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Is there a negative stigma against "MMO"?
Bidwood
Member Posts: 554
- Elder Scrolls Online is now described as "more of a multiplayer Elder Scrolls than MMO".
- Similar comments were made about Destiny and The Division.
Any others?
I'm wondering if this is a marketing thing to draw in people who are turned off by the term "MMO" or if these games are legitimately somewhere in between multi-player and MMO. "Large Multiplayer Online" game? 
Comments
I don't know if it is because people are turned off by something called an MMO but I'm confident assuming it's a marketing ploy of some kind nevertheless. I actually see more of the opposite though, games claiming they are MMOs for marketing reasons rather than factual reasons. Hex was the last game I saw do this successfully but it wasn't the first nor do I think it'll be the last.
I'm not sure if there is a negative stigma against MMO's or not but I guess it depends who you ask. Some people are very jaded and bitter regarding the state of the genre so they might say so but on the other hand they generally have a vision or some hope of how it could be improved and are very passionate about it. Than there are people who are happy with the genre and I guess for them the answer would be different.
So the best I can do other than point out that it's subjective is to give my own feelings regarding it. MMO still has positive connotations with me. I can enjoy some of them now, I have hope for them in the future but most importantly I think they have more potential than any other genre out there and as such MMO excites me still.
The term has so much baggage to it in the form of expectation and preconception that most Western developers are either avoiding the term or using it only where they have to. Some more examples of where it is and isn't used:
My prediction is that over the next year you'll see the use of that term shift further and further out in the rings of discussion until it's no longer used. Those concentric rings being core gamers > MMO gamers > MMO gaming site > gaming press > other press/media. I say that because that's where it's already going. While SOE and the old guard of early devs are attached to the term, the newer studios - especially their marketing and PR teams - are going to steer clear of it.
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
It's been over a decade. They're probably familiar with the term by now.
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
That's not what I meant. I am talking about crossing genres to play a game type that under other circumstances wouldn't appeal. Now the industry is trying desperately to keep players who wouldn't otherwise have come into a genre where slow and steady is the name of the game if not for a fluke.
Of course there's a negative stigma. The gameplay found in non-MMOs has consistently been higher quality on average than MMO gameplay, in part due to the enormous technical and design tax of being MMO.
MMOs have historically had a lot of nonsense system design (staring at spellbooks, excessive travel times) which have either existed without benefit, or at least without a benefit that was worth it.
But of course it's not all about avoiding the stigma. Partly it's marketing, and partly it's genuine intent to create a game which is as fun as a non-MMO (like Skyrim.) Although this renews my concerns about how fun the game's group play will be, as that's what keeps me playing an MMO. Maybe I'll talk with my friend who's working on it to raise this concern.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There is in fact. And with all the F2P titles released in the past 5 years, doesn't help the MMO world at all. The future of MMO's are in the hands of indie developers that will try and create a MMO for a certain type of audience and not aiming for 50 billion$ profit a year along with 10 million active players. 2014 is the year of the Indie , with some nice titles announced for release , and I ain't talking about the flop which will be The Elder Scrolls Online. 2013 is a sad year for MMO's.
There are also good things about MMOs that single player games cannot compete with. I don't feel like putting too much effort into writing a list of things and how they work in combination to provide an experience not found in single player games (because most of us including you know it already) so I'll just sum it up by saying the social intricacies combined with persistency and more content make MMOs capable of delivering something not found in single player games.
Uo, Eq, AC, SWG, DAOC
Massively multiplayer online game.
Wow, rift, eve, and the clones
Multiplayer online
Defiance, ESO, ect
Guess in a way i am saying as the social immersion drops, games seem to be becoming online single player games that have other people in them, and that is kinda sad
over 20 years of mmorpg's and counting...
Heck, I'm not sure anyone is making traditional MMORPGs anymore.
"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
MMO usually is code word for "not fun" in my mind.
For a lot of non mmo players, it also has the stigma of grindy gameplay attached to it. A lot of my gamer friends won't play them because of that.
WOW and RIFT are as much an RPG as any videogame RPG ever made...
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Its a marketing tactic.
its been confirmed that TESO isnt a MMO at all. Its a CORPG like GW1 but with a larger scale version of PvP. World is instanced like Neverwinter for PvE in which only a small percentage of the population you can ever see at the same time or play with. only chat windows have the MMO scale.
