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This is what changed the mmo industry
delete5230
Member EpicPosts: 7,081
Overall, here's the scoop.
Like all innovative inventions you get a short free ride in the beginning. If your product takes off, big cooperation's waist no time in taking over a product. They will beg barrow and steal your idea. At first they will be nice and ask and pay you a low fee. But one way or another using the law they will take over.
True story example:
I worked 22 years for the leading Compact Disc and DVD manufacture in the world. One day our head engineer/manager asked us technicians to spend some time to search for simple ideas for copyrights. He told us no idea is too small. He even told us their will be a small cash award if our company can get a trademark........ With this we put most all competitor's out of business, the remainders paid us. We were and are a truly ruthless company and one of the only ones remaining to this day !
I see this same actions with video games....... MMORPGS seem to have been hit the hardest, or at the very least most noticeable.
Looking at the history of mmos:
This business started with perfect timing. I'll leave companies, names, and games out of it to not start a debate on who what and how. But the timing was excellent back in the late 80's and early 90s when lawyers copyrights, trademarks, ceo's, marketers got their greedy little hands on every possible product and leaving our little spot in the world tied up in red tape and cost.
I'm absolutely amazed how hard mmorpgs took such a hit. No other product has seen such a black and white scandal shock to our beloved game play. It got to the point of pure Asian grinder cash shop games are all we have.
Are Asian mmo companies the only affordable solution ?...... It seems that way !
NOW PUTTING ALL THIS ASIDE, we have a second major problem:
What we want, and what AAA developers think we want !!!!!
We demand extreme top end graphics. This is hell for developers, yet they try and please. Shame on them because mmorpgs are now shallow shells of eye candy. With so much resources this deeply cuts into the depth and immersion in a product that's near impossible to make to began with. I guess we can forget seamless, that's gone forever.
Developers give us simple and easy and short. Why ?...... Two reasons, low cost and profit margin....... Not because a demand for it !
Like all innovative inventions you get a short free ride in the beginning. If your product takes off, big cooperation's waist no time in taking over a product. They will beg barrow and steal your idea. At first they will be nice and ask and pay you a low fee. But one way or another using the law they will take over.
True story example:
I worked 22 years for the leading Compact Disc and DVD manufacture in the world. One day our head engineer/manager asked us technicians to spend some time to search for simple ideas for copyrights. He told us no idea is too small. He even told us their will be a small cash award if our company can get a trademark........ With this we put most all competitor's out of business, the remainders paid us. We were and are a truly ruthless company and one of the only ones remaining to this day !
I see this same actions with video games....... MMORPGS seem to have been hit the hardest, or at the very least most noticeable.
Looking at the history of mmos:
This business started with perfect timing. I'll leave companies, names, and games out of it to not start a debate on who what and how. But the timing was excellent back in the late 80's and early 90s when lawyers copyrights, trademarks, ceo's, marketers got their greedy little hands on every possible product and leaving our little spot in the world tied up in red tape and cost.
I'm absolutely amazed how hard mmorpgs took such a hit. No other product has seen such a black and white scandal shock to our beloved game play. It got to the point of pure Asian grinder cash shop games are all we have.
Are Asian mmo companies the only affordable solution ?...... It seems that way !
NOW PUTTING ALL THIS ASIDE, we have a second major problem:
What we want, and what AAA developers think we want !!!!!
We demand extreme top end graphics. This is hell for developers, yet they try and please. Shame on them because mmorpgs are now shallow shells of eye candy. With so much resources this deeply cuts into the depth and immersion in a product that's near impossible to make to began with. I guess we can forget seamless, that's gone forever.
Developers give us simple and easy and short. Why ?...... Two reasons, low cost and profit margin....... Not because a demand for it !
Comments
OK, that's the Asian fashion show grinder game, that for no good reason you have to log on to play a solo game...... That one ?
Copyright is geared toward literary and artistic works, such as books and videos. A trademark protects items that help define a company brand, such as its logo.
I don't see how either of those would put another CD or DVD manufacturer out of business? Maybe the word you're looking for is a patent? Which after 22 years of searching for ideas for the cash reward, you'd think you'd know what it's called.
What changed the industry is when WOW came along and greatly increased the paying customer base for MMO's AAA developers began to follow their design lead to provide features they felt the masses would buy.
For the most part they were spot on, almost every MMO release afterwards saw solid sales initially, though there was an unexpected change in player behavior with a rapid decline in subs shortly after launch.
The reasons for this are highly debated, but in the end Developers found alternate ways to monetize their games (through adopting and improving on techniques first seen in Asian games).
At some point other genres such as MOBA's, Survival games started raking in the big bucks, with much less development effort/cost than MMORPG's so AAA studios went off to chase the new sources for big, easy money.
As for your second "issue" about graphics, judging from the outcry around poor animations and graphics around MEA I'd day developers are right to be concerned about delivering a good experience, apparently for many gameplay does take a back seat sometimes.
Developers deliver what they think people will pay for, and in most cases I'd say they've not been too far wrong in their assessment of the market as big money is being made in the MMO and general gaming space.
Are there under-served markets, probably, but ferreting those out won't be coming the big houses, it will take disruptors willing to take big risks who have the best chance of breaking traditional paradigms.
"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
When that thing becomes popular enough for the money people to sit up and take notice, it will be stripped down, examined and boiled down to its most profitable bare essentials which will then be mass produced and handed over to the marketing departments for hype.
