Why does everybody think that fantasy = Elves, dwarves, gnomes, humans,etc. ?
ASHERONS CALL series....
This FANTASY didnt have any of those races but human. They had their own fantasy made up and based around a Powerful Mage named Asheron.
this was a GREAT fantasy that broke the mold from Tolkenish styled fantasy.
Pray they come out with an AC3.. because AC2 was an ubelievable game but Microsoft and Turbine shot themself in the foot releasing it when it wasnt ready.
It still had dragons and humans so they broke for half with tolkien:)
Tumerok and Lugians where awesome btw. AC2 Forever!
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77 CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now)) MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB PSU:Corsair AX1200i OS:Windows 10 64bit
AC was all human player races and they did it very well. AC2 was a solid MMO as well, the two none human player races had depth. But we won't see something like AC2 again. We used to have crafting festival days in AC2 because to do the best crafting the forges needed to be fueled up. Advertised via forums we would meet up and go as teams to kill mobs and collect resources from them. With 40 people doing this two trips taking a total of about 20 mins was needed. The crafting fare was then announced as open, even lowbie crafters who could not hunt for resources would come along, players would come knowing anything could be made.
Yes back then you could ask for and get 40 players to turn up just to get the crafting economy going. Now days you would struggle to get those numbers without the involvement of very large guilds and the rewards of uber loot. But new MMO's are sooo great...yeah right.
The problem with Elves IMO is the Tolkien variety that seems less mysterious / magical but more organic and hippie'esque.
I would be a fan of a more Hmm.. Brother's Grimm take on fairie-folk. I'd prefer Elves be something darker, unorganized, chaotic in nature, with no cities in the real world. Something more supernatural, alien in intellect, not belonging to a standard biology, and excessively uncommon. By extension they should not be playable characters, but forces in a game with whom you may interact but have no context for understanding their thinking, goals, or true nature. In other words, they should be a dark, frightening mystery, in the margins of the human psyche instead of something mundane subject to public examination.
The problem with Elves IMO is the Tolkien variety that seems less mysterious / magical but more organic and hippie'esque.
I would be a fan of a more Hmm.. Brother's Grimm take on fairie-folk. I'd prefer Elves be something darker, unorganized, chaotic in nature, with no cities in the real world. Something more supernatural, alien in intellect, not belonging to a standard biology, and excessively uncommon. By extension they should not be playable characters, but forces in a game with whom you may interact but have no context for understanding their thinking, goals, or true nature. In other words, they should be a dark, frightening mystery, in the margins of the human psyche instead of something mundane subject to public examination.
Why does everybody think that fantasy = Elves, dwarves, gnomes, humans,etc. ?
Because the vast majority of fantasy, when you factor in popularity, includes things like elves, dwarves, gnomes, humans, etc and they all fill an archtype that rarely changes. You have your nature-based long lived race, your serious warrior race, etc. In fantasy they are filled by the same things: elves and dwarves. At least in SF there's more variety to what those races are.
Don't get me wrong. I could still stomach elves if they're presented properly. The elves I'm ranting about are the pretty ones you always see in MMOs. I can not name the last MMO that did not feature elves that were NOT willowly, inhumanly good-looking and ... yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to make a character that isn't old, ugly, or the stereotypical rough and gruff beefcake type. Personally one of the (many) things I dislike about WoW is that its impossible to make a male character that isn't either butt-ugly or old-looking. Sometimes I like playing the hulking brute (Galka from FFXI); other times I opt for the pretty-boy type (Kelari from Rift, which are really just dark elves with a different name). It's always nice to have choices.
I'm more bothered by the lack of differentiation between races in MMOs these days. I miss the days of classic EQ where the race you chose actually had an impact on how you would play your class.
Not Sure. The topic itself has been repeated ad nauseum. People still enjoy high fantasy games. But developers who seem to never watch the trends unless it's something about raiding or PVP. Should spend sometime questioning if they really want to make their MMORPG in to the high fantasy genre.
For example:
High elves with cybernetic enhancements? A bionic elf who lost his ability to remain eternal due to the dying or disbelief in magic. or maybe the elves are dying and nanobots are needed to help regenerate them. any kind of twist would be clearly needed to try and extend the shelf life of high fantasy races.
