Im done searching for mmo's since the games just arent fun anymore. I play EvE from time to time and its great but wth happend in this genre?
If we look back to the oldies of UO, EQ, AO, RO and the rest of the oldies there was passion and fun ideas for the games. There was something to do everyday and it was FUN!
Ive allways been against WoW not becose it sucks or that smelly 11 yearolds call them self mmo vets for playing it for 8 months but becose of the negative impact it had on the mmogames. Arent we freaking tired of doing 213 quests everyday to gain a level and get a few more crappy skills that barely do any diffrence at all since you have to kill higher lvl mobs anyway becose some bum in a camp would give you a cheeseburger and XP if you did?
What ever happend to stat and skills that affect eachother and making characters with real builds that stood out from eachother and especially how those builds had an effect in PVP making the class you played diverse and something YOU layed thought into and created. The char becomes more than just one of "that" class that just differ in levels.
What ever happend to free choices like entering a game and just walking a path and see where it leads instead of some hobo telling you to go kill 10 hogs or whatever. Theres so much old good stuff like the sandboxing ideas and real character customization that just got lost when all the new features got implented. Features that some of us mmorpg vets still see and the best things in mmorpgs and that kept us playing those old games for months and years with nothing more than a smile on our faces.
For me WoW isnt something i like to call an mmorpg as it showed the gamedevelopers that simplicity is a winning concept. That any player can jump in and enjoy it no matter how young or stupid. Doing quests for exp, Grinding for crap, Raiding for gear, PvPing for gear or faction status. What ever happend to PvPing for your clan or territory or fun ? Personally id love to just have a dungeon without any quests or stupid choirs to be done within. Just me and my friends venturing down to explore and hopefully gain something from it.
I think we lost RPG and FUN somewhere along the years. This is not a post against WoW players i took it as an example since it had a great deal in changing the mmorpg scene into something diffrent.
Thanks for reading.
I get all those things you say you want in EvE. But that's not a real MMORPG because it's spaceships or something. I dunno, there's always someone with some reason why it "doesn't count".
Nostalgia makes things seem better than they were. Listen to old people talk about the old days. They never seem to mention Jim Crow or polio.
I just don't buy the nostalgia crap. I would love to play a well developed mmo, but none of the modern mmos meet my standards. They are all shallow online games (not real mmos imo). MMOs have lost their depth, meaning, and complexity, and this is a simple fact, no opinion even involved. If there was even ONE mmo out there that came close to the depth, meaning, and complexity of the older mmos (which are now shadows of their former selves), then you would have a completely valid argument. However, there are no such mmos (with the exception of eve which is extremely niche),and that makes your argument meaningless.
Nostalgia makes things seem better than they were. Listen to old people talk about the old days. They never seem to mention Jim Crow or polio.
I just don't buy the nostalgia crap. I would love to play a well developed mmo, but none of the modern mmos meet my standards. They are all shallow online games (not real mmos imo). MMOs have lost their depth, meaning, and complexity, and this is a simple fact, no opinion even involved. If there was even ONE mmo out there that came close to the depth, meaning, and complexity of the older mmos (which are now shadows of their former selves), then you would have a completely valid argument. However, there are no such mmos (with the exception of eve which is extremely niche),and that makes your argument meaningless.
Honestly, do you even remember how those games were like back then? Honestly, where was the depth (compared to todays games)? Which game were you playing that was so extravagant back then that for some reason, you're no longer playing it? I mean, all those aforementioned games are still out, where are you in terms of playing any of those if they were honestly that much better. Do you try and play any of the player ran servers with older versions of said games because they were so great? You should really support the argument if in fact you truly aren't being nostalgialistic and let us know what you do to satisfy your MMORPG "needs" these days.
While Eve is successful there are level of success in the business world. A hot dog stand that make a profit is successful but not as successful as an oil company. Where would you invest your money if all you cared about was the most profit. The masses have spoken and casual style play MMORPG's are the future.
Since you want to argue based on business, you should of course know that the more companies involved in one particular market eventually drive profit to zero, at which point profit is derived by price, features, or service. Eventually people drop out of that business and start opening up hot dog stands because at least that makes more profit than the other saturated marketplace (In other words, all of a sudden those 500k "old school" subscribers are a market to pamper and please).
If you're gonna argue in business terms, at least make sure you cover all the basics from econ 101.
I pretty much have the idea of what would be an MMO to make us all pretty damn happy.
The only thing I can't figure out is why hasn't anyone done it yet?, I mean, I doubt they are like gargoyles with poor intellect, something is keeping us from playing a good MMO, is it laziness, greed, gluttony, a secret russian agent?, something is keeping those Devs from making it.
Nostalgia makes things seem better than they were. Listen to old people talk about the old days. They never seem to mention Jim Crow or polio.
I just don't buy the nostalgia crap. I would love to play a well developed mmo, but none of the modern mmos meet my standards. They are all shallow online games (not real mmos imo). MMOs have lost their depth, meaning, and complexity, and this is a simple fact, no opinion even involved. If there was even ONE mmo out there that came close to the depth, meaning, and complexity of the older mmos (which are now shadows of their former selves), then you would have a completely valid argument. However, there are no such mmos (with the exception of eve which is extremely niche),and that makes your argument meaningless.
