All my wow friends quit playing wow. All my friends didn't play another mmo. So they didn't give a fuck about this genre, they cared about wow. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't even know what the genre was called.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
We might see another golden age, if developers would stop merely copying WOW's skin-deep feataure list (unimportant) and instead copy Blizzard's design process and philosophy (ie the critical reasons their games do well).
Developers who look at every system, as already working in every title across the spectrum. And look at them honestly; what works, what doesn't, what implementations are limping along as second-rate efforts and could be improved.
Rebuild them from the ground up. Ignore fan input until you've got systems that work (intelligently). This means alienating the fans prone to Only One True Way of doing things; but ultimately, they don't matter. To create the Next Big Thing, you need to embrace the future, not the past.
Blizzard seems to have lost the capacity to evaluate their own new content at this level (given the last few expansions...)
Mmorpg's need the charismatic genius that can lead a new team to the same Delian fountain.
Could be a nice, long wait; the last ten years as evidence. When the last Big Budget Players leave the mmorpg arena entirely, my bet is on "already too late".
11 years on the same argument going on strong on this site. Groundhog day for 11 years and continuing. Heres to another 20 years of people saying death to WOW.
WOW was the golden age of MMORPGs. It was a deep game with well-designed content. That's why it did so much better than its competitors.
We might see another golden age, if developers would stop merely copying WOW's skin-deep feataure list (unimportant) and instead copy Blizzard's design process and philosophy (ie the critical reasons their games do well).
While it's technically "cloning" to slap a couple wheels on a cardboard box painted to resemble a Porsche, the important traits aren't being copied. If you want to make a lot of money selling cars you don't churn out some cruddy car that vaguely looks like a Porsche. Instead, you at least copy the way a Porsche drives -- and ideally you aim to surpass how the car drives. Or if you're making an MMORPG you aim to surpass how WOW plays (which MMORPGs have failed to do so far.)
AI isn't a shortcoming of the genre. MMORPGs are a cooperative PVE genre where the AI is supposed to be an interesting puzzle to solve. "Smart" AI would be distinctly less fun. See also Soren's Playing to Lose talk on AI design.
This has already been proven to be successful.
1. Rift: It was was the 1st major WoW clone that I recall playing. But it was well done, It could have been better, but it was still very good during it's Vanilla run. It was fun to play and was successful. Especially when Trion had an aggressive update schedule going. And to this day, I will attribute the downfall of Rift (As a sub only P2P game) not to Rift itself, that could have continued. But to Trion's other failures. Trion got in trouble and needed to boost their revenues fast.
2. SWTOR: The game released incomplete and shallow. It probably had one of the biggest initial revenue losses in the history of the genre. (At least that's my guess) They went F2P. But as we see in other games like WildStar. F2P is a temporary measure. If the game isn't good, F2P isn't going to make it good. But EA/BW used this time to fix their game. And as such brought back a healthy subscription base.
3. FFXIV: The game also was an initial failure on release. SE fixed it and re released it in the traditional Theme Park. But the game is good and healthy.
Once again, I will argue. It's not the business model That's broken. It's not the Theme Park formula that's broken. It's the crappy game design that's broken.
If we ever saw a traditional Theme Park with some depth. One that was based more off of WoW's Vanilla and TBC designs.from before patch 2.3. And if it still failed, then I'd concede.
I just find it funny how there is this bandwagon crusade to proclaim that "The time of the Theme Park is over" All the while, ignoring the White Elephants in the room.
Poster above me,i agree with everything you said 100%. I would like to add one more problem though.The problem is this whole market is now competing on f2p,that is no way going to encourage developers to do more or invest longer,they will simply whip out games for quick cash grabs.
So now we have literally multi thousands of games and developers all competing in a very small market.I also firmly beleieve that the majority of people playing mmorpg's do not want a mmorpg.they instead want some superficial leveling system with end game looting or in many cases they simply want a pvp playground.
So when we have a tug of war and neither side is pulling for what a true mmorpg should be,how can we win ...ever?We simply have to rely on some very smart people out there that really want a good mmorpg and that they might have the money to do it,it is a far stretch but i won't give up hope.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Poster above me,i agree with everything you said 100%. I would like to add one more problem though.The problem is this whole market is now competing on f2p,that is no way going to encourage developers to do more or invest longer,they will simply whip out games for quick cash grabs.