Also maybe it's time to re-think monster races in the fantasy genre. after all the old D20 dice AD&D had a monster compendium that allowed many of the fantasy races to have something to battle. in essene they need to start dipping in to the vast amout of possibilitys that high fantasy dares not make a playable race.
The truth of it is really, most development companys beleive a solid formula based on tolkien races seems to be the way to pull those that enjoy that genre. but they lack any real attempts and re-inventing them becuase they can just whip out pointy ears and they can make orcs the bad guys.
Clealry somebodys needs to get developers some D20 dice and training in the endless amount of options D&D holds.
They lack the imgination to properly enjoy it, then they will never get a clue.
Eh, The genre of fantasy is fine even elves, it will long live, it has sense the creation of them to be main stream sense Tolken, but alas the issue is game play. You want a good fantasy? Build a game based on the defense concept. Let players control a town and it's defenses. Have epic seiges, destructable walls. Make the world chaotic as a real world would be. Give AI it's own goals in your world. If the orcs take over the lands because the A.I. dominates due to birth population so be it. It's up to the players to take control of the area. That would be epic.
Need to fill quest needs? Script your game to affliate senarios within certain random outcomes. Alas, it takes brains to do a game like this and creativity, but the right team could do it and have WoW 2.0 easy. Personally players (I beleive) want to have a real tie to the world and be able to change things., One can argue that if a full time player does all the work, what can others do? In my mind, the design of the world would be large enough, that no matter how many times the players gather togather to fight off the hordes of (insert mobs here), there are always some that come from other places (underground, sky, water) that take their place.
This comes into the concept of an open world enviorment which most developer today don't want to do, but rather do theme parks, but if this world was done correctly. It would be the best out there. DAOC seige was by far the best seiging/pvp system to date. Take that, with the emphases of ownership when guilds held keeps and it was a great combination. Build upon this and add what I mentioned above and you have the new doac/wow combo in my eyes and I think it would be just as popular if not more so then any game released. See minecraft in why people would enjoy such a game. See WoW in why people would enjoy the game. See Dark Age Of Camelot in why people would enjoy the game. Combined this and wala, game of the gods
Edit; Just to clerify, this article is basicly about hating fantasy because it's been done over and over and elves just happen to be just as bad as gnomes in this regard. I argue, that it isn't the theme, but the world these character exist in, you make the game I described above and elves would be loved by the most hated elf player, they will love to squish them as they seige their cities. Some can say this game is already out, sorry but it is not. You can have seige and the town concept I describe, but what would make this game succeed, would be the AI doing what I noted. Such as if the orcs did infest the land, at a point they would seige towns players own because the town/city is the last thing in their way. Alas, a title sometime ago said it would do all of what I describe. However, due to it's misirable fail and well, lying to it's fan base, I won't even mention the name.
"The monster created isn't by the company that makes the game, it's by the fans that make it something it never was"
Eh, The genre of fantasy is fine even elves, it will long live, it has sense the creation of them to be main stream sense Tolken, but alas the issue is game play. You want a good fantasy? Build a game based on the defense concept. Let players control a town and it's defenses. Have epic seiges, destructable walls. Make the world chaotic as a real world would be. Give AI it's own goals in your world. If the orcs take over the lands because the A.I. dominates due to birth population so be it. It's up to the players to take control of the area. That would be epic.
You might very well enjoy a game such as that, but that doesn't mean it would necessarily be "epic". I, personally, could care less about standing around in a fort all day trying to defend it from a never-ending onslaught of enemies. I play MMOs for that sense of adventure, exploration, and treasure hunting. Others prefer PvP and just prefer to fight other players. There will never be any one MMO to rule them all (I made a Tolkein reference, big whoop, wanna fight about it?) because everyone wants something different from their MMOs.
The unfortunate part is that no one is picking an audience and sticking with it. If a developer wants to make a high fantasy MMO, make it high fantasy! Leave out the guns and the robots. "Their helicopters are steam powered!" is not an excuse. High fantasy is not the same as steampunk.
How about an MMO that caters to the PvP enthusiast? Dont force people to fight through endless AI monsters that are more A than I, and repetitive insignificant errands disguised as quests.
Trying to please everyone with one game is exactly why so many MMOs fall short.
