I have to disagree. Games like Ultima Online, Everquest and Vanilla Wow had some of the worst communities. The only way to avoid them was to join a guild or join the RP server (if they had one), or find a niche game that didn't cater to the typical MMO crowd at the time.
Also you are complaining about something that isn't very wide spread. Yes the ESO is using this new technology so everyone is on one mega server but there are dozens of games released and in development that still have standard servers. You are blowing this out of proportion.
The problem with MMOs is not the new school gamers, the problem are the jaded vets who won't stick with a game for more than a month. Older MMOs weren't deeper or more complex, we've all just grown to expect more from our games.
The problem I feel is the over saterations as MMos on the market, particularly of free options. It means there is a far less concentrated player base on one game then there was on the past, even with a bigger player base to go off of. This makes it difficult to really build dedicated communities so things like guilds just are a lot harder to have consistant players in place, or ones at least dedicated to the guild they are in.
Originally posted by pb1285n I have to disagree. Games like Ultima Online, Everquest and Vanilla Wow had some of the worst communities. The only way to avoid them was to join a guild or join the RP server (if they had one), or find a niche game that didn't cater to the typical MMO crowd at the time.
The guilds were a handy and insular way to protect yourself from People You Didn't Like (PYDL™).
In vanilla WoW we joined them in droves, because we were afraid of "b.net kiddies'. It was great, the whole point of isularity was to allow you easy access to those who similarly disliked Those People™, so we could gab about how horrible they were.
(EQ1 players, as I understand it, got a couple of years of head start doing this, discussing how horrible Those People™ were, before WoW even opened. "b.net kiddies", as a phrase, I first encountered somewhere else entirely...again substantially before WoW even opened.)
Didn't work in the long term; every time we stepped out of guild chat, we had to deal with Those People™ again.
Originally posted by pb1285n The problem with MMOs is not the new school gamers, the problem are the jaded vets who won't stick with a game for more than a month. Older MMOs weren't deeper or more complex, we've all just grown to expect more from our games.
Whups. Ever notice that you can almost never agree with someone who knows what the Real Problem™ is? Simple answers, complex questions.
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.
EQ2 still has a good community, sorry the game is so quest orientated it's boring. I was there for vanilla WoW and it never had a community. Not once. Ever. FFXI was where it was at for community. Still, I could find holes in every game where a person might slip thru the cracks. But Final Fantasy rocked all when making strangers into friends.
I'm willing to bet anything that if some developer made an mmo that was strictly server based,very very hard, no dungeon finders and had to work for everything you did IT WOULD BE THE MOST POPULAR MMO TO DATE. It would keep the community longer reguardless of speed of updates and expantions.
Community drives people to log in after the romance is over.
Reguardless of what many people say here, I 100% beleave that the developers are acting on there own with the easy fast tools they are giving us. And for the ones that disagree....I think you wold change your mind and love a hard slow mmo with a fixed community...It would keep your hart pumping to play with the good and bad players every day.
I'm willing to bet anything that if some developer made an mmo that was strictly server based,very very hard, no dungeon finders and had to work for everything you did IT WOULD BE THE MOST POPULAR MMO TO DATE. It would keep the community longer reguardless of speed of updates and expantions.
Community drives people to log in after the romance is over.
Reguardless of what many people say here, I 100% beleave that the developers are acting on there own with the easy fast tools they are giving us. And for the ones that disagree....I think you wold change your mind and love a hard slow mmo with a fixed community...It would keep your hart pumping to play with the good and bad players every day.
I like the idea of a hard game. They would need to get rid of levels though. I would also like an adapting program that changed things around so that the player could not map out strategies to certain events.
I don't think dungeon finder is bad. Maybe with a stipulation of passing the dungeon once or something. Or better yet a reason to go to a dungeon in the first place. like for instance in order to get past level 10 you had to venture in the dungeon. Core skills, or something of importance to the player.
Player should start out with nothing, no hearth, money, clothes, weapons...and just thrown into the world to figure it out.
I'm willing to bet anything that if some developer made an mmo that was strictly server based,very very hard, no dungeon finders and had to work for everything you did IT WOULD BE THE MOST POPULAR MMO TO DATE. It would keep the community longer reguardless of speed of updates and expantions.
Community drives people to log in after the romance is over.
