Originally posted by RobokappMMOs will not make it into the next decade I'm afraid. MMOs reaching the age of 5 are increasingly rare.
I am not sure why you say this. There are MANY more MMO's with an Age > 5 years than there were 5 years ago... and there will be many more in another 5 years.
I think the sheer number of MMOs is contributing to the feeling that the genre is dying. A decade ago you had only a few choices that would limit where you could spend your time and money. Nowadays you can bounce from one F2P MMO to another without investing much of either.
To "recapture" the traditional interaction of MMOs requires gamers to settle down with one MMO for the long haul. Unfortunately too many of us are impatient and off to the next new thing that promises everything and ultimately delivers nothing.
My hat is off to those who are still playing their original MMO love like EQ1, EVE or DAOC. That might be the only way to truly enjoy the genre.
If they want to "recapture" players, then the way to do it would be to give us everything all the old games have (including proper housing, involved crafting, and excellent customization) and expand on it to make it even better. But since we now have games that are mostly them park, with one click crafting, until we get to end game raiding or pvp, I don't see that happening. They will just endlessly cycle to get us to spend money temporarily and then move on to the next game. They aren't interested in actually giving us a game we really want.
I'm so bored with all the newest games (including SWTOR) that I've done what I said I would never do... I'm playing EQ2 again. As a f2p player.
That said, I find it very hard to believe that game developers truly believe they are creating worlds that do not end, or that is even a goal.
I think what goes unsaid is they are trying to create a revenue stream that does not end. A thick stream that requires little more than a conveyor belt that pushes out factory produced content.
When you look at how quickly game companies throw in the towel before even really trying to build the world they dreamed of building, you can't help but wonder what their goal really was from the start. SWTOR fastest move to free to play and move from story centric MMORPG to cash shop centric MMORPG. Wildstar also very quick to go back on the promise of a game that provided value to subscribers. WoW while still making butloads of cash, isn't really even an RPG anymore. The only thing RPGish about it is the story, but it takes more than just a story to make an RPG. They charge more and more for less and less, and pad their wallets with a cash shop on top of it. But hell you can't blame them for taking people's money if people let them get away with it.
Lately I'd want nothing more than a good old fashioned RPG instead of the shallow repetitious rehashed MMOs I've been playing, and I'd be more than willing to pay a subscription for new episodes every month. I'm praying Sword Coast Legends can live up to it's potential.
My question about this is: When all the AAA companies have either died and closed shop, or have moved away from mmorpg's to chase the newer trends (like moba's). What is going to happen to the mmorpg genre?
The people who play these games always bitch and complain about everything and anything of any mmo that has been released since WoW. Nothing is ever good enough, and nobody has the patience to actually stick around and wait for them to improve. Which is why we see the same routine with every single mmo launch. Huge release numbers then massive nose dive declines after the first month or two.
So how is this going to change when the big fish leave the pond? When all that is left is kickstarters and small indie companies. When the mmo's they make are small, crude, and under developed at launch. The community is used to "AAA", I use that term loosely, mmorpg's. So when a indie BBB or CCC game comes out and everyone is like "Uhh, what the fuck is this shit?" how is that gonna move the genre forward or keep it from dying at all?
Won't it get to the point where not even small indie dev teams can keep a game going? Which will mean either the complete implosion of the mmorpg genre or use longing for shitty SWTOR'esq games again.
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
My question about this is: When all the AAA companies have either died and closed shop, or have moved away from mmorpg's to chase the newer trends (like moba's). What is going to happen to the mmorpg genre?
The people who play these games always bitch and complain about everything and anything of any mmo that has been released since WoW. Nothing is ever good enough, and nobody has the patience to actually stick around and wait for them to improve. Which is why we see the same routine with every single mmo launch. Huge release numbers then massive nose dive declines after the first month or two.
So how is this going to change when the big fish leave the pond? When all that is left is kickstarters and small indie companies. When the mmo's they make are small, crude, and under developed at launch. The community is used to "AAA", I use that term loosely, mmorpg's. So when a indie BBB or CCC game comes out and everyone is like "Uhh, what the fuck is this shit?" how is that gonna move the genre forward or keep it from dying at all?
Won't it get to the point where not even small indie dev teams can keep a game going? Which will mean either the complete implosion of the mmorpg genre or use longing for shitty SWTOR'esq games again.
I do think there is too much potential in the genre for that to really happening. But of course even in your worst scenario we could still play Korean AAA MMOs if we couldn't live with indie games, there MMO are as successful as ever.
I do think MMOs is getting close to a mass extinction, there are way too many crappy ones out there right now but once a mass extinction have happened you usually get a few ones comming out of it as new winners.
My question about this is: When all the AAA companies have either died and closed shop, or have moved away from mmorpg's to chase the newer trends (like moba's). What is going to happen to the mmorpg genre?