Honestly, do you even remember how those games were like back then? Honestly, where was the depth (compared to todays games)? Which game were you playing that was so extravagant back then that for some reason, you're no longer playing it? I mean, all those aforementioned games are still out, where are you in terms of playing any of those if they were honestly that much better. Do you try and play any of the player ran servers with older versions of said games because they were so great? You should really support the argument if in fact you truly aren't being nostalgialistic and let us know what you do to satisfy your MMORPG "needs" these days.
My game was SWG, which is not even remotely close to what it was. The other games are all badly dated when it comes to graphics, and as a result have low populations which in general defeats the purpose of a mmo. MMOs have a lifespan, and that usually ends when the majority of the population moves on to another game for whatever reasons. Once that time is done, the mmo will do nothing more than limp on for the rest of its lifetime. As graphics become less and less of an issue, mmos will be able to survive longer and compete more on features. In the case of wow versus all of the older games, even wow's graphics win hands down, so it's comfortable to continue playing that game until another innovation in mass market graphics, unlike eq which looked like crap two years into production.
Your entire argument is based upon ignoring the context of the situation. There are other factors outside of gameplay and features that led people away from the earlier mmos, graphics being the most common reason. This is not to say that earlier mmos were the end all be all of the genre. There were nasty timesinks and bad grinds, and definately some unpopular features. However, most of the good features have been ignored in modern mmos, making for a shallow mmo experience on the whole. Until some of those features are restored, you'll continue to see threads like this.
My game was SWG, which is not even remotely close to what it was. The other games are all badly dated when it comes to graphics, and as a result have low populations which in general defeats the purpose of a mmo. MMOs have a lifespan, and that usually ends when the majority of the population moves on to another game for whatever reasons. Once that time is done, the mmo will do nothing more than limp on for the rest of its lifetime. As graphics become less and less of an issue, mmos will be able to survive longer and compete more on features. In the case of wow versus all of the older games, even wow's graphics win hands down, so it's comfortable to continue playing that game until another innovation in mass market graphics, unlike eq which looked like crap two years into production.
Your entire argument is based upon ignoring the context of the situation. There are other factors outside of gameplay and features that led people away from the earlier mmos, graphics being the most common reason. This is not to say that earlier mmos were the end all be all of the genre. There were nasty timesinks and bad grinds, and definately some unpopular features. However, most of the good features have been ignored in modern mmos, making for a shallow mmo experience on the whole. Until some of those features are restored, you'll continue to see threads like this.
Were you ever a part of a good guild or a group of friends in any of the MMO's you played? I think alot of what actually gets ignored in any game is that the game by itself without any people to really interact with are generally dull games within the MMORPG. At least from my experiences, its the people that always kept me playing the games I play now, no matter how poorly they are handled sometimes. I think more and more MMO's have started focusing more on group and multiplayer interactive type features more so than the great individual ones used in the past. Plus if the industry were to evolve, the games have to explore and try things out differently if not just to see how things will end up with the game. I don't think creating an MMORPG (yet alone the individual systems within it and getting them to interact together effectively) is not so much a science as it is an art thats involving many people in its creation.
I pretty much have the idea of what would be an MMO to make us all pretty damn happy.
The only thing I can't figure out is why hasn't anyone done it yet?, I mean, I doubt they are like gargoyles with poor intellect, something is keeping us from playing a good MMO, is it laziness, greed, gluttony, a secret russian agent?, something is keeping those Devs from making it.
(I am very far away from starting my own MMO )
Do you now? You've figured out how to create an EVE fan like myself happy while also satisfying a WOW player like Zorndorf?
I doubt you realize quite how different our tastes are, and finding one game that we both would enjoy would prove to be quite challenging.
Now, take it from a 10,000 foot view. When creatng a new MMORPG game, using other people's money, what can I promise them in terms of rewards to offset their$ 20M-$150M investment(risk?)
I know, I'll create a game that should bring in 100-250K long term subscribers ( if we're lucky.). Or am I going to show them a game design that I feel will bring in 1M + subs? They might want me to substatiate my business plan, odds are they won't accept my "belief" that there is a market out ther for my game.
So I'll have to compare it to other successful MMO's, and show them feature by feature why my game not only equals a market leader, but even exceeds it in some way.
Wait, how many market leading games have more than 1M subs today. Only one. (discounting F2P models)
So if my game doesn't look a lot like WOW, what are the odds my investors will stick with it.
Not great, ask the folks at Starvault or Aventurine about the challenge they've faced getting funding for their game models that vary from the WOW norm.
Now the bad news for Devs is, copying the WOW model hasn't proven any more successful than tyring something new would have, but its taken quite a few failures to drive the message home.
I think it will be a few years yet, but there are game under development now that will not follow WOW lock, stock and barrel (so we're told anyway) but we'll have be a bit patient.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I would say STOP blaming developers and gamecompany's and for once look at the majority of people that came into this genre, that's the place where you need to put blame.
OP - Try Darkfall. It is the closest thing I have experienced to an old school MMO in a long long time...
QFT
You want a new old school game, subscribe to Darkfall and you'll never look back.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
I pretty much have the idea of what would be an MMO to make us all pretty damn happy.
The only thing I can't figure out is why hasn't anyone done it yet?, I mean, I doubt they are like gargoyles with poor intellect, something is keeping us from playing a good MMO, is it laziness, greed, gluttony, a secret russian agent?, something is keeping those Devs from making it.
(I am very far away from starting my own MMO )
Do you now? You've figured out how to create an EVE fan like myself happy while also satisfying a WOW player like Zorndorf?
