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[Column] General: The Age of Boredom
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
A lot of hyped MMOs have been released in the past year with a few more yet to come. Yet some, if not all, of them have been huge disappointments to some of their fans. In an increasingly crowded market, what is there to be excited about asks our own Scary Booster. See what Scary's got to say and then shine a ray of hope in the comments.
Can you believe it’s been 4 years since Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning was released? Where does the time go? WAR was one of those momentous games in my career as an MMO slacker. I played lots and lots of MMOs prior to it, but WAR was my first MMO I got truly hyped crazy about. I wasn’t much of a Warhammer franchise person. I never played table top games and I really never hung out with people that did. WAR was just that game I seemed to click with and want to be the best in the world. I think it had something to do with the fact that I loved Dark Age of Camelot. I hoped WAR was going to be DAoC 2.0.
Read more of Scary Booster's Very Scary: The Age of Boredom.
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Comments
Anyhow have faith and don't go to the dark side of consoles, nothing is really there, there are some good games I know I got a ps3 but pc is the only way to go!
Stick in there scary!
Themeparkitis
• Build worlds, not parks
• Build systems, not gimmiks
• Spend your frikkin' time and money on REAL content, one-time content doesn't cut it
• The minute you start to think about spending wads of cash on massive voice overs and cut scenes, smack yourself in the face
• Learn from UO, SWG and other sandbox games - NOT WoW
• Design for LONG TERM success NOT box sales
or
• Ignore everything and pretend your dev awesomeness will carry over and create the next best themepark since sliced bread
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
I think the most exciting games are yet to come for those of us who can't wait until there is more than just the standard themepark MMO garbage the industry has been spewing out for the last eight years. Games like The Repopulation, Arch Age, the new Day Z mmo in the works and others that are willing to take a chance on emergent gameplay rather than scripted, linear amusement park MMO's have me very much looking forward to the future.
It's time for player and community driven MMO gaming to come back. Themeparks have few places left to go. Look at TSW and GW2. Those two games have pushed thempark to it's ultimate expression (more or less), and now we need to make old things new again by starting to bring sandbox gaming, horizontal progression, emergent gameplay, community, non-combat features, deep crafting and other much more interesting adventures. Give me a deep game I can spend a couple years playing again. I don't want another 2-3 month passing fancy. Bring back virtual worlds.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
― Terry Pratchett, Making Money
As if the forums aren't depressing enough, we now have official doomsaying pieces like this?
The future has plenty of releases and re-releases to look forwards to for all playstyles, it's really no different then it's always been.
DF2, Wildstar, The Repop, PS2, FFXIV 2, B&S, Archeage... all these games will be attacked and championed with gusto and venom in the upcoming months. Just because there isn't massive attention on them now dosen't mean anything. Some games just bloom late on the mass radar (remember Rift?)
If anything GW2 has shown us that there is indeed a future for the themepark, and other games will hopefully show us a future of other playstyles to stand beside that.
My Nan once told me that if you are bored then it just means you are boring. Wise woman, my Nan.
Pure theme park MMOs won't work anymore! This is a lesson we all learned after TOR, TERA, RIFT, AION, WAR, TSW etc.
The future of MMORPGS lies in sandbox MMOs or theme parks with sandbox aspects. The more game depth the longer will it be played. Look at UO. One of the most complex games of all times and is still on the market after 15 years. It got me hooked for about 10 years without engame content, without a single quest, without even a reasonable PvE part.
Give players something to do other than replaying some bullshit linear premade so called "content".
I'd like to see your evidence for why sandbox games won't sell. You can't say "look at the market", because the fact remains that there hasn't even been an attempt at a AAA sandbox game since Star Wars Galaxies. WoW's success took over the whole genre. They didn't stop making virtual world games because no one wanted them. They stopped making them because they wanted to copy WoW's success. Most people don't even understand that one of the main reason WoW was a success at all was that you could run it on just about any computer. Without that accessibility, it wouldnt have been squat. The few sandbox games that have come out were indy games that didn't even make it on the radar for people who don't hang out on sites like this one.
I'm a perfect example of why there is a market for sandbox games. I came to MMO's from the shooter genre for years as a hardcore clan match player in games like Quake 1, 2, 3, Unreal Tournament, Tribes, Counterstrike, etc. I ran into Star Wars Galaxies at the store one day, and decided to check it out.
The moment I logged my new character into the game, I was met by another higher level character who noticed I was a noob, and offered to take me hunting to get some XP and loot. I was immediately immersed in what felt to me like a living breathing world where the choice was mine as to what I wanted to do. I didn't choose to the the "hero" type player right away either. I became a Bio Engineer, and did science. I loved it.
What we have now is a chicken end egg problem. Most of the people who came to the genre came here with WoW. That's just a fact. They never had the joy of playing, what was back then, an amazing community-driven sandbox or truly hardcore MMO where you had to figure things out on your own, or find others to help guide you.
As for what will sell, that is not your call, and I also believe that expecting every MMO that comes along to compete with WoW's numbers is ludicrous. Look how Day Z took off like crazy. Was it a niche? Yup, and the whole gaming industry was shocked to see it take off like it did. So much so that a full Day Z game is being made now. Emergent gameplay is simply more engaging and interesting. Games like WoW, Rift, SWTOR, GW2, etc feel like Farmville by comparison.