The people who play these games always bitch and complain about everything and anything of any mmo that has been released since WoW. Nothing is ever good enough, and nobody has the patience to actually stick around and wait for them to improve. Which is why we see the same routine with every single mmo launch. Huge release numbers then massive nose dive declines after the first month or two.
So how is this going to change when the big fish leave the pond? When all that is left is kickstarters and small indie companies. When the mmo's they make are small, crude, and under developed at launch. The community is used to "AAA", I use that term loosely, mmorpg's. So when a indie BBB or CCC game comes out and everyone is like "Uhh, what the fuck is this shit?" how is that gonna move the genre forward or keep it from dying at all?
Won't it get to the point where not even small indie dev teams can keep a game going? Which will mean either the complete implosion of the mmorpg genre or use longing for shitty SWTOR'esq games again.
I think what will happen is we will finally see a return to what used to make this genre great. It will again be a niche genre for us "nerds", forgotten/shunned by the casual masses, and there will be a few new "worlds" for those of us left to enjoy in peace.
That would be really interesting to see, and also pretty cool. Back in 1998 when I first got into the genre I didn't give two shits about graphics quality, or quest lines, leaderboards, battlegrounds, or item numbers.
I just liked to create a character and exist. It took me a year to get to level 99 in Nexus, and also a year to get to 55 in EQ1. And I was fine with that.
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
Originally posted by saker The cult-of-infinite-greed that is Murican-style crony-capitalism killed the genre. When the "money-men" are in charge any creativity is murdered in the crib. And you can't have any kind of half-way decent gaming industry without creativity.
This basically sums it up, yes. As a result the genre has stagnated. On the positive side this means there is a lot of unfulfilled potential left in the genre and that is encouraging for the future. Or at least it gives us some hope that one day development will wake up.
I miss SWG and was sad when it finally died (after a long and painful death).
Eve was good for the years that I played it, but once you leave a game like that it's hard to go back. And that is true for all games - they never feel quite right when you pick them up again (oftentimes after having thrown them against the wall in frustration).
Since then, everything has been fairly "meh" and whilst I enjoy ESO, it's a time waster and not an "alarm clock" game.
And that is the nub of games these days. Whilst they hold an ever dwindling number of hardcore players in their thrall, for everyone else they are just things to pick up and put down, with no real sense of ownership. They no longer have the bite they used too, nor do they have the "magic" that came with the - I hate to say it - good old days of MMO's.
At their most basic, you role a toon, run around and do some quests, jump on the achievement/items/shiny things bandwagon, do some pvp and then move onto the next one that takes your fancy.
Most stay for the community, but once the community moves on, what is there to stay for?
I feel nothing is better then your first mmo. great friends and adventures. then some bot comes along hits all your mobs kills everyone and kills your fun for profit. Just an example why I think mmo's will either die or become peoples new jobs because everyone is too lazy to do it themselves...
Once "they" realise they should stop trying to emulate WoW but actually make a game the rest of us want it will all change. The genre has been truly diluted with rubbish since that game came along and appealed to the middle of the road population.
Stop trying to steal WoW players, leave them where they are and just make a good, deep, fun, exciting MMO - and enjoy the success it brings - just realise that it will unlikely be the multi million subscriber that game has but that is ok there is plenty of profit to be made as well as a new and fun game.
For example, imagine if all car manufacturers tried to simply copy the worlds best selling car rather than be original and innovate, we would all be driving around in Ford Focus clones and we would all be hating it - this is why so many MMO gamers hate the situation right now because every AAA financed company tries to make a copy of 1 game and no real innovation (no mclarens) exist
*(no offense intended to wow players or focus drivers in my post!)
I honestly feel that the people who make MMORPGs have forgotten what they are supposed to be doing. MMORPGs were originally an attempt to bring pencil and paper tabletop role playing games "to life" so to speak. Tabletop rpgs in turn were an attempt to let us enter the fantasy worlds created in novels or some approximation of those.
Well, ok, if you ever played table top games, think back to that. Try to remember how it felt. Try to remember what you did in those games. Mostly it was about taking your character out to have adventures. It was also about simply being in the fantasy world. It most certainly was not about doing an endless series of trivial chores for NPCs. If you played tabletop games did you ever go around your starting town amassing a list of chores from the townsfolk: collect 10 rat tails and bring them back, kill 7 stray cats and bring me their pelts, gather 14 daisies and 3 buttercups and return them to me, and so on and so on.
Tabletop games were also never about getting to max level as quickly as possible and then grinding for gear upgrades until you burned out.
And think about fantasy novels. Would you read a novel in which the characters did the sorts of things developers give us to do in these games? I wouldn't. The most common theme in fantasy novels is a group of people or sometimes just one person setting out on a long journey and having nail biting adventures along the way. In what way have MMORPGs captured that essence of fantasy adventure?
Developers need to try to remember what makes fantasy adventure appealing to people and then try to capture at least some of that feeling in their games.