So now we have literally multi thousands of games and developers all competing in a very small market.I also firmly beleieve that the majority of people playing mmorpg's do not want a mmorpg.they instead want some superficial leveling system with end game looting or in many cases they simply want a pvp playground.
So when we have a tug of war and neither side is pulling for what a true mmorpg should be,how can we win ...ever?We simply have to rely on some very smart people out there that really want a good mmorpg and that they might have the money to do it,it is a far stretch but i won't give up hope.
And what you are describing is the system that we all label as the "WoW Clone" But are those really? I don't think they are. At least not the one that worked.
We see them every day here. Posts claiming we've playe dhte same things over and over and we are tired of it. And while that's true. None of what we've played since 2007 - 2008 has been what WoW originally was.
So, No, none of us have actually played that formula over and over again. None of us have ever played it at all since 2007 - 2008.
So to build off @Axehilt ; earlier post. It's like driving around in a cardboard box painted in Porche Red for years saying No, we don't want another car like a Porche.
1. Rift: It was was the 1st major WoW clone that I recall playing. But it was well done, It could have been better, but it was still very good during it's Vanilla run. It was fun to play and was successful. Especially when Trion had an aggressive update schedule going. And to this day, I will attribute the downfall of Rift (As a sub only P2P game) not to Rift itself, that could have continued. But to Trion's other failures. Trion got in trouble and needed to boost their revenues fast.
2. SWTOR: The game released incomplete and shallow. It probably had one of the biggest initial revenue losses in the history of the genre. (At least that's my guess) They went F2P. But as we see in other games like WildStar. F2P is a temporary measure. If the game isn't good, F2P isn't going to make it good. But EA/BW used this time to fix their game. And as such brought back a healthy subscription base.
3. FFXIV: The game also was an initial failure on release. SE fixed it and re released it in the traditional Theme Park. But the game is good and healthy.
Once again, I will argue. It's not the business model That's broken. It's not the Theme Park formula that's broken. It's the crappy game design that's broken.
If we ever saw a traditional Theme Park with some depth. One that was based more off of WoW's Vanilla and TBC designs.from before patch 2.3. And if it still failed, then I'd concede.
I just find it funny how there is this bandwagon crusade to proclaim that "The time of the Theme Park is over" All the while, ignoring the White Elephants in the room.
What makes you say that XIV is "good and healthy?" Everyone I know hates what they did and has lost faith in the boring theme-park system since 3.0 expansion, leading to large player losses. The official forums are full of players begging for more innovation or content dragged from the old xi days of content.
Is it because it still has a subscription? FFXIV has never had high numbers of subs given the cost of it's creation, 600k subscribers was the peak it ever managed and it's been dropping since then (which was for North America, Europe AND Japan) and SWTOR had higher subs than that for NA and EU Alone at the point it was considered a failure (it peaked far higher).
Square Enix is a company that prefers to retain a sub, mainly because they fear the unknown of f2p (they however have no issues fleecing players as can be seen by the ridiculous f2p style cash shop the game has).
All you have to do to prove retaining P2P is company policy irregardless of success or failure is to look at FFXI, a game by their own words that has very low player numbers yet still has a subscription.
What makes you say that XIV is "good and healthy?" Everyone I know hates what they did and has lost faith in the boring theme-park system since 3.0 expansion, leading to large player losses. The official forums are full of players begging for more innovation or content dragged from the old xi days of content.
Is it because it still has a subscription? FFXIV has never had high numbers of subs given the cost of it's creation, 600k subscribers was the peak it ever managed and it's been dropping since then (which was for North America, Europe AND Japan) and SWTOR had higher subs than that for NA and EU Alone at the point it was considered a failure (it peaked far higher).
Square Enix is a company that prefers to retain a sub, mainly because they fear the unknown of f2p (they however have no issues fleecing players as can be seen by the ridiculous f2p style cash shop the game has).
All you have to do to prove retaining P2P is company policy irregardless of success or failure is to look at FFXI, a game by their own words that has very low player numbers yet still has a subscription.
Someone gets on the forums and references FFXIV as a successful game and your alarm goes off? Can't have that can we? So now you need to prove it's not successful? With what? "Everyone I know"? That's solid right there? Even if what you said is true, your post verifies what I said. The game sucked. They fixed it. Then it succeeded. Then you say they broke away from that and are now suffering for it. That really does line up with my post you know.
A good game will succeed. Break from that and it fails.
WOW was the golden age of MMORPGs. It was a deep game with well-designed content. That's why it did so much better than its competitors.
