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The MMO is Dead
vidiotking
Member Posts: 587
Archeage was the nail in the coffin for me. SWG was the pinnacle.
P2W options, advanced bots/hacks, small & instanced worlds, easy/everyone can win gameplay and cash shops are just some of the reasons this genre is over.
I know you can never "go back". But EQ and SWG were magical, and had it right. EQ was actually dangerous, and SWG was a living breathing, player built world.
Where are these types of games today?
I've been playing single player rts.....
Comments
Dead.
MMOs in general however, are alive and doing well.
Even Archeage, at its roots, is still a WoW Clone. Rather than 1-2 light innovations on the WoW model, it maybe has 4-5... and an end game that replaces raid bosses with a backpack. It's no surprise it's not working.
Company's see this - no new WoW clones by big production have started development after SWTOR's initial bomb. TESO and Wildstar were the last Themeparks to finish up in the age of the dead WoW Clone... and their flopping only proved it further.
New games are being developed that will be quite different from the WoW model. Everything I hear about EQ Next is very positive. And if that one doesn't catch on, the games after EQ Next will.
MMOs will never die, they'll just evolve.
^ Yup.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
The growth of MMOs as far as gameplay and content has stagnated. I think a lot of us old school players had brighter hopes for where the genre would end up back in say 2000.
The MMOs were never supposed to end up where "a lot of us old school players had brighter hopes for".
Not evolving into desired form or way does not mean stagnation.
Out of curiosity, which game genre did what you expected MMORPGs to do way back in 2000? Any of them? Did RPGs become fundamentally different or better games, or did they mostly get much better graphics? What about FPS games? Point and click adventures?
I understand what you're saying, but games are driven by economics at a pretty fundamental level. Once they find the features that most people want, or that sell really well, they don't have much incentive to really shake things up. That is, until someone else comes along (MMORPGs, then MOBAs) and finds something that people really want. Then developers start to merge features from different genres together.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
it is alive genre,maybe devs no more making MMO's but here are many old good mmo's games and they are all alive & fun
MMOs aren't dead, but they are definitely changing. And have been for quite some time. Depending on how you view these games, it's in some ways an evolution, and in others a de-evolution.
Those old games were magical, but what a lot of us don't realize is that a large part of that magic came from the fact that they were new ideas. They were created at a time when MMOs were a fairly new concept, a lot less people knew about them, and we were all still wondering 'where is this all going?'. We were like kids (many of us literally), wondering if there was any limit to what these games could do. It was exciting. Obviously there is always a limit, as these games (no matter how imaginary) still need to be created in the real world. With real problems, and real budgets.
Going back, u can see a lot of the flaws those games had (EQ / SWG). Even if they were amazing games.
I will agree, though, that hackers / botters have done a ton of damage to these games (as have DDOS attacks). And it's sad to see these games have to deal with it.
- That said, we are seeing a return to 'old school' MMO design, as most of the kids that grew up playing those games are now old enough to make games of their own. Things tend to happen cyclically, every 20 years or so. Patience. And there's nothing wrong with playing other genres.
However, the days of spending months / years grinding for things are over. People don't have time for that, and there are too many things cluttering our lives already.
MMOs never were so alive like nowdays.
Alot of options in the market, some good "paper projects" be in development, millions and millions of players playing this gender.
So no its not dead, its only dead to players that dont break the nostalgi chain of the old games, imo ofc.
Nothing can substitute the great experiences i had in the pass with old games, neither i want that, now im having new experiences in new games.
If you won't change with time you will be left behind.
I do not support cash shop heavy games or botters and hackers but then again i have more choice now than i ever had in days of EQ and UO.
I think that you're right to a degree. I think that there has been a progression towards more simplified gameplay in MMOs in general. I think back to when we have skill trees (I know we still do, but I'm talking in past tense because they're basically dead) and how much time I poured into researching them and, at the time, that seemed like the bees knees. Fast Forward to today and we've got tools which basically boil our skill trees down to 2 or 3 "viable" builds.
The point I'm trying to make here is that the really deep gameplay elements that some of those old school MMOs created would be wasted today. It was niche back in the day and it remains niche today, even though the number of games in the market is growing. People don't want the grind any more. They don't want to spend a year becoming a Jedi just to say that they did it. Fact is, most people are juggling more than one game, and if their progression isn't sufficient enough that they can say, "Wow, I really made some progress in that hour that I played!" then they'll probably be on the next train to New MMO City.
