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Why do "some" people enjoy an MMO being shut down or doing badly?

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  • LoktofeitLoktofeit Member RarePosts: 14,247
    Originally posted by Raithe-Nor
    Originally posted by Beatnik59

     What created such strange feelings in such an otherwise agreeable group?

    I really couldn't disagree more with your entire post, but I think if I dispell this one particular myth, you have a better chance of getting a glimpse of what is really going on.

    We are NOT an agreeable group.  That is why people relish the demise of each other's MMOs.  The RPers love it when MMO X fails because it failed to protect roleplaying.  The powergamers relish it when MMO Y fails because they didn't provide enough endgame raid content and vertical gear and power progression.  The explorers relish it when MMO Z fails because they didn't provide an open world with lots of lore to follow and deep, dark places to delve.  So on and so forth.

    It isn't because of addiction, or even lack of perspective.  It's because the perspective is perfectly clear and wafting directly before our eyes.  The developers chose to cater to some other audience at the expense of the one in which we (individually) reside.

    And most of the time they are ELIMINATING all audiences, rather than including any.

    There is no other industry more worthy of failure.

    I agree with your points but disagree on the conclusion. 

    "We are NOT an agreeable group.  That is why people relish the demise of each other's MMOs.  The RPers love it when MMO X fails because it failed to protect roleplaying.  The powergamers relish it when MMO Y fails because they didn't provide enough endgame raid content and vertical gear and power progression.  The explorers relish it when MMO Z fails because they didn't provide an open world with lots of lore to follow and deep, dark places to delve.  So on and so forth."

    That level of division is the result of MMO being more of a platform than any one specific genre of games. With shooters, you may have CoD vs Halo vs TF2 etc. With RPGs you may have Elder Scrolls vs Fallout vs Final Fantasy. Now, what if you put the RPGers and the shooter fans in the same group? Well, when a player skill based game comes out, one group hates it and the other dissects it. When a character skill game comes out, the groups switch roles.

    MMO, as a gaming platform, offers a wide spectrum of gameplay, so in a place like MMORPG.com or the old VNBoards, you have very diverse set of conflicting interst groups. In such a scenario, you go beyond rivalry because there is far less in common between the groups. The primary cause of this is 'MMO' being universally viewed as a genre, so the expectations are that each game would or should fit within one's personal definition of the genre. 

     

    There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
    "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre

  • Beatnik59Beatnik59 Member UncommonPosts: 2,413
    Originally posted by Raithe-Nor
    Originally posted by Beatnik59

     What created such strange feelings in such an otherwise agreeable group?

    I really couldn't disagree more with your entire post, but I think if I dispell this one particular myth, you have a better chance of getting a glimpse of what is really going on.

    We are NOT an agreeable group.  That is why people relish the demise of each other's MMOs.  The RPers love it when MMO X fails because it failed to protect roleplaying.  The powergamers relish it when MMO Y fails because they didn't provide enough endgame raid content and vertical gear and power progression.  The explorers relish it when MMO Z fails because they didn't provide an open world with lots of lore to follow and deep, dark places to delve.  So on and so forth.

    It isn't because of addiction, or even lack of perspective.  It's because the perspective is perfectly clear and wafting directly before our eyes.  The developers chose to cater to some other audience at the expense of the one in which we (individually) reside.

    And most of the time they are ELIMINATING all audiences, rather than including any.

    There is no other industry more worthy of failure.

    Maybe it was the extortive nature of the business that made us this way.

    Or maybe we are, like you said, NOT an agreeable group, and we deserve no better from the industry.

    Either way, I agree that "there is no other industry more worthy of failure."

    __________________________
    "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
    --Arcken

    "...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
    --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.

    "It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
    --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE

  • TheScavengerTheScavenger Member EpicPosts: 3,321

    This has been a really interesting read, thus far. While there was a lot to go through, this has made for a really fascinating discussion.

     

    Rather tame too, nothings gotten out of hand. Quite often threads end up in flame wars, and then it goes a whole diff path.

     

    Now for the thread itself...

     

    It does seem like it is only the MMO genre that this happens in, besides the mentioned CoD vs Battlefield, but thats different. Though I guess in other genres, there may be more choice. Well there isn't that much choice either to be honest...its almost all linear storytelling. Very few games like Far Cry 3 (very rare for a FPS to be open world), Elder Scrolls and Fallout...but the point is, even if the various genres are rather dead for open world games, people don't really go around wishing other games dead.