We might see another golden age, if developers would stop merely copying WOW's skin-deep feataure list (unimportant) and instead copy Blizzard's design process and philosophy (ie the critical reasons their games do well).
While it's technically "cloning" to slap a couple wheels on a cardboard box painted to resemble a Porsche, the important traits aren't being copied. If you want to make a lot of money selling cars you don't churn out some cruddy car that vaguely looks like a Porsche. Instead, you at least copy the way a Porsche drives -- and ideally you aim to surpass how the car drives. Or if you're making an MMORPG you aim to surpass how WOW plays (which MMORPGs have failed to do so far.)
AI isn't a shortcoming of the genre. MMORPGs are a cooperative PVE genre where the AI is supposed to be an interesting puzzle to solve. "Smart" AI would be distinctly less fun. See also Soren's Playing to Lose talk on AI design.
This has already been proven to be successful.
1. Rift: It was was the 1st major WoW clone that I recall playing. But it was well done, It could have been better, but it was still very good during it's Vanilla run. It was fun to play and was successful. Especially when Trion had an aggressive update schedule going. And to this day, I will attribute the downfall of Rift (As a sub only P2P game) not to Rift itself, that could have continued. But to Trion's other failures. Trion got in trouble and needed to boost their revenues fast.
2. SWTOR: The game released incomplete and shallow. It probably had one of the biggest initial revenue losses in the history of the genre. (At least that's my guess) They went F2P. But as we see in other games like WildStar. F2P is a temporary measure. If the game isn't good, F2P isn't going to make it good. But EA/BW used this time to fix their game. And as such brought back a healthy subscription base.
3. FFXIV: The game also was an initial failure on release. SE fixed it and re released it in the traditional Theme Park. But the game is good and healthy.
Once again, I will argue. It's not the business model That's broken. It's not the Theme Park formula that's broken. It's the crappy game design that's broken.
If we ever saw a traditional Theme Park with some depth. One that was based more off of WoW's Vanilla and TBC designs.from before patch 2.3. And if it still failed, then I'd concede.
I just find it funny how there is this bandwagon crusade to proclaim that "The time of the Theme Park is over" All the while, ignoring the White Elephants in the room.
I agree that there remains plenty of room in the MMO space for more themeparks, assuming they are built well. However, I disagree with your examples of post-wow success stories, in particular, SW:TOR.
The Old Republic actually released in a very polished state in comparison to most MMOs. The overwhelming majority of the game was finished and working as intended. The only bits I can recall that were incomplete were Ilum (pvp lake) and Karaggas Palace (2nd raid). However, the game was extremely shallow which was the primary reason for its failure.
However, at no point have they "fixed" the game. It is still just as shallow as it was at release. What EA/Bioware did was decide to focus on the one niche that the game successfully entertained: story-focused casuals. This is why almost every patch and expansion has focused on more storytelling and quests, rather than improving the underlying systems.
By focusing on the niche, they stopped bleeding more players, attracted back some lapsed casual players, and by switching to F2P they have been able to milk more money out of the smaller playerbase to continue to be profitable.
As for seeing another themepark more similar to vanilla wow, having never bothered with WoW I can't say how close it is, but vanilla lotro had more depth than any other themepark I've seen. Combat and class design meant success / failure was far more based on player skill than it was gear grind. Being good took skill, rather than time. Raids, such as they were, were long, multi-boss affairs with lots of tactics. The world was mostly open and wonderful. Group play was pretty much forced on you from lvl3 onwards (you could avoid a lot of group play, but you'd end up grinding mobs if you did). PvP was active and fun, crafting was useful.
But, LotRO didn't do that well. Most WoW players that joined during vanilla said it was too similar to WoW so they left. Casual players didn't like all the grouping, so it kept getting nerfed or revamped as solo content. Gear grinders didn't like the horizontal progression at endgame so in the first expansion they made it vertical progression, killing off the casual raiding scene which hurt the rest of the raiding scene long term. It also killed off half the crafters too.
Also, again, not having played vanilla WoW I can't really make the comparison, but Wildstar was supposed to be the modern version of WoW. It was focused on the hardcore crowd (40man raids, lots of pvp and group content), had tons of gear grind crap, loads of character building customisation and stuff. That also did really badly.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
I hope WoW dies, and rather soon. But not because of MMOs, but because Blizzard won't make Warcraft 4 while it's around.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
All microtransaction games are similar enough to be called WOW clones. The only reason they are not exact copies is the payment model dictates that game mechanics have to be monetized.
