Axehilt, im not gonna respond point by point because frankly it would be a waste of time. But your main argument throughout has been that the success of the games on the market is determinate of what players want.
What many of us are trying to explain to you is that we feel that WOW was representative of wht is normally called a fad. Its one of those things that for some psychological reason becomes apeshit popular, sells like gang busters, and then 5 years later people wonder WTF they were thinking.
In a perfectly logical world, yes, your argument would be valid. The reality is though that human psychology plays a large role, and human psychology is fickle and inconsistent and will randomly make weird decisions about what is good.
I can give tons of examples of things that the vast majority of society realizes was completely retarded and useless that sold like gangbusters that completely negates your "popularity/success defined as by number of sales/subscriptions = quality" argument.
Also, assuming your argument is valid, then it actually defends our point, because thus far no game based on the WOW model has been even remotely as succesful. Rift has done well, SWTOR appears to be one that will do well, but the problem with both is longevity. Are people only playing it because its the only polished MMO content out there worth playing, or because they actually enjoy that style of MMO. Only time will tell.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Axehilt, im not gonna respond point by point because frankly it would be a waste of time. But your main argument throughout has been that the success of the games on the market is determinate of what players want.
What many of us are trying to explain to you is that we feel that WOW was representative of wht is normally called a fad. Its one of those things that for some psychological reason becomes apeshit popular, sells like gang busters, and then 5 years later people wonder WTF they were thinking.
In a perfectly logical world, yes, your argument would be valid. The reality is though that human psychology plays a large role, and human psychology is fickle and inconsistent and will randomly make weird decisions about what is good.
I can give tons of examples of things that the vast majority of society realizes was completely retarded and useless that sold like gangbusters that completely negates your "popularity/success defined as by number of sales/subscriptions = quality" argument.
Also, assuming your argument is valid, then it actually defends our point, because thus far no game based on the WOW model has been even remotely as succesful. Rift has done well, SWTOR appears to be one that will do well, but the problem with both is longevity. Are people only playing it because its the only polished MMO content out there worth playing, or because they actually enjoy that style of MMO. Only time will tell.
What? Did you just imply that the most succesful MMORPG of all time is a fluke? Stroke of luck? Listen, I don't care about WoW, but even I think that that is crazy.
You automatically take a stand that WoW is bad, and games like it are also bad. There is no reason to look down on those games. Many of those games were succesful: Rift, LotRO, AoC (after the launch dismal launch) etc. Your post is trickling with bias and you're trying to belittle that success.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
The world is evenly split between those who pursue only the popular (Bieber) and those who pursue the ecclectic (terrible no-name indy bands) just for the sake of being "unique" rugged individualists. One is a conformist, the other a poseur. As "sins", I'd rate them approximately equal.
There's no right or wrong, there's just games. Play what you enjoy and stop preaching.
Incidentally, argumentum ad numerum is a primary fallacy in either direction.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
The world is evenly split between those who pursue only the popular (Bieber) and those who pursue the ecclectic (terrible no-name indy bands) just for the sake of being "unique" rugged individualists. One is a conformist, the other a poseur.
There's no right or wrong, there's just games. Play what you enjoy and stop preaching.
Incidentally, argumentum ad numerum is a primary fallacy in either direction.
C'mon. Did you have to use Bieber as an example?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Why not Katy Perry, Rihanna, Foo Fighters, Eminem or other best sellers of this year? Miley is definitely not one.
Hmm, last I heard she was still the highest grossing tour in the world.
Shrug, makes no difference to the point. Sometimes people like what's popular. Others instantly hate it because it's popular. That's been the music world for at least the last 40 years. (Looking at you, Donny Osmond)
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
One thing that I find interesting about these types of posts is that they seem to feel that it is the companies, the dev's that have changed the genre and not the desire of the players to change the genre. It was why Blizzard hired a few guys who had been hardcore Everquest players to oversee development of WoW and they decided to remove what most consider the heart of early MMO gaming, harsh death penalties, long travel times, forced grouping (Everquest), FFA PVP (UO) etc... and add in what they considered improvements, instancing, mounts, flight paths, instance travel, non FFA PVP etc... My personal feelings are that the genre has changed due to the desire of the playerbase to not want to camp for hours to bring down a boss, travel an hour on foot to get to the actual gameplay, be forced to LFG for an hour just to play the bloody game, thats no fun at all.... all the things that were put in the early games was all great on paper but once out in the hands of gamers many rejected these conventions and made their voice heard and the genre started to evolve into what we have today.
So now we have vets looking back thinking that the genre has been evolved by the games companies forcing this new world order upon us but I say no that is not true, Everquest started to break down the early conventions way before Blizzards WoW was known to exist. I read many many posts of Everquest, UO and AC vets bemoan that such and such expansion pack ruined their precious game, it was these things that started the genre evolving towards what we have today and the games did not really suffer they actually, in the case of Everquest and UO (after the Renaissance xpac), grew their player base. The modern day conventions or wiki's, third party add ons, AA and Talent calculators etc.. started way before WoW was released, Alakazam was started up when? 2000? you can not keep blaming what you see as the woo's of the MMO industry on a company and game that just made what they thought would be a fun MMORPG. Blizzard looked at all the previous games and how they were evolving and made their version, basically Diablo with a Warcraft skin, all their single player games had cartoon graphics and were easy to run on any PC's so no big conspiracy there, all their games are accessable so again no big conspirarcy there just a game company making an MMO version of what they had been doing in the single player arena.
