Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Remember the good old MMO's? Taking off my rose-colored glasses and seeing reality
DrCokePepsi
Member UncommonPosts: 177
To everyone who so strongly opposes P2P.
I want to give you a look into what MMOs would be like if we just harbored the mechanics that have been successful and have maintained such a loving, loyal player-base/community, rather than crushing it at every turn for the sole fact that god-forbid a couple dollars should be spent a month.
Let's reminisce...
Asheron's Call was my very first MMO. This game, back in the day, was groundbreaking. Though in today's standards this game doesn't have such an attraction to new players as it used to, the gameplay mechanics are still fantastic, even compared to the new MMORPGs. This game has a huge open world, the friendliest community i have literally ever seen. For example...
My First day in this game I remember I met a Viamontian standing outside Yaraq, and he noticed I was nooby. He then offered me gold, armor, food, spell runes and the sorts, and i was inducted into his Allegiance. The guild/allegiance had helped me throughout the game for the entirety I had played. We ran through dungeons, did mass PvP, and explored as an allegiance. We were great in-game friends, and I have never felt a stronger connection. These developers had fully developed a deep, complex, and living world. The skill system in this game was amazing and the crafting was a challenge. When you died, you would lose lots of precious items encouraging you to recover your corpse, often causing you to ask guild-members to come help. This formed memories, bonds, and an experience like no other.
Now, to Star Wars Galaxies.
SWG was by far THE MOST fun and best experience in an MMO I've ever had. Period. Everything about it was truly a gem. I played Pre-NGE up until a year before the death of this game. The options in this game were infinite, the community and the crafting was pure perfection, and the freedom was like no other. Am I speaking from Nostalgia? No. If i could repurchase the game today and it was alive, in fact, if it was alive at all I would still be playing. Pre-NGE leveling skills, creating your own combat style and experiencing the world was awesome.
I also played Runescape.
This game was by far, the most unique I've ever played. It stemmed from me playing back in the '06 days, taking a year break then playing again up until 2010-11. It offered a truly unique and fun playstyle. You could level skills, create a combat style based on what skills you level and obtain certain gears also based on your skills. PvP/PKing was especially fun due to the high risk and reward factors, and the fact that you yourself were a truly unique character playing against others who are also truly unique. This game was a blast. The hell of a grind made the rewards and community only so much more sweet.
So, the moral of the story is, if a modern MMOrpg tried embracing the mechanics of old, but with more polish and enhancements, rather than just deny the old mechanics and keep revamping what has always been loved. And none of this would be accomplished without P2P. Having a cash-shop wrecks the immersion and an F2P without a cash-shop could just simply not achieve what these games would require.
The MMOrpg genre is designed for the patient, curious, adventurous, ambitious gamers. The type of players who like to socialize, explore, and achieve self-set goals. It is factually not designed to be hopped-between and played solo. MMORPG's are the outlet for exploration and adventure not churning through quest after quest, and that is ultimately what these modern MMORPG's are designed for, all in the name of greed and money, not ambition.
-as a side note, I have played many, many other MMO's as well, but these made the largest impression on my gaming career.
+http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/06/26/massively-reminisces-on-star-wars-galaxies-10th-anniversary/
Thanks for reading.
Never fear, your dream MMO will be here....
just give me a decade or two to finely hone my Game development
and design abilities as well as start a Game Design Studio.
Thank you for your patience.
Comments
Never fear, your dream MMO will be here....
just give me a decade or two to finely hone my Game development
and design abilities as well as start a Game Design Studio.
Thank you for your patience.
I absolutely don't agree. The player marketplace is not the same today as it was back then. People need to stop pretending that it is. As soon as MMOs went mainstream, the old-school players were completely dwarfed by the incoming mainstream playerbase. There just aren't enough old-school players to make that kind of game financially viable anymore.
The genie is out of the bottle, it's never going to go back in, no matter how many people wish it would happen.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
dang it , ya beat me to it.
This could end up being very interesting.
