It was combination of things that had their cause and effect
1. Blizzard created WoW. Huge financial success that turned in behemoth that clouded any other revenue made by any other game ( mmo or regular )
2. Investors got greedy. And developers looked at WoW that as any other Blizzard game appeared deceptively simple , but was in fact masterpiece.
3. Developers keen to top Blizzard, had easy time convincing investors to invest hundreds of millions in their WoW-Killers.
And now comes the punch
1. MMOs take long time to make. WoW was in production over 6 years. However these new company had the huge burden of large investments and investors breathing down their necks.
2. Games were released unfinished , lacking content , and with gameplay mechanic similar to WoW
3. Players gave them chance. But quickly returned to superior WoW
----
4. Next generation tried to top WoW by beating only weakness they could find : Low fidelity graphics
5. Visual Quality wars ensued. However reason WoW and MMOs had low graphical fidelity was because of performance. And the new Visual superb MMOs had to cut on what makes them MMO and started heavy instancing and limiting concurrent players.
6. Players didnt like this
7. The bar was now set to high, and there was no returning. Either you made a game with high visual fidelity or people will not buy it ( comparing it to other )
8. The clock was ticking. Investors already lost hundreds upon hundreds of millions. And most MMO companies were closed/sold/merged in worst possible way.
9. F2P happened - removing Subscription life line.
10. F2P brought rise of shovel ware that was scamming people for money
11. Last of AA MMOs were released causing fall of some of biggest names in industry.
12. MOBA and other kind of F2P started bringing more money than WoW ever did.
13. No investors were ready to invest in MMO anymore - in fact MMO became scare word in game industry
------------
14. MMOs became victims of their success - the quality bar was set to high , the cost and production time un reachable for indie or small studios.
>> Just for example there was attempt by Smed and few of the best minds in industry to combat this and release very low fidelity ( pixel graphic ) MMO that is basically EQ NEXT without all bells and whistles that cost money and years. The MMO gamers just didnt buy it. Spoiled by trash like Black Desert and similar , they just couldn't cope with 100% gameplay 10% graphic. // And if you are thinking of MMOs like project Gorgon - remember that its developed by 2 people that ( at least used ) to have day jobs. <<
Lets face it.
With production times of over 6 years. Huge costs. No investors willing to invest in such risks anymore.
I doubt we will see another AA MMO, in scope of WoW - in at least 10 years from now.
I think MMOs are by design doomed to fail in terms of how they reward their players.
By that I mean, when a person plays a regular single player game, their progression as linear as it may be, has good story, character development and has a conclusion no more than around 20 hours of gameplay. That game play might include mini games, and an online feature. People know what they are buying, and none of the content is really done in way that feels mediocre compared to the rest of the game.
And then after they finish they wait another year or so, and get another full single player game.
An MMO for the most part has a 'journey' that is below the quality of end game. Its a very long journey normally to reach end game.
Then end game itself which is repeatable, is a grind of good quality content but very small amount of actual content.
So a lot of development is wasted on the 'journey', making multiple classes since people might not stick around if they dont like the end game and the journey takes them too long to play another class considering its another grind as well.
The thing is, MMOs try to be their own classification out of what a game is. Its still a game, and therefore should try to compete in the same standard as other games in how rewarding the experience feels.
Some MMOs do that better than others, and some of the MMO players love their MMO the way that it is, and like that it never ends. But when you make a generalization that it is failing, then its possible that its because people deviate towards other games that they find more rewarding.
MMOs should build their games moer like single (co-op) player games in terms of the quality of the journey, but make the single player much shorter, and make the end game that much bigger. The game will feel more like horizontal progression but the quality of the content would feel that much better.
Also for an MMO the journey needs to matter, so if they were to keep the same model, they should make the worlds feel more alive, and as a result make the content of much higher quality. So an MMO that is more demanding on gaming systems and a more complex 'AI' system for NPCs and their politics and movements.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
Incomparable said: MMOs should build their games moer like single (co-op) player games in terms of the quality of the journey, but make the single player much shorter, and make the end game that much bigger.
Distopia said: There are two types of failing, failing yourself, then there's failing another persons expectations of you... Most who feel it failed would fall into the latter.
No, that s still the former - there are no two types of failing.
That's a complete fallacy. A person can quite easily view the genre as failed if it didn't live up to their wants and desires. Any decision in direction fails someone's expectations.
That's a perfectly valid use of the word fail, as it falls under the premise of neglecting to do something another expected.
Who argues over this moronic minutia? I swear this site is run and frequented by idiots, and you are proving it.