To the OP, nice article and you raise a number of fair points. I'm an avid Eve Online player myself, sick of the mindless repetition of MMOs and elves. On the Eve note, in your article you mentioned this:
"EVE Online is also the only game I know of griefing can be downright epic. Google will attest to my claims. Heck, don't believe me? Look at this article from Destructoid. An estimated $5,645 USD was lost thanks to espionage and clever maneuvering. And you know what the most mind-blowing thing is? None of it was scripted. None of it originated from NPCs rooted to the floor. It was all about the people."
That value you mentioned on the worth of items lost is far too low. If you read the article carefully, that number was the estimated worth for one, single Titan class ship at the time. Going at a conversion rate for that time of $1 USD = 10 million ISK (the in game currency), at least $5000 USD in completed capital ships and raw cash was stolen outright, an "unknown" number of smaller ships as well as various equipment and hardware was stolen, and then there were the supercapital ships currently under construction at the time who's assembly lines were halted dead and the incomplete ships lost, plus all of their territory became open to attack so they quickly lost territory, space stations, etc...in USD, in sum total from all the sources, the amount that the BoB alliance lost from that leader defecting is bare minimum ten times as much as you mentioned, and quite possibly in the six figure range.
Although I'm not completely anti-elves or anti-fantasy, I am ready for new types of games, especially some like TSW, SWTOR and I know it will be awhile but the new CCP games to be released.
The high fantasy genre has just over-saturated the market, IMO, and though at some point it will be fun again for me, I'm just kind of tired of it at the moment.
Oh and at the moment I might add I'm enjoying DCUO too so that rounds out my new game types Good article. I'll be sure to follow this MMORPG.com feature.
I'd be so glad to find a game (other than Istaria), offering to play something else than just bipeds! Something that teaches you other abilities than just how to wield a weapon and use spells, like in the game before and the game before and the game before. This kind of Fantasy is soooo dead, just because you just do not need any fantasy for it anymore.
It's funny, because the anti-elf crowd is exactly what has brought us the sorts of Blizzardesque elves that are the norm today.
How do you figure that?
Because it seems to me that Blizzard's elves, starting with WarCraft III but especially apparent in WoW, were a direct reactionary response to the dominating ‘criticisms’ of elves on teh innerwebz at the time. Complaints which are not Cassandra's, but very common nonetheless, and often fundamentally homophobic, or leastwise focused on a perceived lack of ‘masculinity’ in anything with limbs narrower than its head.
Remember what happened with the Blood Elves? For a decade, people like that have been keeping us from elf-like elves, and we've been flooded with these rugby-shouldered, antler-eared orcs instead, for fear of not being ‘intimidating’ enough.
Notable exception: Warhammer Online. Shame it was otherwise terrible.
Favorites: EQ, EVE | Playing: None. Mostly VR and strategy | Anticipating: CU, Pantheon
Comments
It still had dragons and humans so they broke for half with tolkien:)
Tumerok and Lugians where awesome btw. AC2 Forever!
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
AC was all human player races and they did it very well. AC2 was a solid MMO as well, the two none human player races had depth. But we won't see something like AC2 again. We used to have crafting festival days in AC2 because to do the best crafting the forges needed to be fueled up. Advertised via forums we would meet up and go as teams to kill mobs and collect resources from them. With 40 people doing this two trips taking a total of about 20 mins was needed. The crafting fare was then announced as open, even lowbie crafters who could not hunt for resources would come along, players would come knowing anything could be made.
Yes back then you could ask for and get 40 players to turn up just to get the crafting economy going. Now days you would struggle to get those numbers without the involvement of very large guilds and the rewards of uber loot. But new MMO's are sooo great...yeah right.
The problem with Elves IMO is the Tolkien variety that seems less mysterious / magical but more organic and hippie'esque.
I would be a fan of a more Hmm.. Brother's Grimm take on fairie-folk. I'd prefer Elves be something darker, unorganized, chaotic in nature, with no cities in the real world. Something more supernatural, alien in intellect, not belonging to a standard biology, and excessively uncommon. By extension they should not be playable characters, but forces in a game with whom you may interact but have no context for understanding their thinking, goals, or true nature. In other words, they should be a dark, frightening mystery, in the margins of the human psyche instead of something mundane subject to public examination.
http://youtu.be/zxFKDzW0qdg
This is a funny no elves video....