Popularity is the kiss of death.
It's why I shake my head when you and many others here dream about having your favorite indie MMO project become hugely popular. Be careful what you ask for.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Pretty much since WoW MMO players have been vehemently repeating "gameplay over graphics" when there's criticism of visuals, even though literally no one disagrees.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
"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
The one where entire guilds of players get together for node wars, or cooperate to build guild ships and get war elephants. Not to mention build siege gear.
How dare they not make 24/7 grouping mandatory!
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
“There are huge cost barriers that go into making a MMORPG and the market is crowded,”
Can companies keep up with the expectations and each generation of MMOs costing more and more? It’s an arms race that no one can win, it’s not sustainable in its current direction.”
What we see now are developers making cheaper mmorpg that focus on market segments that aren't as crowded.
Their wages and overhead is a pittance of what it is in NA.I guess it says a lot to why so many devs are aiming at game designs that can afford the free to play budget.Aside from FFXIV and TESO the rest are really cheap low budget games and that says a lot about the industry and what they are forcing on us.
The only other market that is willing to take some risk is the single player game market and they have that monetized as well.Maybe 50 hours of game play then those gamer's are waiting for more,so just give them good enough and hey want more.
So then instead of making another game,all new assets,models several years,just make dlc's,easy money,low cost,low risk.
So who is giving us the most f2p mmorpg's....Asian they can do it for a very low cost,so again low risk.This also explains why Square had to save FFXIV,they are no some small venture,they are arguably bigger than Blizzard.at least production wise they are.I guess in a way Square is the typical Asian except they will aim for high budget but have also flooded the market with low budget games as well.
Bottom line is the market is way too predictable and why it is so easy to predict a bad game,i can see the budget and effort a mile away.I have no idea why the standards for gamer's have changed,it seems now gamer's will accept anything even the mot blatant pile of junk.I guess if the market just throws a pile of crap at customers,they begin to take it as the normal product.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
This is better than my original post, good job Iselin
What changed MMO's was LOTRO. Only WoW had more of a profound effect than LOTRO has on the industry. Why do I say this you ask? Because LOTRO started the theme park storyline based MMO. No one complained about it before the advent of that game. Because other games offered more. The devs decided to try to shoe horn plots into an already existing story, and having played it myself they didn't do the greatest job. But people liked it and it was a success. But it wasn't just that. For the first time, you could buy mercenaries to help you as you leveled so you didn't need a group.
The only other things to change MMO's was WoW who made things super easy and casual.
Players didn't ask for these things, but they played them. And game companies saw dollar signs in their eyes. The rest is history.
Pretty much sum up the mmorpg industry. People just want more and more.
BDO is a playground for doing "fun" stuff solo, I guess you log into the game to trade and use the cash shop ? Standard Asian !
Older games are stripped down to be made easy..... Each one has done a poor job of taking what was and turned into an abomination.
Try playing EQ2 and LOTRO...... They turned into crap, they don't even make good easy games, so many parts of these re-stripped down games don't even fit into leveling ( why bother crafting for one ).
And the why bother question: gear, legendaries, cosmetics, end-game stuff, crafting guild stuff... I dunno, just... stuff?
(or, maybe the crafting itself, for example I loved the farming -before it was simplified-, and some crafting quests are fun too)
I'm sorry, but I have to call you out on this. LotRO started the themepark storyline based MMO?
Um, no.
Firstly, there were already themepark / storyline MMOs before WoW. WoW then popularised the design. LotRO may well have been the first AAA themepark to release after WoW (though, DDO should probably take that title and there were probably others).
Secondly, buying mercenaries to help you level? To my knowledge, such a thing still doesn't exist in the game. I played the game from launch for 5 years and at no point did I have mercenaries to help me level and avoid grouping. The closest the game got is skirmish soldiers, but you could only use them within skirmish instances and they had no effect on grouping - skirmishes could be played solo or up to 24 player.
In my opinion, the thing that changed the MMO industry for the worse is developers forgetting about the community. "Friends don't let friends quit". Older MMOs, whether deliberate or accidental, focused on community. Player based economies promote community. Open world pvp promotes community. Open world bosses promote community. Downtime promotes community. Interdependance promotes community. Social features, like hobbies, card games, music systems, social professions etc, all promote community.
If you can build a decent community in your game, your player retention will increase, resulting in long term stable income.
That focus on community is now gone. There is no one game that can be blamed. Even vanilla WoW had a great community, sure, a little toxic, but with loads of group content, world pvp, class interdependance etc, WoW still fostered a great community in the beginning. Weirdly enough, LotRO is probably one of the few themepark clones that did and still kinda does focus on community, which is one of the reasons it is still going strong and still releasing content 10 years after release.
But, the solofication of MMOs, the trivialisation of content, the dumbing down of combat, the focus on loot drops, rather than player economies, the lack of social features etc....these have all led to a lack of community in MMOs and thus reduced retention. With reduced retention comes the need to either attract new players or, as is the case, find ways to better monetise the players you do have.
The next step on the downwards spiral is games like Destiny and The Division. They are not MMOs but are being mistaken for them. Being lobby based and focused on just a few key features, there is even less opportunity for a vibrant community to develop and so retention is poor.
But then, maybe thats not a bad thing. Maybe MMORPGs, in their traditional form, are dead. Perhaps we are moving to a world where the shelf life of an MMO only needs to be 2-3 years, rather than 10+.