I wouldn't say that MMORPGs have started sucking necessarily.
I feel that the MMORPG genre is just very slow paced compared to other game genres. We get, what, one or two AAA games a year if we're lucky? With so few big games / developers, the genre simply cant evolve as rapidly as our tastes. It very much feels like its a genre of games that you get into, get addicted to for a few years, then you hit a wall of mediocrity / lack of content / lack of innovation and end up wishing for something better.
I'm sure if I had not played MMOs before, I'd think ESO / FFXIV etc are awesome, that the older mmos were crap, and that future mmos were just clones.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
2005 the genre died in innovation. 2006 was a horrible year since the bubble economy was about to burst. The recession hit and we had the rise of f2p.
Yeah because games like TSW are not innovative at all... Nor was WAR... Neither was Cryptics UGC engine that was introuced in CoH and improved upon in Neverwinter.
I am not sure what type of innovation yu are looking for, but to say there has been no innovation is just daft.
2005 the genre died in innovation. 2006 was a horrible year since the bubble economy was about to burst. The recession hit and we had the rise of f2p.
Yeah because games like TSW are not innovative at all... Nor was WAR... Neither was Cryptics UGC engine that was introuced in CoH and improved upon in Neverwinter.
I am not sure what type of innovation yu are looking for, but to say there has been no innovation is just daft.
WAR but never pulled in the playerbase. I think that was a hit or miss. DCUO did it better. TSW its a little too late...Time is a factor in determining morale and frankly weve hit a all time low. It couldnt be worse. There is talk of a savior now. Also the quality of what we originally had also played into why the genre is dying. We've been scorned into being our own men now. If we want something we get it. It couldnt have come for a worse time to the so called innovative mmo. Check my post on this forum page about Everquest Next. That is TRUE innovation...
I mean the Matrix online came out in 2005 10 years before TSW. This is nothing new to us. Levelless classless action combat with pistols. Every game copies from one game to another you are just discovering this playstyle for the first time. What they could do if you allow me to, is to show you how you can take an existing concept and innovate. Ahem:
Here are some more information from that interview. They are not really exact qoutes since I tried to shorten them a bit but they should give you an idea of what the developers want:
The developers realize that there are a lot of unanswered questions.
It didn’t make sense to have static quests in an evolving world.
The map in the storybricks demo could represent large regions or small regions like a cursed temple could be a region. You could affect that temple which then creates values that affects a regions which then creates values that affects a country which then creates values that affects the world.
For example if the evil god that is buried in the cursed temple is awakened it may affect a region larger than the temple. If that god starts a religion it could affect the whole country or world.
It’s like overlapping spheres of influences which affects larger or smaller areas
Can I miss content? Yes but there will always be content. There is no scripted content, you are participating in a changing world. This will be problematic for completionists since it will no longer will be realistically possible to do everything. There will always be too much to do and you will never be able to finish all of it. When you log in next there will be different stuff to do.
The more you do for certain factions the more they will ask of you. You can declare that there are things that you care about in the world and invest in that. We know what people of a certain organization wants and if you invest in an organization you will get that kind of content. This means that you can tailor your experience to your playstyle.
When you invest in a faction you will get deeper story, but you will also get access to classes, advanced items and things that the developers couldn’t talk about. “I improved my story as much as my character.”
There is an idea to put the Rohsong online and share it so other people could see your story. There is also an idea to let the Rohsong show only short text or go into a lot more detail about your story. You can also go to a place and learn the story and history of that place. You could for example learn that the nature essence has gone from a region due to devastation and you might be able to work to bringing it back.
The lore, design and the AI is three components of the same thing. Even if the content is generated SOE still would want the lore and story.
If you want to find out what happens in neighbouring areas you could for example go to a tavern and NPC could tell you.
The world shows the state it’s in. If the NPC:S are sick they look sick, if they are famished they looked famished. If they are attacked they are afraid and try to barricade themselves
NPC can react to how you look. If you have a religious item on you NPC can assume that you support the values of that religion and react differently. If for example you look like a knight of justice an NPC can tell you about a justice quest.