Look at the guys who run the site, they support the twelve people who actually bother to read their pointless articles, and treat everyone else with disdain. If it were a village pub, that would be fine, but is is supposed to be a website discussing RPG's appealing to a global market.
Bunch of morons.
So brave to make an account and post this. Wonder who you usually post as.
My guess? Koop. He has been making new accounts here on a regular basis since he got banned. His schtick is bash the site, bash the mods and bash the purple posters.
That is sad to come back here after all that and try again to get some sort of validation.
Bottom line as i see it, mmorpgs were far too complex and expensive to make and the community was far too demanding to support it.
This is why no one is making mmorpgs other than a few indy devs who cant afford to pull out and make something that allows them to have a life outside of supporting their overly demanding community.
Also...nothings evolved with mmorpgs, just the same old concept repackaged...which imo works with every other game genre but doesnt when you spend so much time playing mmorpgs vs other games.
For instance i can play a single player RPG, 50 hours complete the game, feel satisfied and move on happy. MMORPG i play for three months, get bored, wish i hadnt invested so much time in it, and feel...what a waste.
Ive been harping on the fact that the mmorpg community was dominated by people who hated RPG games..which is why the trend for a while was to move away from what an RPG was and more towards and appeal to all type game.
But yeah...not a single AAA mmorpg on the horizon or in development...once this next round of indy games is done i dont see much of a future for mmorpgs as the 4 current popular and old mmorpgs start to dwindle so will their development.
Was a good run, wasted far too much of my life getting disappointed in the long run. Truth be told im much happier spending less time and less money on ARPG games, single player RPG, and a host of cheap steam games than dealing with the mmorpg run around and dev bullshit.
sometimes i wish i was bitten by the wow bug and never played another mmorpg, rather than searching hopelessly for a solid mmorpg...though i do miss greatly the honeymoon hype period of a fresh AAA mmorpg launch...
Sort of hate how games waste that feeling and frenzy on early access...so you either get a complete game with no fun hype crowd, or a fun hype crowd and not a full game.
Oh and just to be clear, wow didnt do anything, they just made a game that was successful because ??? and then everyone with money decided to get a piece of that pie, hence the mmorpg golden age, once it became clear wow was an anomaly that wasnt going to be recreated everyone pulled out...even blizzard pulled out with titan when they realized the success of wow wasnt going to be recreated.
sort of sad to see what was once a big part of my life come to its sunset phase in life, but tbh...i just cant do it anymore...the mad dash questing towards an inevitable broken and boring endgame...i just dont have it in me...
Bottom line as i see it, mmorpgs were far too complex and expensive to make and the community was far too demanding to support it.
This is why no one is making mmorpgs other than a few indy devs who cant afford to pull out and make something that allows them to have a life outside of supporting their overly demanding community.
Also...nothings evolved with mmorpgs, just the same old concept repackaged...which imo works with every other game genre but doesnt when you spend so much time playing mmorpgs vs other games.
For instance i can play a single player RPG, 50 hours complete the game, feel satisfied and move on happy. MMORPG i play for three months, get bored, wish i hadnt invested so much time in it, and feel...what a waste.
Ive been harping on the fact that the mmorpg community was dominated by people who hated RPG games..which is why the trend for a while was to move away from what an RPG was and more towards and appeal to all type game.
But yeah...not a single AAA mmorpg on the horizon or in development...once this next round of indy games is done i dont see much of a future for mmorpgs as the 4 current popular and old mmorpgs start to dwindle so will their development.
Was a good run, wasted far too much of my life getting disappointed in the long run. Truth be told im much happier spending less time and less money on ARPG games, single player RPG, and a host of cheap steam games than dealing with the mmorpg run around and dev bullshit.
sometimes i wish i was bitten by the wow bug and never played another mmorpg, rather than searching hopelessly for a solid mmorpg...though i do miss greatly the honeymoon hype period of a fresh AAA mmorpg launch...
Sort of hate how games waste that feeling and frenzy on early access...so you either get a complete game with no fun hype crowd, or a fun hype crowd and not a full game.
Oh and just to be clear, wow didnt do anything, they just made a game that was successful because ??? and then everyone with money decided to get a piece of that pie, hence the mmorpg golden age, once it became clear wow was an anomaly that wasnt going to be recreated everyone pulled out...even blizzard pulled out with titan when they realized the success of wow wasnt going to be recreated.
sort of sad to see what was once a big part of my life come to its sunset phase in life, but tbh...i just cant do it anymore...the mad dash questing towards an inevitable broken and boring endgame...i just dont have it in me...
