I trust a small blogger or videomaker way more that crap like IGN. At least the blogger has probably played the game and is giving his or her honest opinion about it.
While I agree with you to a point, remember I said that bad games get neutral reviews.
Plenty of other games got 6-8. It's true when looking at reviews like this that you need to knock down a point or two I believe because they don't want to come off as overly harsh. As you and I both said, ad dollars and access are always a concern.
IGN is pretty big though and gets some leverage in the market, where a no name is more inclined to give an amazing review for more access in the future no? It can cut both ways.
After playing all the major populated mmo's for the last five years, and seeing the latest successful game XIV now with 2.1 and its failure to deliver on housing, with no profits to be made in crafting or farming, and their raid gear having boxed in and awkward stats, and with EQ 2 and WoW on old systems with old graphics and gameplay, I can honestly say ESO will be the next huge successful game, and has a chance now to actually capitalize on game by making strong the weaknesses in these other games in their current state.
Where can ESO capitalize on being the next long term successful game?
1. Housing, make housing huge as EQ Next housing is going to be, and to make it cheap and accessible to everyone, this will allow them to get rid of competition from FFXIV which failed to deliver in that area, and will compete with EQ Next when it hits the markets in 2014.
If housing is the most important thing for you, MMO´s are not for you, MMOs to me are about adventuring and heroic deeds... Houses are not part of that
2. Crafting. Make sure that crafting is useful and most profitable for end game. Another area where FFXIV has failed in 2.1 patch, and where EQ2 seemed to have failed also with the allowing of selling of raid gear to other players. If you keep the crafters at the top of the game in second best spot to raiding or other activities, you'll see you'll win the heart of every crafter out there and disgruntled crafter on other games.
If you want to make crafting proffitable, make sure crafters are rare..
3. Farming. Make sure farming is profitable and not being controlled so heavily which XIV also has just done. Not sure what EQ Next will be like for farming yet but its got to be worth doing. EQ2 also had great farming rewards with Exquisite chest drops on mobs. I'm sure ESO can do better in rewarding farmers who love to spend hours in the field farming mobs for crafters. Throwing a nice reward bone every once in a while after grinding on mobs would seal the deal and win over all farmers who like this type of gameplay.
Farming is boring by nature, make sure not to add any farming areas to your game, people hate grind ing things
4. Raid Gear. Make sure raid gear is worth using and wearing, with really rewarding raiding to all members and not just one or two per a raid. I would like to see more customization with stats on raid gear, where you can choose your stats or abilities on your raid gear.... I see boxed in raid gear and only a few members getting rewards far too often lately and its not very good for moral of guilds or their members. Throw each member in the guild a 5% or 10% progress per a raid towards something useful endgame, and youll have a lot of happy raiders on your hands.
The gear system of ESo is just perfect with randomized stats, there will be 3 levels of endgame zones, level 50, 50+ and 50++ zones... each has 150 raid zones, all adventure and story based.. looking very much forward to this
6. Storylines and RPG. You must have a well written and timeline lore in game that makes the player feel part of the game . This is the most important part of the game, and the reason Mines of Moria got Expansion of the year, and XIV became such a success. It allowed the player to move through a timeline in the world and actually feel the adventure of something big happening around them XIV did such a great job of this and this is where a lot of the real competition will come from in the future. I have no doubt after seeing skyrim that they have what it takes to get this part right and the feel of RPG.
I think the storyline will be very much like in lotro.. involving and a major part of the game...
7. Dungeons. Your going to have to have dungeons that have hidden chests, secret puzzles and other things in them to be better then other games out right now and to compete with future games who will someday make their dungeons complex and puzzle orientated as a huge bonus and reward side quest to a dungeon. These puzzles and bonus rewards in dungeons should not affect completion of the dungeon though, so less smart people will still be able to progress to the end. Its going to have to be really enjoyable in the aspect of exploration and mind puzzles. Keep gameplay flowing really good and challenging on mini bosses and end bosses of the dungeons, but not cheapshot players.
Puzzles are a bad thing, solutions can be found on the world wide web, unless they require stupid random actions. Dungeons should be story based, where players need to make choices based on the eveolving stories
8. Game World. This one is something I really have not seen a bunch of yet in recent mmo's so the bar for exploration is pretty low, but to keep any other game from competing in the future with this game is to have a massive world. One that takes atleast an hour or more to cross the entire thing.... Have a lot of hidden rewards in unexplored areas, that are randomized around the world and you can bet this could seal the deal for competition with EQ Next or any other game that might capitalize on this as a weakness in this game.
You just described GW2s game world
I think if all this is payed attention to and done, you will see ESO as the Next BIG One we have to play for years to come.
The game will do well as it is planned to be right now.... story based feeling like an online version of an elder scrolls game... To make stories more compelling, there will be a lot of phasing and instancing.. the only true consistent part of the world will be the PvP areas..
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I've only seen videos but it looks... mediocre? Like, it doesn't look bad, nor does it excite me in any way. I guess this means it stands a chance to be an okay MMO unless they rush the launch and deliver it way too early like so many MMO's
I'm only really interested in the realm pvp though
If housing is the most important thing for you, MMO´s are not for you, MMOs to me are about adventuring and heroic deeds... Houses are not part of that
I have been playing MMO's for over a decade now, and after spending years in MMO's Ive come to realize that I enjoy having a place in a game where all my thropies hang and tell the story of my adventures and heroic deeds. Something that shows my accomplishments in the game. I agree, for me its not going to be a place I spend the whole gametime in, but its a place of a memorial, a rememberance, and creativity of those memories. I have come to see this as a must in games because I know years into the game, I will have something digital to show for my adventures besides an achievment log. I point you to EQ landmark to show how popular housing has become, when a game company can pull in millions of users and make them pay for a founding pack before a game is even released. It speaks volumes, even if you dont like housing or require it, many people do now more then ever before.