If an NPC will get clothes of a queen like in the night elf demo she will act like a queen and other NPC:s will start treating her like the queen. The player could wear the same clothes and get the same response. This will enable a lot role playing. Items you find could could make NPC:s react differently to you and for example different night elves could react differently.
Things that dictates NPC behaviour is among other race, emotions, group belonging, location and traits. An example could be a greedy priest, a violent priest.
Resources are at the heart of this system and we have only shown a few of them but there are resources that are not tied to stuff you can find in the world like gems. It could be security, honor, justice or chaos. If there for example is no stability in the region, well monsters like that alot.
One npc won’t decide that he/she will move from a town but we can have a sim city approach like your level of happiness is not high enough so 10% of the population will move and will not be there anymore.
Organization can change relationship between each other. It works in the same way as relationships between players and organizations.
We don’t want to gate content. We don’t want you not being able to talk to the orcs if you are friends with the elfs. But the elfs will give you more content and a deeper story.
If you want to make your story about helping farmers for the next 10 years you can do that and travel around the world and help farmers. You will be the farmers hero.
What if I’m the middle of a quest and can’t log on for a couple of days and most other people are working in another direction? Then you might not be able to finish your quest. If you are in a location where there is a large amount of player you are part of a community and the will of that community will shape that location.
Something a lot of players worry about is that a certain group will ruin the experience for everyone else?I don’t think that a small portion of players can ruin the fun for everyone since the world is big and the forces in the world are large as well. That being said the first months of a launch is often plagued by some bugs and you might need to put some checks and balances in place. But if a large amount of players want something this will happen and lead to other events and stories.
Do you expect servers to develop personalities? Yes the world will become a reflection of the population on that server.
We don’t want to lead players into traps but there could be action will lead to bad results. Like if you kill all dryads the forest could become much dangerous. We could give hints like NPC:s saying that I remember before the dryads came and how dangerous it was. Choices are only choices when they are informed.
Indirect pvp, players are working on opposing goals. There could be direct pvp for players interested in that, it’s not the focus of the experience right now. Your actions would matter to other players to. If you have a group of players collection food resources for an army one method to thwart that is that you could burn the food, poison the food and let them deliver it or take the food for you own army.
The game will in general be harder the further away from civilization you are since it would be less secure.
2005 the genre died in innovation. 2006 was a horrible year since the bubble economy was about to burst. The recession hit and we had the rise of f2p.
Yeah because games like TSW are not innovative at all... Nor was WAR... Neither was Cryptics UGC engine that was introuced in CoH and improved upon in Neverwinter.
I am not sure what type of innovation yu are looking for, but to say there has been no innovation is just daft.
I guess you have to play a MMORPG that isn't A standard theme park game in order to understand the type of innovation people are talking about in this thread.
Those two titles you mentioned are far more similar to each other than they are different adding a couple of parlor tricks does not make for innovative creative gameplay
Back on topic the day the music died for me was in 2006 when I was playing LOTRO and realized I was playing the same game as WOW.
After that the phenomena continued and I haven't really enjoyed a new game since. Fortunately I gave EVE a try right at this time and I'm still playing it today.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I mean they are putting a mobile app that coincides with Rohsong (the feature that directs you to possible quests) and gives you up to the minute info on the changes of whats happening in the "evolving world" they are trying to create with simply changing the code of giving npcs "emotions" desires and wants to give the user the option "ok i want to play now, this is whats going on in the game". The game will have everchanging worlds not static ones. Not only is this a breakthrough of outside the box thinking but will resurge the genre and make sure we don't have to play a linear story again. Its the largest sandbox that will come out. And soon.
I believe innovation is created when it solves a problem. This is what's been plagueing mmos since MUDs. They found a new way of making rpgs thats different from MUDs and makes more sense and more aesthetically pleasing too. What you are describing in the TSW is a diku MUD. I played my fair share of MUDs to tell you this being proposed is totally different. Get ready for this. This will turn the genre upside down...
Tell me, which mmo do you run around town and an npc runs up to you and gives you a quest? And not at random either? This is AI. No other game has this nor no other mmorpg to date has this. This is what innovation is.
