Entertainment actually is very important. Way more important than you seem to think. Even animals play fight and while it's fun for them they are also learning skills they need to survive.
Humans operate in a similar fashion. Looking at the morals and prevailing schools of thought found in popular TV shows can help gain an insight into the culture, or predict future morals (As often they preach morals to help bring people more in line with them).
I think the fact that almost all TV shows that had educational value have been replaced with reality TV on channels such as the History Channel and Animal Planet says a lot about our society. I think the fact that during the process of dumbing down skill tress WoW developers gave the justification that they were "too mathy" says something about our society.
I've learned a lot from the games I play and back when I watched TV I learned a lot from TV programs too. Infact I wrote an essay about a subject I saw on the History Channel (In addition to three more based on the IB History class I took) to pass an IB history test with flying colors. And most of the upper level math I've used outside school has been in games.
Entertainment isn't supposed to be 100% pure time sink. Good entertainment teaches life skills too. It's a form of education.
You might be right. Then again, as soon as Kaplan left the game started getting dumber fast. Yes, having him to Overwatch were smarter then leaving him for Wow (but wasting him years on Project Titan first was obviously was a bad move).
The whole thing reminds me of the old TV show M*A*S*H, it also got dumber with time. Some talented people leave, the ones who stay get burned out and someone decides to simply the mechanics and make the game easier (for like the fifth time)
I do agree, and the entertainment value of close to all modern MMOs open world experience is about the same as reality TV: slim to nun. The players are surely not innocent, as soon as anything gets above incredible easy the forums fills up with people screaming for a nerf but I blame the devs.
People screamed a lot about nerfing EQ back then but the devs actually stood up to them and said it would destroy their vision of the game. SOE have made many stupid decisions but that wasn't one of them.
When every content is cleared fast and easy many people leave only to pop up at next expansion until they cleared that as well. That is not a good thing even if it is better them they never touching your game again.
LOl .. i am sure my skills of hitting keys casting fireballs will come in handy when the US airforce asks me to drive their dragon drones.
Not *all* entertainment is education. Certainly not MMOs.
If nothing else MMOs teaches you patience and follow simple instructions...
But I think he means that you learn gaming skills and tactics. And while gaming tactics certainly don't work IRL you at least hopefully train your logical sense that way which is practical in the real world as well.
If there is zero challenge you instead learn to sit on your @ss doing nothing and still get payed, that is probably not healthy if you take it serious or at least you learn that time spent = equal profit no matter the quality which is bad enough (but at least you can write Adam Sandler movie scripts there).
If nothing else MMOs teaches you patience and follow simple instructions...
lol .. if anyone needs a MMO to teach them patience and follow simple instructions, they are screwed anyway.
You seem to understand the erroneous impression that people *need* their MMO to educate them. I hate to break it to you. There are things called schools and colleges. MMOs are a poor substitute to any of those, and should just serve as mindless entertainment, not unlike tv.
Don't project behaviors in a MMO to those in the real world. You know it is not the same.
Entertainment isn't supposed to be 100% pure time sink. Good entertainment teaches life skills too. It's a form of education.
LOl .. i am sure my skills of hitting keys casting fireballs will come in handy when the US airforce asks me to drive their dragon drones.
Not *all* entertainment is education. Certainly not MMOs.
Tell that to people who've developed Excel spreadsheets to track their trades, programed companion programs, crunched numbers on their build, built and managed guilds, guild websites, fan websites etc.
If all you've done is spam fireballs thats a product of how you play MMOs.
If nothing else MMOs teaches you patience and follow simple instructions...
lol .. if anyone needs a MMO to teach them patience and follow simple instructions, they are screwed anyway.
You seem to understand the erroneous impression that people *need* their MMO to educate them. I hate to break it to you. There are things called schools and colleges. MMOs are a poor substitute to any of those, and should just serve as mindless entertainment, not unlike tv.
Don't project behaviors in a MMO to those in the real world. You know it is not the same.
Was my sarcasm about that so unclear? Of course running quests are useless IRL.
Hard tactical games (MMOs or not) where you use you brain is probably somewhat helpful for your brain but running super easy soloquest are not.
I should have answered earlier but I'm on vacation.
"might be"? I would say they have already decided. Look at what are their new games.
They are certainly moving into new genres but I don't think that means much in this case. iF If Wow stop being a cashcow and they believe Wow 2 would earn lots of cash they will make a sequel.
As long as Wow still earn lots of money they will not make a sequel and neither will they make something they think will take it's players. Right now they have somewhere between 4 and 8 mil players and most of them pays a monthly fee (or someone else pay and they buy it for gold, same thing). Making a sequel now would actually kill Wow but you can't be sure the players actually stick to it and they have to fork out loads of cash.