I definately think it's possible and imo eve already does it. If you look at the entire setting of eve, you have high sec and low sec. Low sec is a profitable wild west that is not for the timid. Although I'm not timid, I did not have the time to get really involved in eve when I played, so I carebeared it in the high sec zones. Sure, suicide ganking can happen in high sec, but I never had a problem with it. So I was able to do mission to my heart's content, and for the time did pretty well by maxing out a cerebrus. When I left I was soloing level 4 missions. I'm sure that's not all that spectacular, but for all intents and purposes i felt that I had accomplished a lot without needing to join a group even once.
Regardless, this post isn't about how great I was able to solo eve, but about the very concept of me being able to do what's essentially linear content in a sandbox. If you really look at it, eve really is a hybrid mmo, with linear content smack dab in the middle of the sandbox. That's where I think we're able to please both playerbases. My example has always been take wow and put it in the middle of swg, and all playerbases are satisfied. You can solo, small group, and raid to your heart's content in the center themepark, and when you get bored you can go play with the big boys in the sandbox. Eve already has this feature, but given the turnoff to so many with the ship-as-avatar model, it doesn't really catch the attention of most people.
Oh right, my apoligies, I had completely forgotten about the close minded audience that wants to stick to wow or eve. I am such a self idealistic jerk.
But in all seriousness, even though it would be a very big challenge to make, an MMO with decent combat gameplay, a fun story and that promotes players getting together as role playing community creating their own societies would be a pretty successful game.
An MMO can't get all the audience, but it can easily get enough to sustain itself if its quality is any good.
Remember to keep an open mind, to be honest I find every MMO out there to be unsatisfying to my taste (I haven't tried EVE online, but I don't play MMOs that ask for money or demand that I pay all my time to them, they're just games, if I don't have the money or time for them then I guess I'll just express my opinion and make my own attempt to create a virtual world. (You might have guessed I plan to get into the gaming industry one way or another)
So far all I see are wow clones in terms of lazy combat and games with crazy gameplay with little content.
Nostalgia makes things seem better than they were. Listen to old people talk about the old days. They never seem to mention Jim Crow or polio.
Well no one can deny that UO, EQ or AC had something in common.
Something all of the recent mmorpgs lack ( except Eve online ) .
What they had in common was .. Originality and innovation.
Just the same, old people miss the Doors or Led Zeppelin, and cant be bothered with Green Day or 50 cent.. It's probably nostalgia again i guess.
It is humerous how we talk about nostalgia of games that were released around 10 years ago. Is that even enough time to qualify for nostalgia? lol you'd think the way the younger folks around here talk that the "old school" gamers are in their 50s or 60s and are starting to grow senile and pining for their young life past. Truth is us "old timers" generally aren't older than early to mid 30s, an age group generally considered young in society.
Originally posted by Kyleran Do you now? You've figured out how to create an EVE fan like myself happy while also satisfying a WOW player like Zorndorf?
I definately think it's possible and imo eve already does it. If you look at the entire setting of eve, you have high sec and low sec. Low sec is a profitable wild west that is not for the timid. Although I'm not timid, I did not have the time to get really involved in eve when I played, so I carebeared it in the high sec zones. Sure, suicide ganking can happen in high sec, but I never had a problem with it. So I was able to do mission to my heart's content, and for the time did pretty well by maxing out a cerebrus. When I left I was soloing level 4 missions. I'm sure that's not all that spectacular, but for all intents and purposes i felt that I had accomplished a lot without needing to join a group even once.
Regardless, this post isn't about how great I was able to solo eve, but about the very concept of me being able to do what's essentially linear content in a sandbox. If you really look at it, eve really is a hybrid mmo, with linear content smack dab in the middle of the sandbox. That's where I think we're able to please both playerbases. My example has always been take wow and put it in the middle of swg, and all playerbases are satisfied. You can solo, small group, and raid to your heart's content in the center themepark, and when you get bored you can go play with the big boys in the sandbox. Eve already has this feature, but given the turnoff to so many with the ship-as-avatar model, it doesn't really catch the attention of most people.
One can definetly play EVE without leaving empire space but it is generally an unsatisfying dead end. Running the smae missions over and over will get tiresome and unless you want to be a empire space merchant all the good goodies are in lower sec space which means PvP. Also let's not forget that the more successfull you get in empire space the bigger target you make for 'for-profit suicide gankers'. Plus an out-of-the-blue wardec can really spoil your general enjoyment.
EVE nowadays has a lot of features that make it attractive to non-PvPers but it is still a very limited gameplay where you soon find out which gameplay style is the boss.
Remember to keep an open mind, to be honest I find every MMO out there to be unsatisfying to my taste (I haven't tried EVE online, but I don't play MMOs that ask for money or demand that I pay all my time to them, they're just games, if I don't have the money or time for them then I guess I'll just express my opinion and make my own attempt to create a virtual world. (You might have guessed I plan to get into the gaming industry one way or another) So far all I see are wow clones in terms of lazy combat and games with crazy gameplay with little content.
Well if you insist on only playing free-to-play games, you'll probably get what you pay for. Quality costs money.
And as it happens, CCP dont ask for your money as such; they're quite happy for someone else to pay them on your behalf. You can buy game time in-game directly from other players for in-game money.