Reguardless of what many people say here, I 100% beleave that the developers are acting on there own with the easy fast tools they are giving us. And for the ones that disagree....I think you wold change your mind and love a hard slow mmo with a fixed community...It would keep your hart pumping to play with the good and bad players every day.
i agree , for example ,i played FFXI for years , the game was frustating as hell , but u know what? could wait to log in and chat /do events/exp pts / missions with my Lsmates/friends , the community was the n1 reason i was playing , and the reason for coming back from time to time
i can say the same for wow , i endured the cataclysm expansion because my guild/friends , a lot of them no longer plays , so i quit.
Oh a closed server w/o dungeon finder , is 1 of the best things why?
Ninja/botersJerks? Good luck finding a group to do anything! u will be blacklisted/ignored by the whole server , u better delete that char and star over again w/o doing that.
Name change ? not gonna happen even if u did that u were found and exposed.
No one sticks around anymore....Why ?.........No Community, The last time I have seen an mmo with true community tools were the old Vanilla WoW and Everquest 2 days. I'm not talking about liking a game or not, I'm talking about community !....Real servers, very simple.
The last time you saw a community that shared your views.
After all, a community of people who have differeing views from you, you probably would not perceive as a community.
Community is definitely there in a lot of MMOs. To try to give examples would be futile, though, as anything outside of player views/activities that match yours would be dismissed as not community, not fun or not important.
If you guys spent half as much time being part of a community as you do complaining they don't exist, you'd enjoy MMOs a lot more. The former takes more effort, though.
City of Heroes had a really great community back in the day.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I'm willing to bet anything that if some developer made an mmo that was strictly server based,very very hard, no dungeon finders and had to work for everything you did IT WOULD BE THE MOST POPULAR MMO TO DATE. It would keep the community longer reguardless of speed of updates and expantions.
Community drives people to log in after the romance is over.
Reguardless of what many people say here, I 100% beleave that the developers are acting on there own with the easy fast tools they are giving us. And for the ones that disagree....I think you wold change your mind and love a hard slow mmo with a fixed community...It would keep your hart pumping to play with the good and bad players every day.
I bet such a game would have fewer people than darkfall did half a year after the original launch.
Most people do like challenges but they also want to relax after a long days work. Very very hard, don't think so, having to work for everything - I just came from work.
Make it fun, make it very easy to group and maybe maybe that will overcome the other inconveniences.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
I bet such a game would have fewer people than darkfall did half a year after the original launch.
Most people do like challenges but they also want to relax after a long days work. Very very hard, don't think so, having to work for everything - I just came from work.
Make it fun, make it very easy to group and maybe maybe that will overcome the other inconveniences.
I'd prefer a game that allows for adjustable choices in difficulty for everything. Emphasis on the ADJUSTABLE part.
Granted, you'd probably have to account for things such as the grouping and things like that.
And before anyone brings up WoW's raid finder, that ONLY applies to raiding; everything else you can do, like PVP, Questing, Dungeons, and some other stuff that I'm likely forgetting is pretty much "take it or leave it," which in this case, either results in things being braindead easy (especially at lower levels) or outright annoying when an unfortunate alt character with few viable items outside of maybe 1 or two heirlooms gets curbstomped by a platoon of heirloom covered alts.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE ABOVE IS BASED ON CATACLYSM EXPERIENCE, AND THUS IS OUTDATED; I HAVEN'T PLAYED MOP SO I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT IS LIKE.
it's pretty clear that a lot of people here don't understand that fundamental differences in design lead to changes in community dynamics and social atmosphere. a game like everquest provides a radically different social experience than that of a game that ushers you through the world as you complete mundane solo quests.
furthermore, mmos should not be made with the "casual" player mind. despite whatever half-baked arguments you come up with, casual players aren't the ones supporting the gaming industry. only have 30 minutes to play a game? play wizard101 or angry birds on your phone. or you can behave like a normal person and play an mmo when you have adequate free time. unfortunately, developers fall into this trap and end up creating 100-million-dollar mmos that have no longevity.
Comments
Also you are complaining about something that isn't very wide spread. Yes the ESO is using this new technology so everyone is on one mega server but there are dozens of games released and in development that still have standard servers. You are blowing this out of proportion.
The problem with MMOs is not the new school gamers, the problem are the jaded vets who won't stick with a game for more than a month. Older MMOs weren't deeper or more complex, we've all just grown to expect more from our games.