     

    Here is a quote in this thread (and as a sidenote, Beatnik59...that was quite the post you made):

    ----------------

    Originally posted by Crazy_Stick
    Its a negative part of human nature and enjoyed for the same reason people enjoy seeing those they dislike suffer or have hard times. Vicariously, it makes them feel better about themselves and their choices. The germans even have a word for it: Schadenfreude.

    -----------------

    Guess this may explain a lot of it. Even happens in the real world though, with bullies and what not.

     

    As for Beatnik59's post. Yeah I remember everyone cheering City of Heroes dead and actually defending its death (I know you posted a lot more, but that kind of stuck out to me). Even if they never played (or probably in many cases, never even heard of CoH). Rather scary to be honest.

     

    My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB: 

    https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul



  • dimnikardimnikar Member Posts: 271

    I only ever enjoyed seeing Warhammer Online fail, strictly because a friend of mine was VERY LOUD in his assertions that WAR will most definitely kill WOW, and anyone who doesn't *know* that is an idiot.

    I still laugh at him in regards to WAR, and to a lesser extent AOC (for which he made similair claims).

     

    At the moment, he's touting GW2 as the WOW killer and am very anxious to see the Feb. Q4 Blizzard report, so I can shut him up *yet again*.

     

    Besides this, I have no reason to feel joy when someone or something fails.

  • pmilespmiles Member Posts: 383

    Trying to apply logic to something that inherently has no logic is like trying to get a serial killer to explain why he kills people.  You're not going to get the answer that you are looking for. 

    "Oh I kill people who wear black socks on Tuesday that also happen to have a latte in their hands."  

    Of course!  Makes perfect sense.  People really should avoid wearing black socks on Tuesdays or abstain from lattes.  I understand fully.  It was their fault.  It's a wonder more people aren't killed.

  • NovusodNovusod Member UncommonPosts: 912
    Originally posted by Warmaker

    Let me get this out there.

    I'm pretty sure I'm the only one on these boards that hopes for the equivalent of a "Dinosaur Killing Meteor" to hit the MMORPG genre.  IMO, it's still stuffering from the illness of developers constantly trying (and failing) to chase WoW's success.  Modern, traditional MMORPGs in general are still being compared to how close they are with WoW.  This is most especially so with big-name releases.  I still think developers are funelling into the same path of development.  Very few dare to be different, and if they are they will not get the big bucks to go on.

    SWTOR, by far and easily the biggest MMORPG title in quite a number of years, is about as blatantly uninsipired in MMORPG game design as you can get, despite the fantastic "Star Wars" license and the insane amount of money thrown towards development.  It is the shiniest, easiest example of uninspired design.  You had BioWare... BioWare, of all development houses, openly saying that to defy WoW's design is stupidity.  If there was a title that in alot of years could have really been something, it was SWTOR.  It had "Star Wars."  It had BioWare, the dev house behind KOTOR1.  It had BioWare's reputation to potentially do what they want, because it was BioWare.  It had a healthy amount of time and insane money for development.  And the end result is what is out there now...

    You have a disastrous example of an MMORPG that, IMO, truly had a chance to shake the foundations of the MMORPG genre and realign the power structure.  And it proudly settled on being mediocre and uninspired in its design.  And it wasn't the first to do so and it will not be the last.  And it's been going on since about 2004-2005.

    A fine justification for that nice Meteor to hit.  Maybe there'll be better diversity afterwards for whatever comes out of the ashes.

    Believe me you are not the only one who thinks this way. It is a natural evolution in a punctuated equilibrium. It is kind of social darwinism like when the Dinosaurs went extinct it opened the door for the rise of mamals. There were mamals in the dinosaur age but they were the low man on the totem pole. The mamals needed that meteor strike to wipe the dinosaures out so they could move up the food chain. Same process in nature works in business as well as video games. Creative destruction is why capitalism has booms and busts. When Henry Ford built cars the buggy whip makers went under.