We started with that in mind, playing to have fun. We then got handed a carrot and got excited. We have been chasing the carrot ever since. I think GW2 moved in a direction more MMOs need to start doing, making the carrot mean a lot less and return to the fun as the focus. Only thing is, can gamers stop chasing the carrot? We need to change our reason for gaming as much as devs would need to change how they make content and rewards.
The carrot is part of the fun for a lot of people.
Leveling up, getting gear, shuffling talents are all a part of the fun for RPGs, for me at least.
I know that's true through personal experience. Once upon a time a friend and I each bought the first Neverwinter Nights game. We were playing through it together and having fun. But we only played a little on the weekends when we could do it together so it was going slow. In between our joint play times I was fooling around with the game editor part of it. I set up a little---I think it was called a "module"----which consisted of nothing but one room with one npc whom you could talk to and he would give you a huge amount of experience just for talking to him. I did this just because I was messing around with the game editor and learning how to use it. I didn't think anything of it really.
But then I made the mistake of letting my friend use that module. He imported the character he had been playing in our joint game into the little experience dump module I made and then proceeded to talk to the npc repeatedly, gaining huge experience "rewards", until his character was max level. When he was done with that I wanted to go back to our saved game and pick up where we had left off. To my surprise he said, "But there's no reason for me to play it anymore." And that was it. He had maxed out his character and wouldn't go back to the lower level version to finish playing through the actual game.
This was a bit of an eye-opener for me I must admit. For me, progression has never been the most important thing. For me, progression is really just a side effect of playing a game and what really matters is whether or not I'm having fun. For my friend, apparently, progression is the thing that matters most and is what drives him to play.
So yes, I understand that we don't all approach games with the same mind set. As far as MMORPGs go there are some, like myself, who want something that has more of the "virtual world" feel. People who want a game world where they can have fun and adventures and exploration without feeling like they are racing to "keep up with the Jones'". We don't want to feel like we're being forced to jump through hoops, run in a hamster wheel, etc.
Other people seem to primarily want a ladder to climb. For them climbing the ladder is the important thing and everything else is just window dressing. I don't fully understand that mindset because it is not my own but I know this to be true. For me, character progression as a goal unto itself seems a little bit silly because it is just a game. If I'm not having fun doing it I don't see the point of continuing. For others character progression IS the fun and the way they do it is of secondary importance.
However, there is surely room for more than one type of game. The unfortunate thing for me is that the type of game I want would be more difficult to make and would require a bit more thought and effort on the part of the developers.
I honestly feel that the people who make MMORPGs have forgotten what they are supposed to be doing. MMORPGs were originally an attempt to bring pencil and paper tabletop role playing games "to life" so to speak. Tabletop rpgs in turn were an attempt to let us enter the fantasy worlds created in novels or some approximation of those.
Well, ok, if you ever played table top games, think back to that. Try to remember how it felt. Try to remember what you did in those games. Mostly it was about taking your character out to have adventures. It was also about simply being in the fantasy world. It most certainly was not about doing an endless series of trivial chores for NPCs. If you played tabletop games did you ever go around your starting town amassing a list of chores from the townsfolk: collect 10 rat tails and bring them back, kill 7 stray cats and bring me their pelts, gather 14 daisies and 3 buttercups and return them to me, and so on and so on.
Tabletop games were also never about getting to max level as quickly as possible and then grinding for gear upgrades until you burned out.
And think about fantasy novels. Would you read a novel in which the characters did the sorts of things developers give us to do in these games? I wouldn't. The most common theme in fantasy novels is a group of people or sometimes just one person setting out on a long journey and having nail biting adventures along the way. In what way have MMORPGs captured that essence of fantasy adventure?
Developers need to try to remember what makes fantasy adventure appealing to people and then try to capture at least some of that feeling in their games.
We started with that in mind, playing to have fun. We then got handed a carrot and got excited. We have been chasing the carrot ever since. I think GW2 moved in a direction more MMOs need to start doing, making the carrot mean a lot less and return to the fun as the focus. Only thing is, can gamers stop chasing the carrot? We need to change our reason for gaming as much as devs would need to change how they make content and rewards.
The carrot is part of the fun for a lot of people.
Leveling up, getting gear, shuffling talents are all a part of the fun for RPGs, for me at least.
I know that's true through personal experience. Once upon a time a friend and I each bought the first Neverwinter Nights game. We were playing through it together and having fun. But we only played a little on the weekends when we could do it together so it was going slow. In between our joint play times I was fooling around with the game editor part of it. I set up a little---I think it was called a "module"----which consisted of nothing but one room with one npc whom you could talk to and he would give you a huge amount of experience just for talking to him. I did this just because I was messing around with the game editor and learning how to use it. I didn't think anything of it really.