There is at least one western AAA MMO on the horizon, New World by Amazon studios.
Several Asian titles as well if they are your thing.
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
Bottom line as i see it, mmorpgs were far too complex and expensive to make and the community was far too demanding to support it.
This is why no one is making mmorpgs other than a few indy devs who cant afford to pull out and make something that allows them to have a life outside of supporting their overly demanding community.
Also...nothings evolved with mmorpgs, just the same old concept repackaged...which imo works with every other game genre but doesnt when you spend so much time playing mmorpgs vs other games.
For instance i can play a single player RPG, 50 hours complete the game, feel satisfied and move on happy. MMORPG i play for three months, get bored, wish i hadnt invested so much time in it, and feel...what a waste.
Ive been harping on the fact that the mmorpg community was dominated by people who hated RPG games..which is why the trend for a while was to move away from what an RPG was and more towards and appeal to all type game.
But yeah...not a single AAA mmorpg on the horizon or in development...once this next round of indy games is done i dont see much of a future for mmorpgs as the 4 current popular and old mmorpgs start to dwindle so will their development.
Was a good run, wasted far too much of my life getting disappointed in the long run. Truth be told im much happier spending less time and less money on ARPG games, single player RPG, and a host of cheap steam games than dealing with the mmorpg run around and dev bullshit.
sometimes i wish i was bitten by the wow bug and never played another mmorpg, rather than searching hopelessly for a solid mmorpg...though i do miss greatly the honeymoon hype period of a fresh AAA mmorpg launch...
Sort of hate how games waste that feeling and frenzy on early access...so you either get a complete game with no fun hype crowd, or a fun hype crowd and not a full game.
Oh and just to be clear, wow didnt do anything, they just made a game that was successful because ??? and then everyone with money decided to get a piece of that pie, hence the mmorpg golden age, once it became clear wow was an anomaly that wasnt going to be recreated everyone pulled out...even blizzard pulled out with titan when they realized the success of wow wasnt going to be recreated.
sort of sad to see what was once a big part of my life come to its sunset phase in life, but tbh...i just cant do it anymore...the mad dash questing towards an inevitable broken and boring endgame...i just dont have it in me...
There is at least one western AAA MMO on the horizon, New World by Amazon studios.
Several Asian titles as well if they are your thing.
See now if this website actually cleaned up their game list, and made it possible to see the new and upcomming mmorpgs easily...i would have known this...but this isnt the reality of this site. thank you for bringing it to my attention...and holy shit your still around here???
edit: boo its an open world sandbox....those types of games work soooo much better as servers hosted by players like on steam...
One of my shortest posts ever... Instead of expanding the tech and skills they have,they started to cut corners and use marketing instead of quality game development. How often do people enter a game and after say 1 month feel it is better than they expected?i usually quit before i get that far.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
One of my shortest posts ever... Instead of expanding the tech and skills they have,they started to cut corners and use marketing instead of quality game development. How often do people enter a game and after say 1 month feel it is better than they expected?i usually quit before i get that far.
I have to agree with this. While I don't feel the genre has failed, it's definitely at a point of stagnation. Many developers are clinging onto the ideas of the past while not really looking forward to the future. Of course, we've seen this genre become dominated by decisions of the investors and not the devs in many ways.
The next year or two will be very important for mmos in general. Games like Crowfall, Camelot Unchained, Pantheon, etc., are really narrowing their focus instead of attempting to be something to everyone. This could wind up being good for the genre if any of these games are successful. It will show that a heavily focused game can serve the specific community better than these jack-of-all-trades mmos have in most recent years.
It will also be interesting to see what games like Conan Exiles and even Dark and Light do for the genre. While they aren't mmorpgs in the classic sense, the focus on more sandbox elements and smaller populated servers could be a step in the right direction. Smaller populations in what could be harsh environments could force community importance again.
Additionally, whatever New World turns out to be could be important for the genre too. A bunch of devs from ANet moved over to Amazon's game studio. Could New World be the game that ANet wanted to develop but lacked the tech or had too much meddling from NCSoft?
There's always the potential for someone completely unknown to come out and knock our socks off too.
What is with the hyperbole? MMORPG as genre didn't fail. Other new genres (MOBA, small scale survival games) just took a bigger piece of the pie, making the MMORPG market relatively smaller.
For many people there is no reason to stay that long in a MMORPG after finishing the main storyline and levelling one character to max. A lot of MMORPG's also suck at replayability. A new character would have to go through the same content again.