So they can just sit and cash in with a medium sized but not that expensive expansion every 2 years. Risking that would be madness. If Wow suddenly drop to 1M players things would be different, then a sequel would suddenly be pretty certain to earn more even including development cost and hopefully a lot more.
You might of course be right and they might have given up on the genre completely but I have my doubts.
So this is why I think they are backing off MMOs. As you can see the start with many, many, different titles. Then from 2004 all the way to 2010 all there is is WoW expansions. Then they reignite Starcraft, reignite Diablo 2 years later, and not pictured on this you have Heros of the Storm, Overwatch, and Hearthstone.
When MMOs were big they let all their other titles die and focused entirely on their success with WoW. Now that WoW is in decline they are focusing on all their other titles again and even making new ones, and I don't think they will invest much money into WoW or any other MMO unless they see they see a huge demand for another MMO.
I don't think they will let Blizzard die, I don't think they will let Warcraft die, but World of Warcraft... I don't think that sequel is as profitable as you think it would be.
I'd also mention Warcraft 4, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 would have been profitable at any point. So where they invest their people isn't about what is and isn't profitable. It's about what is most profitable.
As we were taught in Project Management class, just because a project will make the company money, doesn't mean you shouldn't pass it up for something even better.
(picture deleted because of space) So this is why I think they are backing off MMOs. As you can see the start with many, many, different titles. Then from 2004 all the way to 2010 all there is is WoW expansions. Then they reignite Starcraft, reignite Diablo 2 years later, and not pictured on this you have Heros of the Storm, Overwatch, and Hearthstone.
When MMOs were big they let all their other titles die and focused entirely on their success with WoW. Now that WoW is in decline they are focusing on all their other titles again and even making new ones, and I don't think they will invest much money into WoW or any other MMO unless they see they see a huge demand for another MMO.
I don't think they will let Blizzard die, I don't think they will let Warcraft die, but World of Warcraft... I don't think that sequel is as profitable as you think it would be.
I'd also mention Warcraft 4, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 would have been profitable at any point. So where they invest their people isn't about what is and isn't profitable. It's about what is most profitable.
As we were taught in Project Management class, just because a project will make the company money, doesn't mean you shouldn't pass it up for something even better.
I always assumed that the reason they suddenly jacked out so many more games after 2010 was because they merged with Activision in 2008 and had little to do with Wow but you can of course be right, or it can be a mix of those 2 reasons. Anything with the Blizzard logo on tend to sell well and Activision knows it, we just have to be grateful they are treating them better then EA done with Bioware.
The whole question comes down to how much money Wow 2 would make, and what Activision and Blizzard think it will make.
Already when Wow drops below 2-3M they will have a choice to make: make a far larger and better expansion to get back old players, secretly start or a sequel or milk it for everything they can and let it slowly fade away. And yes, I do think either of those 3 options are possible but I still think it is likely we eventually will see Wow 2, but it certainly isn't a sure thing.
The whole question comes down to how much money Wow 2 would make, and what Activision and Blizzard think it will make.
No. That is not the question.
The question is given the same resources, what kind of game will provide the best returns. Blizz is not considering making wow2 (or a MMORPG) in isolation. They are weighing one type of games versus another.
In fact, re-purposing Titan to Overwatch is evidence of such thinking.
The whole question comes down to how much money Wow 2 would make, and what Activision and Blizzard think it will make.
No. That is not the question.
The question is given the same resources, what kind of game will provide the best returns. Blizz is not considering making wow2 (or a MMORPG) in isolation. They are weighing one type of games versus another.
In fact, re-purposing Titan to Overwatch is evidence of such thinking.
Okay, I give you that.
In Titans case I think it was more that Titan really wasn't as fun as it sounded though, or at least that is what Kaplan said when it got canned. The parts that worked got revamped into Overwatch which obviously was a great idea.
If they can just spend peanut money on games like Hearthstone they will do just that, but I don't think that work long term.
Wow do have got an insane amount of money during the years so making a sequel at some point will at least be very tempting. 13 years of large piles of cash is hard to beat and Wow still have a couple of more years with that in it.
In Titans case I think it was more that Titan really wasn't as fun as it sounded though, or at least that is what Kaplan said when it got canned. The parts that worked got revamped into Overwatch which obviously was a great idea.
Obviously there is that element. But don't you think there (obviously) was a resource calculation somewhere in there?
I am sure they can revamp the whole thing and make it fun as a MMORPG (we are talking about blizz here) but it is 10x cheaper to re-purpose it as a fun shooter instead, and that is what they go with.
If they can just spend peanut money on games like Hearthstone they will do just that, but I don't think that work long term.
Are you kidding me? Hearthstone is released in 2014 .. and it is already 3 years with multiple expansion. That is longer term than many MMOs.