But then I made the mistake of letting my friend use that module. He imported the character he had been playing in our joint game into the little experience dump module I made and then proceeded to talk to the npc repeatedly, gaining huge experience "rewards", until his character was max level. When he was done with that I wanted to go back to our saved game and pick up where we had left off. To my surprise he said, "But there's no reason for me to play it anymore." And that was it. He had maxed out his character and wouldn't go back to the lower level version to finish playing through the actual game.
This was a bit of an eye-opener for me I must admit. For me, progression has never been the most important thing. For me, progression is really just a side effect of playing a game and what really matters is whether or not I'm having fun. For my friend, apparently, progression is the thing that matters most and is what drives him to play.
So yes, I understand that we don't all approach games with the same mind set. As far as MMORPGs go there are some, like myself, who want something that has more of the "virtual world" feel. People who want a game world where they can have fun and adventures and exploration without feeling like they are racing to "keep up with the Jones'". We don't want to feel like we're being forced to jump through hoops, run in a hamster wheel, etc.
Other people seem to primarily want a ladder to climb. For them climbing the ladder is the important thing and everything else is just window dressing. I don't fully understand that mindset because it is not my own but I know this to be true. For me, character progression as a goal unto itself seems a little bit silly because it is just a game. If I'm not having fun doing it I don't see the point of continuing. For others character progression IS the fun and the way they do it is of secondary importance.
However, there is surely room for more than one type of game. The unfortunate thing for me is that the type of game I want would be more difficult to make and would require a bit more thought and effort on the part of the developers.
I understand where you are coming from, I enjoy the environments and story too. In fact if a game is only about progression it as a limited shelf life for me since I eventually accomplish what I want and grow bored with other activities. MMOs need a world to progress in.
As for your friend, please don't compare him to me. I was never a cheat-code or GameShark guy. Unearned progression is pointless.
The problem is, we get fools like Daniel Erickson who foists his mistakes on the industry (first the NGE, then SWTOR), so we fall victim to the Excalibur Syndrome, "it is the doom of Man that he forgets."
So instead of doing what every other industry does to succeed, by mixing innovation with "best practices" - the latter represented by those elements of MMO's that while the MMO may have failed there were elements that were best design practices and superb gameplay experiences - we get the Daniel Ericksons and MMO's that follow hype with failure.
We get hubris, and green development teams, teams who neither played the best design elements of past MMO's to know what works and what failed, and why...
We get games like The Repopulation, a game that appears to have learned from prior best design, but then makes all that subject to a "siege game" so as to undermine it's success entirely.
It is indeed the doom of man that he forgets. Unfortunately, that has meant that after two decades we have yet to see an MMO emerge to take MMO's anywhere near their potential, anywhere near their potential to entertain and engage, to make the scale balance more towards "we enjoyed our time online," versus "we were as frustrated by our time online such that it's positives didn't outweigh the negatives, and on balance, we quit."
For these reasons, these foolish and green "leaders" of the industry who refuse to acknowledge best gameplay design of those who have come before, and integrate those sublime experiences into innovative new MMOs, that the industry is dying, the PC game is dying.
I don't like to share what I am playing or doing or what my status is online anymore, for reasons about to be given. But here you go, years worth of info I haven't shared.
World of Warcraft gave people PvP hype, Raid hype, and PvE hype. People got exactly what they saw. People ate what was on the menu. It was fun and incredibly up and down. The end. You got the awesome Blizzard Art style of a game, you got expansion pack hype, you got lich king hype, and then it was over as soon as he was gone. Then WoW went to panda land and added pokemon battles, which weren't much different looking from Wrath of the Lich King areas. WoW ran its hype train and then it got there. There's nothing else to say! Other than the fact that Blizzard makes some pretty backwards stories. The stuff about saying hey look at China isn't it great that's infiltrating our modern day MMORPGs with worshiping the Jade Simulacrum (DAoC reference) and internet censorship being pulled over to be established in the West is where the problems really start to begin. The crazy christians who frowned at mmorpgs saying that it was demonic weren't just crazy, they are actually made right, thanks to whoever is running these things. But Jesus saves by grace, and grace does not care about sin. So I don't know what you're trying to pull here, but just because Americans play WoW doesn't mean we want to be like China or that we want to be spanked for spending too many hours up at night on it.
Dark Age of Camelot gave people RvR hype, but you got so much more than what you saw. Housing expansion, extra battlegrounds over time (eventually till you can just go in at level 1), greater PvE than any game I have ever played (yes, better than EverQuest even though EQ has more, DAoC was straighter to the point in a balanced way that I enjoyed more, and now they are even injecting EverQuest type Pict Artificial Intelligence , which saddens me greatly) (in that the pict mobs used to be soloable, now they made them group only, and they also chase forever like an EQ mob instead of losing aggro which is how DAoC mobs have always worked), awesome PvE expansions (except for ToA, but I came to like ToA). Enriching the lore and the world with more places while keeping the it DAoC. Most of which had nothing to do with RvR. It was quite a magnificient trick going on behind the Hype Curtain. A trick that requires creativity. Also I really liked kicking Undead Roman Zombie butt. Also it was really hard for my first MMORPG and I would get wrecked by Mulgrut Maggot all the time while trying out different classes in camelot hills.
