I'd been jumping around between MMOs alot after being introduced to the genre by AO and having spent a good year and more there. When WoW came I got caught up in it and it stands as _the_ game which burned me out on the genre, with the amount of time it demanded in return for only a slight chance at being rewarded. The road to 60 was fun, but short. Basically you're going through the same themepark as everyone else. Getting off one ride and on another untill you've done them all and you're stuck with the endgame, which would fit just as well within the context of a singleplayer rpg with online capeability like neverwinter nights :P
I think you put alot of people's thoughts into words here as we're looking for something different. Every company with enough money available can develop a clone of a working gameplay and dress it in a slightly different theme, while the few who try to do something outside the box don't have the resources to pull it off.
Your quote of the SWG dev in particular, it pisses me off to no end. It's that kind of "lets find simple ways to keep people online and make money" which is killing the genre. MMOs have been compared with the .com bubble of the past. It can only be inflated so much before popping. If every game is the same, what's keeping players from jumping over to greener pastures every time a new one is released? There's always been ten crap games for every good one, but MMOs slap on a regular fee to the deal.
I look back at WoW and the only good thing about it was the group of people I played with. As it happens to be, people can be found everywhere and as such I regret the time I spent with the game. In comparison I don't regret approximetly the same amount of time spent in AO because it wasn't focused on getting "more pro items". The PvP wasn't as deep as in Eve, but still there was a touch of player politics going on and in retrospect. It's been memorable to have taken part in several player events which were landmarks for the community I was with. In WoW our guild were the first at euro Burning Blade to kill Onyxia, so what? Everyone kills her at some point. Do you brag about sleeping with the town hooker? Not everyone chased off an omni martial artist scouting your Notum Tower triggering a chain of events where land ownership changed drastically for the guilds involved dragging into a big standoff with propaganda wars fought on forums :P
In the lack of other options, PvP is the thing I want to see more of. Not a big fan off "empireA versus empireB" pvp settings, I still find Daoc to be attractive had it not been for the level grind. What's the purpose of the grind if the real meat of the game doesn't open up before you've maxed out? Why force every character through a grind to reach the point you actually find rewarding? It doesn't matter if the level threadmill is just two weeks, or even one. I can get instant gratification from online multiplayer deathmatches with all sorts of settings without subscribing to be allowed to spend 1-2 weeks on a server preparing my avatar before getting into the equalent content.
Originally posted by BountyGreg I play MMOs since UO was released and I still pay for SWG (god knows why), and I agree, the burnout is there. At the same time, Im not happy about everyone complaining about it.
I found out by myself I would never find a game I really love, a mix of WoW, SWG, UO, DAoC and so on, so I decided to create my own game, it surely won't have the numbers of WoW of even Disney's Toontown but at least it will be what I and several others like.
...
Gather your ideas and create your own thing, or at least voice them to developers and producers. It won't cost you a cent and you might get a better response then what you think.
I think there may be more to this than what you think. I remember the days of Diablo (and earlier) anticipating UO and MMOs and dove right in. I've been actively playing MMOs since (currently in WOW).
Universal problem with MMOs? No freedom. You're stuck in a class; stuck doing a quest that thousands have done or will do; or stuck finding the epic gear that every other person is looking for. Dark and Light really peaked a lot of interest when they started talking about exploration and detailed crafting because it's not so much about doing the same things as it is about playing a game that emulates life and the freedom therein.
An interesting idea that i've tossed around is the idea that experience should be just that... experience. I hate how experience has become some magical number that killing a creature has given you. UO was a little different in the fact that you lived and died by skills that you had to spend time on, no levels or predefined classes. I know this is far from politically correct in MMO thinking, but what if experience was based on play time . The more time you spend in the game the more experience you gain to use in abilities to make you bigger, better, stronger. I hate how companies have turned their backs on extremely active players by trying to even the playing field. I would be more upset looking up to a powergamer who learns the ins and outs of a game and grinds the game out than someone who has invested time into a game. The fact is, this would force MMO companies to make a game that people enjoyed playing. Right now, companies make games with a lot of "content" aka, stuff they tell you to do to keep you occupied and involved in the game. A truly great MMO would inspire you to keep playing to play because you enjoy it, not to achieve end game "uberness".
Oftentimes the most elegant solution to a question like this is among the simplest solutions..
MMOGs as they are today, have the following problem: Their content is finite; the number of things that a player can do is limited, therefore at some point, they will run out of things to do. At that point, they will get tired of doing the same-old same-old, and become burnt out on the game.
There are 2 solutions to this that I can think of:
1. If a company has the monetary resources, they must keep adding a steady stream of unique and fresh content to their game. Meaning entirely new gameplay elements which add to what is currently in the game.
WoW has lagged tremendously in this area, especially considering the amount of cash that they could bring to bear to add new gameplay elements, hence players are getting burnt out on the game.
Now onto the next solution, which I feel could be much more compelling, and would absolutely hold a playerbase, without problem if done correctly:
2. Have the timeline of the game itself be finite. Design the gameplay around this framework. There will be a time in which the current iteration of the game ends; therefore, you design the game so that there is a culmination at this point, and players somehow win or lose. The winning or losing aspect is absolutely required; the fun of any truly fun game is in attempting to trump the game - to win out in the end.
Perhaps do this with a rankings system, or design the game so that the players as a whole must accomplish objectives along the way, which will eventually get them to the point of being able to defeat the big foozle, or being able to "ascend" in some way, or some other similar thing.
Once an iteration ends, another begins. Players get some kind of bonus if they won in the previous iteration; and you can have a whole new set of gameplay for each iteration - Truly a story being told, and the players taking part in it - This would be truly compelling gameplay.
Current MMOGs get old because they are static. Anything that which by its nature doesn't change, will become uninteresting once you've completely understood it, or figured it out.
To my way of thinking, the best alternative to raiding at end-game is PVP. If WOW had a better PVP and crafting (and offered gear equal to raid gear, with an appropriate amout of extra effort to obtain said gear), I would never have quit playing.
The first MMO to perfectly balance raiding, PVP, crafting, and questing, this will be the game that keeps me around forever. The trick is that the company has to offer everything, and never cater to any special interest groups.
I aggree with some of the point brought up in this article
But what can one do about the current habit of Game companies not listen to their customers.
All these developers are creating these MMO's but one crucial aspect of their business model they are failing to improve on is their customer interaction. I for one stopped playing or paying for any MMO game because their seems to be a conceit in the air of the way developers handle their consumers. "This we know what you want kinda of attituded" We encounter all the time from conception of the MMO to the deployment of their product. Just read into all the previews. Its eerie how they all talk about their class system/ and level advancement like that is what we want.
I know that the coporate world looks at americans and thinks that we are all just commatosed consumers that dont have to be given a second thought. Which is probably true since we are living in a time where we so easy forget past agressions and the middle class is squeezed more and more everyday for every ounce of blood we got.
But back to the point. We can keep agreeing to the one or two articles written on forums like this here and there. but until we really organize and send out a resounding "Hey You Game Dev Company stop feeding us the same crap! I am not buying it!" message to the industry. Little will change
I am will stick with playing Civ4 and the few single players RPG's that i find worth my money and time till the industry gets it's act together.
I also agree with this article but I would like to add a note of optimism. I see mmrpg as being in their infancy. We have only begun to scratch the surface of the genre.
Right now the industry is generally creating games from a certian level based, grinding, item centric mold that is very simplistic. New games are going to be enlivening combat and that is a nice improvement but many are relying on a variation of the same old thing.
My optimism sprouts from the cutting edge. There are areas that are yet to be developed and ways yet untried.
For example,
The role of player associations in gaming.
Player associations right now are still only glorified chat lines. There is shared banking and housing and there is also faction based interactions based on guilds but that is about it. There are groups and guilds and in pvp there are meaningful kingdoms.
But player associations can have a much more intricate role in games. In the future player associations will be utilized to establish and control factions in a rich and complex manner. They will also be a tool for controlling trade, combat, quests, tasks, and jobs. There will be families, fellowships, professions, villages, city states, kingdoms, and realms and a given player will be able to access many associations at the same time. You could actually BECOME a member of the Freeport Militia for example, and you might even rise through whatever means that association uses to the top and be able to serve a term as the leader. Positions of authority ...the chance to lead will be a possibility for anyone but will have to be earned and even then the term of office will be finite. The ruleset that player associations operate under will vary depending on the race or the profession or the geography or the predominant religion. But it will vary so that moving around will dramatically alter game play.
A member of a professional association will have duties to perform special training opps and obligations to fulfill. The Freeport Militia will owe allegiance to their king and their allies. There will be menus of special tasks and quests that only the Freeport Militia has and you willl be able to participate in those things as a member. But remember your character will be aging as you play so if you decide not to be in the Militia in this life...wait until the next. You will have developing children and relatives that you will also be able to play. The world will be filled with player characters not NPCs. Or rahter oour player characters that we are not occupying WILL BE the NPCs.