If you want to make crafting proffitable, make sure crafters are rare..
I think crafting is always profitable as long as the items made are second to best gear, and things that people will buy for the pudding of the game. Things like housing for example. In everquest 2 I sold more housing items then any gear could have ever sold, I couldnt even possibly think of filling the entire market of housing items because it was so vast. If crafting is for more then just gear and a vast crafting system, I think you can have as many crafters as you want and it will be profitable for every crafter out there.
Farming is boring by nature, make sure not to add any farming areas to your game, people hate grind ing things
Yes, farming is boring, very very boring, if your not into grinding. Though a lot of people don't like farming and hate grinding things, there is a small population who get rich off of farming because of people like you, who do not and will never go to the fields to do the work they do... Farmers are the true backbone of games and fetch and market their goods and get rich off of the lazy or players who have lack of time in a game to do such activities. You may be surprised that only a small percentage of people love to farm, but why deny those small percentage of people their favorite way of making money in a game, just like crafters love to craft to make money, I think we should draw in as many people and ways to make money in game as possible for diversity of players.
The gear system of ESo is just perfect with randomized stats, there will be 3 levels of endgame zones, level 50, 50+ and 50++ zones... each has 150 raid zones, all adventure and story based.. looking very much forward to this
Yeah this seems to be a great strongpoint in ESO and I love the amount of customization we can do with our charactetrs abilities also. I agree with this, and this is the most important part of the game. Its foundation of why we play.
I think the storyline will be very much like in lotro.. involving and a major part of the game...
Yeah, Elder Scrolls is always been very story orientated, I think this is also a major reason we play the game and will be fully satisfied after seeing the Lore Master of previous games is working with ESO dev team on the storyline.
Puzzles are a bad thing, solutions can be found on the world wide web, unless they require stupid random actions. Dungeons should be story based, where players need to make choices based on the eveolving stories
First let me start by addressing the you tube vids and guides, sure they let people know the answer to puzzles if they don't randomly change, and a lot of game producers have not wanted to put randomized stuff in game because of the amount of bugs it could generate. I wanted to say also that looking back to FFXI with the arcane flowerpots, it took people three years of knowing a machine in a dungeon but not how it worked. SE had to tell the gamers a hint before it was figured out, and it generated the best flower pots in the game. I think having puzzles or mind benders that are scaled to a degree to the point that even the smartest person could not figure them out would be a gem in any game, expecially ESO. Throw a rare ore in game that starts something huge, or a stone in the wilderness that is hidden that can start a raid. Things all over the game world that is put in each month till it is figured out and already done and over. I love this type of thing in a game, and adds a element of wonder, and mystery that can send you looking at everything like a mad man wonderin if there is a secret to it, it adds a great deal of spice. Expecially for explorers who go exploring the game world, and see something odd or out of place in some area and can be rewarded for using their brains to solve something, even if its only a one time random event... it will add a great feeling of mystrery, hope, and luck in players to know they can find things like that. You might even bump into other explorers in the game in the middle of nowhere searching like you... (these woods be empty no more)
Think of the repect it would give for the work of devs who created and took all those hours building that empty part of the game world, to give it meaning and draw people to come enjoy their artwork.
You just described GW2s game world
Never played GW2 yet, probably the only game I skiped over. But I constantly here it is a mega world, and if that is the case, then yes, GW2 game world would be perfect.
The game will do well as it is planned to be right now.... story based feeling like an online version of an elder scrolls game... To make stories more compelling, there will be a lot of phasing and instancing.. the only true consistent part of the world will be the PvP areas..
I agree whole heartedly, the game will do well, has a lot of hype and people ready to play... Even if all this stuff is not in game right now, I can wait till it is. I would be nice to see all this in the game, and any game that does all this, I think will be the number one game of the year in any year its released.
Comments
While I agree with you to a point, remember I said that bad games get neutral reviews.
Look at the IGN list of recent reviews.
http://www.ign.com/games/reviews?startIndex=100
Note NBA Live EA sports got a 4.3
Plenty of other games got 6-8. It's true when looking at reviews like this that you need to knock down a point or two I believe because they don't want to come off as overly harsh. As you and I both said, ad dollars and access are always a concern.
IGN is pretty big though and gets some leverage in the market, where a no name is more inclined to give an amazing review for more access in the future no? It can cut both ways.
one million dollars. =P
Well it was money well spent. Even my opinion was swayed lol
The game will do well as it is planned to be right now.... story based feeling like an online version of an elder scrolls game... To make stories more compelling, there will be a lot of phasing and instancing.. the only true consistent part of the world will be the PvP areas..
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I've only seen videos but it looks... mediocre? Like, it doesn't look bad, nor does it excite me in any way. I guess this means it stands a chance to be an okay MMO unless they rush the launch and deliver it way too early like so many MMO's
I'm only really interested in the realm pvp though
I agree whole heartedly, the game will do well, has a lot of hype and people ready to play... Even if all this stuff is not in game right now, I can wait till it is. I would be nice to see all this in the game, and any game that does all this, I think will be the number one game of the year in any year its released.