2005+ when they got mainstreamed and devs started creating games to make money instead of to create a good game. Remember thoes games with 100-200 players. They were the best games. Teraworld, RPG World, EUO, Astonia 2, original dransik etc they were made to make good games and not make money.
So we are not really talking innovation at all then... We are talking about wishfull requests,
Because most sandbox games are not any different from the old mud´s. Not any real innovation there either by the standards of "this thread"
TSW at least tried to shake things up.
Now as for the random NPC´s running around giving quests. I´d bet ny left nut that has more to do with what such a systrem in combination with oh.. lets say a few hundred or more player gathered at one place would do... Apart from some hilarious pathing issues and insane clipping i an sure there are a ton of logical issues that sits far above my non-software engineer knowledge.
Sometimes things do not happen for a reason. Because, do you honestly think that if there was a good solution for what you want... no company would at least try to get it down in order to stand out from the grey morass... Just look at Sony/DBS and their pitch for EQ:N they did not even have a embryo of a system but they still built half their marketing on it.
People have a bad tendency to call for innovation when they actually mean "put my dream feature in this game i will not play anyway in the end because of X"
Tell me, which mmo do you run around town and an npc runs up to you and gives you a quest? And not at random either? This is AI. No other game has this nor no other mmorpg to date has this. This is what innovation is.
Tell me, which mmo do you run around town and an npc runs up to you and gives you a quest? And not at random either? This is AI. No other game has this nor no other mmorpg to date has this. This is what innovation is.
Skyrim had something like this.
ESO has it, and not just in towns.
but it is a themepark-ish and does not count in this thread you see... That was what they told me. But i am glad to hear that some games have managed to get it to work.
As I have said before, now is a great time to be playing MMOs. There is surfeit of riches for the average gamer! My problem is not enough time to play everything on my list.
I'm just guessing here, but I suspect the overall trend will be:
"MMOs started sucking about three to five years after I first played them."
But some of you will be faster or slower, I guess. It is interesting how The Game We Blame is evolving over time, though.
Sort of the opposite for me:
Tried Asheron's Call (1999) and about 9 other early MMORPGs. They all sucked. Didn't bother subscribing past the free months.
Four years later tried World of Warcraft (2003). It didn't suck. Subscribed off and on for over a decade. The majority of expansions increased the quality and depth.
Tried other reasonably enjoyable MMORPGs, but never found one that had better depth.
I figured the genre had potential, so I kept trying them (10 early MMORPGs is kinda a lot of games to try, given that they were so consistently crappy.) Eventually it paid off, but afterwards no developers quite understood the underlying philosophy that created WOW's great gameplay. So a lot of attempts were made to copy the skin-deep featureset without copying the underlying design philosophies that were the true reason WOW worked.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I haven't posted in forever. I check in from time to time, but this topic caught my eyes because of the lack of interest i have in mmos.
I am a bit older and a lot of us have grown up together on these forums through mmo's (im going on 40 years). Anyways, my hardest hardcore came with two games Mu, and WoW. I played wow up through 2007 or 8 i believe. As i got older and wiser, the carrott on a stick and how mmo's were being developed pushed me away.
I remember a guy messaging me in wow years ago. "dude, you tank well, we are a top x guild and could use a tank". I said that'd be great and he responds. "okay man, go fill out an application". I respond , so if i get approved , i get a paycheck?. I have the screenshots somewhere, but ultimately trying to get the point across , that i don't want the game to feel like a job and filling out an application to join was more and more becoming an interview process for a game. this happens in tons of games, fps, etc for competitive clans/guilds. I just remember the convo because it was my maturity kicking in and saying...dude you wanna go to the beach or spend your entire day gaining a level of rep for something that's being replaced next week?
So, that brings me to my kinda major gripe of mmo's.
I truly blame dailies and weeklies for this suckage. There is nothing inventive and it's just a time sink into the game. Rep's through dailies is when wow started to fizzle out for me. Every game has them now and i notice myself just getting uninspired when i see this feature. I was stoked for dungeon defenders 2, but then saw dailies and weeklies. I played a lot of destiny, and i'd still be playing if i could just pvp to play. The game is a massive grind of dailies, weeklies, and rep. Doing pve in order to excel at pvp. The problem isn't doing something daily or weekly. it's that the game is forcing me to do the same thing every day of every week.