Players will be put in storyline based leadership roles via these player associations. Instead of being in a lame out of context guild imagine being the elected leader of the Rangers of Kelethin or you may gain power through combat and become the warlord of Freeport. In such positions players will have a role to play and that role will be deeply imbedded in a developing world altering storyline.
Leveling will not exist in the future of mmrpg. Instead characters will be online 24/7 and you will possess them. They will age and grow old and ys eventually even die. The player character will cease being the central figure of growth for the game. Instead the family line will be the object of growth and continued development over time. Players will be "writing" the lives of their characters as they play. The fun will be in the story because the story will be compelling. You will WANT to log in and maintain an account just to find out what happens next in the big picture of the events of the world as well as the little picture of the role your player character plays.
Races will actually matter in the future games. If you are an ogre you will have ogre characteristics and strengths as well as weaknesses. To play a different race will be almost like playing a completely different game. Interactions between races may be rare at first and increasingly interactive over time but never amorphously the same.
Player characters will be linked to the land through their player associations. Their livelhoods will depend on defense of home and country. Their leaders (also players) will be good leaders if they arrange for their player base to live well. This will include political decisions, peace, warfare, and the ebb and flow of alliances.
Imagine that all rangers of kelethin really are responsible for the safety of the Greater Faydark forest. They would have a task to patrol and perhaps the game devs knowing this will provide a storyline based pvp opportunity through interlocking and opposed tasks. The trolls may have a task option that the leader can pick to raid the Elf town and steal children elves for food. The rangers in their role as protectors will oppose this. In this case PVP will have depth and meaning. It might also change the demographics of the world.
There will be sophisticated live monitoring and balancing tools to allow the game devs to control the nature of the storyline and effect change when things are becoming too chaotic. They will allow change and sometime rapid change but always withing the context of a STORY. The quest and task interface will be a tool to manipulatae the world.
There is more....
The point is that this genre is just starting. I agree with the article. The present games make burnout easy. But I like to think ahead about what it might be....consummate explorer/ranger I am.
I agree to this article and I have always agreed. WoW has been great progress in the evolution of virtual environments, however it has been a load of very safe design choices. I have always seen WoW using the same formula as Disney; you can follow the predetermined route, can't stray from the paths, and are offered the same toony animatronics over and over again.
However WoW will pass away. Oh, I am sure there will be a few WoW servers left by 2016 with die-hards level 98 and Tier-8C sets, in 8 continents, with 22 races, 14 classes and 3 fractions, probably managed by fan boys with a strange insane glint in their eyes. But the rest of the MMO scene will have moved on. WoW will have served his purpose, which is to prove this can and will be a mass movement way more entertaining than a load of other types of entertainment in this narrowing world.
However it is time to wake up. Companies reflexively, spasmodically imitating the same formula should heed my warning; War, MEO, AoC, all of these smell like having the same very safe and very stupid design choices. There will only be one winner in the post-WoW arena of games and the competition will incur financial losses on the balance sheets.
I have said this in several commentaries, discussions and articles: MMO needs to escape from the cliche's, MMO needs to make trendy (a horrible world) and politically incorrect statements and MMO needs to become persistent world.
First - cliche's. WoW is a snakepit of cliche's. I liked the humor for a while, say, 2 months. Now I ignore it. I liked the same old races for a while, now I tolerate them. Orcs and Elves and Gnomes, personally I think it's easy and safe and cowardly. However I have some empathy with designers. Man, mass audience are sometimes so bloody stupid. Come with a new race, something red with glaring eyes and small backward curved horned and call it a Yangiri, and those same predictable IQ80 murrcans will say, WTF? and won't get it. But that will change, mark by words. A title with the more original concepts may initially fare a little slower but will bounce back.
Second - games that are politically correct are boring. I personally loathe political correctness. If I play a game or choose a genre I go for statement, value, challenge. I don't play correct, I want to feel the game I select is too far out, too offensive. Not everyone may agree with this, least of all everyone's lame-ass boring parents, but who cares?
Third - MMO should not be predictable. The best way to generate this is to allow chaotic processes and user contributions. Both are a nightmare for game designers. If I would redesgn WoW I would introduce the same mechanics as Alterac Valley but do it worldwide. I'd say - a stretch of land has resources, places to build houses and some native animals. Then have it evolve. Give each race a starting valley and that's it. You can come to land A in january, a n area with level-10 resources and monsters and find it dominated with orcish buildings, orcish lifestock, orcish resource exploitation. Return there in may, the elves may have captured it, with all of their iconic placeholders firmly visible. Maybe even the plants have changed a bit.
If players dont work hard and dilligently enough, the NPC's encroach. Sure, we have all known that for ages the damn sillithids are in the southern barrens. That is my point exactly - it doesnt change. In the Next WoW I wanna persistently see the damn sillithids pop up all over the place, be eradicated, pushed back and return. Eventually the sillithids may be pushed back to their seed country and stay there for a few months. And eventually the game designers should make other seed countries, that'll pop up, disseminate and dominate all over all available countries. And that brings me to player content...
Imagine a WoW where players design a magic item, create the skin for the item, have it approved and then it becomes part of the game. This happens in Second Life all the time; I have made a bunch of T shirts with political statements there and they pop up all over. The same can be done with buildings... the game creators can create the default for a lumberyard building but what if players of the orcish persuasion (or yangiri for all I care) create a better and more convincing lumberyard, who cares? The same has been done in miniature games and works there just fine, who cares? And what about races themselves. We have hobbits and elves and taurens now, people love em. But what if a persistent world sees the emergence of player designed content, carefully screened for thirdparty copyright infringement ofcourse (or not!) ? A WoW would start with maybe 10 races, and after a year would have 30.
Allow players their own strategical choices. Imagine that in many servers the sillithid NPC monsters would have all been eradicated. Imagine in some serves the gnomes not having caught on a lot, while in other serves those damn gnomes cooperating with the yangiri, the kzin, the klingons and the wookies having split from the alliance, all based on player decissions, with taurens and gorean pirates waging a fierce civil war!
This is chaos. Chaos is scary but in the end chaos is the most entertaining. MMO's should become a bit like the weather and become dominated by evolutionary processes. Allow new ideas to pop up.
My ideal game would be like this:
Take the solar system, around 2200 - You have all planets, a shitload of asteroids. The game starts with 5 starter areas, probably earth, mars, asteroids, the saturn rings, a jovian moon. There are resources all over and the game starts with a number of NPC bases. Some area's, generally the one with better resources, are more dangerous.
Players start as baseline boring humans but with cyberware, genetic mods and career choices they can become whatever they like. You can have big blueskinned brutish warrior types a la orcs, with big ugly black matted metal cyberarms, but you can also have these slender sleek and deadly fast and sexy elvish (vulcan) stealth types.
Now allow players to design and create consistent world content. Combine technologies. Create skins and models. Form alliances. Define political ideals.
All in all, take elements not just from some archaic tolkien-based ideal, but assimilate it all - star trek, star wars, Eve Online, Wow, Second Life.
I burnout as soon as I realize the only think keeping me going is the next level. I've played around a dozen MMOs and each one ends the same for me. I find myself in a cave, surrounded by the corpses of whatever monster is the most efficent to kill. That's when I know the story has run dry, and there's nothing left but the grind. At this point I cancel my account, and fire up NWN for a bit of modding, or to see what new modules are available.
Looks like Im absolutely in the same place as all of you...MMO burnout.
Yes Meridian59 was great for its time. I played it, but UO and EQ1 were what really captured me.
Any MMOer that missed doing an EQ1 raid..with 200 people there all cringing as they watched clerics do a CHeal rotation on the main tank...really missed an amazing experience.
Shadowbane too was a must-play. I felt like I had recaptured the luster of my 5 years in EQ1 whenever we had a critical seige on an opposing guild's town. So much "edge of your seat" drama. That feeling of anything could happen at a moment's notice based on crafting or politics or a new character build.
Now I play betas and absolutely dread every minute of them.
The absolute keys to making the next great MMO are:
> Design the quest interactions like in single-player games with custom interfaces (like radio dials, computers, etc.) so that the user is interacting with the world
> NPCs on a real friggin schedule not robotically standing there - that dynamically change based on simulated sets of needs.
> Meta-gaming where single players and guilds alike can influence the storyline and have the world react. Make it modular, but make it deep so that a string of 100 actions, each achievable by a player or player group, will follow a story arc that has meaning within the context of the game.
... thats just a start.
Right now Im bored with whats out there and it doesnt look like its going to get any better any time soon.