Originally posted by Torik One can definetly play EVE without leaving empire space but it is generally an unsatisfying dead end. Running the smae missions over and over will get tiresome and unless you want to be a empire space merchant all the good goodies are in lower sec space which means PvP. Also let's not forget that the more successfull you get in empire space the bigger target you make for 'for-profit suicide gankers'. Plus an out-of-the-blue wardec can really spoil your general enjoyment. EVE nowadays has a lot of features that make it attractive to non-PvPers but it is still a very limited gameplay where you soon find out which gameplay style is the boss.
EvE is all PvP all of the time. It's just that not all PvP is combat PvP. Market trading, industry, invention and exploration are highly competitive and very cut-throat activities. The losses and victories of the major maket players can easily exceed the ISK value of the losses from a large capital fleet battle. If you like that kind of thing, there's no need to step out of hi-sec to engage in what can be the most profitable activity in the game and never have to feel that what you do is less significant than engaging in alliance-level warfare.
Running missions is pretty much the only non-PvP activity in the game, and even that has some non-combat PvP elements (eg: selling LP items for maximum profit per LP)
There are plenty of MMOs out there, you're just picky.
You're like a kid who grew up on PB&J and Mac N Cheese, it's all you'll eat, and eventually, when you get sick of it, you'll wine and cry and eat nothing else until someone invents new Mac N Cheese with hamburger bits, even though Hamburger helper was already doing it.
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Playing: World Of Warcraft Resting From: Nothing Retired: EQ2, CoH, Tabula Rasa, SWG, Warhammer, AoC Waiting For: SWTOR, APB Love(d): Tabula Rasa, SWG, World Of Warcraft, Age of Conan
The REal problem : WerE ALL SPOILED from too many mmo choices.. When i played Asheron's call it was all i knew.. it was AWESOME.. but.. now the mmo's are better, more diverse, more to do.. and less fun, cause we've all been there done that.. YOu'll never get that feeling back..
I talk about it like it was the greatest game of all time, but in reality.. it was simple.. there was no real content.. old mmo's were grind grind grind some more, there are tons of f2p games that have as much,but we hate, cause we want more.. we don't want that mmo back, even though we think we do, we want the next game after WoW.. we had UO.. then EQ.. then WoW.. and we are all pretty much waiting on "next" (not EQ Next mind you" but the Next great mmo.. which hasn't happened..
Dispite us all thinking we want "old" back..we want the "next one".. that why we all buy mmo after mmo hoping for it..
I play lotro cause i gave up, cause i realise, it's about picking the lesser of all evils, not the greatest mmo.. lotro has enough to do and is fun for me, but i am waiting for the next great (not next biggest), like all of you.
And devs, when you make it, Don't F it up by trying to WoWinize it.. time in and time again we learn MMO's LOSE subs by trying to increase them by making them more like game X... your not going to get 5 million subs, get over it.
I agree with the above poster (right above me only with the first paragraph) and coming to think due to all these selections and competition, we're all spoiled by the fact that companies are starting to give the customers what they want in terms of the changes that do occur with the game.
I think many of us are expecting things to be more our way rather than put up with what we're given like the old days or even adapting to it. If we don't like a game enough, its easy enough to just drop it in hopes the next MMO you try out would be better. The next MMO does usually end up being better at first, until something happens that causes us not to like again occurs then we just easily switch over right etc. etc. I think some of us players are caught in this endless loop until no MMO are found to satisfy what we would think to ourselves would be good for an MMO and in the light of what you think is good, everything else just becomes stupid. I think this is where the MMO snobbery comes into play.
I think we abuse this term of calling everything that might even slightly resemble WoW as a WoW clone. I don't think many developers have actually tried making a WoWinizing anything save for Alganon who just did it with their own code. It seems like anything with a fantasy setting that appears to flop and is 3D people want to call it a WoW clone and that's just wrong. How else would you go about designing a game if you don't use with what most of the population find familiar in terms of User Interface.
Just because a game utilizes a similar looking UI as another game DOES NOT make it a clone of another game without taking into account mechanics, gameplay, class/skills systems, community etc. I'm tired of hearing people blame companies of trying to be like WoW because its really not occurring as often as many people are making it out to be.
Anarchy online, OMG what a game, so intricate and detailed, so very intellectual.
I remember spending dozens of hours trying to calculate a way for my player in order to twink it.
What ever happend to the intelligent game , I would never be satasfiend with a 'a go collect 30 fox tails', there is no challenge in it, and in turn there is no challenge in the entire game, ie wow.
If you make an ass out of yourself, there will always be someone to ride you - Bruce lee
Life Is not about how hard you can hit, It's about hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.- Rocky
Indeed, this is a very spoiled little boy, and when this spoiled boy grows up, he is going to fix things the best he can ;p.
Too many MMO choices is correct, but barely any game choices, no MMO has good combat and those who have decent combat are not released yet and require megaton computers I can't afford because they are obsessed with graphics(I tested one recently and could barely run it at min settings, trust me my computer ain't junk).
I am so gonna try and make my own game someday, and we will see how that goes. ______________________________________________________________________________________
Regarding main post, I hope in future MMOs for quests to not exist, static quests which everyone does and are designed to be for that only player which is the hero, really doesn't fit the story and makes quests not match the lifeless world you live in.
Quests should reflect real world event which could be controlled by GMs, maybe there are 6 months of peace (But still plenty of fun things and missions to do), but then all of a sudden a war breaks loose for a month and after that, all the players are deprived of money and resources and must rebuild against attack from treacherous wildlife.