     

    I have read the entire thread but am surprised no one brought up the great video game crash of 1983. That was the year Atari went bankrupt. Atari had been around since the 70s and by the early 80s they were making more money than ever but their technology and games were outdated and stale. They were dinosaurs waiting to go exinct. The extiction event came in the form of a game based on the movie ET. It wasn't a bad game it had the same features all the old atari games had (basically a Pac-man clone with some add ons) and was based on a major hollywood IP. How could it not make money? Well the Atari fanbase balked and said it was the same old same old that Atari had been feeding them for 7 years. The people wanted something new and the teardown mentality prevailed. Millions of unsold ET games were burried in a landfill and Atari had to declare bankruptsy. With Atari out of the way it opened the doors of the American market to Japanese imported Nintendo and Sega. A new golden age of video games began.

     

    Same thing has to happen with MMORPGs at this point. The current batch of game makers are too set in their ways to ever change. Now with 8 years of WoW clones it is time for a teardown. There will be a bust and not much made but on the other side of the bust there will be a new golden age.

  • RydesonRydeson Member UncommonPosts: 3,852
         I'm waiting and hoping for a MMORPG cataclysm..   The industry is filled with arcade console gamers wanting to spend their money on wannabe MMO's.. The we need new blood that will think outside the box, and keep in mind what a true MMORPG was all about.. These lobby based WoW clone grinds need to move to the Xboxes and PS3 of the world..  I truly doubt we'll see any recapture of the old days until the big money market is dried up..  That day is coming.. The industry is so saturated with games currently only a few shine..  Even Blizzard's Titan is in jeaopardy of falling flat..
  • rounnerrounner Member UncommonPosts: 725
    Why do some people enjoy inventing crap about what other people enjoy? Why post pages and pages of self serving circle jerk? Why does anyone post anything on the internet at all? All is vanity
  • Loke666Loke666 Member EpicPosts: 21,441
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    If a game is highly successful, then there are likely to be many efforts at copying it.  You want that to happen to games you like, not games you hate.

    Hoping that a game you dont like wont become the next Wow is actually rather normal, enjoying that games that aint your type will close down is en etirely different matter.

    Some of our fellow gamers do enjoy those games and if they close down they will be sad = bad.

     

  • BiskopBiskop Member UncommonPosts: 709

    I can't say I enjoy watching games die per se, but I do find it pleasing if bad design and unprofessional behavior aren't rewarded. So if a bunch of amateur devs release an inferior game and then treat their customers like crap, I find some pleasure in watching them reap what they sow.

    The same goes for overhyped, sub par AAA products that crash and burn 6 months after release btw. I just love it when huge corps and pompous, self-important devs have to eat their words because they couldn't understand what people actually enjoy in an MMO.

     

  • ScotScot Member LegendaryPosts: 22,742
    Thinking about the jobs behind the title is not something posters do a lot on here. For that matter thinking about anything other than the graphics seems to be asking too much.
  • WahrHeitWahrHeit Member UncommonPosts: 57
    if a bad game does well it really impact the genre you know.
  • RenoakuRenoaku Member EpicPosts: 3,157

    Sometimes I just really don't care if a MMO dies these are my reasons.

    Tera, I told the developers of this game they shouldn't charge for Cosmetic changes on top of a subscription they did it anyways they refused to fix UI bugs during Beta, they did badly they lost too many subscribers I laughed because of their failure.

    The devs had the sugguestions I gave them, they didn't listen to the community they got what was coming now they going F2P.

    The Secret World.

    Its a good game, but again they failed because of lack of customization and immediately charging for costumes, I refuse to play this due to lack of customization, its a good game just like Tera it has potential but isn't what I am looking for, I gave the developers the way to go since beta to attract people into the game, they didn't listen on release.

    APB Reloaded,

    Is another game with potential but Hackers, making the game pay 2 win drove me away from the game again refusing to listen to players and what was said.

    SWTOR

    Is a touchy situation because of StarWars Fans, I love StarWars, but I think EA, Bioware, Enmasse, Gamers First, Nexon, And Perfect World are all fail companies they don't listen to what players ask even in beta when they could polish before release.

    I like SWTOR but I refuse to play because as a subscriber they do not give me many perks at all, and on top of that it lacks the customization I look for.

    To be honest Defiance Based on the official videos  with some improvements to the gameplay it could cause a loss of subscriptions or customers from games like TSW, Fallen Earth, APB, and I could careless if these companies go down the drain or not that is what happens when they don't listen.

    Every MMO has had its chance to make it a good MMO depending ob budget I know that MMO's take a lot of hard work to develop, but a MMO like Age OF Conan for example had so much potential until I played the game and found out armors covered everything lack of customization its AD of being a Sexy Brutal killer MMORPG was really click target and boring combat to me too.