The most memorable moment for me in the RPG world is Baldur's Gate 2. I totally fell in love with that game, and most if not all of the mmorpg's that have come out are like taking a huge step backward in gameplay diversity. I never ONCE cared about what level I was in bg2, because I was so busy enjoying the story and different environments and different personalities of characters and the different powers/ability combo's. Every decent singleplayer rpg I have played, mops the floor with any mmorpg I have played.
Mmorpg's basically take a game like bg2, remove the decent followable effectable imaginative storyline, remove any way that you can actually effect the world, remove all personality's from npc's and then how do they make up for all this gameplay loss? they extend the amount of times you have to kill the same mob by 100 to 1000 times, depending on what lv you are. And there's no voiceover for any npc's. The worse part is the majority of us all fall for it because of this idea of 1000's of people playing at the same time, and whats funny about that is, what seems like most of the time, the majority of players aren't interacting with anyone.
I lasted about 6 months with WOW when it first came out and quit HATING the game. I've played Guildwars for probably a couple of weeks in the several months I've owned it, just can't get into it. Every mmorpg has been the same thing, a monotonous repetitive level/mob grind, with unfair "I'm higher lv so I win" pvp. Boo to that. Bring on Gothic 3.
I think the prblem here is that MMOG's are nothing more that single player games. At least thats how most people view them.
To me an mmog is something you own. You pay regularly for it like rent so why shouldnt you feel like you own it? I mean all the high social positions in the games out today are taken up by NPC's. The NPC's order the players around. You cant create your own personality online, you cant personalise your avatar (without it being combat driven). YOu cant own land you cant to do a million other things.
Ask yourselves a question. Why do you realy play games? My opinion is to start afresh. "Survivor" if you will. To go from being a single person in a nation of 260 million. To a person in a nation of 10,000. Even then you could break it down to 200 / 20 depending on your guild / clan. The odds in the mmo are more likely that your going to be useful/influential arent they? Thats why we play online in a persistent universe. Thats why we compete, socialise and explore. Just like real life.
All current MMO's are based on a business model first and game idea second. And when i say idea i dont mean storyline. I mean let people have the flexibility to what the hell they want. This is the internet for gods sake. Our real lives are controled by so many moral, legal, social, financial, parental obilgations. Why not let people live their dreams. WHen a game does that it will be timeless.
Oh and if you are thinkin, get a life? Everyone has one, but does everyone realy get to choose the life they live?
Too bad everything Garrett ever posts is thoroughtly PvP centric. It might work for some, but not for others. I for one never PvP at all and am proud of it, so any kind of PvP centric solution just gets me to cancel my account. A PvE game might not last forever, at least due to present limitations, but PvP gets boring beyond belief in less than 30 seconds.
I think for the most part the thing that causes stress for many games isn't so much the fact the mmo's tend to have similar conventions (so many elves) but that they are so generic. Why couldn't an mmo put out a race of elves that was big lumbering and maybe not so wise? Maybe make them industrial and in opposition to nature. Defy the conventions a bit and provide a true alternative to the stereotype... and while I understand the raid format there is a viable solution to even that.
I remember playing Diablo 2 and the difficulty of places went up with the ammount of people in there. Why not make the killing of a raid boss flag a person able to group with other flagged members for an easier version of the raid area with significantly increased rare drop probability, the fear obviously is that it would destroy raiding but the truth is those who enjoy raiding will do so anyway and those who do it for the gear will feel disconnected and leave the game or get tired of raiding.
Also you find yourself parfticularly in WoW grinding faction and such... an interesting component to add would be to find faction grinders that had benefits that increase and decrese depending ont he ammount of facion with them. Suppose having faction with someone gave you a chance to stun on strike but also made your character's stun last 3 seconds longer and as you gained more faction you could balance this by adding significantly more stun time to your own while adding another second to stun, adding a little with no penalty, or decreasing the penalty on the initial faction you would wind up with many combinations and something to do while you solo. Now if you were to add a system with oh 100 factions you could grind for with the allowance of a small faction base for 5 medium for 3 high for 2 and ultimate for one with each faction presenting you with a special bonus for the ultimate. The combinations would be near infinite and the solo game just got a reason to be worked on as well as making pvp infinitly more interesting having to adapt to tactics.
As for pvp what if in WoW there was a very long and drawn out process to defect to horde or alliance and suppose that if you were discovered you would have to start over ( in order to discover someone there would be a skill added to fire off on someone who is achieving their objective). Naturally if you were a paladin or a shaman your worth to a guild would be substantial and if you were a person interested in extending your reason to play having to do new faction and getting to use horde mounts might be just the ticket. Pvp aspects could include leading your team into an ambush as your final initiation in which high level mobs slaughter your team and then allow to complete the quest and spread the decree. So that is an option for pvp as well.
Finally user created content rarely see's a large ammount of customization but what if crafters are given less statistics to work with but freedom to choose where they place their bonuses and a little of the look of armor given a set of variable's not unlike character creation. A crafter would need to know where to collect his materials and also there could be intergrated certain probabilities in it. A person could gain a good deal of reputation as a crafter offering them a boost the their replay and the game could include even certain sanctions for crafters such as a translator that allows certain crafters to peddle their wares to both sides based on completion. These are just a few ideas which while difficult to impliment have plenty of room to be built upon and offer simple and fun ways to extend gameplay and offer a reason to stay around.
The realization is that blizzard (and probably the competition) is not interested much in the opinion of clients. The bigger they get, the more critics around, the thicking their hide, the more they get like cattle ranchers. Customers become a statistic. They create a game with the minimal flow-off in clients and the biggest inflow. They accept WoW is gonna starve off one day and they are in the feeding frenzy for as long as it lasts.
Business.
The more we customers are outspoken, opinionated, willing to enter a dialogue, post coherent posts on the forum, the more we become a partner for blizzard and similar companies. We as customers have to avoid coming across as complete whining noobs, adolescents with unreasonable desires or spoiled brats.
Blizzard needs to become less like Microsoft and more like Linux. Whereas a model like Second Life, where users get almost free design access to the world, is unmanageable (and would end up making the world look like a complete mess) future games need to be more involved with what customers want. I can envision test realms where new content trickles inwards, voted in or rejected. Imagine a WoW2 with GOOD user generated content ! Imagine the amount of instances that would be added every month. Imagine new spells, races, professions, magic items, land andsoforth. Imagine evolving content. Imagine chaos. Imagine persistent worlds.
I can only get better if we are able to beat the same old corporate ideology.
I think a lot of people have already said it and it's true, there needs to be room for good pvp in an online game to extend it and there needs to be more than grind for power. I played UO relgiously right up untill they added UO:R and ruined it (for me) and there's a lot of people who will say the same thing about UO as well. I think there needs to be nonconsentual pvp in a noncontrolled (that is, no switches or special pvp rules) enviorment where there's large risk reward ratios. When SB went free I jumped on that for awhile, but my machine couldn't handle the large amount of people during banes so I had to stop, but it was loads of fun.
When MMO developers can figure out how to remove oh so boring grinds, create fun exciting and rewarding pvp (I WANT TO LOOT YOUR CORPSE!), create fun and exciting pve (oh boy run up to the mob and push the right buttons then go grab a mountain dew) and figure out that there needs to be more to the game than just KILL MONSTERS AND BE THE HERO! Then we'll finally have online games we won't get burned out on, untill then it's a real crapshoot to try to find something you'll really enjoy over a longer period of time.
Hello all. Ive been pondering for a while how to make a game really long lasting and fun for all players. I believe this would be hard to do in the fantasy genre because you cant have firefights in the sky and you cant jump in a tank and advance on positions. A part to the puzzle is going to be in the upcoming POTBS were people can battle for ports for there nation. Fighting for a port or town allows pvp players something to canstantly do though this can get repetative and people would get sick of fighting for a nation. Well what if you were fighting for a guild or your self. What if you gain control of a town and upgrade it with towers and employ Bot guards to protect your prized posetion. Then make you town impossible to take and move to the next town. While this is happening the next guy is waiting in the darkness for you defenceses to be weak and bam he launches a seige. Though this would not appeal to alot of part time players. A way to get part time players enjoying MMO gameplay is giving them instant access to mass pvp battles were game playing skill is more dominent then level 100 armour and making quests more then a long boring walk only to die and walk back.