Fps mmo's, 3rd person mmos, action combat mmo's. They all take from something brought to the genre 8 years ago. At the root of every game is the same progression, there is no end game. The companies have this timed out. That x hours will get you x of your gear. They space it out to create as much repetition as possible while they develop the next snippet of content that you will do the same for over and over. The problem is with the content it's not enough to keep people going anymore. It's all the same, in terms of content. Kill a bunch of little guys, fight a big guy. WoW raids were fun for a while but ultimately its the same thing, kill rooms of little guys, fight big guy at the end. When the introduce new mechanics they are fun but again, after doing that new mechanic 30 times, the innovation goes away.
The innovation and change of mmo's will probably come in the next year or two. Business models tend to change every 10 years or so. Most of my mmo friends are playing things like fallout, dragon age etc... Huge open world single player games. The things we missed in mmo's was the relationships we built in them, that doesn't exist anymore. It's a daily grind, so people use a LFG tool and do their solo dailies.
Don't have a solution, and trying not to complain just voicing why i play more of the single player open world games and am more of a pick up and put down person. I've moved over to stuff like diablo on patches, call of duty, borderlands , fallout. I don't feel like i have to do anything other than just play. When i play video games now, i want to enjoy my time and mmo's just don't give me that kind of enjoyment anymore from them.
I think they began to suck almost immediately. Allow me to explain.
The initial MMO's were created for a very select group of individuals. The M.O. is as follows....
1. White Male ( I say white because there were almost no people of color in the first several titles). 2. Consumer of Fantasy media (books, movies, comics, games, whatever). 3. Computer enthusiast (which was not that big a thing back then). 4. Video Game Player
That's pretty much it. Women were hoped for but not really expected to play. Other races weren't even thought about until they made themselves known to play. And pretty much the idea was to create a world where that prototype consumer could go and play "pretend" with other prototype consumers like him.
Problem, obviously, was that THAT dude was not actually cool enough or smart enough to take advantage of such a gift and the game-play that resulted quickly degenerated down into a sausage swinging event where people were doing pretty much anything and everything, within the rules of the game and without, to lord over each other and prove their dominance.
So by the time games like Ultima Online and Everquest came out, things were already out of control and we couldn't have nice things anymore. (See "The Wild West - Player Killing" in the link below)
Then Everquest came out and suddenly GIRLS! And of course, where there are girls there are going to be people who exploit the possibility of girls. Because OF COURSE they were going to exploit the possibility of girls!! Because in a sausage festival GIRLS GOT FREE STUFF!!!
And then, along with the girls, came the cute stuff.
Now there have been other games that have tried to bring back the idea of a "Persistent Fantasy World" where people can be "magically transported to a world of fantasy and adventure", but almost every time, like clock work, the scumbags have latched onto these titles EARLY, rallied towards the idea of scumbaggery, and convinced the developers to either cater to them or spent an almost ENDLESS amount of time going to forums (just like this one) bad mouthing the game and doing their best to hurt the business of the game before the game ever gets off the ground.
And I didn't even cross into the concept of how an ENTIRE NATION started an ENTIRE INDUSTRY focused around CHEATING the games out of their content.
So you see, it's not reaaaallly the game that sucks as much as it is the player, and the player of these games have sucked almost since the beginning.
Heck, I still love em though. I just don't talk to anyone anymore HAHA which kind of defeats the entire point of the game being online but whatever.
*** Gardavsshade jumps to his feet and applauds Jesad ***
So much bitterness and pessimism in this thread, I actually feel bad for a lot of you guys! MMOs don't suck, there are a lot of generic games, for sure, but a lot of gems as well.
I think the problem is that a lot of guys aren't playing with the right people, and a LOT of you guys are expecting flawless games that will NEVER exist. That, and most of you guys don't have what it takes to really get into an MMO, and look forward to playing it.