If people copied Blizzard's design process and philosophy as anything but a billion dollar company they would tank before releasing a title. They are not an efficient or effective company when it comes to identifying what to do and it's only because of how much leeway they have in tinkering with group projects that the titles they do release end up as they are (save for the more recent drops in launch standards). You'd have to know how many projects they initiate and eventually drop internally to understand exactly how much they are actively losing to development that won't result in any sales.
It's honestly not the right culture and mindset for developers to be starting or moving along with. It's quite wasteful really and it's exceptionally dangerous to mimic.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
What makes you say that XIV is "good and healthy?" Everyone I know hates what they did and has lost faith in the boring theme-park system since 3.0 expansion, leading to large player losses. The official forums are full of players begging for more innovation or content dragged from the old xi days of content.
Is it because it still has a subscription? FFXIV has never had high numbers of subs given the cost of it's creation, 600k subscribers was the peak it ever managed and it's been dropping since then (which was for North America, Europe AND Japan) and SWTOR had higher subs than that for NA and EU Alone at the point it was considered a failure (it peaked far higher).
Square Enix is a company that prefers to retain a sub, mainly because they fear the unknown of f2p (they however have no issues fleecing players as can be seen by the ridiculous f2p style cash shop the game has).
All you have to do to prove retaining P2P is company policy irregardless of success or failure is to look at FFXI, a game by their own words that has very low player numbers yet still has a subscription.
So a mmorpg with 600k sub is a failed game?
I don't think the problem is the 600k sub, the problem is it is decliing. And they spent way too much money developing the game.
Someone gets on the forums and references FFXIV as a successful game and your alarm goes off? Can't have that can we? So now you need to prove it's not successful? With what? "Everyone I know"? That's solid right there? Even if what you said is true, your post verifies what I said. The game sucked. They fixed it. Then it succeeded. Then you say they broke away from that and are now suffering for it. That really does line up with my post you know.
A good game will succeed. Break from that and it fails.
Why didn't you list ESO as a success then? It had more subs than FFXIV ever peaked at.
Someone gets on the forums and references FFXIV as a successful game and your alarm goes off? Can't have that can we? So now you need to prove it's not successful? With what? "Everyone I know"? That's solid right there? Even if what you said is true, your post verifies what I said. The game sucked. They fixed it. Then it succeeded. Then you say they broke away from that and are now suffering for it. That really does line up with my post you know.
A good game will succeed. Break from that and it fails.
Why didn't you list ESO as a success then? It had more subs than FFXIV ever peaked at.
Probably because most of the numbers are estimate, inaccurate, biased, or misleading.
ESO just started to release the game on console, it's very possible the free month is also included as subscription.
Also company usually dont' like to release numbers, unless it looks good.
Someone gets on the forums and references FFXIV as a successful game and your alarm goes off? Can't have that can we? So now you need to prove it's not successful? With what? "Everyone I know"? That's solid right there? Even if what you said is true, your post verifies what I said. The game sucked. They fixed it. Then it succeeded. Then you say they broke away from that and are now suffering for it. That really does line up with my post you know.
A good game will succeed. Break from that and it fails.
Why didn't you list ESO as a success then? It had more subs than FFXIV ever peaked at.
ESO wasn't modeled in the traditional WoW style Theme Park. But if you think it's a good example to show for a successful Theme Park, then by all means.........
I'm not trying to make the point that WoW clones can work. I am trying to make the point that a well designed Theme Park still does and that what we've been feed for the last 10 years has been mostly garbage and not well designed at all.
If people copied Blizzard's design process and philosophy as anything but a billion dollar company they would tank before releasing a title. They are not an efficient or effective company when it comes to identifying what to do and it's only because of how much leeway they have in tinkering with group projects that the titles they do release end up as they are (save for the more recent drops in launch standards). You'd have to know how many projects they initiate and eventually drop internally to understand exactly how much they are actively losing to development that won't result in any sales.
It's honestly not the right culture and mindset for developers to be starting or moving along with. It's quite wasteful really and it's exceptionally dangerous to mimic.
I think devs with deeper pockets (like EA) should mimic Blizz. The reason why Blizz games are so good (essentially every game they put out is a hit .. except may be HOTS) is that they iterate many times, try many things, and are not shy to throw away what is not working (like Titan).