SWG was my first mmo, and i played and loved that game. In november last year (NGE: is all i have to say) i left after that time i have tryed a few games and they are all the same. night elvs, elvs, padalin etc and all the mmo's i have tryed after that point have had huge grind/quest grind issues for me, eaither they want you to go kill a million critters per lvl or endless quest grinding, i know ,i know: quest grinding can be fun but on the 20th go kill, or find me moonstone mission it gets boring and while quests can give you faction/armor etc its still a grind.
i tihnk what im trying to say is all MMO's want you to grind its that extra timesink that keeps you interested but to me starting a new game should be exciting and you should be looking forward to it not thinking OMG im going to have to kill kill kill/endless quest for the next 3 months
over all starting a new game IS fun. learning your way around finding new places getting to know your faction and making new friends theses are all massive joys but after a week (20-30 in-game hours) you should be allmost at a end of your grind and ready to make fun in the world your allready invested in not forced into a grind just hoping to get to the top lvl so you able to compete for longer than it takes too be hit only once (levels i know different issue) it nothin less that lazy development teams and managers, but allthough they are some really great games based on top IP's tobe bought out i think if mmo game makers want to make MMO's really fly one way to do it would be to look again at the "hook" of grinding/lvling and take a steep back and remember MMO"RPG" and not MMO"grindfest/lootwhore" [hint] sandbox is great, with content its better, PvP is no1 and grinding and looting stinks
In real life, people have known for thousands of years that material wealth, and the status and comfort it brings, is not enough to fulfill a person and make them whole. That is why we have religion, philosophy, art, family, love, romance, music, literature, poetry, dance, theatre, nobel and worthwhile causes to champion, sports, hobbies, etc.
Sadly, the makers of videogames have largely failed to notice this. They believe that all gamers really want is a world in which they can continually add to the quality and quantity of their possessions. This week I reached level __, and my sword is better than last week's sword. That's as good as it gets.
The mother of all ironies is that if the acquisition of material wealth is really all the players want, then why are they spending time playing a game? Should they not be out in the real world earning more material wealth? The very fact that they are looking to get away from the real world for a while and be entertained should tell you something. The fact that they choose to play a game in the company of others, when there are so many single player games available, should also tell you something. And the fact that players are not content with the toil and drudgery of their real life means of acquiring wealth, but instead seek out a world where they can be a hero, take up arms and defeat great enemies should tell you a LOT.
Much could be done to add to the entertainment value of online games and to broaden the experiences we have, and satisfaction we derive, in them. And a few developers are actually breaking new ground and innovating, but sadly not many. We won't see much improvement so long as 99.9% of the vision for a game is merely kill stuff ad nauseum, gain level, get better item.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
At 54 years old I have been playing computer games from a time, well, before there WERE any commericial games around. I have beenin MOGS since 2001 and have tried all the majors and many of the minors.
My current love is Everquest 2. Have you tried it recently? A lot has changed in the last year and half since it was released. It truly is a game for both the Achiever, the explorer and the socializers and now with the PVP additions the Killers. It ihas had 2 major expansions and 2 adventure packs with a new adventure pack come out this month and another expansion this Novemeber.
One thing I find essential in having fun in a mog is being able to find good folks to play with. I am an EASK so socializing is not exactly my highest priority. But still I run one of the largest and oldest guilds on the Antonia Bayle server. The people make the difference to me. Having a backstop of 150+ real people to adventure with and chat with makes everything so much better. You can check our our guild at www.vindicators.org
My web site is www.msadams.com for those who might be interested in my history.
FINALLY! Man i was beginning to think i was the only one feeling this way..This article was great and really says my opinions of the MMO genre these days.
To tell u the truth what i would like to see is more exploration and storyline, given to these games. Why is everything cookie cutter combat? Go here kill 5 go there kill 10 grab their head bring it back..ugh...
Im not sure if anyone here ever played Earth And Beyond or not but to me that game had so much potential. Exploration, combat, great crafting, and over all ...STORY. I realize to alot of people that having a storyline in a game isnt important as long as the quests are interesting but to me that game really nailed it. I'm not saying it was perfect, cause anyone whos played it knows it was plagued with an assortment of problems. Latency issues, memory leaks and campers. But near the final months pre-end announcement they really made a leap with the instanced battle we all called the fish bowl. I realize some or most have no idea what im talking about but if there are ex ENB players here im sure they will agree.
In a nut shell thats the biggest issue i see...impossible time sinks, as well as the art of the solo player is dead. The new cookie cutter games FORCE you to form groups/parties/guilds, and for me (father of 3 and graveyard shift worker) i dont have the amount of time it takes to join these hugely time consuming raids. And also for me its seriously disheartening to think that the game companies and developers have forgotten the guys/girls like me who would rather solo then be forced to group, to get the "Uber" loot. Its really killed the aspect of the games that i orginally loved. Exploration story and heck some sweet loot along the way aint bad either.
Thanks for the post, i feel much better saying all this here without hearing people moan at me to shut up cause im whinning lol.
I can agree with your article almost 100%. But definitely not completely.
I have played all the games you mentioned in your write up. I of course have different opinions of each.
The one thing I did not even hear you mention, was any sort of crafting. You speak of boredom settilng in, with not enough options to keep you interested. THAT IS why so many games offer crafting, something different. Something to break the grinding/leveling feeling.
I understand that alot of players aren't interested in crafting, which is each person's choice. Give it a try sometime though if the game offers it, you might find something you would enjoy putting some time into.
I would say that my play style currently in Horizons is more crafting, but luckily, if I get burnt on building my plot, I can suit up and go hunting or questing. That option to me, no matter what game you play, is great.
Unfortunately, like your opinion of WoW's PvP, there are many games out there that have a weak crafting system.
A few people made a comment about M59. I played it way back when it first came out but it was not the originall MMO. In what was a very short time span in terms of the two in beta and coming out, Archmage was first but not by much. Man, this is digging way back to the roots of MMO's that were spun off BBS boards and MUD's (pre-internet www. for anyone confused). I would have to agree it has been at least 12 years since MMO inception, not 10.
Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box. ~ Italian proverb
Who is it that thinks that Success in MMO content is based of how long a player stays logged in? And why do so may Devs seem to agree.
To me it seems plainly stupid.
First off it leads to burn out as was mentiond in the article. Seccondly if you players must stay loged in for long periods of time your servers will be put under more pressure. Less players logged in at once = less lag.
Games should be fun first. MMOs (in my view) are funnest when the playing field is even and its your skill vs another player or AI.
Blizzard made a fun game.. then they had to add hours of mindless grinding. Its a carrot on a stick.
"Play our game its realy fun"........ "But in order to get to the fun part you must complete this, and this, and this, and grind here for 14 hrs, then run this instance every week for months then also complete any new grinds we add in the future"
Its the constant need to keep ontop of the Gear curve in WoW is what is killing the game. In order to feel you are playing on an Even playing field you need to raid lots and mindlessly grind Faction. Those that choose not to or who cant due to haveing a real life to be part of will never realy get to enjoy the "Fun" WoW.I mean people dont play Tetris for hours on end because they think they will "advance" their tetris toon.They play because its fun.
Where is the "Dev school" the teaches that MMO's must require hours of mindless button mashing and why hasnt it been burnt to the ground yet?
The one game that i think has thought about "the grind" and how it effect their players is EVE. Yes the grind is there (skill learning) but you dont need to be logged in to be learning your skill.
The only MMO that i can think of of the top of my head that actualy has NO grind at all is Seccond Life. It also comes with no content, other than player made, and mabe thats why. Perhaps No Dev made content = No Grind. I for one hope that is not the case but it has yet to be disproved to me.
I do agree that most mmo right now are only made to keep you online so the company's get paid.
And yes i too am hitting the been there done that point.
The real problem is that not many companies are willing to take risks they only want to get paid so they make the same game over and over only in different locations.
I have been wondering if it realy is so hard to make a game where PC's have some say in the world !
No im not talking about mindless PVP as some think is the only way to keep players happy, some of us don't like killing others so we can danse on there corpses.
Why not make a game that allows the players to add there brains to the devs side of the game?
If you look at gamers now you find that not everybody likes the killfrenzy type of play some want to build stuff and others want to controle stuff so why not do that.
Simply make a game that is 1 part politics.
Start with a NPC forum or a council that players can join as low lvl errand boys and can grow to city fathers or even planetary govenors by interacting with NPC and PC repricentatives or even lobbists.
This allows players to fight more diplomatic battles these can result in owning towns or planets or wat ever.
These can use there skills to make quests to get there town or there planet to grow and to be come stronger so they can get more skills and build more special buildings and so on.
second part is crafting.
Create crafting houses of NPC's that PC can join and as they get better they get more say so they can make missions to get resouces and allows for the dealing with the politics so they get better housing and or acces to better stuff.
Thirtly combat.
Combat types can join the NPC army and later join NPC merc units and get missions from the politic and corp NPC and PC's.
This allows for gaining rank and getting more say in the missions you as a Merc unit accept.
Using this model you can make the PC's gain more power and if you want even give them controle over there respective area. adding guild leaders as corp bosses or merc commanders or even ruler of the world or galaxy until voted out of office.
This way people can have a choice to PVP or not to PVP you can take missions that involve PVP or take only PVE missions it doesn't matter.
Only a small idea but i have never seen anybody get close to this one.
I do think however that a game that uses this layout will live for a very long time as the devs dont have to out think the thousands of player but have them out think them selfs.