The guilds were a handy and insular way to protect yourself from People You Didn't Like (PYDL™).
In vanilla WoW we joined them in droves, because we were afraid of "b.net kiddies'. It was great, the whole point of isularity was to allow you easy access to those who similarly disliked Those People™, so we could gab about how horrible they were.
(EQ1 players, as I understand it, got a couple of years of head start doing this, discussing how horrible Those People™ were, before WoW even opened. "b.net kiddies", as a phrase, I first encountered somewhere else entirely...again substantially before WoW even opened.)
Didn't work in the long term; every time we stepped out of guild chat, we had to deal with Those People™ again.
Whups. Ever notice that you can almost never agree with someone who knows what the Real Problem™ is? Simple answers, complex questions.
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.
EQ2 still has a good community, sorry the game is so quest orientated it's boring. I was there for vanilla WoW and it never had a community. Not once. Ever. FFXI was where it was at for community. Still, I could find holes in every game where a person might slip thru the cracks. But Final Fantasy rocked all when making strangers into friends.
I'm willing to bet anything that if some developer made an mmo that was strictly server based,very very hard, no dungeon finders and had to work for everything you did IT WOULD BE THE MOST POPULAR MMO TO DATE. It would keep the community longer reguardless of speed of updates and expantions.
Community drives people to log in after the romance is over.
Reguardless of what many people say here, I 100% beleave that the developers are acting on there own with the easy fast tools they are giving us. And for the ones that disagree....I think you wold change your mind and love a hard slow mmo with a fixed community...It would keep your hart pumping to play with the good and bad players every day.
I like the idea of a hard game. They would need to get rid of levels though. I would also like an adapting program that changed things around so that the player could not map out strategies to certain events.
I don't think dungeon finder is bad. Maybe with a stipulation of passing the dungeon once or something. Or better yet a reason to go to a dungeon in the first place. like for instance in order to get past level 10 you had to venture in the dungeon. Core skills, or something of importance to the player.
Player should start out with nothing, no hearth, money, clothes, weapons...and just thrown into the world to figure it out.
i agree , for example ,i played FFXI for years , the game was frustating as hell , but u know what? could wait to log in and chat /do events/exp pts / missions with my Lsmates/friends , the community was the n1 reason i was playing , and the reason for coming back from time to time
i can say the same for wow , i endured the cataclysm expansion because my guild/friends , a lot of them no longer plays , so i quit.
Oh a closed server w/o dungeon finder , is 1 of the best things why?
Ninja/botersJerks? Good luck finding a group to do anything! u will be blacklisted/ignored by the whole server , u better delete that char and star over again w/o doing that.
Name change ? not gonna happen even if u did that u were found and exposed.
City of Heroes had a really great community back in the day.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I bet such a game would have fewer people than darkfall did half a year after the original launch.
Most people do like challenges but they also want to relax after a long days work. Very very hard, don't think so, having to work for everything - I just came from work.
Make it fun, make it very easy to group and maybe maybe that will overcome the other inconveniences.
I'd prefer a game that allows for adjustable choices in difficulty for everything. Emphasis on the ADJUSTABLE part.
Granted, you'd probably have to account for things such as the grouping and things like that.
And before anyone brings up WoW's raid finder, that ONLY applies to raiding; everything else you can do, like PVP, Questing, Dungeons, and some other stuff that I'm likely forgetting is pretty much "take it or leave it," which in this case, either results in things being braindead easy (especially at lower levels) or outright annoying when an unfortunate alt character with few viable items outside of maybe 1 or two heirlooms gets curbstomped by a platoon of heirloom covered alts.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE ABOVE IS BASED ON CATACLYSM EXPERIENCE, AND THUS IS OUTDATED; I HAVEN'T PLAYED MOP SO I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT IS LIKE.
it's pretty clear that a lot of people here don't understand that fundamental differences in design lead to changes in community dynamics and social atmosphere. a game like everquest provides a radically different social experience than that of a game that ushers you through the world as you complete mundane solo quests.
furthermore, mmos should not be made with the "casual" player mind. despite whatever half-baked arguments you come up with, casual players aren't the ones supporting the gaming industry. only have 30 minutes to play a game? play wizard101 or angry birds on your phone. or you can behave like a normal person and play an mmo when you have adequate free time. unfortunately, developers fall into this trap and end up creating 100-million-dollar mmos that have no longevity.