    I respect the artists, and people who compose, and make music for MMO's the problem is the companies ability to lead and make the decisions after the game is actually made companies who make poor decisions and choices games like APB Reloaded with lots of customers lost. In general I am the kind of person with the right dev team who could actually make a game like APB reloaded fun again and make people actually feel like playing again, but gamers first has ruined that game so much if I had the money to actually hire a team, and buy the IP rights for the game I would do it and revert back to the original game that RTW released and start working from there, I bet that more people would actually be playing the game than what currently play now.

    RTW was doing a good job when they made the game, but from what I know lack of funds killed the game yes they needed to improve, and yes Hackers ruined it but excluding hackers They had the right ideas in mind G1 destroyed what they created.

    So when a company does bad and sinks down the drain all I usually do is a big I told you so thought and laugh nothing more its all about keeping your customers happy and people playing and wanting to spend money not complaing and not wanting to spend.

    With an honest opinion.

    Every since F2P MMO's have been released in the U.S the MMO industry has been flooded with a bunch of FAIL MMORPG games, Nexon for example and vindictus not making the right choices game started out decent I loved it but it took them months after releaes to fix the market lag bug, and they made it pay 2 enjoy, and Perfect World MMO's seriously The Trashy MMO's and companies need to die off, and New MMORPG's need to take place in the Genre with good strong dev teams and people who have common sense enough to make profit, and keep the consumers happy and playing.  I have done an experiment with this in a Mini MMO in Second Life, the more people who were happy the more money I was getting from the game.

    Besides Trolls the current best MMORPG's, or RTS titles.

    1. Eve Online

    2. League OF Legends

    If you can avoid the trolls in league its a great game you have to play among friends and clan though.

  • EzhaeEzhae Member UncommonPosts: 735

    Because gamers tend to be self-enttiled, self-important, ignorant idiots that feel the need to mark their superiority through their game choice. It's harsh, but sadly true in so many situations. 

    Why LoL fans hate DoTA fans and vice versa? Why CoD fans hate BF fans, and vice versa? Why Xbox owneers hate on Playstation and vice versa? All the very same reasons really. 

    Whenever a game you don't like fails you can always rush to the forums and post a thread saying the "I told you so!" or "If only they'd listen to ME!" crap and let others bask in the warming light of your glory... yeah, except no one gives a damn. It's actually worse than the bashing that goes around when it comes to choice of music. 

    Any game, any company, failing, is never a good thing for the health of industry, and innovation is not attained by building something from scratch, innovation is all about itteration, just like evolution in nature. You don't create something completley new whenever the old design didn't work as expected, you try to improve the bad points, one by one, until it works. 

     

    The only exception are scams, but that's not even about game design, but about how the company treats it's customers (see - the WarZ drama) , and those things need to be called out loud and clear. 

  • Lovely_LalyLovely_Laly Member UncommonPosts: 734

    I wonder what OP means when wrote "some" people?=P

    I'm glad if bad game, scamming game and other fail can be cleaned from game lists, so others can't pick it up and get disappointed.

    If it makes me looking like a troll, I don't care, you can continue play shhh and even eat it if you like. =D

    But sorry I never call smelly stuff rose.=D

    try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
    Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2

  • xmentyxmenty Member UncommonPosts: 718

    Survival of the fittest.

    You don't make bad games and be a bad dev then expect your game to make it for 10 years.

    Just let these game die and move on.

    Don't blame us if they lose their job, they should blame themselves for being in love with their game or

    they listen too much of sweet things from their fanboys.

    I read a lot of devs comment in these forums or in the web, they tend to be full of themselves.

     

     

     

    Pardon my English as it is not my 1st language :)

  • ComanComan Member UncommonPosts: 2,177
    Originally posted by WahrHeit
    if a bad game does well it really impact the genre you know.

    If a bad games does well it ain't a bad game. If something is bad it will not do well. It might have huge initial sales, but they will die down. 

  • VonatarVonatar Member UncommonPosts: 723

    The answer to the OP is simple:

    Schadenfreude

    scha . den . freu . de

    Noun

    Pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune.

  • TorgrimTorgrim Member CommonPosts: 2,088
    You should not reward anyone for doing a poor job.