I wanted to like Guild Wars 2 as much as I liked regular Guild Wars. The graphics are perfect. Everything was perfect. I just didn't be motivated to play. The same thing happened to me with Final Fantasy 14. Perfection, just no play. The only MMORPG I have been able to come back to for longer than a month was DAoC, for its simplicity, and yet, its complexity. I like having lots of things to stick on the bar. I like those things to be simple too. Guild Wars 2 felt too simple. Guild Wars 1 though had billions of skills to put on the bar, but only 8 slots. It was fun finding weird and crazy skill combinations, for a while, until ArenaNet started nerfing stuff for pvp balance, but I still like it anyway.
Same thing happened to Skyrim Online. Oops, I mean The Elder Scrolls Online. I only liked Skyrim because it has birds, ants, fish, stuff like that to make the world seem alive. The game itself was very uninteresting, with Arrow to Knee hype. That and MachoMan Dragon! But mostly it was just a hack and slash FPS, in which you play through similar cave systems and little variety. The most epic moments were in the beginning or finding entirely new areas. And much to everyone's disappointment, TESO was something entirely different. I think it was okay, but again the no motivator factor again.
I'm not interested in titles like Crowfall. Don't like the name. Or crows. I was interested in Albion online until I saw it was just a festival of zerg trains running over soloers. I was like, oh, I guess that's why Mythic Entertainment didn't allow RvR in the home realms. So I just through that up for Mythic's geniusness of Dark Age of Camelot.
EverQuest Landmark, I must say, is going to be spectacular. Again, I probably won't be playing it, because I'm not an EverQuester, and never will be, but from what I can see from Landmark, it's awesome looking.
Camelot Unchained , what can I say, they took out everything behind the Curtain of what made DAoC great, and are now just giving people RvR hype. I'm afraid to even buy it, even as a DAoC player. I'll just have to wait and see.
Thanks Bill, I've been waiting for an article like that for a long time. Also, thanks to some of the commentators, this is one of the most insightful threads I've ever read here.
We are at the end of a cycle, some of us saw the mark on the wall years back. In my opinion, the bottom line it's the way the speculative corporations have approached the market. From a genre that was the technological and natural evolution of the PnP we have got to this jack-of-trades mess that cannot provide satisfaction in any of its particular aspects, excluding for the usual compulsive-consumerist imbeciles that judge a game just for its superficial elements (graphics, voiceovers, cgis and the sort).
Millions of dollars have been wasted in the design of elements that barely provide value to the game experience. In that and in the commercialization itself (rolls eyes). And not only that, we have witnessed how these games lose more and more functional scope and mechanics throughout the years in favor of convenience, instant-gratification and the gamification methodology.
And we have come to this point. The curtain has been unveiled and now we see the skeletons behind. The end of the cycle, the burst of the bubble.
Hopefully, this genre will now get back to the nerdy, niche roots where it truly belongs.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
I'm getting really tired of being told "You're complaining too much about everything in the game, that's why the genre is in trouble" when you know very well that isn't true. We are being offered less and less while prices go up and up or they go so called f2p and nickle and dime us to death instead.
Game companies are receiving complaints through their own fault. The games are in trouble because of them, not "because you are complainers".
As for citadel of sorcery... I'd love it if you were right. But it's been 9 years and counting with no alpha in sight. I have my doubts. There should be an alpha by now even with taking their time to develop. Even if it means that beta is another two years off. We should be seeing an alpha by now.
Comments
I am not sure why you say this. There are MANY more MMO's with an Age > 5 years than there were 5 years ago... and there will be many more in another 5 years.
I think the sheer number of MMOs is contributing to the feeling that the genre is dying. A decade ago you had only a few choices that would limit where you could spend your time and money. Nowadays you can bounce from one F2P MMO to another without investing much of either.
To "recapture" the traditional interaction of MMOs requires gamers to settle down with one MMO for the long haul. Unfortunately too many of us are impatient and off to the next new thing that promises everything and ultimately delivers nothing.
My hat is off to those who are still playing their original MMO love like EQ1, EVE or DAOC. That might be the only way to truly enjoy the genre.
If they want to "recapture" players, then the way to do it would be to give us everything all the old games have (including proper housing, involved crafting, and excellent customization) and expand on it to make it even better. But since we now have games that are mostly them park, with one click crafting, until we get to end game raiding or pvp, I don't see that happening. They will just endlessly cycle to get us to spend money temporarily and then move on to the next game. They aren't interested in actually giving us a game we really want.
I'm so bored with all the newest games (including SWTOR) that I've done what I said I would never do... I'm playing EQ2 again. As a f2p player.