Individual quests would be highly inaccessible, being mostly group quests and requests, but that would quickly be changed when more content is added and therefore easier to get something.
I play Vanguard. I love the game and think it's the best PvE game available. It's the depth, complexity and community that has kept me going for almost three years in this game. But it's also the depth and complexity that makes Vanguard a niche MMO because the requirement of thought, organization and strategy scares many players away. A good friend of mine quit because he didn't want to make the effort to learn how to play his class and spec out his gear sets to be effective. He just wanted to get to max level and be as good as other folks in his class. Although I can understand why someone would not want to email combat logs and gear spreadsheets back and forth to optimize their class.
Developers are going where the money is and that is the larger market of players that prefer a more simple, straight-forward and immediate reward type of MMO. They are lower cost MMOs to make, they sell a lot of boxes, and then move on to an expansion or another cookie-cutter MMO title.
I'm very discouraged by the state of MMO development. I see nothing on the horizon that will be like another EQ1, UO or Vanguard. Maybe folks will get sick of cookie-cutter MMOs and the market will shift again... one can only hope.
Im done searching for mmo's since the games just arent fun anymore. I play EvE from time to time and its great but wth happend in this genre?
If we look back to the oldies of UO, EQ, AO, RO and the rest of the oldies there was passion and fun ideas for the games. There was something to do everyday and it was FUN!
Ive allways been against WoW not becose it sucks or that smelly 11 yearolds call them self mmo vets for playing it for 8 months but becose of the negative impact it had on the mmogames. Arent we freaking tired of doing 213 quests everyday to gain a level and get a few more crappy skills that barely do any diffrence at all since you have to kill higher lvl mobs anyway becose some bum in a camp would give you a cheeseburger and XP if you did?
What ever happend to stat and skills that affect eachother and making characters with real builds that stood out from eachother and especially how those builds had an effect in PVP making the class you played diverse and something YOU layed thought into and created. The char becomes more than just one of "that" class that just differ in levels.
What ever happend to free choices like entering a game and just walking a path and see where it leads instead of some hobo telling you to go kill 10 hogs or whatever. Theres so much old good stuff like the sandboxing ideas and real character customization that just got lost when all the new features got implented. Features that some of us mmorpg vets still see and the best things in mmorpgs and that kept us playing those old games for months and years with nothing more than a smile on our faces.
For me WoW isnt something i like to call an mmorpg as it showed the gamedevelopers that simplicity is a winning concept. That any player can jump in and enjoy it no matter how young or stupid. Doing quests for exp, Grinding for crap, Raiding for gear, PvPing for gear or faction status. What ever happend to PvPing for your clan or territory or fun ? Personally id love to just have a dungeon without any quests or stupid choirs to be done within. Just me and my friends venturing down to explore and hopefully gain something from it.
I think we lost RPG and FUN somewhere along the years. This is not a post against WoW players i took it as an example since it had a great deal in changing the mmorpg scene into something diffrent.
Thanks for reading.
What happened? Ummm all you "mmo vets" realized what the rest of us old school RPG vet's already saw, there is nothing new about the systems being used in these games and so us old school RPG players are not out setting ourselves up for the "new experience" everytime a game comes out.
I don't presume to tell anyone what to do for fun but I think the mmo community as well as the devs all could use a good purge.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Comments
I get all those things you say you want in EvE. But that's not a real MMORPG because it's spaceships or something. I dunno, there's always someone with some reason why it "doesn't count".
Give me liberty or give me lasers
I just don't buy the nostalgia crap. I would love to play a well developed mmo, but none of the modern mmos meet my standards. They are all shallow online games (not real mmos imo). MMOs have lost their depth, meaning, and complexity, and this is a simple fact, no opinion even involved. If there was even ONE mmo out there that came close to the depth, meaning, and complexity of the older mmos (which are now shadows of their former selves), then you would have a completely valid argument. However, there are no such mmos (with the exception of eve which is extremely niche),and that makes your argument meaningless.
I just don't buy the nostalgia crap. I would love to play a well developed mmo, but none of the modern mmos meet my standards. They are all shallow online games (not real mmos imo). MMOs have lost their depth, meaning, and complexity, and this is a simple fact, no opinion even involved. If there was even ONE mmo out there that came close to the depth, meaning, and complexity of the older mmos (which are now shadows of their former selves), then you would have a completely valid argument. However, there are no such mmos (with the exception of eve which is extremely niche),and that makes your argument meaningless.
Honestly, do you even remember how those games were like back then? Honestly, where was the depth (compared to todays games)? Which game were you playing that was so extravagant back then that for some reason, you're no longer playing it? I mean, all those aforementioned games are still out, where are you in terms of playing any of those if they were honestly that much better. Do you try and play any of the player ran servers with older versions of said games because they were so great? You should really support the argument if in fact you truly aren't being nostalgialistic and let us know what you do to satisfy your MMORPG "needs" these days.
Since you want to argue based on business, you should of course know that the more companies involved in one particular market eventually drive profit to zero, at which point profit is derived by price, features, or service. Eventually people drop out of that business and start opening up hot dog stands because at least that makes more profit than the other saturated marketplace (In other words, all of a sudden those 500k "old school" subscribers are a market to pamper and please).
If you're gonna argue in business terms, at least make sure you cover all the basics from econ 101.