Global Agenda: No Elves
#2 Wood Elf vs. Assault">Global Agenda: No Elves Campaign, Battle #2 Wood Elf vs. Assault
#2 Wood Elf vs. Assault">http://youtu.be/ESE-QzPpZ50
and another one.
BANNED Global Agenda commercial
This is just a funny commercial for GA http://youtu.be/WxQCm_l6amE
Really I have nothing against elves so long as they are femail in chainlink bikinis.
I say, vote with your subscription money.
Never trust a screenshot or a youtube video without a version stamp!
Because the vast majority of fantasy, when you factor in popularity, includes things like elves, dwarves, gnomes, humans, etc and they all fill an archtype that rarely changes. You have your nature-based long lived race, your serious warrior race, etc. In fantasy they are filled by the same things: elves and dwarves. At least in SF there's more variety to what those races are.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to make a character that isn't old, ugly, or the stereotypical rough and gruff beefcake type. Personally one of the (many) things I dislike about WoW is that its impossible to make a male character that isn't either butt-ugly or old-looking. Sometimes I like playing the hulking brute (Galka from FFXI); other times I opt for the pretty-boy type (Kelari from Rift, which are really just dark elves with a different name). It's always nice to have choices.
I'm more bothered by the lack of differentiation between races in MMOs these days. I miss the days of classic EQ where the race you chose actually had an impact on how you would play your class.
I like that browser game, Die2nite. Thanks for the recomendation.
Not Sure. The topic itself has been repeated ad nauseum. People still enjoy high fantasy games. But developers who seem to never watch the trends unless it's something about raiding or PVP. Should spend sometime questioning if they really want to make their MMORPG in to the high fantasy genre.
For example:
High elves with cybernetic enhancements? A bionic elf who lost his ability to remain eternal due to the dying or disbelief in magic. or maybe the elves are dying and nanobots are needed to help regenerate them. any kind of twist would be clearly needed to try and extend the shelf life of high fantasy races.
Also maybe it's time to re-think monster races in the fantasy genre. after all the old D20 dice AD&D had a monster compendium that allowed many of the fantasy races to have something to battle. in essene they need to start dipping in to the vast amout of possibilitys that high fantasy dares not make a playable race.
The truth of it is really, most development companys beleive a solid formula based on tolkien races seems to be the way to pull those that enjoy that genre. but they lack any real attempts and re-inventing them becuase they can just whip out pointy ears and they can make orcs the bad guys.
Clealry somebodys needs to get developers some D20 dice and training in the endless amount of options D&D holds.
They lack the imgination to properly enjoy it, then they will never get a clue.
Eh, The genre of fantasy is fine even elves, it will long live, it has sense the creation of them to be main stream sense Tolken, but alas the issue is game play. You want a good fantasy? Build a game based on the defense concept. Let players control a town and it's defenses. Have epic seiges, destructable walls. Make the world chaotic as a real world would be. Give AI it's own goals in your world. If the orcs take over the lands because the A.I. dominates due to birth population so be it. It's up to the players to take control of the area. That would be epic.
Need to fill quest needs? Script your game to affliate senarios within certain random outcomes. Alas, it takes brains to do a game like this and creativity, but the right team could do it and have WoW 2.0 easy. Personally players (I beleive) want to have a real tie to the world and be able to change things., One can argue that if a full time player does all the work, what can others do? In my mind, the design of the world would be large enough, that no matter how many times the players gather togather to fight off the hordes of (insert mobs here), there are always some that come from other places (underground, sky, water) that take their place.
This comes into the concept of an open world enviorment which most developer today don't want to do, but rather do theme parks, but if this world was done correctly. It would be the best out there. DAOC seige was by far the best seiging/pvp system to date. Take that, with the emphases of ownership when guilds held keeps and it was a great combination. Build upon this and add what I mentioned above and you have the new doac/wow combo in my eyes and I think it would be just as popular if not more so then any game released. See minecraft in why people would enjoy such a game. See WoW in why people would enjoy the game. See Dark Age Of Camelot in why people would enjoy the game. Combined this and wala, game of the gods
Edit; Just to clerify, this article is basicly about hating fantasy because it's been done over and over and elves just happen to be just as bad as gnomes in this regard. I argue, that it isn't the theme, but the world these character exist in, you make the game I described above and elves would be loved by the most hated elf player, they will love to squish them as they seige their cities. Some can say this game is already out, sorry but it is not. You can have seige and the town concept I describe, but what would make this game succeed, would be the AI doing what I noted. Such as if the orcs did infest the land, at a point they would seige towns players own because the town/city is the last thing in their way. Alas, a title sometime ago said it would do all of what I describe. However, due to it's misirable fail and well, lying to it's fan base, I won't even mention the name.
