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MMO's have not changed but sadly I have.
calranthe
Member UncommonPosts: 359
I feel like I have played online games forever, beginning in the 80's with BBS games and evolving into primitive college MUD games, in then came full text based online games with 10-500 people playing, soon myself and wife moved on to Meridian 59 server 102, from there we avoided WoW but played nearly every other one that came up, apart from EVE had no interest in PVP (in fact EVE PVP probably made it impossible for us to take pvp in any other game seriously) enjoyed questing and role play, loved open world exploration and interesting story lines.
We grew up but time never became limited for us as a couple (my wife is disabled and I am her primary carer) so time limitation can not be blamed.
We settled in Anarchy online, Everquest, Neocron, Matrix online, City of Heroes/Villains, Star Wars Galaxies, tried many others.
My favourite current MMO games are Star Trek Online, SWTOR and TSW Legends.
But I realized last night that I no longer play any of them as an MMO, I am not a member of a group or guild, I do not do raids or any high level content that can not be solo friendly instead I play them as a Social Single player game.
I love games like Mass effect and Dragon Age, love the Witcher games and the only sad part is when I complete them, they can engross me for weeks at at time but always there is an end, those characters and relationships I built up over time, always there is a last time I load up my save game and it is like I am saying good bye to a piece of me.
Now games like Swtor, TSW and STO taken as a single player game have many hundreds of hours of content and some of it is quite good.
The conclusion I have come to is, there is no point me looking for a new MMO to play as an MMO, instead stick to those three unless some one out there can suggest an MMO with great single player story and content that is pretty much free to play.
We grew up but time never became limited for us as a couple (my wife is disabled and I am her primary carer) so time limitation can not be blamed.
We settled in Anarchy online, Everquest, Neocron, Matrix online, City of Heroes/Villains, Star Wars Galaxies, tried many others.
My favourite current MMO games are Star Trek Online, SWTOR and TSW Legends.
But I realized last night that I no longer play any of them as an MMO, I am not a member of a group or guild, I do not do raids or any high level content that can not be solo friendly instead I play them as a Social Single player game.
I love games like Mass effect and Dragon Age, love the Witcher games and the only sad part is when I complete them, they can engross me for weeks at at time but always there is an end, those characters and relationships I built up over time, always there is a last time I load up my save game and it is like I am saying good bye to a piece of me.
Now games like Swtor, TSW and STO taken as a single player game have many hundreds of hours of content and some of it is quite good.
The conclusion I have come to is, there is no point me looking for a new MMO to play as an MMO, instead stick to those three unless some one out there can suggest an MMO with great single player story and content that is pretty much free to play.
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Comments
I feel the exact opposite, I feel the games I have been playing are the best ever (and I have been playing a long time) and I think the number of games of that high quality is now better than ever.
sadly (to borrow your line) nobody who posts here at MMORPG cares to know what those titles are or cares to try them out in hopes that it might help them.
Normally that would suggest one WANTS to remain in a state of sorrow, maybe it is.
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So i don't see a state of sorrow.
In fact, what is wrong with moving on from MMOs? There are plenty of other online games (unless you count all of them as MMO as some websites kind of do), single player games, netflix ... it is not like we really need "proper" MMOs to have fun.
no its not 'sadly' frankly its the best time ever no 'but sadly' nope..far from it exact opposite in fact.
can anyone here get excited about the current games other than me?(my special snowflake card I am sure some will love) not 'ok' i mean EXCITED
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I will say, however, than when playing ESO with the new Morrowind Expansion, when I got off the boat in Seyda Neen I did "SQUEEE" like a little girl, "Woohoo'd" in Vivec, and almost cried in Balmora, and sat for about 10 minutes beside the Silt Strider listening to its noises. But before they released? Apprehensive anticipation all the way.
This weekend is a case in point, I had a friggin fucking BLAST this weekend playing a specific game which I only refrain from mentioning because I know people will try to divert attention.
and for the record I am age of 49
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I go against the grain myself. I love the new combat in [REDACTED: a reboot of an older game] (I was in the whole beta) and as you can tell by my icon, I also played [REDACTED: the older game] (lifetimer). Love [REDACTED: Korean grindfest laggy game with boats] (because I play it MY way, not the grind train way), still love old [REDACTED: sequal to mmo that rhymes with nevertest] (they brought back the Island!), still play [REDACTED: heavily monotized sci fi that boldly goes somewhere] occasionally, so I do agree with you, I just wanted to point out that I keep my expectations low so that when something is great, GREAT! and when it's a mess, oh well.
oops I mentioned some games. Let me redact so as not to derail...
I want to make it very crystal clear, I think the games we can play now are in quanity and quality MUCH better than any other time in human history by a large margin and that started to happen around 2013.
I feel sorry for those who are missing out
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It is sad in a way because I remember all those times spent on raids/guild meetings, parties, adventures with many many people, 10 to 12 groups of us in Kunark on the plains up against the cliffs slowly pulling the Spider creatures one at a time trying to push through a hell level, sitting in freeport complaining about the boat as we fished, danced, joked and got to know people, killing my first hill giant solo with my earth pet.
But not sorrow, just like the sadness you can have remembering amazing times had as children, adventures taken before time moved on.
if 10 years ago you (and everyone) lived without electricity and with no cars then 2 years ago space aliens came down and gave you the ability to live forever, travel anywhere you could, and never die or never feel pain.
Would you be sad about the days no longer being like the good old days?
what I am trying to illustrate here is that the gaming of today is so good its silly to be sad or lament or anything other then be idly curious about the past.
at least speaking for me I dont think I can express how profound the change to my gaming life has been in the past 3 years, its major, its like turning it up to 11, its like discovering warp drive...