This is where newer genre's shine. Replayability. For PVP based games (MOBA, FPS , PVP survival) it is obvious. For pvp it is enough to just find new opponents. PVP is not the strongest point in AAA MMORPG's. Especially because of the usual mandatory PVE first.
Then there are survival games that let you host your own server and make your own rules, let you install mods to add more content, let you generate worlds randomly. Things that also improve replayability a lot.
Also, before there were just MMORPG's to form online communities in games. Now many other genres do the same. I also think Steam platform and consoles now being online influenced this a lot. It makes MMORPG's less special.
It was combination of things that had their cause and effect
1. Blizzard created WoW. Huge financial success that turned in behemoth that clouded any other revenue made by any other game ( mmo or regular )
2. Investors got greedy. And developers looked at WoW that as any other Blizzard game appeared deceptively simple , but was in fact masterpiece.
3. Developers keen to top Blizzard, had easy time convincing investors to invest hundreds of millions in their WoW-Killers.
And now comes the punch
1. MMOs take long time to make. WoW was in production over 6 years. However these new company had the huge burden of large investments and investors breathing down their necks.
2. Games were released unfinished , lacking content , and with gameplay mechanic similar to WoW
3. Players gave them chance. But quickly returned to superior WoW
----
4. Next generation tried to top WoW by beating only weakness they could find : Low fidelity graphics
5. Visual Quality wars ensued. However reason WoW and MMOs had low graphical fidelity was because of performance. And the new Visual superb MMOs had to cut on what makes them MMO and started heavy instancing and limiting concurrent players.
6. Players didnt like this
7. The bar was now set to high, and there was no returning. Either you made a game with high visual fidelity or people will not buy it ( comparing it to other )
8. The clock was ticking. Investors already lost hundreds upon hundreds of millions. And most MMO companies were closed/sold/merged in worst possible way.
9. F2P happened - removing Subscription life line.
10. F2P brought rise of shovel ware that was scamming people for money
11. Last of AA MMOs were released causing fall of some of biggest names in industry.
12. MOBA and other kind of F2P started bringing more money than WoW ever did.
13. No investors were ready to invest in MMO anymore - in fact MMO became scare word in game industry
------------
14. MMOs became victims of their success - the quality bar was set to high , the cost and production time un reachable for indie or small studios.
>> Just for example there was attempt by Smed and few of the best minds in industry to combat this and release very low fidelity ( pixel graphic ) MMO that is basically EQ NEXT without all bells and whistles that cost money and years. The MMO gamers just didnt buy it. Spoiled by trash like Black Desert and similar , they just couldn't cope with 100% gameplay 10% graphic. // And if you are thinking of MMOs like project Gorgon - remember that its developed by 2 people that ( at least used ) to have day jobs. <<
Lets face it.
With production times of over 6 years. Huge costs. No investors willing to invest in such risks anymore.
I doubt we will see another AA MMO, in scope of WoW - in at least 10 years from now.
So maybe 2027 , and even that is optimistic.
It is a rather interesting theory and it is probably at least partly right.
The investors did not loose 100 of millions of dollars though, even games like WAR and AoC got their development cost back. Investors wants far more then just their money back though so it just wasn't enough (making your point still valid if somewhat less so).
But I don't think the games actually needed cutting edge graphics, they focused on that because it is the easiest choice instead of making the game more fun. It is very easy to beat an old games graphics, beating the fun factor to play is not as easy.
Investors count how much money they get back on each invested dollar but I think they did miss a few gems that actually gave back a lot. Take Guildwars for instance, Eve or Lineage are other good examples of games that gave huge payback to the investors.
And I think they mainly missed what actually made the games like Wow so great, just copying doesn't actually work. You need to look on what the game fulfilled to the players and figure out different better ways of doing that instead of just doing the same and hope the result will be better then the other 50 games trying the exact same thing.
But I guess they are too used to EA Sports and most FPS games, release the same thing again with updated graphics and slightly different content there and you get a huge success (for some mysterious reason). The same don't work for a genre where people already played the copied games constantly for years.
Where are the links and sources that show the genre has failed?
Exactly. The market is probably bigger than its ever been, its just that customers are spread over a larger area than they were ten years ago. Im still a firm believer that MMORPG's have another golden age ahead of them.
That's my opinion too. I think a well done MMORPG can interest as many people as any one game can. What's currently available isn't satisfying a lot of players, who are ether playing other games, or playing an MMORPG they aren't crazy about while waiting for something better. I don' t believe the indie MMORPGs on the horizon will do well, I think it takes a AAA budget. Start Citizen has that, but what I think they will do about as well as the other indie companies.
