MMO of the time was in it's ease of ability to play the game solo. To the best of my knowledge, very few, if any, MMORPG of the time allowed for solo play. It was definitely a breath of fresh air over games like FFXI and EQ where the majority sat around for sometimes hours on end looking for a group before being be able to play the game. And playing the game at the time meant finding a camp spot where the group would sit for hours on end pulling mobs for XP and hoping for a "ding."
The dungeon finder also advanced group play in this regard. Now I understand some would argue that it ruined community but that is arguable. No matter how you look at it having the ability to play the game soon after logging on will always beat having to wait around and spamming LFG chat for long periods of time trying to find a group before being able to play.
Even more questionable is thinking that today's MMO player is even interested in establishing or building community. As dungeons have evolved, it has become apparently clear that this generation's MMORPG player is more concerned and interested with amassing loot and completing content than making friends or establishing community. Sadly, community is something that is cherished by the older MMORPG generation who played for community and enjoyed its benefits. This generations MMORPG player is more inclined to play with personal RL friends, and not so much the odd player they meet online. Building online acquaintances was a welcomed novelty back in the day. Today, not so much.
I'm going to have to disagree with anyone saying that Final Fantasy XIV: ARR is healthy. There are two simple things that are keeping it from bleeding out entirely due to copy pasting the mistakes of World of Warcraft:
1) They are pumping out fast food content as fast as humanly possible. The "dungeons" they are releasing are not dungeons. They are over-hyped gauntlets that are a genuine waste of their music and art assets. I can remember Black Rock Depths and other vanilla dungeons many years later. I find myself blocking out the entire experience of running these dungeons every time I have to run one I've done before, because its just pain having to do them hundreds of times.
2) They're planning the releases on different consoles to offset the usual mass exodus. Just as they see PC users jumping ship, they release on PS4. There will be an Xbox One release of the game. I assure you of it. As soon as PS4 users begin their mass exodus (which they hope is later than PC users), they will release on the next console.
3) Because they were willing to revamp the game, it comes with the assumption that if problems occur they will work really diligently to fix it, even if it means overturning their previous direction for the game. That sounds great and all, but the development cycle of these games makes that impossible to do on a realistic time table for gamers. If the game made a fatal mistake and they don't notice it, the game will most likely crash before they can fix it.
It's success is a result of marketing gimmicks alone. You will find not a single person who has played that game who can give you one original idea they have implemented that hasn't been done better someplace else other than the art style.
Stopped reading here. That remark was literally too stupid for words.
MMOs today are played mainly by FPS and action gamers. Trying to attract wider audience, these games lost most of their original player base and it was replaced with a new one. Even Blizzard have written in forums something like 'we have to figure out what our new customer base want'. This was soon after they had implemented new quests 1-60.
So it's not about generation of gamers, but type of players. MMOs are not made for the same group of people than before. The new player base want accessibility and convinience. They want to get everything as soon as possible, and see everything the game has to offer. And that's what they will get.
The original player base is still there, not playing anything and waiting a game coming for them. It's been a long wait, let me tell you..
been saying this ish for years! WoW pushed the genre mainstream because of its success.Now the market is flooded with copy cat mainstream garbage.happens in every industry,everyone wants a piece of the pie now.
Had to underline this part.
WRONG!
It wasn't that they made a new leveling experience, but that...
A) The leveling experience was so unbalanced that people found themselves outleveling the zones before they could even finish the quest chains. That was without xp boosting legacy items or rested experience.
This is what I mean about "marketing" being so devastating to the genre. Its infected the design specifications of MMORPGs.
Yeah because it is written in stone that if something is popular it can not be of quality. Thanks for this nugget of wisdom.
Except I never said that anywhere. I said that popularity doesn't prove quality.
Again you are talking in absolutes which is the worse thing you can do while making your argument.
And if WOW has not set standards for polish and quality then i don't know what MMO has.
Are you saying WoW wasn't the best game on the market at the time in terms of quality? If that's your contention, give reasons why you believe this.
Btw, when your game is the sole reason an entire genre goes from unpopular to mainstream over the course of a few years, chances are pretty high that there is some quality involved in what you are doing. I don't give a good shit what you think popularity implies, the numbers back up what I'm saying.
Once again, implying WoW only got to where it is by marketing and dumb luck is lazy thinking by lazy people. I stand by that statement.
And it does not disprove quality. Plus, quality is pretty subjective anyway. Don't you think if something is popular, a lot of people think of it as high quality?
"only a sith deals in absolutes" is a absolute statement.
cryptic messages ftw. backwards talk we do.
Herald of innovation, Vanquisher of the old! - Awake a few hours almost everyday!
The problem isn't cross-server party building tools and I agree with you on that. People who played as damage dealers were having trouble getting groups and it was the only solution for dealing with the role disparity that seemed to work. The problem is that MMORPG devs failed to pick up on the toxic mixture created by mixing that with heavy vertical progression.