"Believe nothing. No matter where you read it, Or who said it, Even if I have said it, Unless it agrees with your own reason And your own common sense" - The Buddha, from Dhammapada
Comments
I'd been jumping around between MMOs alot after being introduced to the genre by AO and having spent a good year and more there. When WoW came I got caught up in it and it stands as _the_ game which burned me out on the genre, with the amount of time it demanded in return for only a slight chance at being rewarded. The road to 60 was fun, but short. Basically you're going through the same themepark as everyone else. Getting off one ride and on another untill you've done them all and you're stuck with the endgame, which would fit just as well within the context of a singleplayer rpg with online capeability like neverwinter nights :P
I think you put alot of people's thoughts into words here as we're looking for something different. Every company with enough money available can develop a clone of a working gameplay and dress it in a slightly different theme, while the few who try to do something outside the box don't have the resources to pull it off.
Your quote of the SWG dev in particular, it pisses me off to no end. It's that kind of "lets find simple ways to keep people online and make money" which is killing the genre. MMOs have been compared with the .com bubble of the past. It can only be inflated so much before popping. If every game is the same, what's keeping players from jumping over to greener pastures every time a new one is released? There's always been ten crap games for every good one, but MMOs slap on a regular fee to the deal.
I look back at WoW and the only good thing about it was the group of people I played with. As it happens to be, people can be found everywhere and as such I regret the time I spent with the game. In comparison I don't regret approximetly the same amount of time spent in AO because it wasn't focused on getting "more pro items". The PvP wasn't as deep as in Eve, but still there was a touch of player politics going on and in retrospect. It's been memorable to have taken part in several player events which were landmarks for the community I was with. In WoW our guild were the first at euro Burning Blade to kill Onyxia, so what? Everyone kills her at some point. Do you brag about sleeping with the town hooker? Not everyone chased off an omni martial artist scouting your Notum Tower triggering a chain of events where land ownership changed drastically for the guilds involved dragging into a big standoff with propaganda wars fought on forums :P
In the lack of other options, PvP is the thing I want to see more of. Not a big fan off "empireA versus empireB" pvp settings, I still find Daoc to be attractive had it not been for the level grind. What's the purpose of the grind if the real meat of the game doesn't open up before you've maxed out? Why force every character through a grind to reach the point you actually find rewarding? It doesn't matter if the level threadmill is just two weeks, or even one. I can get instant gratification from online multiplayer deathmatches with all sorts of settings without subscribing to be allowed to spend 1-2 weeks on a server preparing my avatar before getting into the equalent content.
I think there may be more to this than what you think. I remember the days of Diablo (and earlier) anticipating UO and MMOs and dove right in. I've been actively playing MMOs since (currently in WOW).
Universal problem with MMOs? No freedom. You're stuck in a class; stuck doing a quest that thousands have done or will do; or stuck finding the epic gear that every other person is looking for. Dark and Light really peaked a lot of interest when they started talking about exploration and detailed crafting because it's not so much about doing the same things as it is about playing a game that emulates life and the freedom therein.
An interesting idea that i've tossed around is the idea that experience should be just that... experience. I hate how experience has become some magical number that killing a creature has given you. UO was a little different in the fact that you lived and died by skills that you had to spend time on, no levels or predefined classes. I know this is far from politically correct in MMO thinking, but what if experience was based on play time
. The more time you spend in the game the more experience you gain to use in abilities to make you bigger, better, stronger. I hate how companies have turned their backs on extremely active players by trying to even the playing field. I would be more upset looking up to a powergamer who learns the ins and outs of a game and grinds the game out than someone who has invested time into a game. The fact is, this would force MMO companies to make a game that people enjoyed playing. Right now, companies make games with a lot of "content" aka, stuff they tell you to do to keep you occupied and involved in the game. A truly great MMO would inspire you to keep playing to play because you enjoy it, not to achieve end game "uberness".
MMOGs as they are today, have the following problem: Their content is finite; the number of things that a player can do is limited, therefore at some point, they will run out of things to do. At that point, they will get tired of doing the same-old same-old, and become burnt out on the game.
There are 2 solutions to this that I can think of:
1. If a company has the monetary resources, they must keep adding a steady stream of unique and fresh content to their game. Meaning entirely new gameplay elements which add to what is currently in the game.
WoW has lagged tremendously in this area, especially considering the amount of cash that they could bring to bear to add new gameplay elements, hence players are getting burnt out on the game.
Now onto the next solution, which I feel could be much more compelling, and would absolutely hold a playerbase, without problem if done correctly:
2. Have the timeline of the game itself be finite. Design the gameplay around this framework. There will be a time in which the current iteration of the game ends; therefore, you design the game so that there is a culmination at this point, and players somehow win or lose. The winning or losing aspect is absolutely required; the fun of any truly fun game is in attempting to trump the game - to win out in the end.
Perhaps do this with a rankings system, or design the game so that the players as a whole must accomplish objectives along the way, which will eventually get them to the point of being able to defeat the big foozle, or being able to "ascend" in some way, or some other similar thing.
Once an iteration ends, another begins. Players get some kind of bonus if they won in the previous iteration; and you can have a whole new set of gameplay for each iteration - Truly a story being told, and the players taking part in it - This would be truly compelling gameplay.
Current MMOGs get old because they are static. Anything that which by its nature doesn't change, will become uninteresting once you've completely understood it, or figured it out.
That's my 2c, take from it what you will.
_______________________________________________________________________
Looking forward (cautiously) to: Age of Conan, Dark Solstice, Armada Online.
Will soon try: Guild Wars
Overall: Amazed and bewhildered at the current sad state of the artform of gaming.
To my way of thinking, the best alternative to raiding at end-game is PVP. If WOW had a better PVP and crafting (and offered gear equal to raid gear, with an appropriate amout of extra effort to obtain said gear), I would never have quit playing.
The first MMO to perfectly balance raiding, PVP, crafting, and questing, this will be the game that keeps me around forever. The trick is that the company has to offer everything, and never cater to any special interest groups.
I aggree with some of the point brought up in this article
But what can one do about the current habit of Game companies not listen to their customers.
All these developers are creating these MMO's but one crucial aspect of their business model they are failing to improve on is their customer interaction. I for one stopped playing or paying for any MMO game because their seems to be a conceit in the air of the way developers handle their consumers. "This we know what you want kinda of attituded" We encounter all the time from conception of the MMO to the deployment of their product. Just read into all the previews. Its eerie how they all talk about their class system/ and level advancement like that is what we want.
I know that the coporate world looks at americans and thinks that we are all just commatosed consumers that dont have to be given a second thought. Which is probably true since we are living in a time where we so easy forget past agressions and the middle class is squeezed more and more everyday for every ounce of blood we got.
But back to the point. We can keep agreeing to the one or two articles written on forums like this here and there. but until we really organize and send out a resounding "Hey You Game Dev Company stop feeding us the same crap! I am not buying it!" message to the industry. Little will change
I am will stick with playing Civ4 and the few single players RPG's that i find worth my money and time till the industry gets it's act together.
Faranthil Tanathalos
EverQuest 1 - Ranger
Star Wars Galaxies - Master Ranger
Everquest2 - Ranger WarhammerOnline - Shadow Warrior
WOW - Hunter
That's right I like bows and arrows.
Right now the industry is generally creating games from a certian level based, grinding, item centric mold that is very simplistic. New games are going to be enlivening combat and that is a nice improvement but many are relying on a variation of the same old thing.
My optimism sprouts from the cutting edge. There are areas that are yet to be developed and ways yet untried.
For example,
The role of player associations in gaming.
Player associations right now are still only glorified chat lines. There is shared banking and housing and there is also faction based interactions based on guilds but that is about it. There are groups and guilds and in pvp there are meaningful kingdoms.
But player associations can have a much more intricate role in games. In the future player associations will be utilized to establish and control factions in a rich and complex manner. They will also be a tool for controlling trade, combat, quests, tasks, and jobs. There will be families, fellowships, professions, villages, city states, kingdoms, and realms and a given player will be able to access many associations at the same time. You could actually BECOME a member of the Freeport Militia for example, and you might even rise through whatever means that association uses to the top and be able to serve a term as the leader. Positions of authority ...the chance to lead will be a possibility for anyone but will have to be earned and even then the term of office will be finite. The ruleset that player associations operate under will vary depending on the race or the profession or the geography or the predominant religion. But it will vary so that moving around will dramatically alter game play.
A member of a professional association will have duties to perform special training opps and obligations to fulfill. The Freeport Militia will owe allegiance to their king and their allies. There will be menus of special tasks and quests that only the Freeport Militia has and you willl be able to participate in those things as a member. But remember your character will be aging as you play so if you decide not to be in the Militia in this life...wait until the next. You will have developing children and relatives that you will also be able to play. The world will be filled with player characters not NPCs. Or rahter oour player characters that we are not occupying WILL BE the NPCs.