Sure, if you don't have a deep pocket, you can't mimic Blizz .. but they are not the only company that makes lots of money out there. I bet Riot Games can do what Blizz has done if they want to.
Developers who look at every system, as already working in every title across the spectrum. And look at them honestly; what works, what doesn't, what implementations are limping along as second-rate efforts and could be improved.
Rebuild them from the ground up. Ignore fan input until you've got systems that work (intelligently). This means alienating the fans prone to Only One True Way of doing things; but ultimately, they don't matter. To create the Next Big Thing, you need to embrace the future, not the past.
Blizzard seems to have lost the capacity to evaluate their own new content at this level (given the last few expansions...)
Mmorpg's need the charismatic genius that can lead a new team to the same Delian fountain.
Could be a nice, long wait; the last ten years as evidence. When the last Big Budget Players leave the mmorpg arena entirely, my bet is on "already too late".
Eh, safe money would be predicting MMORPGs end up exactly like RTSes.
Many RTSes existed.
Starcraft + Brood War arrived and basically dominated the scene with extremely hard-to-beat gameplay quality and depth.
Many RTSes followed, but none ever quite achieved the same skill depth. (Including Blizzard's own Warcraft 3 which was only about half as successful as Starcraft.)
RTSes sort of declined as a genre overall for a time.
Much later, Blizzard returned with Starcraft 2 which did a bit better than War3 but I think still hasn't achieved SC1-like success judging by the limited numbers available. But notably this wasn't a "genre re-imagining" as you seem to be proposing. It was simply a solid execution against the factors known to create a fun RTS game.
WOW's expansions have largely been fine. They've generally walked the line between too-innovative and not-innovative-enough. They've consistently increased the game's depth (in spite of players often mistaking that depth for the surface level simplicity.)
I feel players are mistakenly blaming expansions for their burnout. A really good game might hold your interest a full year, whereas tons of WOW players have played 2+ years and many are over 10 years. I think players just aren't terribly self-aware to realize that it's this MASSIVE amount of burnout that's causing them to only stick with an expansion 1-2 months. But when you ask them why they stopped playing, they'd jump to the quickest conclusion that the expansion itself was somehow bad. Even if they're able to cite 1-2 specific reasons an expansion was bad, that's no different from the 1-2 things which have always been the game's current biggest problems (which changed from year to year across WOW's history.) It's just that with 10+ years of burn (or whatever) it now only takes those 1-2 problems to cause a player to quit.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
WOW was the golden age of MMORPGs. It was a deep game with well-designed content. That's why it did so much better than its competitors.
We might see another golden age, if developers would stop merely copying WOW's skin-deep feataure list (unimportant) and instead copy Blizzard's design process and philosophy (ie the critical reasons their games do well).
While it's technically "cloning" to slap a couple wheels on a cardboard box painted to resemble a Porsche, the important traits aren't being copied. If you want to make a lot of money selling cars you don't churn out some cruddy car that vaguely looks like a Porsche. Instead, you at least copy the way a Porsche drives -- and ideally you aim to surpass how the car drives. Or if you're making an MMORPG you aim to surpass how WOW plays (which MMORPGs have failed to do so far.)
AI isn't a shortcoming of the genre. MMORPGs are a cooperative PVE genre where the AI is supposed to be an interesting puzzle to solve. "Smart" AI would be distinctly less fun. See also Soren's Playing to Lose talk on AI design.
This has already been proven to be successful.
1. Rift: It was was the 1st major WoW clone that I recall playing. But it was well done, It could have been better, but it was still very good during it's Vanilla run. It was fun to play and was successful. Especially when Trion had an aggressive update schedule going. And to this day, I will attribute the downfall of Rift (As a sub only P2P game) not to Rift itself, that could have continued. But to Trion's other failures. Trion got in trouble and needed to boost their revenues fast.
I strongly disagree with Rift. Rift did well initially because of a massive PR campaign and it was indeed fun initially. Rift's descent started long before defiance and EoN. It was in fairly sharp decline by month 3 from a retention standpoint, but the PR was able to keep new players coming for a while.
Rift was the game to have most blatantly copied WoW, it was clearly built with WoW as a starting point. But what it didnt have was the well developed game world WoW had. people werent in Azeroth, they were in blandsville. The class system gave players lots of choice but also gave the classes a huge lack of depth and identity. Go dig up favorite MMO class/spec posts and see just how little rift shows up despite being one of the most tried MMORPGs of recent times.
