Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

MMOs used to be unique

2»

Comments

  • Vermillion_RaventhalVermillion_Raventhal Member EpicPosts: 4,198
    Originally posted by Righteous_Rock

    With the web, twitch, youtube, and all the like, the magic of mmo's has vanished. You used to have to play the game to see what was around the corner, now you can watch beta testing on twitch and clearly see that you have been there and done that sort of thing before and there is nothing unique about the experience you're about to embark on, and furthermore it would clearly be a waste of your time to do something that has been done a million times already.

    Being creative has gone out of the window as well, there are too many strategy guides and this and that scenario and how to handle this situation or that situation - the world has become one big cookie cut themepark.

    Even your sandboxes can't save you because it won't be long and that sandbox will be filled with all the things you have already seen.

     

    Do you really need to watch twich to see how the next themepark was going to be played?  

  • AlBQuirkyAlBQuirky Member EpicPosts: 7,432


    Originally posted by grimal

    Originally posted by Magiknight

    Originally posted by LacedOpium
    The genre is going through a natural process of evolution.  Nothing more, nothing less.  These decline, rose colored glasses, where have you gone, I miss you so much, type threads are starting to become a bit redundant.
    Evolution is not improvement
    Actually, it is.Evolution: The gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex form. (Oxford Dictionary)
    Nothing said about "improvement", though. Improvement is an opinion, comparing two or more states.

    Just because something "evolves" does not automatically mean "better", contrary to some people's personal beliefs.

    On Topic:
    MMOs were unique. The genre was unique. Only a handful or two of games and each one was developed on its own, with its own ideas. Now, MMOs see all the money to be made have formulated the games to the best datamining. The soul is gone from the genre.

    - Al

    Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.
    - FARGIN_WAR


  • MagiknightMagiknight Member CommonPosts: 782
    Originally posted by grimal
    Originally posted by Magiknight
    Originally posted by LacedOpium

     

    The genre is going through a natural process of evolution.  Nothing more, nothing less.  These decline, rose colored glasses, where have you gone, I miss you so much, type threads are starting to become a bit redundant.

     

    Evolution is not improvement

     

    Actually, it is.

    Evolution: The gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex form.

    (Oxford Dictionary)

    How does something gradually changing make it better???

    It's like saying that people now are better than they were during the renaissance just because it's a later time period.. Give me a break.

  • maybebakedmaybebaked Member UncommonPosts: 305
    Originally posted by grimal
    Originally posted by Vermillion_Raventhal
    Originally posted by grimal
    Originally posted by maybebaked
    Movies, books and TV shows used to be unique too.

    Are you kidding me?  It's the golden age of television right now.  We are seeing a level of televised entertainment of a quality never before realized in mass numbers.

    And also a golden of trash TV to balance it out.  

    True but I find it hard to swallow that television is no longer unique.  With shows like Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black, True Detective it's a rather odd thing to say.

    Everything is derivative. These titles aren't exploring new ideas, they are just presenting them in a different way.

  • ThestrainThestrain Member CommonPosts: 390
    Originally posted by LacedOpium
    Originally posted by grimal
    Originally posted by maybebaked
    Movies, books and TV shows used to be unique too.

    Are you kidding me?  It's the golden age of television right now.  We are seeing a level of televised entertainment of a quality never before realized in mass numbers.

     

    This has to be sarcasm.

    Huh?

    Breaking bad, The Sopranos,  Game Of Thrones,  Mad Men,  24, The Wire, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, The Shield...

    Shall i go on? or you are one of the guys who just flips through all channels and just complain 'nothing good is on'.

     

    Originally posted by maybebaked

    Everything is derivative. These titles aren't exploring new ideas, they are just presenting them in a different way.

     

     

    Good luck with finding something 100% unique then. Some of you have unreasonable expectations.

  • LakytusLakytus Member Posts: 59
    Originally posted by Magiknight
    Originally posted by grimal
    Originally posted by Magiknight
    Originally posted by LacedOpium

     

    The genre is going through a natural process of evolution.  Nothing more, nothing less.  These decline, rose colored glasses, where have you gone, I miss you so much, type threads are starting to become a bit redundant.

     

    Evolution is not improvement

     

    Actually, it is.

    Evolution: The gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex form.

    (Oxford Dictionary)

    How does something gradually changing make it better???

    It's like saying that people now are better than they were during the renaissance just because it's a later time period.. Give me a break.

    Evolution doesn't mean something gets better, all it means is that things change and adapt. Mammals aren't "better" than dinosaurs, they just adapted to the environment they were in.

    And such is like the existence of mmos. They used to be a niche sub-genre of video game. Everquest, Asheron's Call, and Ultima online were the only main ones at the time, themselves being an evolution of MUDs and Meridian 59. Then came Dark Age of Camelot and Anarchy Online. They evolved the genre further with PvP and Sci-fi. All of these games were made for very specific target audiences, and in general, were made by the same kind of people who wanted to play the games. No one did it to become mega millionaires, they did it for the love of fantasy. These were hardcore games for hardcore players.