I pretty much have the idea of what would be an MMO to make us all pretty damn happy.
The only thing I can't figure out is why hasn't anyone done it yet?, I mean, I doubt they are like gargoyles with poor intellect, something is keeping us from playing a good MMO, is it laziness, greed, gluttony, a secret russian agent?, something is keeping those Devs from making it.
(I am very far away from starting my own MMO
)
I just don't buy the nostalgia crap. I would love to play a well developed mmo, but none of the modern mmos meet my standards. They are all shallow online games (not real mmos imo). MMOs have lost their depth, meaning, and complexity, and this is a simple fact, no opinion even involved. If there was even ONE mmo out there that came close to the depth, meaning, and complexity of the older mmos (which are now shadows of their former selves), then you would have a completely valid argument. However, there are no such mmos (with the exception of eve which is extremely niche),and that makes your argument meaningless.
Honestly, do you even remember how those games were like back then? Honestly, where was the depth (compared to todays games)? Which game were you playing that was so extravagant back then that for some reason, you're no longer playing it? I mean, all those aforementioned games are still out, where are you in terms of playing any of those if they were honestly that much better. Do you try and play any of the player ran servers with older versions of said games because they were so great? You should really support the argument if in fact you truly aren't being nostalgialistic and let us know what you do to satisfy your MMORPG "needs" these days.
My game was SWG, which is not even remotely close to what it was. The other games are all badly dated when it comes to graphics, and as a result have low populations which in general defeats the purpose of a mmo. MMOs have a lifespan, and that usually ends when the majority of the population moves on to another game for whatever reasons. Once that time is done, the mmo will do nothing more than limp on for the rest of its lifetime. As graphics become less and less of an issue, mmos will be able to survive longer and compete more on features. In the case of wow versus all of the older games, even wow's graphics win hands down, so it's comfortable to continue playing that game until another innovation in mass market graphics, unlike eq which looked like crap two years into production.
Your entire argument is based upon ignoring the context of the situation. There are other factors outside of gameplay and features that led people away from the earlier mmos, graphics being the most common reason. This is not to say that earlier mmos were the end all be all of the genre. There were nasty timesinks and bad grinds, and definately some unpopular features. However, most of the good features have been ignored in modern mmos, making for a shallow mmo experience on the whole. Until some of those features are restored, you'll continue to see threads like this.
Were you ever a part of a good guild or a group of friends in any of the MMO's you played? I think alot of what actually gets ignored in any game is that the game by itself without any people to really interact with are generally dull games within the MMORPG. At least from my experiences, its the people that always kept me playing the games I play now, no matter how poorly they are handled sometimes. I think more and more MMO's have started focusing more on group and multiplayer interactive type features more so than the great individual ones used in the past. Plus if the industry were to evolve, the games have to explore and try things out differently if not just to see how things will end up with the game. I don't think creating an MMORPG (yet alone the individual systems within it and getting them to interact together effectively) is not so much a science as it is an art thats involving many people in its creation.
Do you now? You've figured out how to create an EVE fan like myself happy while also satisfying a WOW player like Zorndorf?
I doubt you realize quite how different our tastes are, and finding one game that we both would enjoy would prove to be quite challenging.
Now, take it from a 10,000 foot view. When creatng a new MMORPG game, using other people's money, what can I promise them in terms of rewards to offset their$ 20M-$150M investment(risk?)
I know, I'll create a game that should bring in 100-250K long term subscribers ( if we're lucky.). Or am I going to show them a game design that I feel will bring in 1M + subs? They might want me to substatiate my business plan, odds are they won't accept my "belief" that there is a market out ther for my game.
So I'll have to compare it to other successful MMO's, and show them feature by feature why my game not only equals a market leader, but even exceeds it in some way.
Wait, how many market leading games have more than 1M subs today. Only one. (discounting F2P models)
So if my game doesn't look a lot like WOW, what are the odds my investors will stick with it.
Not great, ask the folks at Starvault or Aventurine about the challenge they've faced getting funding for their game models that vary from the WOW norm.
Now the bad news for Devs is, copying the WOW model hasn't proven any more successful than tyring something new would have, but its taken quite a few failures to drive the message home.
I think it will be a few years yet, but there are game under development now that will not follow WOW lock, stock and barrel (so we're told anyway) but we'll have be a bit patient.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I would say STOP blaming developers and gamecompany's and for once look at the majority of people that came into this genre, that's the place where you need to put blame.
QFT
You want a new old school game, subscribe to Darkfall and you'll never look back.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Do you now? You've figured out how to create an EVE fan like myself happy while also satisfying a WOW player like Zorndorf?
I definately think it's possible and imo eve already does it. If you look at the entire setting of eve, you have high sec and low sec. Low sec is a profitable wild west that is not for the timid. Although I'm not timid, I did not have the time to get really involved in eve when I played, so I carebeared it in the high sec zones. Sure, suicide ganking can happen in high sec, but I never had a problem with it. So I was able to do mission to my heart's content, and for the time did pretty well by maxing out a cerebrus. When I left I was soloing level 4 missions. I'm sure that's not all that spectacular, but for all intents and purposes i felt that I had accomplished a lot without needing to join a group even once.