And Trion got desperate, throwing out tons of ideas in hopes some would stick. A halfassed AA system. Hardmode dungeons of which i think a total of 2 got released. Chronicles. Three faction PvP in a two faction game world (right at the same time a major 3 faction game was releasing). And the one idea that stuck and got expanded on? Mindless quest grinding without the quest text or running to quest givers. yes, Instant Adventures, perhaps the most mindless idea to come to an MMORPG in years, was what stuck. Says as much about the current playerbase as it does for Trion really.
What that says to me is Trion never had a clear vision with Rift. It was simply trying to make a better WoW.
The two most successful post WoW MMORPGs are probably GW2 and FFXIV. GW2 may have been a little shaky in its vision, but it certainly did not try to build upon any one game. It tried a fresh take on the genre. FFXIV failed initially, but then it settled on a themepark formula but with an old school slant where things needed to be earned. And again, FFXIV feels like its own unique game. Sure, its a themepark, but its obviously not WoW. Its influenced by WoW of course, but its not used as a base.
Poster above me,i agree with everything you said 100%. I would like to add one more problem though.The problem is this whole market is now competing on f2p,that is no way going to encourage developers to do more or invest longer,they will simply whip out games for quick cash grabs.
So now we have literally multi thousands of games and developers all competing in a very small market.I also firmly beleieve that the majority of people playing mmorpg's do not want a mmorpg.they instead want some superficial leveling system with end game looting or in many cases they simply want a pvp playground.
So when we have a tug of war and neither side is pulling for what a true mmorpg should be,how can we win ...ever?We simply have to rely on some very smart people out there that really want a good mmorpg and that they might have the money to do it,it is a far stretch but i won't give up hope.
F2P is a multiplier.
Like how LOTRO's revenue doubled after going F2P. (The actual long-run multiplier will tend to be less than 2x -- as that was a comparison against LOTRO's subscriber base after decaying quite a while after launch -- but the multiplier is still well above 1x)
Knowing that, you could choose to put out a mediocre game like Wizardry Online. As F2P you will make more money than you would have P2P. But it's only going to take "very weak" revenue and increase it to "somewhat weak".
Alternatively you could choose to put out League of Legends, and multiply profits off a really good design. And we saw how that turned out.
So developers should be encouraged by the potential revenue they could earn should they launch with the best possible combination of High Quality Design and F2P.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Square Enix had a chance to beat WoW with FFXIV but they shirked everything that made the latest FFXI patches so good. A modern FFXI type MMORPG with great graphics and expanded gameplay would have killed it.
We need a great group oriented long term MMO that doesn't cater to the instant gratification crowd and instead focuses on harder to achieve goals and a dependence on teammates and skill.
Comments
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Rebuild them from the ground up. Ignore fan input until you've got systems that work (intelligently). This means alienating the fans prone to Only One True Way of doing things; but ultimately, they don't matter. To create the Next Big Thing, you need to embrace the future, not the past.
Blizzard seems to have lost the capacity to evaluate their own new content at this level (given the last few expansions...)
Mmorpg's need the charismatic genius that can lead a new team to the same Delian fountain.
Could be a nice, long wait; the last ten years as evidence. When the last Big Budget Players leave the mmorpg arena entirely, my bet is on "already too late".
1. Rift: It was was the 1st major WoW clone that I recall playing. But it was well done, It could have been better, but it was still very good during it's Vanilla run. It was fun to play and was successful. Especially when Trion had an aggressive update schedule going. And to this day, I will attribute the downfall of Rift (As a sub only P2P game) not to Rift itself, that could have continued. But to Trion's other failures. Trion got in trouble and needed to boost their revenues fast.
2. SWTOR: The game released incomplete and shallow. It probably had one of the biggest initial revenue losses in the history of the genre. (At least that's my guess) They went F2P. But as we see in other games like WildStar. F2P is a temporary measure. If the game isn't good, F2P isn't going to make it good. But EA/BW used this time to fix their game. And as such brought back a healthy subscription base.
3. FFXIV: The game also was an initial failure on release. SE fixed it and re released it in the traditional Theme Park. But the game is good and healthy.
Once again, I will argue. It's not the business model That's broken. It's not the Theme Park formula that's broken. It's the crappy game design that's broken.
If we ever saw a traditional Theme Park with some depth. One that was based more off of WoW's Vanilla and TBC designs.from before patch 2.3. And if it still failed, then I'd concede.