"The monster created isn't by the company that makes the game, it's by the fans that make it something it never was"
You might very well enjoy a game such as that, but that doesn't mean it would necessarily be "epic". I, personally, could care less about standing around in a fort all day trying to defend it from a never-ending onslaught of enemies. I play MMOs for that sense of adventure, exploration, and treasure hunting. Others prefer PvP and just prefer to fight other players. There will never be any one MMO to rule them all (I made a Tolkein reference, big whoop, wanna fight about it?) because everyone wants something different from their MMOs.
The unfortunate part is that no one is picking an audience and sticking with it. If a developer wants to make a high fantasy MMO, make it high fantasy! Leave out the guns and the robots. "Their helicopters are steam powered!" is not an excuse. High fantasy is not the same as steampunk.
How about an MMO that caters to the PvP enthusiast? Dont force people to fight through endless AI monsters that are more A than I, and repetitive insignificant errands disguised as quests.
Trying to please everyone with one game is exactly why so many MMOs fall short.
No Elves in an MMO is like Christmas without Santa Claus or the 4th of July without fireworks.
To the OP, nice article and you raise a number of fair points. I'm an avid Eve Online player myself, sick of the mindless repetition of MMOs and elves. On the Eve note, in your article you mentioned this:
"EVE Online is also the only game I know of griefing can be downright epic. Google will attest to my claims. Heck, don't believe me? Look at this article from Destructoid. An estimated $5,645 USD was lost thanks to espionage and clever maneuvering. And you know what the most mind-blowing thing is? None of it was scripted. None of it originated from NPCs rooted to the floor. It was all about the people."
That value you mentioned on the worth of items lost is far too low. If you read the article carefully, that number was the estimated worth for one, single Titan class ship at the time. Going at a conversion rate for that time of $1 USD = 10 million ISK (the in game currency), at least $5000 USD in completed capital ships and raw cash was stolen outright, an "unknown" number of smaller ships as well as various equipment and hardware was stolen, and then there were the supercapital ships currently under construction at the time who's assembly lines were halted dead and the incomplete ships lost, plus all of their territory became open to attack so they quickly lost territory, space stations, etc...in USD, in sum total from all the sources, the amount that the BoB alliance lost from that leader defecting is bare minimum ten times as much as you mentioned, and quite possibly in the six figure range.
Where's the any key?
Screw that..
Give me Shadowrun with trolls, elves, dwarves, dragons, AK47s, super computers, magic using AI.
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
Although I'm not completely anti-elves or anti-fantasy, I am ready for new types of games, especially some like TSW, SWTOR and I know it will be awhile but the new CCP games to be released.
The high fantasy genre has just over-saturated the market, IMO, and though at some point it will be fun again for me, I'm just kind of tired of it at the moment.
Oh and at the moment I might add I'm enjoying DCUO too so that rounds out my new game types
Good article. I'll be sure to follow this MMORPG.com feature.
Ok, no Elves...
But why the hell, no dragons?
I'd be so glad to find a game (other than Istaria), offering to play something else than just bipeds! Something that teaches you other abilities than just how to wield a weapon and use spells, like in the game before and the game before and the game before. This kind of Fantasy is soooo dead, just because you just do not need any fantasy for it anymore.
Because it seems to me that Blizzard's elves, starting with WarCraft III but especially apparent in WoW, were a direct reactionary response to the dominating ‘criticisms’ of elves on teh innerwebz at the time. Complaints which are not Cassandra's, but very common nonetheless, and often fundamentally homophobic, or leastwise focused on a perceived lack of ‘masculinity’ in anything with limbs narrower than its head.
Remember what happened with the Blood Elves? For a decade, people like that have been keeping us from elf-like elves, and we've been flooded with these rugby-shouldered, antler-eared orcs instead, for fear of not being ‘intimidating’ enough.
Notable exception: Warhammer Online. Shame it was otherwise terrible.