Players will be put in storyline based leadership roles via these player associations. Instead of being in a lame out of context guild imagine being the elected leader of the Rangers of Kelethin or you may gain power through combat and become the warlord of Freeport. In such positions players will have a role to play and that role will be deeply imbedded in a developing world altering storyline.
Leveling will not exist in the future of mmrpg. Instead characters will be online 24/7 and you will possess them. They will age and grow old and ys eventually even die. The player character will cease being the central figure of growth for the game. Instead the family line will be the object of growth and continued development over time. Players will be "writing" the lives of their characters as they play. The fun will be in the story because the story will be compelling. You will WANT to log in and maintain an account just to find out what happens next in the big picture of the events of the world as well as the little picture of the role your player character plays.
Races will actually matter in the future games. If you are an ogre you will have ogre characteristics and strengths as well as weaknesses. To play a different race will be almost like playing a completely different game. Interactions between races may be rare at first and increasingly interactive over time but never amorphously the same.
Player characters will be linked to the land through their player associations. Their livelhoods will depend on defense of home and country. Their leaders (also players) will be good leaders if they arrange for their player base to live well. This will include political decisions, peace, warfare, and the ebb and flow of alliances.
Imagine that all rangers of kelethin really are responsible for the safety of the Greater Faydark forest. They would have a task to patrol and perhaps the game devs knowing this will provide a storyline based pvp opportunity through interlocking and opposed tasks. The trolls may have a task option that the leader can pick to raid the Elf town and steal children elves for food. The rangers in their role as protectors will oppose this. In this case PVP will have depth and meaning. It might also change the demographics of the world.
There will be sophisticated live monitoring and balancing tools to allow the game devs to control the nature of the storyline and effect change when things are becoming too chaotic. They will allow change and sometime rapid change but always withing the context of a STORY. The quest and task interface will be a tool to manipulatae the world.
There is more....
The point is that this genre is just starting. I agree with the article. The present games make burnout easy. But I like to think ahead about what it might be....consummate explorer/ranger I am.
Karsk
I agree to this article and I have always agreed. WoW has been great progress in the evolution of virtual environments, however it has been a load of very safe design choices. I have always seen WoW using the same formula as Disney; you can follow the predetermined route, can't stray from the paths, and are offered the same toony animatronics over and over again.
However WoW will pass away. Oh, I am sure there will be a few WoW servers left by 2016 with die-hards level 98 and Tier-8C sets, in 8 continents, with 22 races, 14 classes and 3 fractions, probably managed by fan boys with a strange insane glint in their eyes. But the rest of the MMO scene will have moved on. WoW will have served his purpose, which is to prove this can and will be a mass movement way more entertaining than a load of other types of entertainment in this narrowing world.
However it is time to wake up. Companies reflexively, spasmodically imitating the same formula should heed my warning; War, MEO, AoC, all of these smell like having the same very safe and very stupid design choices. There will only be one winner in the post-WoW arena of games and the competition will incur financial losses on the balance sheets.
I have said this in several commentaries, discussions and articles: MMO needs to escape from the cliche's, MMO needs to make trendy (a horrible world) and politically incorrect statements and MMO needs to become persistent world.
First - cliche's. WoW is a snakepit of cliche's. I liked the humor for a while, say, 2 months. Now I ignore it. I liked the same old races for a while, now I tolerate them. Orcs and Elves and Gnomes, personally I think it's easy and safe and cowardly. However I have some empathy with designers. Man, mass audience are sometimes so bloody stupid. Come with a new race, something red with glaring eyes and small backward curved horned and call it a Yangiri, and those same predictable IQ80 murrcans will say, WTF? and won't get it. But that will change, mark by words. A title with the more original concepts may initially fare a little slower but will bounce back.
Second - games that are politically correct are boring. I personally loathe political correctness. If I play a game or choose a genre I go for statement, value, challenge. I don't play correct, I want to feel the game I select is too far out, too offensive. Not everyone may agree with this, least of all everyone's lame-ass boring parents, but who cares?
Third - MMO should not be predictable. The best way to generate this is to allow chaotic processes and user contributions. Both are a nightmare for game designers. If I would redesgn WoW I would introduce the same mechanics as Alterac Valley but do it worldwide. I'd say - a stretch of land has resources, places to build houses and some native animals. Then have it evolve. Give each race a starting valley and that's it. You can come to land A in january, a n area with level-10 resources and monsters and find it dominated with orcish buildings, orcish lifestock, orcish resource exploitation. Return there in may, the elves may have captured it, with all of their iconic placeholders firmly visible. Maybe even the plants have changed a bit.
If players dont work hard and dilligently enough, the NPC's encroach. Sure, we have all known that for ages the damn sillithids are in the southern barrens. That is my point exactly - it doesnt change. In the Next WoW I wanna persistently see the damn sillithids pop up all over the place, be eradicated, pushed back and return. Eventually the sillithids may be pushed back to their seed country and stay there for a few months. And eventually the game designers should make other seed countries, that'll pop up, disseminate and dominate all over all available countries. And that brings me to player content...
Imagine a WoW where players design a magic item, create the skin for the item, have it approved and then it becomes part of the game. This happens in Second Life all the time; I have made a bunch of T shirts with political statements there and they pop up all over. The same can be done with buildings... the game creators can create the default for a lumberyard building but what if players of the orcish persuasion (or yangiri for all I care) create a better and more convincing lumberyard, who cares? The same has been done in miniature games and works there just fine, who cares? And what about races themselves. We have hobbits and elves and taurens now, people love em. But what if a persistent world sees the emergence of player designed content, carefully screened for thirdparty copyright infringement ofcourse (or not!) ? A WoW would start with maybe 10 races, and after a year would have 30.
Allow players their own strategical choices. Imagine that in many servers the sillithid NPC monsters would have all been eradicated. Imagine in some serves the gnomes not having caught on a lot, while in other serves those damn gnomes cooperating with the yangiri, the kzin, the klingons and the wookies having split from the alliance, all based on player decissions, with taurens and gorean pirates waging a fierce civil war!
This is chaos. Chaos is scary but in the end chaos is the most entertaining. MMO's should become a bit like the weather and become dominated by evolutionary processes. Allow new ideas to pop up.
My ideal game would be like this:
Take the solar system, around 2200 - You have all planets, a shitload of asteroids. The game starts with 5 starter areas, probably earth, mars, asteroids, the saturn rings, a jovian moon. There are resources all over and the game starts with a number of NPC bases. Some area's, generally the one with better resources, are more dangerous.
Players start as baseline boring humans but with cyberware, genetic mods and career choices they can become whatever they like. You can have big blueskinned brutish warrior types a la orcs, with big ugly black matted metal cyberarms, but you can also have these slender sleek and deadly fast and sexy elvish (vulcan) stealth types.
Now allow players to design and create consistent world content. Combine technologies. Create skins and models. Form alliances. Define political ideals.
All in all, take elements not just from some archaic tolkien-based ideal, but assimilate it all - star trek, star wars, Eve Online, Wow, Second Life.
Make it come alive instead of merely animated.
(signature blocked)
Yes Meridian59 was great for its time. I played it, but UO and EQ1 were what really captured me.
Any MMOer that missed doing an EQ1 raid..with 200 people there all cringing as they watched clerics do a CHeal rotation on the main tank...really missed an amazing experience.
Shadowbane too was a must-play. I felt like I had recaptured the luster of my 5 years in EQ1 whenever we had a critical seige on an opposing guild's town. So much "edge of your seat" drama. That feeling of anything could happen at a moment's notice based on crafting or politics or a new character build.
Now I play betas and absolutely dread every minute of them.
The absolute keys to making the next great MMO are:
> Design the quest interactions like in single-player games with custom interfaces (like radio dials, computers, etc.) so that the user is interacting with the world
> NPCs on a real friggin schedule not robotically standing there - that dynamically change based on simulated sets of needs.
> Meta-gaming where single players and guilds alike can influence the storyline and have the world react. Make it modular, but make it deep so that a string of 100 actions, each achievable by a player or player group, will follow a story arc that has meaning within the context of the game.
... thats just a start.
Right now Im bored with whats out there and it doesnt look like its going to get any better any time soon.
The most memorable moment for me in the RPG world is Baldur's Gate 2. I totally fell in love with that game, and most if not all of the mmorpg's that have come out are like taking a huge step backward in gameplay diversity. I never ONCE cared about what level I was in bg2, because I was so busy enjoying the story and different environments and different personalities of characters and the different powers/ability combo's. Every decent singleplayer rpg I have played, mops the floor with any mmorpg I have played.
Mmorpg's basically take a game like bg2, remove the decent followable effectable imaginative storyline, remove any way that you can actually effect the world, remove all personality's from npc's and then how do they make up for all this gameplay loss? they extend the amount of times you have to kill the same mob by 100 to 1000 times, depending on what lv you are. And there's no voiceover for any npc's. The worse part is the majority of us all fall for it because of this idea of 1000's of people playing at the same time, and whats funny about that is, what seems like most of the time, the majority of players aren't interacting with anyone.