    Skip ahead to WoW. 1 million+ subcribers is now the new minimum, when previously 100k was a large number. This game attracted many different types of players to the genre. No longer was it the realm of D&D and Tolkien fantasy nerds. Regular and casual gamers were starting to get into this "new" genre. It wasn't really new, but it was new to the mainstream. Soloing and easy content was in and there was no going back.

    One year later, Xbox 360 came out and basically broken open video games for the masses. The way video games were made and played changed forever. Now everyone was playing video games. World of Warcraft was now in the millions of subscribers and home consoles were selling by the millions in just a few short years. "Nerdy" stuff was no longer nerdy; it was accepted by everyone because everyone was doing it.

    With this came the change of all future mmos. No longer could you make a game that didn't sell millions of copies, because WoW did it and everyone wanted to become rich. Business people took over and cared only about short term profits and box sales. You had to make the game as casual as possible because your investors wanted to see those millions. There were no more 80 people raids, or camping 30 hours for your sword, because Jimmy was 14 years old and didn't have the attention span, and the stay-at-home mom only had a few hours while the kids were at school.

    So today, mmos are just another game release, like the next Call of Duty. Sell 1 million boxes, people get bored, then move on to the next one. It's no one's fault really, things just evolved this way; this is the new environment. These games cost so much to make now. Everyone is too scared to try something new incase they get only 250,000 subscribers, so we keep getting the same rehash because it's proven to sell. The hardcore players that supported the old mmo genre grew up, got jobs, and started families. They don't have time anymore either, so they get into the new casual mmo also.

    The new evolution is Free to Play, so now everyone can play as many games as they want like a bunch of ADHD children, going from one to the next like an unsupervised child in a candy store. Hopefully one of them hooks you and you spend all of your money on it; that is how the game survive now, feeding to the addiction.

    Maybe the genre will evolve into something meaningful again. MMOs were originally a new technology experiment, and who knows what new technology will bring us? Perhaps it will take something catastrophic, like the meteor that caused the dinosaurs to go extinct and let the mammals rise, for us to see that new niche genre.

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by grimal
    Originally posted by nariusseldon
    Originally posted by grimal

    I firmly believe we will begin to see more and more sandbox features in games.  The themepark is over done and studios are going to catch on.

    nah .. sandbox ideas (like those in UO) were even older, and less popular.

    Studios are going to do new stuff like Destiny, not going back to tried and failed ideas.

    There is a much bigger audience to draw from now.  "Tried and failed ideas?"  ever heard of Minecraft?

    minecraft does not use any of those failed ideas  ... it is just a single player builder games with some online options, no persistent world. It is not even a MMO.

     

     

  • grimalgrimal Member UncommonPosts: 2,935
    Originally posted by maybebaked
    Originally posted by grimal
    Originally posted by Vermillion_Raventhal
    Originally posted by grimal
    Originally posted by maybebaked
    Movies, books and TV shows used to be unique too.

    Are you kidding me?  It's the golden age of television right now.  We are seeing a level of televised entertainment of a quality never before realized in mass numbers.

    And also a golden of trash TV to balance it out.  

    True but I find it hard to swallow that television is no longer unique.  With shows like Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black, True Detective it's a rather odd thing to say.

    Everything is derivative. These titles aren't exploring new ideas, they are just presenting them in a different way.

    With that line of thinking nothing is new as everything has been explored before and is just a rehash (in a different form) of what preceded it.  But that's not what we are talking about. The reply I commented on made a silly statement and I offered examples to counter it. Unless you can offer specifics to counter mine, then this is a pointless digression.

  • grimalgrimal Member UncommonPosts: 2,935
    Originally posted by nariusseldon
    Originally posted by grimal
    Originally posted by nariusseldon
    Originally posted by grimal

    I firmly believe we will begin to see more and more sandbox features in games.  The themepark is over done and studios are going to catch on.

    nah .. sandbox ideas (like those in UO) were even older, and less popular.

    Studios are going to do new stuff like Destiny, not going back to tried and failed ideas.

    There is a much bigger audience to draw from now.  "Tried and failed ideas?"  ever heard of Minecraft?

    minecraft does not use any of those failed ideas  ... it is just a single player builder games with some online options, no persistent world. It is not even a MMO.

     

     

    Minecraft contains sandbox elements, some of that are very similar to that of SWG, UO and others.  But I guess since it is not an MMO, no one would be interested in that.  Yet, we have post after post on these forums saying the exact opposite.  

  • AkulasAkulas Member RarePosts: 3,004
    Something like minecraft with skills to grind in a mp environment would be good enough for me to spend a fair bit of time in.

    This isn't a signature, you just think it is.

  • laseritlaserit Member LegendaryPosts: 7,591

    I'm so blessed to have grown up in quite an age. I have seen the world change so much ;) There is good and bad in everything, in any time. Everything is an evolution. To keep to the spirit of these forums.... I can find it quite humorous that  many see these games as if the golden age has past... when in actual fact (unless civilization comes crashing to an end) we are in the infancy of video games, television... modern technology etc. Etc. My parents, (who are still alive and kicking) grew up in a time when there was no such a thing as TV and their parents lived before the automobile. And I'm contemplating all this, while I'm sitting in front of a fire in the middle of the wilderness, in this great place that I live and love. 