Today is it even really about the game anymore? It seems it is all about the cash shops and the new reskinned fuzzy back packs.
Maybe its because I had hopes that mmorpg's would mature with me as I got older but they seem to have went the other way and are going after the childlings now. I just can't seem to get excited anymore with some of the new titles that are coming out from the AAA camps, so I have turned to the Indie guys and will see what they can crank out.
Never fear, your dream MMO will be here....
just give me a decade or two to finely hone my Game development
and design abilities as well as start a Game Design Studio.
Thank you for your patience.
Your right it isn't ,todays players want everything NOW. Most recent example I can think of?
Star Wars The Old Republic.......Anything can be had there for a price of admission to their gawd awful cartel market.
That game has moved so much from the "class story" to the total monetization of any unique gameplay that could have been included in the game itself. The HK companion, fairly good reward for doing a semi-long string of missions. The new ewok? Well you can do the mission OR by pass all that and just buy the damn thing.
Look...when I first started playing mmo's was when UO first happened. Back when there wasn't a Felluca and Trammel , when pk was still a viable income. it took work to get what you wanted, the best gear was what YOU could craft.
Now..as long as you have a credit card...welp you know how that goes. It is why I am hoping that the new titles that are coming out as p2p succeed. Sick and tired of the cash shop thing!
Only other thing that can only happen is a total collapse of the genre , like what happened to game consoles before Nintendo arrived on the scene.
Remember that??
You are insulting the new players tbh, just because you only get fastfood mmorpgs today does not mean that there's no one in the new players group who would like to play a bit more deeper games. When you dont even have the choise it's kinda hard to argue how well or how bad a big budget mmorpg with more depth and complexion, something that strays from the basic formula, would do currently.
There aren't a significant number because if there were, market research conducted by MMOs would find them and assuming there are enough people to make a game financially worthwhile, they'd be making games for them. The fact that they do not shows that there just aren't that many people that want an old-school game.
You people can keep trying to convince yourself that old-school games are still viable, they just aren't.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
IMHO the new games are not much different than the older games. The difference is today the genre is flooded with choices. No one takes the time to explore the game they are currently playing, because the second they are bored they jump to another title. I believe it is why WoW became so popular, there was very little to choose from, and the game grew along with it's player base. I'm curious as to how well WoW would do if it came out today.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
The problem isn't the playerbase. New players or old. If the right game were available for the right price, (I really don't care what the model is, so long as it's appropriate for the game) Players will play.
The problem is with the most recent games is that developers just don't seem to be designing any longevity into the games. Giving everything to the players so they are done in 2-4 weeks is suicide for an MMORPG.
Never really got into the FF series so will sit that one out and AA doesn't really look like it for me either. I will probably check out ESO depends how open beta pans out but other than that gonna wait for Shroud of the Avatar and Camelot Unchained. Really wish there was more on the radar for me but looks like a lot of waiting is in my future for new games.
Mostly agree, but you lost me with SWG. That's a different species altogether.
SWG players didn't have rose-colored glasses to take off. They had rose-colored lenses grafted on to their corneas. Those are never coming off.
I feel this way towards shadowbane
Characters build on offensive/defensive/spellcasting skill levels with abilities based on how high each one was. This left you with 10+ different builds on each class, before runes. Runes spawned off of rare spawn mobs, some gave you new abilities (basically subclasses, you could have up to 3) and some gave you higher stat caps( between +5 to +40). The combinations were endless and all of them unique.
They have real stealth which only the scout class could reveal, thieves could steal from your inventory.
You built your own cities literally plan by plan, including merchants(which is where crafting was done, you had to level them and give them resources too), banks, walls, GUARDS (all different types and could set their aggression and pathing).
All in open world PVP. The resources to make the best items were all contested nodes that only one guild could control at a time.
They built a world , put tons of valuables spread throughout it, then made us all fight over it. Even location on the map was important. I remember trying to siege cities build on islands.
It's literally everything people QQ about never having in a game anymore. Went F2P in like 2006 and was overrun by chinese. You would show up to a siege with 50 people but they would have 300.