I lasted about 6 months with WOW when it first came out and quit HATING the game. I've played Guildwars for probably a couple of weeks in the several months I've owned it, just can't get into it. Every mmorpg has been the same thing, a monotonous repetitive level/mob grind, with unfair "I'm higher lv so I win" pvp. Boo to that. Bring on Gothic 3.
I think the prblem here is that MMOG's are nothing more that single player games. At least thats how most people view them.
To me an mmog is something you own. You pay regularly for it like rent so why shouldnt you feel like you own it? I mean all the high social positions in the games out today are taken up by NPC's. The NPC's order the players around. You cant create your own personality online, you cant personalise your avatar (without it being combat driven). YOu cant own land you cant to do a million other things.
Ask yourselves a question. Why do you realy play games? My opinion is to start afresh. "Survivor" if you will. To go from being a single person in a nation of 260 million. To a person in a nation of 10,000. Even then you could break it down to 200 / 20 depending on your guild / clan. The odds in the mmo are more likely that your going to be useful/influential arent they? Thats why we play online in a persistent universe. Thats why we compete, socialise and explore. Just like real life.
All current MMO's are based on a business model first and game idea second. And when i say idea i dont mean storyline. I mean let people have the flexibility to what the hell they want. This is the internet for gods sake. Our real lives are controled by so many moral, legal, social, financial, parental obilgations. Why not let people live their dreams. WHen a game does that it will be timeless.
Oh and if you are thinkin, get a life? Everyone has one, but does everyone realy get to choose the life they live?
I think for the most part the thing that causes stress for many games isn't so much the fact the mmo's tend to have similar conventions (so many elves) but that they are so generic. Why couldn't an mmo put out a race of elves that was big lumbering and maybe not so wise? Maybe make them industrial and in opposition to nature. Defy the conventions a bit and provide a true alternative to the stereotype... and while I understand the raid format there is a viable solution to even that.
I remember playing Diablo 2 and the difficulty of places went up with the ammount of people in there. Why not make the killing of a raid boss flag a person able to group with other flagged members for an easier version of the raid area with significantly increased rare drop probability, the fear obviously is that it would destroy raiding but the truth is those who enjoy raiding will do so anyway and those who do it for the gear will feel disconnected and leave the game or get tired of raiding.
Also you find yourself parfticularly in WoW grinding faction and such... an interesting component to add would be to find faction grinders that had benefits that increase and decrese depending ont he ammount of facion with them. Suppose having faction with someone gave you a chance to stun on strike but also made your character's stun last 3 seconds longer and as you gained more faction you could balance this by adding significantly more stun time to your own while adding another second to stun, adding a little with no penalty, or decreasing the penalty on the initial faction you would wind up with many combinations and something to do while you solo. Now if you were to add a system with oh 100 factions you could grind for with the allowance of a small faction base for 5 medium for 3 high for 2 and ultimate for one with each faction presenting you with a special bonus for the ultimate. The combinations would be near infinite and the solo game just got a reason to be worked on as well as making pvp infinitly more interesting having to adapt to tactics.
As for pvp what if in WoW there was a very long and drawn out process to defect to horde or alliance and suppose that if you were discovered you would have to start over ( in order to discover someone there would be a skill added to fire off on someone who is achieving their objective). Naturally if you were a paladin or a shaman your worth to a guild would be substantial and if you were a person interested in extending your reason to play having to do new faction and getting to use horde mounts might be just the ticket. Pvp aspects could include leading your team into an ambush as your final initiation in which high level mobs slaughter your team and then allow to complete the quest and spread the decree. So that is an option for pvp as well.
Finally user created content rarely see's a large ammount of customization but what if crafters are given less statistics to work with but freedom to choose where they place their bonuses and a little of the look of armor given a set of variable's not unlike character creation. A crafter would need to know where to collect his materials and also there could be intergrated certain probabilities in it. A person could gain a good deal of reputation as a crafter offering them a boost the their replay and the game could include even certain sanctions for crafters such as a translator that allows certain crafters to peddle their wares to both sides based on completion. These are just a few ideas which while difficult to impliment have plenty of room to be built upon and offer simple and fun ways to extend gameplay and offer a reason to stay around.
BundyTheRipper
The realization is that blizzard (and probably the competition) is not interested much in the opinion of clients. The bigger they get, the more critics around, the thicking their hide, the more they get like cattle ranchers. Customers become a statistic. They create a game with the minimal flow-off in clients and the biggest inflow. They accept WoW is gonna starve off one day and they are in the feeding frenzy for as long as it lasts.
Business.
The more we customers are outspoken, opinionated, willing to enter a dialogue, post coherent posts on the forum, the more we become a partner for blizzard and similar companies. We as customers have to avoid coming across as complete whining noobs, adolescents with unreasonable desires or spoiled brats.
Blizzard needs to become less like Microsoft and more like Linux. Whereas a model like Second Life, where users get almost free design access to the world, is unmanageable (and would end up making the world look like a complete mess) future games need to be more involved with what customers want. I can envision test realms where new content trickles inwards, voted in or rejected. Imagine a WoW2 with GOOD user generated content ! Imagine the amount of instances that would be added every month. Imagine new spells, races, professions, magic items, land andsoforth. Imagine evolving content. Imagine chaos. Imagine persistent worlds.
I can only get better if we are able to beat the same old corporate ideology.
I think a lot of people have already said it and it's true, there needs to be room for good pvp in an online game to extend it and there needs to be more than grind for power. I played UO relgiously right up untill they added UO:R and ruined it (for me) and there's a lot of people who will say the same thing about UO as well. I think there needs to be nonconsentual pvp in a noncontrolled (that is, no switches or special pvp rules) enviorment where there's large risk reward ratios. When SB went free I jumped on that for awhile, but my machine couldn't handle the large amount of people during banes so I had to stop, but it was loads of fun.
When MMO developers can figure out how to remove oh so boring grinds, create fun exciting and rewarding pvp (I WANT TO LOOT YOUR CORPSE!), create fun and exciting pve (oh boy run up to the mob and push the right buttons then go grab a mountain dew) and figure out that there needs to be more to the game than just KILL MONSTERS AND BE THE HERO! Then we'll finally have online games we won't get burned out on, untill then it's a real crapshoot to try to find something you'll really enjoy over a longer period of time.
Hello all. Ive been pondering for a while how to make a game really long lasting and fun for all players. I believe this would be hard to do in the fantasy genre because you cant have firefights in the sky and you cant jump in a tank and advance on positions. A part to the puzzle is going to be in the upcoming POTBS were people can battle for ports for there nation. Fighting for a port or town allows pvp players something to canstantly do though this can get repetative and people would get sick of fighting for a nation. Well what if you were fighting for a guild or your self. What if you gain control of a town and upgrade it with towers and employ Bot guards to protect your prized posetion. Then make you town impossible to take and move to the next town. While this is happening the next guy is waiting in the darkness for you defenceses to be weak and bam he launches a seige. Though this would not appeal to alot of part time players. A way to get part time players enjoying MMO gameplay is giving them instant access to mass pvp battles were game playing skill is more dominent then level 100 armour and making quests more then a long boring walk only to die and walk back.
SWG was my first mmo, and i played and loved that game. In november last year (NGE: is all i have to say) i left after that time i have tryed a few games and they are all the same. night elvs, elvs, padalin etc and all the mmo's i have tryed after that point have had huge grind/quest grind issues for me, eaither they want you to go kill a million critters per lvl or endless quest grinding, i know ,i know: quest grinding can be fun but on the 20th go kill, or find me moonstone mission it gets boring and while quests can give you faction/armor etc its still a grind.
i tihnk what im trying to say is all MMO's want you to grind its that extra timesink that keeps you interested but to me starting a new game should be exciting and you should be looking forward to it not thinking OMG im going to have to kill kill kill/endless quest for the next 3 months
over all starting a new game IS fun. learning your way around finding new places getting to know your faction and making new friends theses are all massive joys but after a week (20-30 in-game hours) you should be allmost at a end of your grind and ready to make fun in the world your allready invested in not forced into a grind just hoping to get to the top lvl so you able to compete for longer than it takes too be hit only once (levels i know different issue) it nothin less that lazy development teams and managers, but allthough they are some really great games based on top IP's tobe bought out i think if mmo game makers want to make MMO's really fly one way to do it would be to look again at the "hook" of grinding/lvling and take a steep back and remember MMO"RPG" and not MMO"grindfest/lootwhore" [hint] sandbox is great, with content its better, PvP is no1 and grinding and looting stinks
Tin Foil hats dont work.. its all a conspiracy
In real life, people have known for thousands of years that material wealth, and the status and comfort it brings, is not enough to fulfill a person and make them whole. That is why we have religion, philosophy, art, family, love, romance, music, literature, poetry, dance, theatre, nobel and worthwhile causes to champion, sports, hobbies, etc.