No offense intended to anyone who posted. (It's just that a lot of MMO veterans are kinda jaded)
See what happened is those old games sucked your brain out. Now because your brain has been sucked out you are no longer able to look at a new game while using your brain. When you look at pictures of those old games, muscle memory causes your body begins to mimic the activities of the brain you once had. Making you believe that they are superior because the lack of brain is causing you to continue in such a belief. If you would find the brain and insert it back into the head you would very easily see that mmo's are better now then they have ever been.
So much bitterness and pessimism in this thread, I actually feel bad for a lot of you guys! MMOs don't suck, there are a lot of generic games, for sure, but a lot of gems as well.
I think the problem is that a lot of guys aren't playing with the right people, and a LOT of you guys are expecting flawless games that will NEVER exist. That, and most of you guys don't have what it takes to really get into an MMO, and look forward to playing it.
No offense intended to anyone who posted. (It's just that a lot of MMO veterans are kinda jaded)
For me personally, I think its just that the modern MMORPG market isn't aimed at someone like myself. I'm an endgame, grouped-focused player who prefers playing in worlds with a recognisable IP.
With most mainstream MMOs going more casual, my prefered playstyle is no longer catered for. For those few MMOs that do try to cater to my playstyle, there is generally something significantly wrong or they haven't learnt from past mistakes, so I either end up not bothering in the first place, or quitting very quickly.
Modern MMORPGs are still OK and obviously meet a lot of peoples standards for entertainment as they are still making money. I just have different standards from the average and so I must wait, lurking here and keeping up to date on the latest developments in the hopes that a new MMO might come out that I can enjoy.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
Comments
I feel that the MMORPG genre is just very slow paced compared to other game genres. We get, what, one or two AAA games a year if we're lucky? With so few big games / developers, the genre simply cant evolve as rapidly as our tastes. It very much feels like its a genre of games that you get into, get addicted to for a few years, then you hit a wall of mediocrity / lack of content / lack of innovation and end up wishing for something better.
I'm sure if I had not played MMOs before, I'd think ESO / FFXIV etc are awesome, that the older mmos were crap, and that future mmos were just clones.
I am not sure what type of innovation yu are looking for, but to say there has been no innovation is just daft.
This have been a good conversation
Here are some more information from that interview. They are not really exact qoutes since I tried to shorten them a bit but they should give you an idea of what the developers want:
The developers realize that there are a lot of unanswered questions.
It didn’t make sense to have static quests in an evolving world.
The map in the storybricks demo could represent large regions or small regions like a cursed temple could be a region. You could affect that temple which then creates values that affects a regions which then creates values that affects a country which then creates values that affects the world.
For example if the evil god that is buried in the cursed temple is awakened it may affect a region larger than the temple. If that god starts a religion it could affect the whole country or world.
It’s like overlapping spheres of influences which affects larger or smaller areas
Can I miss content? Yes but there will always be content. There is no scripted content, you are participating in a changing world. This will be problematic for completionists since it will no longer will be realistically possible to do everything. There will always be too much to do and you will never be able to finish all of it. When you log in next there will be different stuff to do.
The more you do for certain factions the more they will ask of you. You can declare that there are things that you care about in the world and invest in that. We know what people of a certain organization wants and if you invest in an organization you will get that kind of content. This means that you can tailor your experience to your playstyle.
When you invest in a faction you will get deeper story, but you will also get access to classes, advanced items and things that the developers couldn’t talk about. “I improved my story as much as my character.”
There is an idea to put the Rohsong online and share it so other people could see your story. There is also an idea to let the Rohsong show only short text or go into a lot more detail about your story. You can also go to a place and learn the story and history of that place. You could for example learn that the nature essence has gone from a region due to devastation and you might be able to work to bringing it back.
The lore, design and the AI is three components of the same thing. Even if the content is generated SOE still would want the lore and story.
If you want to find out what happens in neighbouring areas you could for example go to a tavern and NPC could tell you.
The world shows the state it’s in. If the NPC:S are sick they look sick, if they are famished they looked famished. If they are attacked they are afraid and try to barricade themselves
NPC can react to how you look. If you have a religious item on you NPC can assume that you support the values of that religion and react differently. If for example you look like a knight of justice an NPC can tell you about a justice quest.