You take a look at World of Warcraft, even. Even they can't maintain their subs 100% of the time, even though WoW fans are, arguably, the most loyal there are, returning expack after expack like moths to a flame. So it's all a matter of how big a market are we talking about? There have been petitions put together to bring back SWG, but I don't even think they saw response in the thousands, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands. So there really isn't anything compelling there.
Crazkanuk
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The common thing I see among these types of posts is that the player has the problem, not the genre. Gotta figure many of us who started when the genre was new are now in our mid 30s to early 40s now. As people grow older they tend to not be as open to new experiences as they were when they were younger.
So the problem isn't the genre itself, the problem is that the genre has moved forward but many of us who are fans aren't as open to the direction the genre is going. This isn't a bad thing, but it's something that needs to be considered when people are lamenting how mmos are "dead".
As a secondary issue, there doesn't seem to be as many young people getting into the genre, at least not in the same way our generation did. Many of the games that the younger generation is devouring is more about instant action and shorter lifespans. FPS and MOBAs are some of the most popular genres in gaming right now, and it's seemingly the younger generation that is playing these games, more so than the original MMO players. We have mmos that are attempting to incorporate some of the values of FPS and MOBAs into MMOs for a user base that isn't necessarily interested in the genre as a whole.
Additionally, we're not seeing the smaller independent companies making mmos anymore either. If you look at many of the older, more hardcore values in elder mmos, we see those elements being incorporated into private server games. Rust, Life is Feudal, DayZ, etc. are all games that have some of the values of the MMO of generations past, but they are "released" in an alpha status with people playing while the game slowly evolves, and by the time the game is a full release, well many people have already grown weary of the game itself.
I wouldn't say the mmo is dead, but I would say that developers aren't factoring what their target demographic really should be. Wildstar is the perfect and most recent example of a developer completely over estimating their perceived target demographic and Carbine/NCSoft are now paying the price for that. On the other hand, Blizzard knows full well who their target audience is and has been able to maintain an extremely healthy population for 10 years now.
Who knows, down the road we may come full circle and wind up with a more modern version of UO/EQ/AC.
May be you ... but not me.
UO & EQ are bad games for me ("bad" is subjective), and modern changes (instances, fast travel ...) make MMOs better games for me. If not for the changes, I would not have been back to the genre.
I get what you are saying. I would counter that by saying I expected more depth and breadth from "future" mmos.
I definately concede to a sense of nostalgia. I guess what I expected by now in mmos were GM controlled events where the fate of the server was in the hands of the players. Games where every server was different based on how the player base handled what the GMs threw at them.
I saw stuff like that in Muds back in the day all the time, Im still rather surprised MMOs arent more dynamic in that way.
In one of your earliest posts on mmorpg.com you go on about how excited you were to get back into EQ; a game you played for a bloody year. People tend to not stick around with a "bad game" for such a long time. Know what I mean?
Anywho, I didn't start into MMOs until WOW launched, but I do share Calidor's sentiment. One of the first things I thought of after logging into my first virtual world in 2004 was: "Holy shit! Imagine what things are going to look like in ten years?" Little did I know. LMAO.
"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
I agree with the OP, the genre currently leaves something to be desired. A few of the current mmos are decent, most are crap. None of them are great.
The biggest telling sign is the hype for the next new game and the number of people that jump to it immediately, and then leave shortly thereafter.
Unfortunately the "everyone gets a trophy" generation joined the genre and this is what we get.
I would like to formally lobby to have the genre renamed to MMOGWEGAGM (Massively Multiplayer Online Game Where Everyone Gets A Gold Medal). A bit of a mouth full, but it sums it up better than the previous acronym.
So true lol.
That is not countering anything, it would be at best correction of your flawed statement.
You can expect anything, it does not mean much tho...
I must apologize if Ive said something to make you respond so aggresively. I truly meant no disrespect sir.
The rumors surrounding the death of MMORPG's have been greatly exaggerated.
They have, however, evolved over time. I suppose to many who resent or reject this evolution, the genre may seem dead to them.