I just find it funny how there is this bandwagon crusade to proclaim that "The time of the Theme Park is over" All the while, ignoring the White Elephants in the room.
I would like to add one more problem though.The problem is this whole market is now competing on f2p,that is no way going to encourage developers to do more or invest longer,they will simply whip out games for quick cash grabs.
So now we have literally multi thousands of games and developers all competing in a very small market.I also firmly beleieve that the majority of people playing mmorpg's do not want a mmorpg.they instead want some superficial leveling system with end game looting or in many cases they simply want a pvp playground.
So when we have a tug of war and neither side is pulling for what a true mmorpg should be,how can we win ...ever?We simply have to rely on some very smart people out there that really want a good mmorpg and that they might have the money to do it,it is a far stretch but i won't give up hope.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
We see them every day here. Posts claiming we've playe dhte same things over and over and we are tired of it. And while that's true. None of what we've played since 2007 - 2008 has been what WoW originally was.
So, No, none of us have actually played that formula over and over again. None of us have ever played it at all since 2007 - 2008.
So to build off @Axehilt ; earlier post. It's like driving around in a cardboard box painted in Porche Red for years saying No, we don't want another car like a Porche.
What makes you say that XIV is "good and healthy?" Everyone I know hates what they did and has lost faith in the boring theme-park system since 3.0 expansion, leading to large player losses. The official forums are full of players begging for more innovation or content dragged from the old xi days of content.
Is it because it still has a subscription? FFXIV has never had high numbers of subs given the cost of it's creation, 600k subscribers was the peak it ever managed and it's been dropping since then (which was for North America, Europe AND Japan) and SWTOR had higher subs than that for NA and EU Alone at the point it was considered a failure (it peaked far higher).
Square Enix is a company that prefers to retain a sub, mainly because they fear the unknown of f2p (they however have no issues fleecing players as can be seen by the ridiculous f2p style cash shop the game has).
All you have to do to prove retaining P2P is company policy irregardless of success or failure is to look at FFXI, a game by their own words that has very low player numbers yet still has a subscription.
A good game will succeed. Break from that and it fails.
I agree that there remains plenty of room in the MMO space for more themeparks, assuming they are built well. However, I disagree with your examples of post-wow success stories, in particular, SW:TOR.
The Old Republic actually released in a very polished state in comparison to most MMOs. The overwhelming majority of the game was finished and working as intended. The only bits I can recall that were incomplete were Ilum (pvp lake) and Karaggas Palace (2nd raid). However, the game was extremely shallow which was the primary reason for its failure.
However, at no point have they "fixed" the game. It is still just as shallow as it was at release. What EA/Bioware did was decide to focus on the one niche that the game successfully entertained: story-focused casuals. This is why almost every patch and expansion has focused on more storytelling and quests, rather than improving the underlying systems.
By focusing on the niche, they stopped bleeding more players, attracted back some lapsed casual players, and by switching to F2P they have been able to milk more money out of the smaller playerbase to continue to be profitable.
As for seeing another themepark more similar to vanilla wow, having never bothered with WoW I can't say how close it is, but vanilla lotro had more depth than any other themepark I've seen. Combat and class design meant success / failure was far more based on player skill than it was gear grind. Being good took skill, rather than time. Raids, such as they were, were long, multi-boss affairs with lots of tactics. The world was mostly open and wonderful. Group play was pretty much forced on you from lvl3 onwards (you could avoid a lot of group play, but you'd end up grinding mobs if you did). PvP was active and fun, crafting was useful.
But, LotRO didn't do that well. Most WoW players that joined during vanilla said it was too similar to WoW so they left. Casual players didn't like all the grouping, so it kept getting nerfed or revamped as solo content. Gear grinders didn't like the horizontal progression at endgame so in the first expansion they made it vertical progression, killing off the casual raiding scene which hurt the rest of the raiding scene long term. It also killed off half the crafters too.
Also, again, not having played vanilla WoW I can't really make the comparison, but Wildstar was supposed to be the modern version of WoW. It was focused on the hardcore crowd (40man raids, lots of pvp and group content), had tons of gear grind crap, loads of character building customisation and stuff. That also did really badly.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
I think there are even those who says they will play nothing but mmorpgs.
wait ... world of tank is a wow clone, how?
warframe is a wow clone, how?
marvel heroes is a wow clone, how?
star conflict is a wow clone, how?