If I could pick one genre to be exclusively be developed it would be MMO, but the masses have spoken and they prefer other genres no matter how shallow they are... ahem(moba, fps). I guess people with more free time prefer MMO while others prefer little shit drop in and out multiplayer... If only there could be a union between the two. I think they should increase drop rates or something the longer you're logged out so the people with little time to play feel like they are being rewarded when they do play. Maybe that's not an ideal solution since they're being rewarded for NOT playing but I guess the rest of us should probably get a life or something, and we'll be rewarded the same.
I think you randomly hit the nail on the head here. I do not have time anymore for a slow advancement mmorpg (I did in wow vanilla). Have we just moved on?
These posts are almost funny. They would be if it weren't for the predictable frequency of them.
Funny thing is, all this talk about how bad things are and how they are worse than ever, blah blah blah. Its like a crowd of doctors standing around discussing someone who should be in a wheel chair because they think he is crippled, except the patient keeps on running in marathons and winning. O.o
Raiding guilds put a stake through the heart of MMOs. By insisting that raiding was the be all and end all of gaming and by insisting that raiding be treated like a special snowflake, deserving of elite rewards special to them, they have skewed devs away from more balanced designs and forced them to continually reproduce what only 5-10% of any MMOs population ever sees and maintain an antiquated hierarchy of gamers, which everybody else is simply sick and tired of.
That's my opinion too. I think a well done MMORPG can interest as many people as any one game can. What's currently available isn't satisfying a lot of players, who are ether playing other games, or playing an MMORPG they aren't crazy about while waiting for something better. I don' t believe the indie MMORPGs on the horizon will do well, I think it takes a AAA budget. Start Citizen has that, but what I think they will do about as well as the other indie companies.
I am not sure that SC is the game but the problem so far is that there are far too many similar games and the genre can just have that many games so close to eachother.
As for the indie games if one is good enough it will still do great, Minecraft was a low budget indie game as well. It is certainly an advantage to have a good budget but most of us rather play a fun game with lower budget then an expensive game without any ideas.
Also, if an indie game attracts enough players it will get a way better budget soon, Eve started out with a low budget and 20K players, it did pretty well even if it is getting too old now.Cazriel said:
Raiding guilds put a stake through the heart of MMOs. By insisting that raiding was the be all and end all of gaming and by insisting that raiding be treated like a special snowflake, deserving of elite rewards special to them, they have skewed devs away from more balanced designs and forced them to continually reproduce what only 5-10% of any MMOs population ever sees and maintain an antiquated hierarchy of gamers, which everybody else is simply sick and tired of.
I doubt that is the case, most MMOs put 75%-90% into solo gameplay and very few games are focused on raids.
Generally, it is just like with crafting or PvP, the devs throw in a little content just because everyone else do it but the majority of the game is focused on open world soloing and almost all that is left is put into instanced dungeons.
As for putting raiding as the ultimate endgame they just do this because Wow does it, I don't think they put much thoughts into it. By forcing people to do a few raids over and over with locked timers they stall the players until new content comes out. But that wouldn't be necessary to the same degree if they didn't put so much work into the content most players clears in a couple of weeks.
The key is to make a world not a game and have game design reflect your world. Most MMOs don't do that now. Early ones were still trying to translate D&D experience into gaming. This is also a reflection on the type of players that seek these games out now as opposed to 2001.
The key is to make a world not a game and have game design reflect your world. Most MMOs don't do that now. Early ones were still trying to translate D&D experience into gaming. This is also a reflection on the type of players that seek these games out now as opposed to 2001.
I feel like it's a yes and no. We're now in an era where years of content development can be finished in a month with a run to the end of it and a lot of bitter whining on the randomization of drops and even how players new to the experience are subjected to the horrors of game elitism.
In some games, like eve, yeah there are ways where it can't dominate as heavily or others, like FF14, that find ways to curve the gap and attempt to address the whole "hard core" vs casual in the equation.
I'd say the big key is really avoiding the whole "this is a triple-A release" as far as management goes and really take a studio funded approach to an indie game. There are tons of mmo's that get released and greenlit because of the belief that they have an existing fanbase and that translates into dollars and that doesn't always work. Likewise there are tons of indie games that are just all over the place and loose their core fundamentals as far as what a solid base means for players.
We're also not in the age of the first mmo's where you cant google strategies or watch videos on how to do something. I feel the element is to making mmo's something fun and unique again is to take the familiar, unfamiliar, address the casual but don' rely on the hard core and find common ground. It doesn't have to be the most revolutionary game; WoW has shown you can do the basics well enough and become big. But the game needs to really do something to essentially "wow" us (no pun intended) to seriously think about mmo's differently.