Regardless, this post isn't about how great I was able to solo eve, but about the very concept of me being able to do what's essentially linear content in a sandbox. If you really look at it, eve really is a hybrid mmo, with linear content smack dab in the middle of the sandbox. That's where I think we're able to please both playerbases. My example has always been take wow and put it in the middle of swg, and all playerbases are satisfied. You can solo, small group, and raid to your heart's content in the center themepark, and when you get bored you can go play with the big boys in the sandbox. Eve already has this feature, but given the turnoff to so many with the ship-as-avatar model, it doesn't really catch the attention of most people.
Well no one can deny that UO, EQ or AC had something in common.
Something all of the recent mmorpgs lack ( except Eve online ) .
What they had in common was .. Originality and innovation.
Just the same, old people miss the Doors or Led Zeppelin, and cant be bothered with Green Day or 50 cent.. It's probably nostalgia again i guess.
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Playing : Uncharted Waters Online
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Oh right, my apoligies, I had completely forgotten about the close minded audience that wants to stick to wow or eve. I am such a self idealistic jerk.
But in all seriousness, even though it would be a very big challenge to make, an MMO with decent combat gameplay, a fun story and that promotes players getting together as role playing community creating their own societies would be a pretty successful game.
An MMO can't get all the audience, but it can easily get enough to sustain itself if its quality is any good.
Remember to keep an open mind, to be honest I find every MMO out there to be unsatisfying to my taste (I haven't tried EVE online, but I don't play MMOs that ask for money or demand that I pay all my time to them, they're just games, if I don't have the money or time for them then I guess I'll just express my opinion and make my own attempt to create a virtual world. (You might have guessed I plan to get into the gaming industry one way or another)
So far all I see are wow clones in terms of lazy combat and games with crazy gameplay with little content.
Well no one can deny that UO, EQ or AC had something in common.
Something all of the recent mmorpgs lack ( except Eve online ) .
What they had in common was .. Originality and innovation.
Just the same, old people miss the Doors or Led Zeppelin, and cant be bothered with Green Day or 50 cent.. It's probably nostalgia again i guess.
It is humerous how we talk about nostalgia of games that were released around 10 years ago. Is that even enough time to qualify for nostalgia? lol you'd think the way the younger folks around here talk that the "old school" gamers are in their 50s or 60s and are starting to grow senile and pining for their young life past. Truth is us "old timers" generally aren't older than early to mid 30s, an age group generally considered young in society.
I definately think it's possible and imo eve already does it. If you look at the entire setting of eve, you have high sec and low sec. Low sec is a profitable wild west that is not for the timid. Although I'm not timid, I did not have the time to get really involved in eve when I played, so I carebeared it in the high sec zones. Sure, suicide ganking can happen in high sec, but I never had a problem with it. So I was able to do mission to my heart's content, and for the time did pretty well by maxing out a cerebrus. When I left I was soloing level 4 missions. I'm sure that's not all that spectacular, but for all intents and purposes i felt that I had accomplished a lot without needing to join a group even once.
Regardless, this post isn't about how great I was able to solo eve, but about the very concept of me being able to do what's essentially linear content in a sandbox. If you really look at it, eve really is a hybrid mmo, with linear content smack dab in the middle of the sandbox. That's where I think we're able to please both playerbases. My example has always been take wow and put it in the middle of swg, and all playerbases are satisfied. You can solo, small group, and raid to your heart's content in the center themepark, and when you get bored you can go play with the big boys in the sandbox. Eve already has this feature, but given the turnoff to so many with the ship-as-avatar model, it doesn't really catch the attention of most people.
One can definetly play EVE without leaving empire space but it is generally an unsatisfying dead end. Running the smae missions over and over will get tiresome and unless you want to be a empire space merchant all the good goodies are in lower sec space which means PvP. Also let's not forget that the more successfull you get in empire space the bigger target you make for 'for-profit suicide gankers'. Plus an out-of-the-blue wardec can really spoil your general enjoyment.
EVE nowadays has a lot of features that make it attractive to non-PvPers but it is still a very limited gameplay where you soon find out which gameplay style is the boss.
Well if you insist on only playing free-to-play games, you'll probably get what you pay for. Quality costs money.
And as it happens, CCP dont ask for your money as such; they're quite happy for someone else to pay them on your behalf. You can buy game time in-game directly from other players for in-game money.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
EvE is all PvP all of the time. It's just that not all PvP is combat PvP. Market trading, industry, invention and exploration are highly competitive and very cut-throat activities. The losses and victories of the major maket players can easily exceed the ISK value of the losses from a large capital fleet battle. If you like that kind of thing, there's no need to step out of hi-sec to engage in what can be the most profitable activity in the game and never have to feel that what you do is less significant than engaging in alliance-level warfare.
Running missions is pretty much the only non-PvP activity in the game, and even that has some non-combat PvP elements (eg: selling LP items for maximum profit per LP)
Give me liberty or give me lasers
There are plenty of MMOs out there, you're just picky.
You're like a kid who grew up on PB&J and Mac N Cheese, it's all you'll eat, and eventually, when you get sick of it, you'll wine and cry and eat nothing else until someone invents new Mac N Cheese with hamburger bits, even though Hamburger helper was already doing it.
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Playing: World Of Warcraft
Resting From: Nothing
Retired: EQ2, CoH, Tabula Rasa, SWG, Warhammer, AoC
Waiting For: SWTOR, APB
Love(d): Tabula Rasa, SWG, World Of Warcraft, Age of Conan
The REal problem : WerE ALL SPOILED from too many mmo choices.. When i played Asheron's call it was all i knew.. it was AWESOME.. but.. now the mmo's are better, more diverse, more to do.. and less fun, cause we've all been there done that.. YOu'll never get that feeling back..