We have a much larger and diverse market now, and if a game like EVE can thrive after all these years, there is a case for other "niche" games. In fact I believe niche games will become the norm in this industry. MMO develpers are going to learn to get and keep smaller audiences for longer periods of time and differentiate their games from others. A growing number of people are tired of also-ran MMO games that are only a little different than WoW.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Excellent post! This sums it pretty much up!
I always wondered why hardly anyone noticed that WOWs success was for a large part due to the fact, that i runs (very smoothly) even on older hardware! Excellent decision of Blizzard!
Your whole post was well thought out and masterfully worded. I came to MMOs with Asheron's Call and feel this way a lot, it was precisely what happened to me. Bravo!
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
Can I borrow those rose-colored glasses of nostalgia +1?
Today's gamers wouldn't put up with some of these systems for two seconds. Corpse runs were NOT fun. Running from a-holes training you was NOT fun. Farming rats outside Qeynos for hours and running to the guards for safety was NOT fun. We put up with it because the MMO genre was new and different and EQ was pretty much the only game in town.( Yeah , I know, UO and AC but they were equally hardcore and unforgiving).
The future is dark for MMO's but not so much because of boredom but because of shrinking investment money. When the business analyst declared SWTOR a failure the number of MMO failures has grown and the number of MMO's being well funded has dropped dramatically. Why do you think there is so much interest in Kickstarter? The investors are going after the mobile market. MMOs are passe.
I agree with what many posters (not here) have said - the MMO market is too fragmented for another WOW and that is what investors want. Too many gamers think that MMOs are developed by gamers for gamers. Well, in a sense they are. However, the developers are paid by investors. What investor does not think about returns?
My opinion is that the number of potential MMO players has been reached thus there will no longer be any investor happy growth in the genre. In addition, the age of the average full-time MMO player has gone up. The youngsters are playing consoles, mobile games, action games and League of Legend type games. Sure there are young people joining MMOs but most of them are in the three month club - play for three months (or less) and then quit. I have two teenage sons in that group. Once again - investors aren't looking for old people - they want young people in the games.
I think the future is darker than the OP wants to believe. You are starting to see games being turned off faster and faster and this will continue. More MMOs will be discontinued in betas. I can only hope that funding remains available for the coming MMOs.
Except maybe they would never have come to the genre if it wasn't for WoW and wouldn't like the idea of a fully "free to do what you want" game.
A friend of mine who played SWG thought it was horrible because he said he felt like he was working a second job that he wasn't getting paid for. Cue EQ and suddenly he likes mmo's.
A coworker played skyrim and didn't get past the first few bits because he said he needed more guidance. It was too free.
I think it's silly to assume that just because a group feel that one type of "thing" is superior that sooner or later everyone will jump on board.
There's a lot of "superior' media out there in terms of construction, composition, layers of thuoht put into it but much of it falls into niche groups of people because it just doesn't appeal to larger groups of people.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
"As if the forums aren't depressing enough, we now have official doomsaying pieces like this?
The future has plenty of releases and re-releases to look forwards to for all playstyles, it's really no different then it's always been."
My nan also told me that people that cant see the trouble in the genre are generally fanboys. Congrats
Obviously, she failed to tell me it puts it on my back, butt, face, and that sensitive place that tickles. Nan is not always perfect and she is a lying drunk.
Hmmm Themepark's attract a customer base for 3-6 months, so 1,000,000 @ $60 + 6 months of subs @ 12 is $72,000,000, usually the f2p hits in the 8-12 month mark lately so call it 90 mil before f2p conversion,and thats being generous for any game out lately.
Sandboxes have a lower population, but usually a longer shelflife, even at 1/2 to 1/3 the population, it stands to reason that a sandbox would make more money in the longhaul, even if it is offset by the longterm vs shortterm overhead. I really can't see why there is not a market for another sandbox game (think this is the beginning of me looking at MMOGCharts)
Sorry but not true. When you are talking about things like genre vs genre you can't just ignore Wow cause its the popular thing to do. Wow has made more money then all Sandbox MMO's in history combined so saying Sanbox MMO's make more money then Themepark ones is just false. I realize pretty much all Themepark MMO's in the last few years have failed, honestly so have pretty much all Sandbox MMO's other then Eve. That doesn't ignore the fact in total amount made Themeparks have been way more profitable then Sandbox MMOs. Doesn't mean they are better games but it does mean they make more money...even longterm.
"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
After many years of different games being overhyped, leading to letdowns, and the next overhyped game - perhaps a lack of overhyping games is what is actually needed. It's time for folks to put their little boy pants on, sit at their little computers, look at their little screens as they log into their little games...and have a little fun. If you're always looking for what's coming, you're never going to see what's here.
I think this generation needs a dose of the 80s...
http://www.billboard.com/features/the-10-best-80s-music-videos-poll-results-1005299832.story#/features/the-10-best-80s-music-videos-poll-results-1005299832.story
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3DC360AA714A7969
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%