Bottom line as i see it, mmorpgs were far too complex and expensive to make and the community was far too demanding to support it.
This is why no one is making mmorpgs other than a few indy devs who cant afford to pull out and make something that allows them to have a life outside of supporting their overly demanding community.
Also...nothings evolved with mmorpgs, just the same old concept repackaged...which imo works with every other game genre but doesnt when you spend so much time playing mmorpgs vs other games.
For instance i can play a single player RPG, 50 hours complete the game, feel satisfied and move on happy. MMORPG i play for three months, get bored, wish i hadnt invested so much time in it, and feel...what a waste.
Ive been harping on the fact that the mmorpg community was dominated by people who hated RPG games..which is why the trend for a while was to move away from what an RPG was and more towards and appeal to all type game.
But yeah...not a single AAA mmorpg on the horizon or in development...once this next round of indy games is done i dont see much of a future for mmorpgs as the 4 current popular and old mmorpgs start to dwindle so will their development.
Was a good run, wasted far too much of my life getting disappointed in the long run. Truth be told im much happier spending less time and less money on ARPG games, single player RPG, and a host of cheap steam games than dealing with the mmorpg run around and dev bullshit.
sometimes i wish i was bitten by the wow bug and never played another mmorpg, rather than searching hopelessly for a solid mmorpg...though i do miss greatly the honeymoon hype period of a fresh AAA mmorpg launch...
Sort of hate how games waste that feeling and frenzy on early access...so you either get a complete game with no fun hype crowd, or a fun hype crowd and not a full game.
Oh and just to be clear, wow didnt do anything, they just made a game that was successful because ??? and then everyone with money decided to get a piece of that pie, hence the mmorpg golden age, once it became clear wow was an anomaly that wasnt going to be recreated everyone pulled out...even blizzard pulled out with titan when they realized the success of wow wasnt going to be recreated.
sort of sad to see what was once a big part of my life come to its sunset phase in life, but tbh...i just cant do it anymore...the mad dash questing towards an inevitable broken and boring endgame...i just dont have it in me...
There is at least one western AAA MMO on the horizon, New World by Amazon studios.
Several Asian titles as well if they are your thing.
See now if this website actually cleaned up their game list, and made it possible to see the new and upcomming mmorpgs easily...i would have known this...but this isnt the reality of this site. thank you for bringing it to my attention...and holy shit your still around here???
edit: boo its an open world sandbox....those types of games work soooo much better as servers hosted by players like on steam...
If player hosted servers are your thing check out the two upcoming survival games, Conan Exiles with Steam early access tomorrow, and Dark and Light coming "soon"
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
Comments
1. Blizzard created WoW. Huge financial success that turned in behemoth that clouded any other revenue made by any other game ( mmo or regular )
2. Investors got greedy. And developers looked at WoW that as any other Blizzard game appeared deceptively simple , but was in fact masterpiece.
3. Developers keen to top Blizzard, had easy time convincing investors to invest hundreds of millions in their WoW-Killers.
And now comes the punch
1. MMOs take long time to make. WoW was in production over 6 years. However these new company had the huge burden of large investments and investors breathing down their necks.
2. Games were released unfinished , lacking content , and with gameplay mechanic similar to WoW
3. Players gave them chance. But quickly returned to superior WoW
----
4. Next generation tried to top WoW by beating only weakness they could find : Low fidelity graphics
5. Visual Quality wars ensued. However reason WoW and MMOs had low graphical fidelity was because of performance. And the new Visual superb MMOs had to cut on what makes them MMO and started heavy instancing and limiting concurrent players.
6. Players didnt like this
7. The bar was now set to high, and there was no returning. Either you made a game with high visual fidelity or people will not buy it ( comparing it to other )
8. The clock was ticking. Investors already lost hundreds upon hundreds of millions. And most MMO companies were closed/sold/merged in worst possible way.
9. F2P happened - removing Subscription life line.
10. F2P brought rise of shovel ware that was scamming people for money
11. Last of AA MMOs were released causing fall of some of biggest names in industry.
12. MOBA and other kind of F2P started bringing more money than WoW ever did.
13. No investors were ready to invest in MMO anymore - in fact MMO became scare word in game industry
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14. MMOs became victims of their success - the quality bar was set to high , the cost and production time un reachable for indie or small studios.