I talk about it like it was the greatest game of all time, but in reality.. it was simple.. there was no real content.. old mmo's were grind grind grind some more, there are tons of f2p games that have as much,but we hate, cause we want more.. we don't want that mmo back, even though we think we do, we want the next game after WoW.. we had UO.. then EQ.. then WoW.. and we are all pretty much waiting on "next" (not EQ Next mind you" but the Next great mmo.. which hasn't happened..
Dispite us all thinking we want "old" back..we want the "next one".. that why we all buy mmo after mmo hoping for it..
I play lotro cause i gave up, cause i realise, it's about picking the lesser of all evils, not the greatest mmo.. lotro has enough to do and is fun for me, but i am waiting for the next great (not next biggest), like all of you.
And devs, when you make it, Don't F it up by trying to WoWinize it.. time in and time again we learn MMO's LOSE subs by trying to increase them by making them more like game X... your not going to get 5 million subs, get over it.
Vaed
I agree with the above poster (right above me only with the first paragraph) and coming to think due to all these selections and competition, we're all spoiled by the fact that companies are starting to give the customers what they want in terms of the changes that do occur with the game.
I think many of us are expecting things to be more our way rather than put up with what we're given like the old days or even adapting to it. If we don't like a game enough, its easy enough to just drop it in hopes the next MMO you try out would be better. The next MMO does usually end up being better at first, until something happens that causes us not to like again occurs then we just easily switch over right etc. etc. I think some of us players are caught in this endless loop until no MMO are found to satisfy what we would think to ourselves would be good for an MMO and in the light of what you think is good, everything else just becomes stupid. I think this is where the MMO snobbery comes into play.
I think we abuse this term of calling everything that might even slightly resemble WoW as a WoW clone. I don't think many developers have actually tried making a WoWinizing anything save for Alganon who just did it with their own code. It seems like anything with a fantasy setting that appears to flop and is 3D people want to call it a WoW clone and that's just wrong. How else would you go about designing a game if you don't use with what most of the population find familiar in terms of User Interface.
Just because a game utilizes a similar looking UI as another game DOES NOT make it a clone of another game without taking into account mechanics, gameplay, class/skills systems, community etc. I'm tired of hearing people blame companies of trying to be like WoW because its really not occurring as often as many people are making it out to be.
Anarchy online, OMG what a game, so intricate and detailed, so very intellectual.
I remember spending dozens of hours trying to calculate a way for my player in order to twink it.
What ever happend to the intelligent game , I would never be satasfiend with a
'a go collect 30 fox tails', there is no challenge in it, and in turn there is no
challenge in the entire game, ie wow.
If you make an ass out of yourself, there will always be someone to ride you - Bruce lee
Life Is not about how hard you can hit, It's about hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.- Rocky
Indeed, this is a very spoiled little boy, and when this spoiled boy grows up, he is going to fix things the best he can ;p.
Too many MMO choices is correct, but barely any game choices, no MMO has good combat and those who have decent combat are not released yet and require megaton computers I can't afford because they are obsessed with graphics(I tested one recently and could barely run it at min settings, trust me my computer ain't junk).
I am so gonna try and make my own game someday, and we will see how that goes.
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Regarding main post,
I hope in future MMOs for quests to not exist, static quests which everyone does and are designed to be for that only player which is the hero, really doesn't fit the story and makes quests not match the lifeless world you live in.
Quests should reflect real world event which could be controlled by GMs, maybe there are 6 months of peace (But still plenty of fun things and missions to do), but then all of a sudden a war breaks loose for a month and after that, all the players are deprived of money and resources and must rebuild against attack from treacherous wildlife.
Individual quests would be highly inaccessible, being mostly group quests and requests, but that would quickly be changed when more content is added and therefore easier to get something.
OP is suffering from nostalgia.
Nostalgia makes things seem better in hindsight than they really were. It's human nature.
You can see this in how old people talk about the good old days ignoring polio, Jim Crow and Fascism.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
I play Vanguard. I love the game and think it's the best PvE game available. It's the depth, complexity and community that has kept me going for almost three years in this game. But it's also the depth and complexity that makes Vanguard a niche MMO because the requirement of thought, organization and strategy scares many players away. A good friend of mine quit because he didn't want to make the effort to learn how to play his class and spec out his gear sets to be effective. He just wanted to get to max level and be as good as other folks in his class. Although I can understand why someone would not want to email combat logs and gear spreadsheets back and forth to optimize their class.
Developers are going where the money is and that is the larger market of players that prefer a more simple, straight-forward and immediate reward type of MMO. They are lower cost MMOs to make, they sell a lot of boxes, and then move on to an expansion or another cookie-cutter MMO title.
I'm very discouraged by the state of MMO development. I see nothing on the horizon that will be like another EQ1, UO or Vanguard. Maybe folks will get sick of cookie-cutter MMOs and the market will shift again... one can only hope.
What happened? Ummm all you "mmo vets" realized what the rest of us old school RPG vet's already saw, there is nothing new about the systems being used in these games and so us old school RPG players are not out setting ourselves up for the "new experience" everytime a game comes out.
I don't presume to tell anyone what to do for fun but I think the mmo community as well as the devs all could use a good purge.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....