I'll admit up front that I am cynical.
That said, I find it very hard to believe that game developers truly believe they are creating worlds that do not end, or that is even a goal.
I think what goes unsaid is they are trying to create a revenue stream that does not end. A thick stream that requires little more than a conveyor belt that pushes out factory produced content.
When you look at how quickly game companies throw in the towel before even really trying to build the world they dreamed of building, you can't help but wonder what their goal really was from the start. SWTOR fastest move to free to play and move from story centric MMORPG to cash shop centric MMORPG. Wildstar also very quick to go back on the promise of a game that provided value to subscribers. WoW while still making butloads of cash, isn't really even an RPG anymore. The only thing RPGish about it is the story, but it takes more than just a story to make an RPG. They charge more and more for less and less, and pad their wallets with a cash shop on top of it. But hell you can't blame them for taking people's money if people let them get away with it.
Lately I'd want nothing more than a good old fashioned RPG instead of the shallow repetitious rehashed MMOs I've been playing, and I'd be more than willing to pay a subscription for new episodes every month. I'm praying Sword Coast Legends can live up to it's potential.
My question about this is: When all the AAA companies have either died and closed shop, or have moved away from mmorpg's to chase the newer trends (like moba's). What is going to happen to the mmorpg genre?
The people who play these games always bitch and complain about everything and anything of any mmo that has been released since WoW. Nothing is ever good enough, and nobody has the patience to actually stick around and wait for them to improve. Which is why we see the same routine with every single mmo launch. Huge release numbers then massive nose dive declines after the first month or two.
So how is this going to change when the big fish leave the pond? When all that is left is kickstarters and small indie companies. When the mmo's they make are small, crude, and under developed at launch. The community is used to "AAA", I use that term loosely, mmorpg's. So when a indie BBB or CCC game comes out and everyone is like "Uhh, what the fuck is this shit?" how is that gonna move the genre forward or keep it from dying at all?
Won't it get to the point where not even small indie dev teams can keep a game going? Which will mean either the complete implosion of the mmorpg genre or use longing for shitty SWTOR'esq games again.
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes
Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge
Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
I do think there is too much potential in the genre for that to really happening. But of course even in your worst scenario we could still play Korean AAA MMOs if we couldn't live with indie games, there MMO are as successful as ever.
I do think MMOs is getting close to a mass extinction, there are way too many crappy ones out there right now but once a mass extinction have happened you usually get a few ones comming out of it as new winners.
That would be really interesting to see, and also pretty cool. Back in 1998 when I first got into the genre I didn't give two shits about graphics quality, or quest lines, leaderboards, battlegrounds, or item numbers.
I just liked to create a character and exist. It took me a year to get to level 99 in Nexus, and also a year to get to 55 in EQ1. And I was fine with that.
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes
Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge
Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
This basically sums it up, yes. As a result the genre has stagnated. On the positive side this means there is a lot of unfulfilled potential left in the genre and that is encouraging for the future. Or at least it gives us some hope that one day development will wake up.
I miss SWG and was sad when it finally died (after a long and painful death).
Eve was good for the years that I played it, but once you leave a game like that it's hard to go back. And that is true for all games - they never feel quite right when you pick them up again (oftentimes after having thrown them against the wall in frustration).
Since then, everything has been fairly "meh" and whilst I enjoy ESO, it's a time waster and not an "alarm clock" game.
And that is the nub of games these days. Whilst they hold an ever dwindling number of hardcore players in their thrall, for everyone else they are just things to pick up and put down, with no real sense of ownership. They no longer have the bite they used too, nor do they have the "magic" that came with the - I hate to say it - good old days of MMO's.
At their most basic, you role a toon, run around and do some quests, jump on the achievement/items/shiny things bandwagon, do some pvp and then move onto the next one that takes your fancy.
Most stay for the community, but once the community moves on, what is there to stay for?
I feel nothing is better then your first mmo. great friends and adventures. then some bot comes along hits all your mobs kills everyone and kills your fun for profit. Just an example why I think mmo's will either die or become peoples new jobs because everyone is too lazy to do it themselves...
the end.
Once "they" realise they should stop trying to emulate WoW but actually make a game the rest of us want it will all change. The genre has been truly diluted with rubbish since that game came along and appealed to the middle of the road population.
Stop trying to steal WoW players, leave them where they are and just make a good, deep, fun, exciting MMO - and enjoy the success it brings - just realise that it will unlikely be the multi million subscriber that game has but that is ok there is plenty of profit to be made as well as a new and fun game.
For example, imagine if all car manufacturers tried to simply copy the worlds best selling car rather than be original and innovate, we would all be driving around in Ford Focus clones and we would all be hating it - this is why so many MMO gamers hate the situation right now because every AAA financed company tries to make a copy of 1 game and no real innovation (no mclarens) exist
*(no offense intended to wow players or focus drivers in my post!)