Secondly, Actionvision/Blizz is a publicly traded company. They don't look for long (5-10 years) terms. They look for the next quarterly financial meeting.
If they can just spend peanut money on games like Hearthstone they will do just that, but I don't think that work long term.
Are you kidding me? Hearthstone is released in 2014 .. and it is already 3 years with multiple expansion. That is longer term than many MMOs.
Secondly, Actionvision/Blizz is a publicly traded company. They don't look for long (5-10 years) terms. They look for the next quarterly financial meeting.
Yep, small investment, big payout (but how many hit games can they really make like that?). I don't get the kidding me thing though, of course they want something like that.
Smarter companies like projects that earn lots of money for a long time, heck, any company want something that earns lots of cash for a long time. Both Wow and Lineage are among the games that earned most money ever.
In any case, I feel we kinda hijacked the thread a bit here. We are a bit off topic.
Yeah. I don't think you are wrong it might be profitable. You're not even wrong that it might be their most profitable use of labor at some point and get done.
I just wouldn't make any bets on it. I think "WoW 2" if it ever happens will be a product of Activision/Blizzard seeing large potential profits in the MMO industry and feeling that they have a model to best meet that demand that can't be met with a simple expansion to WoW.
I don't think those market conditions currently exist for a company so hellbent on dumbing down what they currently have. I think what people want right now in MMOs is the opposite of further dumbing down of the genre.
I don't think people are tired of the massively multiplayer aspect. I think people are tired of all the other baggage that's become associated with the genre. People aren't tired of MMOs they are tired of shitty ones. Which is almost all we have at the moment.
I think what people want right now in MMOs is the opposite of further dumbing down of the genre.
No. I don't think most people want MMOs at all.
I am not so sure people know what they want in gaming at all until they actually get it. Most people tend to scream for more of what they already have or had earlier but when they get it they tire fast.
Most genres have fans shouting for a remake of old games, in our genre it is usually for remakes of UO, EQ and SWG. Yet none of those games were that popular and games trying to recreate something similar like Mortal online tend to fail miserably.
When people talk about features they want in the next gen MMO everybody been talking about since forever they bring in old stuff from other games, nothing new. In fact the discussion we kinda hijacked have a lot of that, people who often say current MMOs are bad but still want to use the same mechanics for a new game anyways (since I included that I am almost in topic .
People in general did not knew they wanted Wow when it released but they did when they noticed it.
I personally think that what people really want is a great game, if it is a MMORPG or something does not matter. If it is a MMORPG though a great game need to differ from the ones already made because it either have been done too many times already or what have been done is not good enough.
If a great MMORPG releases many gamers will play it, not only the MMORPG super fans like us. If the mechanics of it is simple or advanced is not a huge deal as long as they are smart. Chess for instance have very simple mechanics and is easy to learn but it is very hard to master and computer games that succeed with something similar have far higher chances of becoming an iconic game people remember then something that is either simple to master or hard to learn.
Comments
The whole thing reminds me of the old TV show M*A*S*H, it also got dumber with time. Some talented people leave, the ones who stay get burned out and someone decides to simply the mechanics and make the game easier (for like the fifth time)
I do agree, and the entertainment value of close to all modern MMOs open world experience is about the same as reality TV: slim to nun. The players are surely not innocent, as soon as anything gets above incredible easy the forums fills up with people screaming for a nerf but I blame the devs.
People screamed a lot about nerfing EQ back then but the devs actually stood up to them and said it would destroy their vision of the game. SOE have made many stupid decisions but that wasn't one of them.
When every content is cleared fast and easy many people leave only to pop up at next expansion until they cleared that as well. That is not a good thing even if it is better them they never touching your game again.
LOl .. i am sure my skills of hitting keys casting fireballs will come in handy when the US airforce asks me to drive their dragon drones.
Not *all* entertainment is education. Certainly not MMOs.
But I think he means that you learn gaming skills and tactics. And while gaming tactics certainly don't work IRL you at least hopefully train your logical sense that way which is practical in the real world as well.
If there is zero challenge you instead learn to sit on your @ss doing nothing and still get payed, that is probably not healthy if you take it serious or at least you learn that time spent = equal profit no matter the quality which is bad enough (but at least you can write Adam Sandler movie scripts there).
You seem to understand the erroneous impression that people *need* their MMO to educate them. I hate to break it to you. There are things called schools and colleges. MMOs are a poor substitute to any of those, and should just serve as mindless entertainment, not unlike tv.
Don't project behaviors in a MMO to those in the real world. You know it is not the same.
If all you've done is spam fireballs thats a product of how you play MMOs.
Hard tactical games (MMOs or not) where you use you brain is probably somewhat helpful for your brain but running super easy soloquest are not.
I should have answered earlier but I'm on vacation.