     

    We haven't seen anything yet.

    "Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee

  • ThornrageThornrage Member UncommonPosts: 659
    Originally posted by grimal

    This past decade or so has seem some of the greatest quality it has ever seen.  Sopranos, Mad Men, True Detective, Game of Thrones, The Shield, Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Hannibal, Fargo, House of Cards, etc, etc.  The quality of these programs is rivaling and in many ways surpassing that of which you would catch on the big screen.  Anthony Hopkins has gone on record as saying the acting in Breaking Bad is some of the best acting he has ever seen.  Top Billed actors are returning to television because it not only a more stable medium, but the quality of some of the writing and direction is becoming so rich.

    So, no, I am not being sarcastic.

    Glad you mentioned The Shield. One of my all time favorite shows. I am often amazed that so many people I know have never heard of it.

    Add to the list - Justified

    "I don't give a sh*t what other people say. I play what I like and I'll pay to do it too!" - SerialMMOist

  • BalmersBalmers Member UncommonPosts: 7

    Yeah, I noticed that too... MOBAs are now MMOs but Minecraft isn't... Yeah right...

    They both aren't but the closest would be minecraft...

  • DeddmeatDeddmeat Member UncommonPosts: 387

    [quote]Originally posted by Thestrain
    [b][quote] Originally posted by LacedOpium [quote] Originally posted by grimal


    Originally posted by maybebaked Movies, books and TV shows used to be unique too. Are you kidding me?  It's the golden age of television right now.  We are seeing a level of televised entertainment of a quality never before realized in mass numbers.   This has to be sarcasm.
    Huh?

    Breaking bad, The Sopranos,  Game Of Thrones,  Mad Men,  24, The Wire, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, The Shield....[/b][/quote]

    Current tv is in a rather sad state compared to what it used to be.

    Benny Hill, Kenny Everett, The Two Ronnies, Monkey, Only Fools and Horses, faulty Towers and then we only had a few channels

    Whereas now we have reality tv covering way to much of the broadcasting and we have a HELL of a lot more channels, of course due to how PC everything has become shows like Benny Hill won't be possible.

    image

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by Robokapp
    Originally posted by nariusseldon
    Originally posted by grimal
    Originally posted by nariusseldon
    Originally posted by grimal

    I firmly believe we will begin to see more and more sandbox features in games.  The themepark is over done and studios are going to catch on.

    nah .. sandbox ideas (like those in UO) were even older, and less popular.

    Studios are going to do new stuff like Destiny, not going back to tried and failed ideas.

    There is a much bigger audience to draw from now.  "Tried and failed ideas?"  ever heard of Minecraft?

    minecraft does not use any of those failed ideas  ... it is just a single player builder games with some online options, no persistent world. It is not even a MMO.

     

     

    never thought to see you claim something is not an MMO.

     

     

    Because it does not have a lobby?

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by Balmers

    Yeah, I noticed that too... MOBAs are now MMOs but Minecraft isn't... Yeah right...

    They both aren't but the closest would be minecraft...

    Really?

    But there is no LFD, LFR, lobby, loot drama, ......

     

  • Azaron_NightbladeAzaron_Nightblade Member EpicPosts: 4,829
    Originally posted by grimal
    Originally posted by nariusseldon
    Originally posted by grimal

    I firmly believe we will begin to see more and more sandbox features in games.  The themepark is over done and studios are going to catch on.

    nah .. sandbox ideas (like those in UO) were even older, and less popular.

    Studios are going to do new stuff like Destiny, not going back to tried and failed ideas.

    There is a much bigger audience to draw from now.  "Tried and failed ideas?"  ever heard of Minecraft?

    It all comes down to how they are implemented. Sandbox ideas aren't unpopular, the ways they've often been implemented in older games were unpopular, hence WoW (and its army of "clones") dominating over them so completely. Minecraft is a very accessible game, which explains part of its success. But it doesn't automatically mean that games like SWG would be more successful now than the were in the past if they returned with the same designs.

    The older games targetted a small and hardcore segment of gamers. A new game that manages to introduce those features without making the game inaccessible to more casual players has the potential to be popular.

    Although I'm personally leaning more towards hybrid systems ("sandparks") doing well in the future. I enjoy a story in my MMO's, and unless I'm part of a good RP guild or the like I'll lose interest in a sandbox pretty fast.

    I'll acknowledge that there are people who can play sandboxes endlessly just for the sake of playing though. Different strokes and all that.

    Originally posted by Sevenstar61

    I think some MMOs are pretty unique, maybe not all aspects but some of them. For example: SWTOR ands TSW have outstanding questing - each in it's own style, which is not comparable to any other MMOs. That is unique in my opinion.

    Also - unique MMO does not have to be for everybody's taste and does not have to be sandbox.

    Yeah, but those innovations don't count. There's one golden rule when reading these:

    "If it doesn't appeal to me, it's not an innovation." =P

    The introduction of story-driven MMO's has been one of my favorite new features to be added to the genre over the last couple of years.

    My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)

    https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/

Sign In or Register to comment.