I know that's true through personal experience. Once upon a time a friend and I each bought the first Neverwinter Nights game. We were playing through it together and having fun. But we only played a little on the weekends when we could do it together so it was going slow. In between our joint play times I was fooling around with the game editor part of it. I set up a little---I think it was called a "module"----which consisted of nothing but one room with one npc whom you could talk to and he would give you a huge amount of experience just for talking to him. I did this just because I was messing around with the game editor and learning how to use it. I didn't think anything of it really.
But then I made the mistake of letting my friend use that module. He imported the character he had been playing in our joint game into the little experience dump module I made and then proceeded to talk to the npc repeatedly, gaining huge experience "rewards", until his character was max level. When he was done with that I wanted to go back to our saved game and pick up where we had left off. To my surprise he said, "But there's no reason for me to play it anymore." And that was it. He had maxed out his character and wouldn't go back to the lower level version to finish playing through the actual game.
This was a bit of an eye-opener for me I must admit. For me, progression has never been the most important thing. For me, progression is really just a side effect of playing a game and what really matters is whether or not I'm having fun. For my friend, apparently, progression is the thing that matters most and is what drives him to play.
So yes, I understand that we don't all approach games with the same mind set. As far as MMORPGs go there are some, like myself, who want something that has more of the "virtual world" feel. People who want a game world where they can have fun and adventures and exploration without feeling like they are racing to "keep up with the Jones'". We don't want to feel like we're being forced to jump through hoops, run in a hamster wheel, etc.
Other people seem to primarily want a ladder to climb. For them climbing the ladder is the important thing and everything else is just window dressing. I don't fully understand that mindset because it is not my own but I know this to be true. For me, character progression as a goal unto itself seems a little bit silly because it is just a game. If I'm not having fun doing it I don't see the point of continuing. For others character progression IS the fun and the way they do it is of secondary importance.
However, there is surely room for more than one type of game. The unfortunate thing for me is that the type of game I want would be more difficult to make and would require a bit more thought and effort on the part of the developers.
I understand where you are coming from, I enjoy the environments and story too. In fact if a game is only about progression it as a limited shelf life for me since I eventually accomplish what I want and grow bored with other activities. MMOs need a world to progress in.
As for your friend, please don't compare him to me. I was never a cheat-code or GameShark guy. Unearned progression is pointless.
The problem is, we get fools like Daniel Erickson who foists his mistakes on the industry (first the NGE, then SWTOR), so we fall victim to the Excalibur Syndrome, "it is the doom of Man that he forgets."
So instead of doing what every other industry does to succeed, by mixing innovation with "best practices" - the latter represented by those elements of MMO's that while the MMO may have failed there were elements that were best design practices and superb gameplay experiences - we get the Daniel Ericksons and MMO's that follow hype with failure.
We get hubris, and green development teams, teams who neither played the best design elements of past MMO's to know what works and what failed, and why...
We get games like The Repopulation, a game that appears to have learned from prior best design, but then makes all that subject to a "siege game" so as to undermine it's success entirely.
It is indeed the doom of man that he forgets. Unfortunately, that has meant that after two decades we have yet to see an MMO emerge to take MMO's anywhere near their potential, anywhere near their potential to entertain and engage, to make the scale balance more towards "we enjoyed our time online," versus "we were as frustrated by our time online such that it's positives didn't outweigh the negatives, and on balance, we quit."
I don't like to share what I am playing or doing or what my status is online anymore, for reasons about to be given. But here you go, years worth of info I haven't shared.
World of Warcraft gave people PvP hype, Raid hype, and PvE hype. People got exactly what they saw. People ate what was on the menu. It was fun and incredibly up and down. The end. You got the awesome Blizzard Art style of a game, you got expansion pack hype, you got lich king hype, and then it was over as soon as he was gone. Then WoW went to panda land and added pokemon battles, which weren't much different looking from Wrath of the Lich King areas. WoW ran its hype train and then it got there. There's nothing else to say! Other than the fact that Blizzard makes some pretty backwards stories. The stuff about saying hey look at China isn't it great that's infiltrating our modern day MMORPGs with worshiping the Jade Simulacrum (DAoC reference) and internet censorship being pulled over to be established in the West is where the problems really start to begin. The crazy christians who frowned at mmorpgs saying that it was demonic weren't just crazy, they are actually made right, thanks to whoever is running these things. But Jesus saves by grace, and grace does not care about sin. So I don't know what you're trying to pull here, but just because Americans play WoW doesn't mean we want to be like China or that we want to be spanked for spending too many hours up at night on it.