As long as Wow still earn lots of money they will not make a sequel and neither will they make something they think will take it's players. Right now they have somewhere between 4 and 8 mil players and most of them pays a monthly fee (or someone else pay and they buy it for gold, same thing). Making a sequel now would actually kill Wow but you can't be sure the players actually stick to it and they have to fork out loads of cash.
So they can just sit and cash in with a medium sized but not that expensive expansion every 2 years. Risking that would be madness. If Wow suddenly drop to 1M players things would be different, then a sequel would suddenly be pretty certain to earn more even including development cost and hopefully a lot more.
You might of course be right and they might have given up on the genre completely but I have my doubts.
So this is why I think they are backing off MMOs. As you can see the start with many, many, different titles. Then from 2004 all the way to 2010 all there is is WoW expansions. Then they reignite Starcraft, reignite Diablo 2 years later, and not pictured on this you have Heros of the Storm, Overwatch, and Hearthstone.
When MMOs were big they let all their other titles die and focused entirely on their success with WoW. Now that WoW is in decline they are focusing on all their other titles again and even making new ones, and I don't think they will invest much money into WoW or any other MMO unless they see they see a huge demand for another MMO.
I don't think they will let Blizzard die, I don't think they will let Warcraft die, but World of Warcraft... I don't think that sequel is as profitable as you think it would be.
I'd also mention Warcraft 4, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 would have been profitable at any point. So where they invest their people isn't about what is and isn't profitable. It's about what is most profitable.
As we were taught in Project Management class, just because a project will make the company money, doesn't mean you shouldn't pass it up for something even better.
The whole question comes down to how much money Wow 2 would make, and what Activision and Blizzard think it will make.
Already when Wow drops below 2-3M they will have a choice to make: make a far larger and better expansion to get back old players, secretly start or a sequel or milk it for everything they can and let it slowly fade away. And yes, I do think either of those 3 options are possible but I still think it is likely we eventually will see Wow 2, but it certainly isn't a sure thing.
The question is given the same resources, what kind of game will provide the best returns. Blizz is not considering making wow2 (or a MMORPG) in isolation. They are weighing one type of games versus another.
In fact, re-purposing Titan to Overwatch is evidence of such thinking.
In Titans case I think it was more that Titan really wasn't as fun as it sounded though, or at least that is what Kaplan said when it got canned. The parts that worked got revamped into Overwatch which obviously was a great idea.
If they can just spend peanut money on games like Hearthstone they will do just that, but I don't think that work long term.
Wow do have got an insane amount of money during the years so making a sequel at some point will at least be very tempting. 13 years of large piles of cash is hard to beat and Wow still have a couple of more years with that in it.
I am sure they can revamp the whole thing and make it fun as a MMORPG (we are talking about blizz here) but it is 10x cheaper to re-purpose it as a fun shooter instead, and that is what they go with.
Smarter companies like projects that earn lots of money for a long time, heck, any company want something that earns lots of cash for a long time. Both Wow and Lineage are among the games that earned most money ever.
In any case, I feel we kinda hijacked the thread a bit here. We are a bit off topic.
It is not like the genre of MMO will be magically improves if everyone sticks to the topic according to some ironclad rules.
Yeah. I don't think you are wrong it might be profitable. You're not even wrong that it might be their most profitable use of labor at some point and get done.
I just wouldn't make any bets on it. I think "WoW 2" if it ever happens will be a product of Activision/Blizzard seeing large potential profits in the MMO industry and feeling that they have a model to best meet that demand that can't be met with a simple expansion to WoW.
I don't think those market conditions currently exist for a company so hellbent on dumbing down what they currently have. I think what people want right now in MMOs is the opposite of further dumbing down of the genre.
So WoW2 may or may not ever happen.
Most genres have fans shouting for a remake of old games, in our genre it is usually for remakes of UO, EQ and SWG. Yet none of those games were that popular and games trying to recreate something similar like Mortal online tend to fail miserably.
When people talk about features they want in the next gen MMO everybody been talking about since forever they bring in old stuff from other games, nothing new. In fact the discussion we kinda hijacked have a lot of that, people who often say current MMOs are bad but still want to use the same mechanics for a new game anyways (since I included that I am almost in topic
People in general did not knew they wanted Wow when it released but they did when they noticed it.
I personally think that what people really want is a great game, if it is a MMORPG or something does not matter. If it is a MMORPG though a great game need to differ from the ones already made because it either have been done too many times already or what have been done is not good enough.
If a great MMORPG releases many gamers will play it, not only the MMORPG super fans like us. If the mechanics of it is simple or advanced is not a huge deal as long as they are smart. Chess for instance have very simple mechanics and is easy to learn but it is very hard to master and computer games that succeed with something similar have far higher chances of becoming an iconic game people remember then something that is either simple to master or hard to learn.