When everything is reduced to a rat race for the latest gear before the next patch invalidates it, people try to get stuff as fast as possible. The only thing that kept people socializing with one another was that such tools were not available. The second they added that feature, the gaming landscape changed and the rest of the MMORPG structure has yet to accommodate for it.
It's one of the reasons I'm just about to explode like a land mine after I've played FFXIV for a while.
If you go by your own post, it's marketing departments that have "killed everything" and not World of Warcraft. That would actually be a conclusion I can somewhat get behind. Although with less drama.
Marketing and marketing speeches have started to sicken me lately. They just analyse trends blindly and draw conclusions based on that, instead of making the difference with creativity. To make matters worse, those conclusions often seem to be forced into the development process by the big publishers.
Marketeers shouldn't be developing games, they should only be selling them.
But aside from that. We're starting to see quite a few new things. MMO's lag behind because they're such big, complex and costly projects. But we'll start to see new things for them too, especially if the market becomes more global and games pass over language borders more easily.
So no, not everything is killed.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
I'm saying there are very few ways you can objectively measure MMO quality.
I do not think WoW is the most fun or highest quality MMO on the market (obviously since I stopped playing it long ago ) but my reasons for this are subjective just as yours are for thinking it is the highest quality game. Unless you can provide some measurable objective facts that demonstrate how WoW is higher quality than other games you are just giving your opinion.
Exactly. WOW is the reason the word 'polish' ever surfaced when describing MMOs. It provided a reasonably complete, stable and feature rich game at release.
"...saying "WoW was just a massive improvement on everything else." is just an opinion which can't possibly be proven one way or the other " -iridescence
Actually, that isn't opinion. WOW genuinely did improve on almost every aspect of gameplay. often introducing features that we now expect in an MMO. An example would be the comparison panel that shows your respective equipped item when hovering over an item on a vendor.
That's not opinion. It's fact, and it was a core design goal when creating the game.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Yes, I agree with that. It is quite a bit less extreme than what the other person I was replying to was saying and you are backing it up with something tangible unlike them.
But DF is literally "LFG" automated. It's literally the same thing. LFG tools were always in MMO's, even pre-WoW mmo's. You just had to manually send the invite to the people on the list. Now, a system does it for you. I don't see any difference at all and how that "killed" mmo's. It really seems like a stretch.
Honestly MMO players have become lazy, almost everything that a Modern day mmo has is really what we been screaming about for many years - and now that its here, we are complaining its not like how it used to be. What do you want? If EQ is so awesome, its still there to play. If your like me and have moved on, then you will find the light in the newer MMO's. I currently play FF:ARR, im having a blast. Is it perfect? No. Does it have flaws? Many. Am I having fun? Yes. It's basically what I expected it to be: a FF single player game with a multiplayer mode tacked on. People complain about community, well, when was the last time you strike up a random convo with a person? sent them a Tell about how cool there armor looks are if they wanted to join a group to do X content? I have found the community and the bonding is still there you just have to be more outgoing to find it, its not gonna fall in your lap anymore like the ol' days.
I enjoy undercutting people in the market place - it's the only PvP a crafter gets.
Below is where we can disscuss and come up with new ideas for Sandparks!
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/5164689#5164689
Actually we can't blame DF-tool directly, it's more like how the game design changed because of the DF-tool.
In order to make every class combination viable for 5-man dungeon run, Blizzard had to nerf dungeons drastically from what they were before. They homogenized classes, so there was a better chance for each random group to have some valuable group abilities. They gave you a 'goody pack' after the dungeon run to ensure everyone get loot in the end. And most importantly, they allowed you to join dungeons from anywhere in Azeroth and then come back changing the game effectively to a lobby game. Players didn't have to leave towns for playing the game, and they didn't have to do quests or kill mobs if they didn't want to. Dungeons became AoE-fests..
They took this even further and redesigned the classes once again. They gave every class some AoE skills to make them more desirable for dungeon runs. At the same time they had to balance classes around PvP as well, which had become a mess. I could go on and on, but i stop here.
The point is, they redesigned the entire game around this new tool. Should they have kept the game as it was at the beginning of WotLK and let the DF-tool only search players for a group, and nothing more, everything would be just fine. They just made too much compromises in terms of gameplay to make Random Dungeon Finder to work.
FFXIV isn't an MMO killer. In fact, it's arguably the most successful MMO released since WoW, and yet there are things which differ quite a bit.
MMOs are thriving. Sure there's a lot of junk out there, but there's also a lot of good stuff too. With all that's available to us, if you can't find an MMO to suit your tastes, it's not the genre's problem. It's yours.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
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Extremely small zones are a big deal, It breaks up the game and kills Imisrsion. Lots of people will agree.
250 story line keeps everyone doing there story quest, infact FF14 makes you SOLO. An don't give any crap that others can join in, cause that doesn't happen.
45 min times dungeons....So much for Dungeon crawling, and making friends, why do you even play mmos ?
No name plates, who is who? Or don't you even care, again why do you even play mmos ?
FF14 is not arguably the best mmo? Its about as popular and the last 10 mmos that people play and skip over. And thats the point of the topic. People skipping over, games dont even last 30 days