    If it's not broken, you are not innovating.

  • EzhaeEzhae Member UncommonPosts: 735
    Originally posted by Torgrim
    You should not reward anyone for doing a poor job.

    And who are You to decide what's poor job and what's not? I mean, if people enjoy it, why does it hurt you that a game exists? Does it somehow prevent you from playing anything else? Most people who write all the "I hope this game will fail" stuff do it prior to the games actual release and often without even playing it. They just consider anything that's not up their alley to be a threat to their very existance and ego. 

    Very few games actually hurt the industry by their incompetence, and those that do are quickly picked up and called on it by both the community and alls orts of gaming journalists/reviewers. 

  • TerranahTerranah Member UncommonPosts: 3,575
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    If a game is highly successful, then there are likely to be many efforts at copying it.  You want that to happen to games you like, not games you hate.

     This didn't occur to me at first, but I think there is a lot of truth to that.  The other aspect is for some who like to play monday night quarterback, a game they predict will do poorly failing validates their opinion.

     

    I was actually kind of sad when SWG shut down, even though it was in a form (NGE) I no longer played.  The thought of never returning to the world, even for just nostalgia's sake was a bummer.

     

    Auto Assault on the other hand was horrid.  So to was the last Final Fantasy mmo despite having beautiful graphics.  Sometimes I think devs and big production houses need to learn some humility, and maybe not take success for granted.  Failure can be a good teacher sometimes.

  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403

    Pessimism, thanks to teenage angst, has/will always be the thing that all the cool gamer kids on the internet do.

    Optimism is less popular, but also less hopeless.

     

    If bitterness wants to get into the act, I offer it a cookie or a gumdrop.
    —James Broughton

    Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.

  • neobahamut20neobahamut20 Member Posts: 336
    Originally posted by jpnz
    Originally posted by Paradigm68

    There are valid reasons.

    If you're a big fan of the MMO genre and you think that genre is being ruined by certain dynamics (I.E. instancing, de-emphasizing communitiy) then big money games that use those dynamics need to fail or they'll become an adopted norm.

    If you're a big fan of a given IP and an MMO has come out based on that IP but the MMO in your opinion has handled it terribly (I.E. LoTRO, SWTOR, ESO), then your only hope to play an MMO based on your favorite IP is to hope the current version fails and a new better one is made.

    This shows a fundamentally flawed logic that is pretty common amongst people that doesn't know how the real world works.

    The logic of 'Failure = breeds innovation / better version' is flawed and history has proven time and again that it is false.

    Why people still think this way I have no idea.

    It is true, in a way, let me help you understand: 

    That logic doesn't apply to the same people. If someone copies something and it is shit, the observers will accept the risk of going forward with their innovative ideas, because, at worse, it fails like copying does. Now if observers watch and see 150 million dollar budgets be successful, they start thinking, thinking that maybe they are wrong and it is doubt that truly kills their innovation, so they go with what they think people seem to want, a WoW clone. That is the source of the problem.

     

    You might be lucky to find the 1 or 2 people that never played WoW in your clone, but chances are, everyone did and those people are no longer playing WoW because they want something else. It is the flawed logic of "suits" that is the problem, they keep telling themselves people quit WoW because they aren't "l33t54uc3" so they remake WoW.... with dumbed down content, which makes their product that much more boring, that much worse.

     

    So although failure does not necessarily breed innovation, it halts stagnation and innovation is only truly stopped when we stagnate. When games like SW:ToR fail, it only shows that perhaps your wacky idea as a game designer might just be what people want as what people don't want is what is already out there.

    Boycotting EA. Why? They suck, even moreso since 2008.

  • DauzqulDauzqul Member RarePosts: 1,982

    WoW = NGE, AoC, WAR, Aion, Tera, STO, SWTOR, etc....

    When non-innovative games fail, people are happy because they think that it will be the final wake-up call for future developers. The problem is that it's rarely the case.

    SWTOR is probably the biggest flop of all time. Finally! The Theme Park trend is over! Woohoo! <60 days later> The Elder Scrolls Online is announced...

     

    People don't like to see good games fail. People like to see bad games fail.

  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403
    Originally posted by mmoDAD
    The problem is that it's rarely the case.

    Possibly because the gamer-ized definition of "fail" is so very, very different from the business definition?

    Proper Forum Drama requires it to be, after all.

    Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.

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