If an NPC will get clothes of a queen like in the night elf demo she will act like a queen and other NPC:s will start treating her like the queen. The player could wear the same clothes and get the same response. This will enable a lot role playing. Items you find could could make NPC:s react differently to you and for example different night elves could react differently.
Things that dictates NPC behaviour is among other race, emotions, group belonging, location and traits. An example could be a greedy priest, a violent priest.
Resources are at the heart of this system and we have only shown a few of them but there are resources that are not tied to stuff you can find in the world like gems. It could be security, honor, justice or chaos. If there for example is no stability in the region, well monsters like that alot.
One npc won’t decide that he/she will move from a town but we can have a sim city approach like your level of happiness is not high enough so 10% of the population will move and will not be there anymore.
Organization can change relationship between each other. It works in the same way as relationships between players and organizations.
We don’t want to gate content. We don’t want you not being able to talk to the orcs if you are friends with the elfs. But the elfs will give you more content and a deeper story.
If you want to make your story about helping farmers for the next 10 years you can do that and travel around the world and help farmers. You will be the farmers hero.
What if I’m the middle of a quest and can’t log on for a couple of days and most other people are working in another direction? Then you might not be able to finish your quest. If you are in a location where there is a large amount of player you are part of a community and the will of that community will shape that location.
Something a lot of players worry about is that a certain group will ruin the experience for everyone else?I don’t think that a small portion of players can ruin the fun for everyone since the world is big and the forces in the world are large as well. That being said the first months of a launch is often plagued by some bugs and you might need to put some checks and balances in place. But if a large amount of players want something this will happen and lead to other events and stories.
Do you expect servers to develop personalities? Yes the world will become a reflection of the population on that server.
We don’t want to lead players into traps but there could be action will lead to bad results. Like if you kill all dryads the forest could become much dangerous. We could give hints like NPC:s saying that I remember before the dryads came and how dangerous it was. Choices are only choices when they are informed.
Indirect pvp, players are working on opposing goals. There could be direct pvp for players interested in that, it’s not the focus of the experience right now. Your actions would matter to other players to. If you have a group of players collection food resources for an army one method to thwart that is that you could burn the food, poison the food and let them deliver it or take the food for you own army.
The game will in general be harder the further away from civilization you are since it would be less secure.
Those two titles you mentioned are far more similar to each other than they are different adding a couple of parlor tricks does not make for innovative creative gameplay
Back on topic the day the music died for me was in 2006 when I was playing LOTRO and realized I was playing the same game as WOW.
After that the phenomena continued and I haven't really enjoyed a new game since. Fortunately I gave EVE a try right at this time and I'm still playing it today.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Skyrim had something like this.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
"What this games needs is a Paladin class!" Really...
Players are just as uninventive as the developers... you're getting sameness because you keep asking for it.
Because most sandbox games are not any different from the old mud´s. Not any real innovation there either by the standards of "this thread"
TSW at least tried to shake things up.
Now as for the random NPC´s running around giving quests. I´d bet ny left nut that has more to do with what such a systrem in combination with oh.. lets say a few hundred or more player gathered at one place would do... Apart from some hilarious pathing issues and insane clipping i an sure there are a ton of logical issues that sits far above my non-software engineer knowledge.
Sometimes things do not happen for a reason. Because, do you honestly think that if there was a good solution for what you want... no company would at least try to get it down in order to stand out from the grey morass... Just look at Sony/DBS and their pitch for EQ:N they did not even have a embryo of a system but they still built half their marketing on it.
People have a bad tendency to call for innovation when they actually mean "put my dream feature in this game i will not play anyway in the end because of X"
This have been a good conversation
This have been a good conversation
This have been a good conversation
- Tried Asheron's Call (1999) and about 9 other early MMORPGs. They all sucked. Didn't bother subscribing past the free months.
- Four years later tried World of Warcraft (2003). It didn't suck. Subscribed off and on for over a decade. The majority of expansions increased the quality and depth.
- Tried other reasonably enjoyable MMORPGs, but never found one that had better depth.