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MMOs need new ideas just like pen and paper RPGs added when more then a few players tired of D&D and AD&D in the mid 80s. That genre splitted out in many direction and D&D itself changed a lot (some things to the better but not all). There are still millions of P&P players but if AD&D would be the only system around after all these years the number would be really small.
The difference is of course that MMOs are very expensive to make while you can make a good P&P game with a $1000 initial investment but the MMO genre have far too many very similar games and that means it is losing players and fail to gain new.
Meridian 59 and Everquest were amazing games but their settings and mechanics have been taking so far we can after 21 years of basically the same with prettier graphics. Most alternative games have been really bad (except UO, Eve and to some degree SWG).
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.
Instead of creating vibrant virtual worlds the robots killed it off a la Terminator.
Your alternatives are just as odd as Nari who is always telling me to go watch Netflix instead of looking for a good MMORPG to play.
Heck, Netflix makes more sense, I can watch shows on it while playing my MMO.
One more time, go play something else is not an answer in these conversations.
Most of the folks here already are, I'm likely the rare exception.
"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
They started out with a lot of variation and experimentation, then everyone settled on one "best" model, now the entire industry is stagnant and dying.
The issue is players have sent a clear signal to developers. "Make something new." And most developers just haven't picked up on it.
MMOs are only the model of the past if developers never clue in to the massive potential this industry has to be something more than WoW clone after WoW clone. I have the feeling that even if all the games promising something new flop and the industry all but dies out for decades to come, eventually someone will come along, create something new and interesting, and the MMO genre will be reborn.
I really do not see the community of players going back to how they used to play, I think a lot of the games coming out will be changing that dynamic in the long run.
and to be clear...when I talk about MMOs specifically I tend to assume my audience understands that what is revelant are things that can ONLY be in an MMO. so things like questing bla bla bla is an interchanageable game mechanic so I usually dont refer to those when I speak specifically about MMOs
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But Everquest and Wow styled games need something rather different to stay alive in the west for the next 21 years. It is possible that VR could change the experience enough but I doubt that.
You don't really need to make a hybrid with another genre to make something successful though, you need something that is different but fun. Different mechanics, a different setting and a different presentation to the players. There will certainly be some fans of older types of games around (UO still have players after 20 years) but for a MMO to become a huge hit in the west again we need something that feels new and fresh.
And that is why I advocate a translation of the P&P game Shadowrun. It have very different mechanics, a different but good world and it would feel like nothing we played before unless some moron just slap Wows old tired mechanics over it (like using Wows mechanics for a Warhammer game instead of Warhammer fantasy RPGs good and working mechanics for an instance).
Most important though is that the players goal in Shadowrun is very different from D&Ds, while you certainly want cash in SR and some gear is nice to get like beta grade cyberware and weapon focus that is not why you play the game. SR is focused on abilities, story and things like streetcred instead of getting a new vorpal blade +5...
I still believe in the genre but I don't believe in continuing to make the same game over and over.
Large scale MMOs will be replaced with Private server games. There is something called Dunbars number which illustrates that the number of people you can hold a social relationship to is limited. MMO servers far exceed that limit, thus private servers can give a player all that they are looking for. This in addition to data collection so that the game universe can respond to players actions.
I by no stretch of the imagination mean people are not going to be playing together.
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You certainly don't have the same interactions with that many people but that doesn't mean you don't enjoy being around them and to meet new people.
Private servers have been around a long time and it is fun but you don't really meet new people there and interacting with new people is the best thing about MMOs. Sure, most of the people you interact with are just something superficial but I think most of us here met at least one actual friend through MMOs if not more.
So I guess I disagree with you, I like talking with new people, not just my IRL friends.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number
People who want more are basically not in it for the social relationship and said experience can be easily replicated using NPCs because its more static after 150.
anyway...I see people moving away from MMOs and moving toward Private Servers as in I have LITERALLY seen people do that, I have heard of many people doing this. In part because the games are simply better but I dont think the big budget MMOs are going to return to fill that gap.
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As you said, the reason people go for smaller games with personal servers is because the games are generally better there now. As I see it are both good, sometimes I want to spend quality time with my friends, othertimes I like to go out and meet new people.
There is also a genre that is a mix, CORPGs like Guildwars and DDO. There you meet new people in the outposts but still get the close and personal experience most of the time, I think we will see a few new games like that in the future as well.
I do hope we will get a few new good AAA MMORPGs in the future
The question is: do gamers need MMOs? The answer is "probably not anymore, aside from a small group".
thats another way of saying just because one own personal world view contradicts Dunbars number it doesnt mean the substance of Dunbars number which I am sure most have not even read is not valid ...;)
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That indirect relation with a large community of real players is something that can't be replaced by NPCs in a single player or small population server game. While it's true you can get a scripted response from NPCs when you do something, it doesn't hold the same kind of value as it does when real people know you for things you did.
The problem with modern MMOs, in my opinion, is the lack of focus on creating opportunities for both direct and indirect community interactions. Most modern games seem to isolate you from interactions with other players with primarily solo activities that nobody else in the game will know about or care about. To yourself and the NPCs your character is the chosen one who will save the entire world. To the other players (who are also the chosen one) you are just another random nobody who is cluttering up their screen, causing lag and making their progress through the game harder and/or less immersive. That isn't how it should be in a MMO!. They need more server records that can be set, player rankings, face-to-face trading, and other ways for players to gain notoriety in the world. That's just my thoughts on it.
2. I did not protest against the data (even though I said that some researchers thinks the real number is even lower, illustrated Science had an article about it 2 years or so back) , I just say that not everyone I talk to over a beer or PUG a dungeon with is a friend and I still can enjoy that.
I enjoy meeting new people, if you don't that is fine but don't try to to say that I can't enjoy that because "science".