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[Column] General: Hoping for Something More Esoteric

SBFordSBFord Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
in News & Features Discussion

In our latest Independency column, we take a look into the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup to try to ascertain what 2013 might bring to the MMO space. See what we think and hope might happen before leaving your ideas in the comments.

If you've spent any time monitoring the changes in the industry, it's likely you would have stumbled across a Kickstarter project detailing what might feel like the next-best thing for MMOs. From the NASA-endorsed Astronaut: Moon, Mars & Beyond to more recent additions like Topia Online, we've seen a whole gamut of Kickstarter projects make themselves known before, more often than not, fading into obscurity.

Read more of Cassandra Khaw's Independency: Hoping for Something More Esoteric.

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Comments

  • AeolronAeolron Member Posts: 648
    Great read! I want the mmorpg genre to be more like Everquest 1 , the harsh death penalties the sense of adventure that we, as gamers are missing out in the recent mmorpgs.
  • ShakyMoShakyMo Member CommonPosts: 7,207
    I think we might see innovation in several of these games that are single player but also have a closed server mode and mmo mode

    Like star citizen, starbound, elite 4, star forge, the adventure mode thing for minecraft etc..
  • Silverthorn8Silverthorn8 Member UncommonPosts: 510
    I'm looking forward to pathfinder online, 2015 is a way off in the distance though.
  • BattlerockBattlerock Member CommonPosts: 1,393
    We like working together or do we ? When I think about TESO I guess I just invisioned TES with the online part being other people being able to come in and change the world, you could cooperate or you could be enemies, but you both ( or more ) had your own objectives. GW2 has achieved this in some ways, but there is still lvl cap, there are still hearts on the map that suggest where to go and what to do. when I play TES I don't Google how to's, I don't read the manual other than for some background lore, I don't want outside influence affecting my TES life. I'm not sure TESO is going to be able to pull that off especially with news like twitter and Facebook involved. This game I'm looking for doesn't need to be massive in terms of population on the map at any given point in time, in fact limit the number of people that can enter my world to 1/5 acres or 100 acres even. I like knowing real people are there, could be friendly could be a threat, could be helpful, could have met before, knows someone I know...... Endless and rare points in time.
  • MumboJumboMumboJumbo Member UncommonPosts: 3,219
    Crowdfunding & sourcing.

    Players raising the capital and confidence in a vision. Players being given the tools to shape the story and even the very game world

    Eg sandbox & simulation And player-created content such as scripting in Topia or coding in 0x10^c ; as ShakyMo says, more emphasis on players doing a sort of wiki contribution to a game world.

    http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem

  • MumboJumboMumboJumbo Member UncommonPosts: 3,219
    Also Topia & Pathfinder Online could both have some more support from prospective mmorpg players search for interesting mmorpgs of the future.

    http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem

  • OzmodanOzmodan Member EpicPosts: 9,726

    Personally, I don't see anything on the horizon that seems that interesting.  I know what I don't want, linear progression with a strict class structure.  

    I want a MMO to challenge me.  While I preferred UO over EQ, at least EQ presented a challenge to the player.  There does not seem to be any challenge in the upcoming MMO's.  I would prefer a sandbox, but sandbox does not mean you have to have open pvp everywhere.  It seems that everyone assumes that and they are just wrong.

    Look at at DAoC, it was probably the most successful pvp ever IMO.  It was not a sandbox, but it allowed players to pvp when they wanted to and provided a fun experience.  Not saying it was perfect, the crowd control and stealth were way overboard, but the concept of more than two factions worked far better than people realize.  The developers eventually killed the game by giving the dedicated crowd too much power and the casuals fled.

    SWG was one of the better MMO's prior to NGE, but the Jedi design was an absolute mess.  Funny, the space expansion was probably the best part of the game after it was changed to a themepark design.

    There are pieces and parts of prior games that worked well, it remains for someone to put them together in a design that allows them all to work well with one another.  A new game does not have to be that innovative, it just has to integrate it's systems in a manner that each supports the other.  It is not rocket science, but the big hurdle is getting investors to support something that is not a story driven theme park.

  • TchildeTchilde Member Posts: 3

    I am not a fan of PvP, more a PvE player. In all honesty City of Heroes was the finest MMO I ever played. SWTOR is not a MMO, not really. Geeting teams is hard, its mostly played like a console game by most players, they solo it. LOTRO is a bit better, but only a bit. Niether has a patch on the social community of CoH, granted it developed over time, but a Super Hero game has a ready made player base with a sense of purpose as players. I played GW and liked it enough, but left it for CoH. I have not tried GW2 partly because I'm grudging against NCsoft.

    My biggest gripe with SWTOR from a player point is every other time they do an update the freaking launcher gets Lobotomized. I uninstalled it after 3 reinstalls, 9 hours on the phone with tech support and 7 hours on hold. I've had enough. Canceled my sub. Done. Never had that problem with any other game.

    So I guess I'd like a real MMORPG, with a nice UI and a population of players who don't behave like surly 15 year olds just released from Juvie.

    Just my 2 cents.

    gets off the soapbox so somone else can rant

  • aspekxaspekx Member UncommonPosts: 2,167
    would love to see a kickstarter for an oblivion/skyrim mod that allowed for coop play. if such a thing were possible.

    "There are at least two kinds of games.
    One could be called finite, the other infinite.
    A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
    an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
    Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse

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