Notice games like Guild Wars 1 also used that statement ""more of a multiplayer Elder Scrolls than MMO""
Its a statement used to hype up MMO players because it mentions the term directly, while also appealing to non MMO players.
its very clever. I learn to pick up on these kind of things. So dont mind me on this. Sheep-minded consumers dont really care until after the hype drops and their money is wasted.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Might I suggest they just don't make them like they used to, so gaming companies are getting wary of being compared to the large online worlds that we used to have?
We do have different kinds of MMO games coming out, but many are calling themselves MMO's and then setting their own standards for what that means. As a term it will not die out, but there has been problems with adopting new names for new types of MMO, I think we should embrace that. what's wrong with MMOFPS? Online action RPG's seem to have the same ARPG term as their offline counter parts, sometimes they are called online ARPG MMO's, this is where it gets confusing.
Marketing is to blame here I think, "if we put MMO in the title we will get more hits" that sort of thinking has caused a real problem. We do get these issues posted on here quite a bit which shows players are sometimes being puzzled by what companies are calling their games. But the terms have and will evolve, I think the types of games may evolve faster though!
- People that exclusively play shooters, or sport games often see mmos a lame and boring, as games for geeky types where people speak in thees in thous, and there is not much action.
- There is a bad picture painted of mmos in the media. There are people that get addicted and there are many horror stories about players falling dead from chairs because of dehydration and babies starving to death.
- Some people only know bad F2P grinders and associate mmos with cheap games just made to grab money. Somehow these are the games that invest the most into promotion. When I see ads for mmos on the net or on tv its always for some really bad asian grinder. Its even the same on this site.
- And there are the people (where i add myself to some extent) that think that mmos are always this same old same old. If you have seen WoW, you have basically seen them all.
Over the years the mmo-genre has become narrowed on a set of stereotypical features and it is dragging along a lot of dead weight. This is the same way the point and klick adventure genre ended. If mmos are not able to break the mold soon the genre is in danger of going the same way. At least games are starting to take baby steps in the right direction.
Nowadays, yes. For two reasons.
Either they have no idea what it means because virtually every game with an online component, from LoL to Age of Empires Online are being called MMOs.
Or, they just picture a fantasy setting where they quest grind, aka, a WoW clone, and assume all MMOs are like that. And who can blame them? 8 years since WoW came out and only TWO AAA MMORPGs could be safely called not WoW clones.
Which two AAA games would you consider not a WoW clone?
WOW was a fluke - a very good one. It proved that you did not have to grind, grind, grind, et al like all the MMOs before it. WOW proved that there was a market for something other than hard core pvp and teenage boys on steroids. There was a place for care bears and women and older players.
Pure MMOs are dying and no more are being developed - as documented by the OP and other posters. The money (investors) are all pushing the mobile platform. Any development of the traditional MMO will be from independent (mostly Kickstarter) financing. Sorry, you are not going to make a AAA MMO on a shoestring budget.
The age of MMOs is passing. You want even more d--ming proof just look at the editors of this site. Their favorite MMOs are basically FPS with some roleplay. [I tried to find the last link but couldn't in my time frame.] This is no fault of their own - that is what the main audience is today. Look at everything from ESO to Firefall to Planetside.
Don't get me wrong. I am old enough to remember Avalon Hill board games. I saw the birth of paper and pencil rpgs, muds and the first mmos. Things change sometimes for the bad sometimes for the good. The only constant is change. Being a geezer I have a tendency to look back. For me the years with TBC and WOLK were the height of the MMO experience. But that is my personal opinion. The old MMOs are being replaced. Cry about it I may but it is just a part of the "circle of life".
I am going to miss SWTOR and RIFT and WOW when they finally shut down. I just wish that the companies would do what NCsoft did with GW1 - just let it run. But, looking at my stack of 8-track tapes, I doubt that is going to happen.
gameplay > graphics
Vanguard and Guild Wars 2.
Vanguard is a triple A title? As far as i remember it was a pile of utter unplayable garbage upon release. And my definition of AAA title is something absolutely opposite to that.
As for topic i can see some lobby games pretending to be MMOs (like World of Tanks) and some MMORPGs pretending they are something else. So i think it's just a PR move to tell people that this game is something different from a whole bunch of similar products and nothing more. Personally i dont care because if you try to pretend that lemon is actually an apple i still can see that it's an apple.
Which is good, because the baggage of expectation is enormous.
Because all the successful games that have commonality with MMOs like LoL, WoT, D3, ...... are deemed not MMOs anymore by the hardcore players.
With such a narrow minded way to define MMO, of course, MMO is viewed as a very narrow genre that does not entertain the masses. Hence developers try to steer away from the label.
In fact, on the opposite side, in many industry research analysis, MMO is defined much more broadly.