>> Just for example there was attempt by Smed and few of the best minds in industry to combat this and release very low fidelity ( pixel graphic ) MMO that is basically EQ NEXT without all bells and whistles that cost money and years. The MMO gamers just didnt buy it. Spoiled by trash like Black Desert and similar , they just couldn't cope with 100% gameplay 10% graphic. // And if you are thinking of MMOs like project Gorgon - remember that its developed by 2 people that ( at least used ) to have day jobs. <<
Lets face it.
With production times of over 6 years. Huge costs. No investors willing to invest in such risks anymore.
I doubt we will see another AA MMO, in scope of WoW - in at least 10 years from now.
So maybe 2027 , and even that is optimistic.
By that I mean, when a person plays a regular single player game, their progression as linear as it may be, has good story, character development and has a conclusion no more than around 20 hours of gameplay. That game play might include mini games, and an online feature. People know what they are buying, and none of the content is really done in way that feels mediocre compared to the rest of the game.
And then after they finish they wait another year or so, and get another full single player game.
An MMO for the most part has a 'journey' that is below the quality of end game. Its a very long journey normally to reach end game.
Then end game itself which is repeatable, is a grind of good quality content but very small amount of actual content.
So a lot of development is wasted on the 'journey', making multiple classes since people might not stick around if they dont like the end game and the journey takes them too long to play another class considering its another grind as well.
The thing is, MMOs try to be their own classification out of what a game is. Its still a game, and therefore should try to compete in the same standard as other games in how rewarding the experience feels.
Some MMOs do that better than others, and some of the MMO players love their MMO the way that it is, and like that it never ends. But when you make a generalization that it is failing, then its possible that its because people deviate towards other games that they find more rewarding.
MMOs should build their games moer like single (co-op) player games in terms of the quality of the journey, but make the single player much shorter, and make the end game that much bigger. The game will feel more like horizontal progression but the quality of the content would feel that much better.
Also for an MMO the journey needs to matter, so if they were to keep the same model, they should make the worlds feel more alive, and as a result make the content of much higher quality. So an MMO that is more demanding on gaming systems and a more complex 'AI' system for NPCs and their politics and movements.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
This is why no one is making mmorpgs other than a few indy devs who cant afford to pull out and make something that allows them to have a life outside of supporting their overly demanding community.
Also...nothings evolved with mmorpgs, just the same old concept repackaged...which imo works with every other game genre but doesnt when you spend so much time playing mmorpgs vs other games.
For instance i can play a single player RPG, 50 hours complete the game, feel satisfied and move on happy. MMORPG i play for three months, get bored, wish i hadnt invested so much time in it, and feel...what a waste.
Ive been harping on the fact that the mmorpg community was dominated by people who hated RPG games..which is why the trend for a while was to move away from what an RPG was and more towards and appeal to all type game.
But yeah...not a single AAA mmorpg on the horizon or in development...once this next round of indy games is done i dont see much of a future for mmorpgs as the 4 current popular and old mmorpgs start to dwindle so will their development.
Was a good run, wasted far too much of my life getting disappointed in the long run. Truth be told im much happier spending less time and less money on ARPG games, single player RPG, and a host of cheap steam games than dealing with the mmorpg run around and dev bullshit.
sometimes i wish i was bitten by the wow bug and never played another mmorpg, rather than searching hopelessly for a solid mmorpg...though i do miss greatly the honeymoon hype period of a fresh AAA mmorpg launch...
Sort of hate how games waste that feeling and frenzy on early access...so you either get a complete game with no fun hype crowd, or a fun hype crowd and not a full game.
Oh and just to be clear, wow didnt do anything, they just made a game that was successful because ??? and then everyone with money decided to get a piece of that pie, hence the mmorpg golden age, once it became clear wow was an anomaly that wasnt going to be recreated everyone pulled out...even blizzard pulled out with titan when they realized the success of wow wasnt going to be recreated.
sort of sad to see what was once a big part of my life come to its sunset phase in life, but tbh...i just cant do it anymore...the mad dash questing towards an inevitable broken and boring endgame...i just dont have it in me...
• unoriginal
• shallow
• simplistic
Several Asian titles as well if they are your thing.
"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
See now if this website actually cleaned up their game list, and made it possible to see the new and upcomming mmorpgs easily...i would have known this...but this isnt the reality of this site. thank you for bringing it to my attention...and holy shit your still around here???
edit: boo its an open world sandbox....those types of games work soooo much better as servers hosted by players like on steam...
Instead of expanding the tech and skills they have,they started to cut corners and use marketing instead of quality game development.