I don't think people want an "old school" MMO....we want an MMO that makes you want to get on and play everyday and to just have fun with your friends that make in the game. In MMOs these days you don't really make friends...you are just playing with people to get "phat lewtz".
The new generation of the MMO gamer just wants everything handed to them and it done quickly or they lose interest. With this mindset no wonder new MMOs flop after a few months, you don't ever feel like you have accomplished anything because everyone and their momma has the same shit you do.
People knew each other in older MMO's, like in SWG there were crafters and then there were the master crafters who could make the best weapons/armor. I would always go to a certain armor/weapon crafter because he had the best shit and gave me good deals. You don't see this in MMOs these days because everyone can be a crafter and have awesome recipes for things.....which IMO defeats the point. I felt like a complete badass in SWG because I had the choice to do what I wanted to do....not what some guide told me to do. And speaking of guides, I think they have ruined MMO's and many other games for that matter. People don't take the time to learn how to do things on their own so they don't know why you put points into this skill and what it does...they just do it because <Pro Player Joe> does it so its what I should be doing.
Now that was a post worth reading. Well done, sir!
/salute
There is no single "MMORPGs should be designed this way."
If there was, it wouldn't be the answer you want.
There are only successful MMORPG formulas, and unsuccessful ones.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Spot on, Ceph.
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
Visiting these forums is like going to a retirement home. The place is full of self-styled old timers droning endlessly on about how things were better back in the day. FWIW, I fully empathize with the sentiment but I'm really bored of hearing about it.
Change happens, for better and for worse. This genre is presently going through an evolutionary burst. The strains that survive to pass on their genes (mechanics) will be those that continually and successfully adapt to the market's changing demands. The best that we can hope for is that the market will eventually come to demand something more closely attuned to our own preferences.
Yeah. I played SWG pre-CU and the game had some serious design and gameplay issues. A lot of the advanced professions had their key abilities broken, the doctor buffs unbalanced the game to a massive degree, trying to level a crafting profession could cripple the player due to repetetive strain injuries because of a bad UI. The Holo Grind was the ultimate example of the 'make everything an extreme grind' philosophy of MMORPG design. It was a sandbox game that tended to lock its players into specific playstyles and penalized them for trying to progress horizontally.
It was a great concept but the game needed serious work to get it close to what it was supposed to be.
I don't want old school MMORPGs. In fact, i quit the genre and did not come back until they evolved into better games for me.
No it's not that complicated tbh, all they do is look at the game which has largest sub numbers and try to make a similar game with some trivial twist. That's all the research there is.
And I'm not trumpeting about oldschool games, I dont want oldschool games, I want new games, the problem is we get the same game that was made 10 years ago every year now. Thank god about the new direction some big studios were suggesting about in the PAX future of mmorpgs panel. No more clones.Much like our childhood (if it was a good one) we tend to romanticize the past; particularly with gaming. There were great games in our past, but I don't think they were all that many make them out to be... people will forever fondly remmeber their "first love" or "past loves"; but that's the past and we live in the ever-changing present. Like Kuinn I am looking forward to new games. Not just new games for the sake of new games, but innovation and improvements. All you have to do is read my past posts to know that I strongly believe that GW2 is a good example of a new game with innovations and improved "old school" mechanics.
As for P2P vs F2P/B2P, ya'll better start getting used to the new mmo world order, cause F2P/B2P is the future, like it or not. I like it because I personally think being forced to pay monthly fees just to have access to a game you've already purchased is ridiculous! Anet has debunked the notion that P2P is required in order to have a AAA quality game. The notion that P2P = quality no longer is true (if it ever was true)
As for old school games still being viable, I think they are; maybe not entirely but surely many of the mechanics which characterize old school games are very much still compatible with today's gaming market.
What are you talking about?
MOBA is new 2 years back.
Destiny and Division looks new.
TSW has a new setting.
STO is the only star Trek MMORPG (or for that matter, only recent star trek TNG GAME)
......