Sadly, the makers of videogames have largely failed to notice this. They believe that all gamers really want is a world in which they can continually add to the quality and quantity of their possessions. This week I reached level __, and my sword is better than last week's sword. That's as good as it gets.
The mother of all ironies is that if the acquisition of material wealth is really all the players want, then why are they spending time playing a game? Should they not be out in the real world earning more material wealth? The very fact that they are looking to get away from the real world for a while and be entertained should tell you something. The fact that they choose to play a game in the company of others, when there are so many single player games available, should also tell you something. And the fact that players are not content with the toil and drudgery of their real life means of acquiring wealth, but instead seek out a world where they can be a hero, take up arms and defeat great enemies should tell you a LOT.
Much could be done to add to the entertainment value of online games and to broaden the experiences we have, and satisfaction we derive, in them. And a few developers are actually breaking new ground and innovating, but sadly not many. We won't see much improvement so long as 99.9% of the vision for a game is merely kill stuff ad nauseum, gain level, get better item.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
General - can raise large BOT forces to fight for him while supporting.
Sargent - call in transport, good supporting unit who adds bonuses to allies near by.
Rapid Assault - ability to go into the sky and then attack from above.
Pilot - can fly any air unit.
Driver - can drive any vechile.
All these classes are for mmofps which i believe is the next stage in the MMO genre.
At 54 years old I have been playing computer games from a time, well, before there WERE any commericial games around. I have beenin MOGS since 2001 and have tried all the majors and many of the minors.
My current love is Everquest 2. Have you tried it recently? A lot has changed in the last year and half since it was released. It truly is a game for both the Achiever, the explorer and the socializers and now with the PVP additions the Killers. It ihas had 2 major expansions and 2 adventure packs with a new adventure pack come out this month and another expansion this Novemeber.
Here is a fascinating thread http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=Newbie&message.id=147554&jump=true about why many WoW players have moved to EQ2 and what they have found.
One thing I find essential in having fun in a mog is being able to find good folks to play with. I am an EASK so socializing is not exactly my highest priority. But still I run one of the largest and oldest guilds on the Antonia Bayle server. The people make the difference to me. Having a backstop of 150+ real people to adventure with and chat with makes everything so much better. You can check our our guild at www.vindicators.org
My web site is www.msadams.com for those who might be interested in my history.
Happy Adventuring!
Scott Adams
M. Scott Adams, Not Dilbert, Adventure!
http://www.msadams.com
FINALLY! Man i was beginning to think i was the only one feeling this way..This article was great and really says my opinions of the MMO genre these days.
To tell u the truth what i would like to see is more exploration and storyline, given to these games. Why is everything cookie cutter combat? Go here kill 5 go there kill 10 grab their head bring it back..ugh...
Im not sure if anyone here ever played Earth And Beyond or not but to me that game had so much potential. Exploration, combat, great crafting, and over all ...STORY. I realize to alot of people that having a storyline in a game isnt important as long as the quests are interesting but to me that game really nailed it. I'm not saying it was perfect, cause anyone whos played it knows it was plagued with an assortment of problems. Latency issues, memory leaks and campers. But near the final months pre-end announcement they really made a leap with the instanced battle we all called the fish bowl. I realize some or most have no idea what im talking about but if there are ex ENB players here im sure they will agree.
In a nut shell thats the biggest issue i see...impossible time sinks, as well as the art of the solo player is dead. The new cookie cutter games FORCE you to form groups/parties/guilds, and for me (father of 3 and graveyard shift worker) i dont have the amount of time it takes to join these hugely time consuming raids. And also for me its seriously disheartening to think that the game companies and developers have forgotten the guys/girls like me who would rather solo then be forced to group, to get the "Uber" loot. Its really killed the aspect of the games that i orginally loved. Exploration story and heck some sweet loot along the way aint bad either.
Thanks for the post, i feel much better saying all this here without hearing people moan at me to shut up cause im whinning lol.
I can agree with your article almost 100%. But definitely not completely.
I have played all the games you mentioned in your write up. I of course have different opinions of each.
The one thing I did not even hear you mention, was any sort of crafting. You speak of boredom settilng in, with not enough options to keep you interested. THAT IS why so many games offer crafting, something different. Something to break the grinding/leveling feeling.
I understand that alot of players aren't interested in crafting, which is each person's choice. Give it a try sometime though if the game offers it, you might find something you would enjoy putting some time into.
I would say that my play style currently in Horizons is more crafting, but luckily, if I get burnt on building my plot, I can suit up and go hunting or questing. That option to me, no matter what game you play, is great.
Unfortunately, like your opinion of WoW's PvP, there are many games out there that have a weak crafting system.
A few people made a comment about M59. I played it way back when it first came out but it was not the originall MMO. In what was a very short time span in terms of the two in beta and coming out, Archmage was first but not by much. Man, this is digging way back to the roots of MMO's that were spun off BBS boards and MUD's (pre-internet www. for anyone confused). I would have to agree it has been at least 12 years since MMO inception, not 10.
Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box. ~ Italian proverb
Who is it that thinks that Success in MMO content is based of how long a player stays logged in? And why do so may Devs seem to agree.
To me it seems plainly stupid.
First off it leads to burn out as was mentiond in the article. Seccondly if you players must stay loged in for long periods of time your servers will be put under more pressure. Less players logged in at once = less lag.
Games should be fun first. MMOs (in my view) are funnest when the playing field is even and its your skill vs another player or AI.
Blizzard made a fun game.. then they had to add hours of mindless grinding. Its a carrot on a stick.
"Play our game its realy fun"........ "But in order to get to the fun part you must complete this, and this, and this, and grind here for 14 hrs, then run this instance every week for months then also complete any new grinds we add in the future"
Its the constant need to keep ontop of the Gear curve in WoW is what is killing the game. In order to feel you are playing on an Even playing field you need to raid lots and mindlessly grind Faction. Those that choose not to or who cant due to haveing a real life to be part of will never realy get to enjoy the "Fun" WoW.I mean people dont play Tetris for hours on end because they think they will "advance" their tetris toon.They play because its fun.
Where is the "Dev school" the teaches that MMO's must require hours of mindless button mashing and why hasnt it been burnt to the ground yet?
The one game that i think has thought about "the grind" and how it effect their players is EVE. Yes the grind is there (skill learning) but you dont need to be logged in to be learning your skill.
The only MMO that i can think of of the top of my head that actualy has NO grind at all is Seccond Life. It also comes with no content, other than player made, and mabe thats why. Perhaps No Dev made content = No Grind. I for one hope that is not the case but it has yet to be disproved to me.
I do agree that most mmo right now are only made to keep you online so the company's get paid.
And yes i too am hitting the been there done that point.
The real problem is that not many companies are willing to take risks they only want to get paid so they make the same game over and over only in different locations.
I have been wondering if it realy is so hard to make a game where PC's have some say in the world !
No im not talking about mindless PVP as some think is the only way to keep players happy, some of us don't like killing others so we can danse on there corpses.
Why not make a game that allows the players to add there brains to the devs side of the game?
If you look at gamers now you find that not everybody likes the killfrenzy type of play some want to build stuff and others want to controle stuff so why not do that.
Simply make a game that is 1 part politics.
Start with a NPC forum or a council that players can join as low lvl errand boys and can grow to city fathers or even planetary govenors by interacting with NPC and PC repricentatives or even lobbists.
This allows players to fight more diplomatic battles these can result in owning towns or planets or wat ever.
These can use there skills to make quests to get there town or there planet to grow and to be come stronger so they can get more skills and build more special buildings and so on.
second part is crafting.
Create crafting houses of NPC's that PC can join and as they get better they get more say so they can make missions to get resouces and allows for the dealing with the politics so they get better housing and or acces to better stuff.
Thirtly combat.
Combat types can join the NPC army and later join NPC merc units and get missions from the politic and corp NPC and PC's.
This allows for gaining rank and getting more say in the missions you as a Merc unit accept.
Using this model you can make the PC's gain more power and if you want even give them controle over there respective area. adding guild leaders as corp bosses or merc commanders or even ruler of the world or galaxy until voted out of office.
This way people can have a choice to PVP or not to PVP you can take missions that involve PVP or take only PVE missions it doesn't matter.
Only a small idea but i have never seen anybody get close to this one.
I do think however that a game that uses this layout will live for a very long time as the devs dont have to out think the thousands of player but have them out think them selfs.
"Believe nothing.
No matter where you read it,
Or who said it,
Even if I have said it,
Unless it agrees with your own reason
And your own common sense"
- The Buddha, from Dhammapada