How often do people enter a game and after say 1 month feel it is better than they expected?i usually quit before i get that far.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The next year or two will be very important for mmos in general. Games like Crowfall, Camelot Unchained, Pantheon, etc., are really narrowing their focus instead of attempting to be something to everyone. This could wind up being good for the genre if any of these games are successful. It will show that a heavily focused game can serve the specific community better than these jack-of-all-trades mmos have in most recent years.
It will also be interesting to see what games like Conan Exiles and even Dark and Light do for the genre. While they aren't mmorpgs in the classic sense, the focus on more sandbox elements and smaller populated servers could be a step in the right direction. Smaller populations in what could be harsh environments could force community importance again.
Additionally, whatever New World turns out to be could be important for the genre too. A bunch of devs from ANet moved over to Amazon's game studio. Could New World be the game that ANet wanted to develop but lacked the tech or had too much meddling from NCSoft?
There's always the potential for someone completely unknown to come out and knock our socks off too.
For many people there is no reason to stay that long in a MMORPG after finishing the main storyline and levelling one character to max. A lot of MMORPG's also suck at replayability. A new character would have to go through the same content again.
This is where newer genre's shine. Replayability. For PVP based games (MOBA, FPS , PVP survival) it is obvious. For pvp it is enough to just find new opponents. PVP is not the strongest point in AAA MMORPG's. Especially because of the usual mandatory PVE first.
Then there are survival games that let you host your own server and make your own rules, let you install mods to add more content, let you generate worlds randomly. Things that also improve replayability a lot.
Also, before there were just MMORPG's to form online communities in games. Now many other genres do the same. I also think Steam platform and consoles now being online influenced this a lot. It makes MMORPG's less special.
The investors did not loose 100 of millions of dollars though, even games like WAR and AoC got their development cost back. Investors wants far more then just their money back though so it just wasn't enough (making your point still valid if somewhat less so).
But I don't think the games actually needed cutting edge graphics, they focused on that because it is the easiest choice instead of making the game more fun. It is very easy to beat an old games graphics, beating the fun factor to play is not as easy.
Investors count how much money they get back on each invested dollar but I think they did miss a few gems that actually gave back a lot. Take Guildwars for instance, Eve or Lineage are other good examples of games that gave huge payback to the investors.
And I think they mainly missed what actually made the games like Wow so great, just copying doesn't actually work. You need to look on what the game fulfilled to the players and figure out different better ways of doing that instead of just doing the same and hope the result will be better then the other 50 games trying the exact same thing.
But I guess they are too used to EA Sports and most FPS games, release the same thing again with updated graphics and slightly different content there and you get a huge success (for some mysterious reason). The same don't work for a genre where people already played the copied games constantly for years.
many of have said this over and over and over.
As for the indie games if one is good enough it will still do great, Minecraft was a low budget indie game as well. It is certainly an advantage to have a good budget but most of us rather play a fun game with lower budget then an expensive game without any ideas.
Also, if an indie game attracts enough players it will get a way better budget soon, Eve started out with a low budget and 20K players, it did pretty well even if it is getting too old now.Cazriel said: I doubt that is the case, most MMOs put 75%-90% into solo gameplay and very few games are focused on raids.
Generally, it is just like with crafting or PvP, the devs throw in a little content just because everyone else do it but the majority of the game is focused on open world soloing and almost all that is left is put into instanced dungeons.
As for putting raiding as the ultimate endgame they just do this because Wow does it, I don't think they put much thoughts into it. By forcing people to do a few raids over and over with locked timers they stall the players until new content comes out. But that wouldn't be necessary to the same degree if they didn't put so much work into the content most players clears in a couple of weeks.
In some games, like eve, yeah there are ways where it can't dominate as heavily or others, like FF14, that find ways to curve the gap and attempt to address the whole "hard core" vs casual in the equation.
I'd say the big key is really avoiding the whole "this is a triple-A release" as far as management goes and really take a studio funded approach to an indie game. There are tons of mmo's that get released and greenlit because of the belief that they have an existing fanbase and that translates into dollars and that doesn't always work. Likewise there are tons of indie games that are just all over the place and loose their core fundamentals as far as what a solid base means for players.
We're also not in the age of the first mmo's where you cant google strategies or watch videos on how to do something. I feel the element is to making mmo's something fun and unique again is to take the familiar, unfamiliar, address the casual but don' rely on the hard core and find common ground. It doesn't have to be the most revolutionary game; WoW has shown you can do the basics well enough and become big. But the game needs to really do something to essentially "wow" us (no pun intended) to seriously think about mmo's differently.
"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