I figured the genre had potential, so I kept trying them (10 early MMORPGs is kinda a lot of games to try, given that they were so consistently crappy.) Eventually it paid off, but afterwards no developers quite understood the underlying philosophy that created WOW's great gameplay. So a lot of attempts were made to copy the skin-deep featureset without copying the underlying design philosophies that were the true reason WOW worked."What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I am a bit older and a lot of us have grown up together on these forums through mmo's (im going on 40 years). Anyways, my hardest hardcore came with two games Mu, and WoW. I played wow up through 2007 or 8 i believe. As i got older and wiser, the carrott on a stick and how mmo's were being developed pushed me away.
I remember a guy messaging me in wow years ago. "dude, you tank well, we are a top x guild and could use a tank". I said that'd be great and he responds. "okay man, go fill out an application". I respond , so if i get approved , i get a paycheck?. I have the screenshots somewhere, but ultimately trying to get the point across , that i don't want the game to feel like a job and filling out an application to join was more and more becoming an interview process for a game. this happens in tons of games, fps, etc for competitive clans/guilds. I just remember the convo because it was my maturity kicking in and saying...dude you wanna go to the beach or spend your entire day gaining a level of rep for something that's being replaced next week?
So, that brings me to my kinda major gripe of mmo's.
I truly blame dailies and weeklies for this suckage. There is nothing inventive and it's just a time sink into the game. Rep's through dailies is when wow started to fizzle out for me. Every game has them now and i notice myself just getting uninspired when i see this feature. I was stoked for dungeon defenders 2, but then saw dailies and weeklies. I played a lot of destiny, and i'd still be playing if i could just pvp to play. The game is a massive grind of dailies, weeklies, and rep. Doing pve in order to excel at pvp. The problem isn't doing something daily or weekly. it's that the game is forcing me to do the same thing every day of every week.
Fps mmo's, 3rd person mmos, action combat mmo's. They all take from something brought to the genre 8 years ago. At the root of every game is the same progression, there is no end game. The companies have this timed out. That x hours will get you x of your gear. They space it out to create as much repetition as possible while they develop the next snippet of content that you will do the same for over and over. The problem is with the content it's not enough to keep people going anymore. It's all the same, in terms of content. Kill a bunch of little guys, fight a big guy. WoW raids were fun for a while but ultimately its the same thing, kill rooms of little guys, fight big guy at the end. When the introduce new mechanics they are fun but again, after doing that new mechanic 30 times, the innovation goes away.
The innovation and change of mmo's will probably come in the next year or two. Business models tend to change every 10 years or so. Most of my mmo friends are playing things like fallout, dragon age etc... Huge open world single player games. The things we missed in mmo's was the relationships we built in them, that doesn't exist anymore. It's a daily grind, so people use a LFG tool and do their solo dailies.
Don't have a solution, and trying not to complain just voicing why i play more of the single player open world games and am more of a pick up and put down person. I've moved over to stuff like diablo on patches, call of duty, borderlands , fallout. I don't feel like i have to do anything other than just play. When i play video games now, i want to enjoy my time and mmo's just don't give me that kind of enjoyment anymore from them.
Bravo!!
MMOs don't suck, there are a lot of generic games, for sure, but a lot of gems as well.
I think the problem is that a lot of guys aren't playing with the right people, and a LOT of you guys are expecting flawless games that will NEVER exist.
That, and most of you guys don't have what it takes to really get into an MMO, and look forward to playing it.
No offense intended to anyone who posted. (It's just that a lot of MMO veterans are kinda jaded)
For me personally, I think its just that the modern MMORPG market isn't aimed at someone like myself. I'm an endgame, grouped-focused player who prefers playing in worlds with a recognisable IP.
With most mainstream MMOs going more casual, my prefered playstyle is no longer catered for. For those few MMOs that do try to cater to my playstyle, there is generally something significantly wrong or they haven't learnt from past mistakes, so I either end up not bothering in the first place, or quitting very quickly.
Modern MMORPGs are still OK and obviously meet a lot of peoples standards for entertainment as they are still making money. I just have different standards from the average and so I must wait, lurking here and keeping up to date on the latest developments in the hopes that a new MMO might come out that I can enjoy.