It's honestly not the right culture and mindset for developers to be starting or moving along with. It's quite wasteful really and it's exceptionally dangerous to mimic.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I don't think the problem is the 600k sub, the problem is it is decliing. And they spent way too much money developing the game.
Probably because most of the numbers are estimate, inaccurate, biased, or misleading.
ESO just started to release the game on console, it's very possible the free month is also included as subscription.
Also company usually dont' like to release numbers, unless it looks good.
I'm not trying to make the point that WoW clones can work. I am trying to make the point that a well designed Theme Park still does and that what we've been feed for the last 10 years has been mostly garbage and not well designed at all.
Sure, if you don't have a deep pocket, you can't mimic Blizz .. but they are not the only company that makes lots of money out there. I bet Riot Games can do what Blizz has done if they want to.
- Many RTSes existed.
- Starcraft + Brood War arrived and basically dominated the scene with extremely hard-to-beat gameplay quality and depth.
- Many RTSes followed, but none ever quite achieved the same skill depth. (Including Blizzard's own Warcraft 3 which was only about half as successful as Starcraft.)
- RTSes sort of declined as a genre overall for a time.
- Much later, Blizzard returned with Starcraft 2 which did a bit better than War3 but I think still hasn't achieved SC1-like success judging by the limited numbers available. But notably this wasn't a "genre re-imagining" as you seem to be proposing. It was simply a solid execution against the factors known to create a fun RTS game.
WOW's expansions have largely been fine. They've generally walked the line between too-innovative and not-innovative-enough. They've consistently increased the game's depth (in spite of players often mistaking that depth for the surface level simplicity.)I feel players are mistakenly blaming expansions for their burnout. A really good game might hold your interest a full year, whereas tons of WOW players have played 2+ years and many are over 10 years. I think players just aren't terribly self-aware to realize that it's this MASSIVE amount of burnout that's causing them to only stick with an expansion 1-2 months. But when you ask them why they stopped playing, they'd jump to the quickest conclusion that the expansion itself was somehow bad. Even if they're able to cite 1-2 specific reasons an expansion was bad, that's no different from the 1-2 things which have always been the game's current biggest problems (which changed from year to year across WOW's history.) It's just that with 10+ years of burn (or whatever) it now only takes those 1-2 problems to cause a player to quit.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Rift was the game to have most blatantly copied WoW, it was clearly built with WoW as a starting point. But what it didnt have was the well developed game world WoW had. people werent in Azeroth, they were in blandsville. The class system gave players lots of choice but also gave the classes a huge lack of depth and identity. Go dig up favorite MMO class/spec posts and see just how little rift shows up despite being one of the most tried MMORPGs of recent times.
And Trion got desperate, throwing out tons of ideas in hopes some would stick. A halfassed AA system. Hardmode dungeons of which i think a total of 2 got released. Chronicles. Three faction PvP in a two faction game world (right at the same time a major 3 faction game was releasing). And the one idea that stuck and got expanded on? Mindless quest grinding without the quest text or running to quest givers. yes, Instant Adventures, perhaps the most mindless idea to come to an MMORPG in years, was what stuck. Says as much about the current playerbase as it does for Trion really.
What that says to me is Trion never had a clear vision with Rift. It was simply trying to make a better WoW.
The two most successful post WoW MMORPGs are probably GW2 and FFXIV. GW2 may have been a little shaky in its vision, but it certainly did not try to build upon any one game. It tried a fresh take on the genre. FFXIV failed initially, but then it settled on a themepark formula but with an old school slant where things needed to be earned. And again, FFXIV feels like its own unique game. Sure, its a themepark, but its obviously not WoW. Its influenced by WoW of course, but its not used as a base.
F2P is a multiplier.
Like how LOTRO's revenue doubled after going F2P. (The actual long-run multiplier will tend to be less than 2x -- as that was a comparison against LOTRO's subscriber base after decaying quite a while after launch -- but the multiplier is still well above 1x)
Knowing that, you could choose to put out a mediocre game like Wizardry Online. As F2P you will make more money than you would have P2P. But it's only going to take "very weak" revenue and increase it to "somewhat weak".
Alternatively you could choose to put out League of Legends, and multiply profits off a really good design. And we saw how that turned out.
So developers should be encouraged by the potential revenue they could earn should they launch with the best possible combination of High Quality Design and F2P.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
We need a great group oriented long term MMO that doesn't cater to the instant gratification crowd and instead focuses on harder to achieve goals and a dependence on teammates and skill.