Dark Age of Camelot gave people RvR hype, but you got so much more than what you saw. Housing expansion, extra battlegrounds over time (eventually till you can just go in at level 1), greater PvE than any game I have ever played (yes, better than EverQuest even though EQ has more, DAoC was straighter to the point in a balanced way that I enjoyed more, and now they are even injecting EverQuest type Pict Artificial Intelligence , which saddens me greatly) (in that the pict mobs used to be soloable, now they made them group only, and they also chase forever like an EQ mob instead of losing aggro which is how DAoC mobs have always worked), awesome PvE expansions (except for ToA, but I came to like ToA). Enriching the lore and the world with more places while keeping the it DAoC. Most of which had nothing to do with RvR. It was quite a magnificient trick going on behind the Hype Curtain. A trick that requires creativity. Also I really liked kicking Undead Roman Zombie butt. Also it was really hard for my first MMORPG and I would get wrecked by Mulgrut Maggot all the time while trying out different classes in camelot hills.
I wanted to like Guild Wars 2 as much as I liked regular Guild Wars. The graphics are perfect. Everything was perfect. I just didn't be motivated to play. The same thing happened to me with Final Fantasy 14. Perfection, just no play. The only MMORPG I have been able to come back to for longer than a month was DAoC, for its simplicity, and yet, its complexity. I like having lots of things to stick on the bar. I like those things to be simple too. Guild Wars 2 felt too simple. Guild Wars 1 though had billions of skills to put on the bar, but only 8 slots. It was fun finding weird and crazy skill combinations, for a while, until ArenaNet started nerfing stuff for pvp balance, but I still like it anyway.
Same thing happened to Skyrim Online. Oops, I mean The Elder Scrolls Online. I only liked Skyrim because it has birds, ants, fish, stuff like that to make the world seem alive. The game itself was very uninteresting, with Arrow to Knee hype. That and MachoMan Dragon! But mostly it was just a hack and slash FPS, in which you play through similar cave systems and little variety. The most epic moments were in the beginning or finding entirely new areas. And much to everyone's disappointment, TESO was something entirely different. I think it was okay, but again the no motivator factor again.
I'm not interested in titles like Crowfall. Don't like the name. Or crows. I was interested in Albion online until I saw it was just a festival of zerg trains running over soloers. I was like, oh, I guess that's why Mythic Entertainment didn't allow RvR in the home realms. So I just through that up for Mythic's geniusness of Dark Age of Camelot.
EverQuest Landmark, I must say, is going to be spectacular. Again, I probably won't be playing it, because I'm not an EverQuester, and never will be, but from what I can see from Landmark, it's awesome looking.
Camelot Unchained , what can I say, they took out everything behind the Curtain of what made DAoC great, and are now just giving people RvR hype. I'm afraid to even buy it, even as a DAoC player. I'll just have to wait and see.
I have been playing MMOs since Ultima Online and have cheered and Jeered many games since the early 2000's.
Now In the last 5 years I have mostly Jeered.. sad to say that but its true.
But fear not! the end is not near. The godly MMORPG is on the Horizon!
Citadel of Sorcery! The only MMORPG that is breaking the mold, answering to those who requested a MMORPG mold reset.. and starting from scratch.
Trolls drop dead, Vaporware inhalers get lost.. Citadel of Sorcery will change the genre and bring a whole new dynasty to realization!
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
Thanks Bill, I've been waiting for an article like that for a long time. Also, thanks to some of the commentators, this is one of the most insightful threads I've ever read here.
We are at the end of a cycle, some of us saw the mark on the wall years back. In my opinion, the bottom line it's the way the speculative corporations have approached the market. From a genre that was the technological and natural evolution of the PnP we have got to this jack-of-trades mess that cannot provide satisfaction in any of its particular aspects, excluding for the usual compulsive-consumerist imbeciles that judge a game just for its superficial elements (graphics, voiceovers, cgis and the sort).
Millions of dollars have been wasted in the design of elements that barely provide value to the game experience. In that and in the commercialization itself (rolls eyes). And not only that, we have witnessed how these games lose more and more functional scope and mechanics throughout the years in favor of convenience, instant-gratification and the gamification methodology.
And we have come to this point. The curtain has been unveiled and now we see the skeletons behind. The end of the cycle, the burst of the bubble.
Hopefully, this genre will now get back to the nerdy, niche roots where it truly belongs.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
WoW needs to go?! Then we would have crap for mmo options.
Every "WoW killer" has failed miserably and you want to get rid of the only solid mmo on the market????
Here's a thought....why don't developers make something good enough to steal people from WoW...
I'm getting really tired of being told "You're complaining too much about everything in the game, that's why the genre is in trouble" when you know very well that isn't true. We are being offered less and less while prices go up and up or they go so called f2p and nickle and dime us to death instead.
Game companies are receiving complaints through their own fault. The games are in trouble because of them, not "because you are complainers".
As for citadel of sorcery... I'd love it if you were right. But it's been 9 years and counting with no alpha in sight. I have my doubts. There should be an alpha by now even with taking their time to develop. Even if it means that beta is another two years off. We should be seeing an alpha by now.