A year or so ago I put up a thread that earned me the spotlight poster tag and it asked... "What made older MMO's harder than modern MMO's"and the answers that came out of that thread, presented by many a seasoned vet, were that the older MMO's were no more harder or deeper in gameplay than modern ones they were just more tedious to play, it is all in the minds of some vets that believe the opposite to be true and I'm afraid you have to really open up your memories and see that at the end of the day its was always the desires of the playerbase that changed the MMO landscape, it was the players that made and used quest trackers, better maps, threat & damage metres, gearscore calculators before even WoW was released and not these evil money grabbing dev's you so want it to be.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Why not Katy Perry, Rihanna, Foo Fighters, Eminem or other best sellers of this year? Miley is definitely not one.
Hmm, last I heard she was still the highest grossing tour in the world.
Shrug, makes no difference to the point. Sometimes people like what's popular. Others instantly hate it because it's popular. That's been the music world for at least the last 40 years. (Looking at you, Donny Osmond)
Yeah. I would love to say that people like competence artists but I had more than one girlfriend who asked me how I could know if I liked an artist first them I hear him/her, some people need to hear stuff 20 times on the radio to like it.
Still, Miley at least write her own songs and that is more than Rhianna and Gaga.
I think you've been pretty clear at driving home the premise that you're the "One True MMORPGer" and that anyone who races in a comfy seat isn't actually racing even though they're racing.
Your views on WOW grouping are pretty outdated, as all of my fastest leveling (and best-geared-while-leveling) characters predominantly group. In fact my fastest levelled character spent like 95% of his time grouping.
This is exactly how I played WoW I grouped up far more than solo'd then when my small guild imploded and I was forced to solo I left the game shortly after as I became bored stiff with the game. Its such a falacy that WoW killed grouping.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
In the days before MMO's, there was a wide selection of genre's to choose from in single-player games. There were hugely successfull games in each genre. However, the average Civilization fan was not automatically a huge supporter of Quake, BUT those Civ fans were not forced to play Quake because the Civ franchise had died...
I guess the gameplay of the "early" MMO's suited the people that liked simulation games better. But a they were also played by a vast number of players who hated the "virtual world" aspects like travel time and harsh death penalties. They played within those rules because they had no choice, there were no alternatives in the early days. Then WoW came along...
The complaints by the UO and EQ vets are mostly because the gaming industry has abandoned their preferred playstyle. They are the ones who have no choice in the current MMO market. Due to the huge cost of developing modern AAA MMO's, developers go for the biggest possible target audience, and that audience doesn't like "virtual world simulation" features. They want MAX GAME ACTION !
There is no "right and wrong" comparison between the classic MMO style and the modern "casual friendly" style. It's only a matter of personal taste. It is, however, patently clear which style makes more money. And that's where the development-dollar will be spent...
Axehilt, im not gonna respond point by point because frankly it would be a waste of time. But your main argument throughout has been that the success of the games on the market is determinate of what players want.
What many of us are trying to explain to you is that we feel that WOW was representative of wht is normally called a fad. Its one of those things that for some psychological reason becomes apeshit popular, sells like gang busters, and then 5 years later people wonder WTF they were thinking.
In a perfectly logical world, yes, your argument would be valid. The reality is though that human psychology plays a large role, and human psychology is fickle and inconsistent and will randomly make weird decisions about what is good.
I can give tons of examples of things that the vast majority of society realizes was completely retarded and useless that sold like gangbusters that completely negates your "popularity/success defined as by number of sales/subscriptions = quality" argument.
Also, assuming your argument is valid, then it actually defends our point, because thus far no game based on the WOW model has been even remotely as succesful. Rift has done well, SWTOR appears to be one that will do well, but the problem with both is longevity. Are people only playing it because its the only polished MMO content out there worth playing, or because they actually enjoy that style of MMO. Only time will tell.
You confuse the skin-deep featureset of WOW with why WOW was actually successful.
Blizzard next games are likely to be considerably different from WOW's playstyle, yet adhere to the same underlying design tenets which caused it's ridiculous success. More than anything I say here, they'll prove to you that these tenets (including a focus on gameplay and eradicating player inconvenience or time-wasting) are the reason for Blizzard's rampant success.
Blizzard chases after the fundamental way people have fun in games. This isn't some passing fad, which is why they've been consistently successful. The specific genres people have played over the years has changed, but the fundamental reasons they have fun in those games have remained constant, because they're psychological fundamentals.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I think you've been pretty clear at driving home the premise that you're the "One True MMORPGer" and that anyone who races in a comfy seat isn't actually racing even though they're racing.
Your views on WOW grouping are pretty outdated, as all of my fastest leveling (and best-geared-while-leveling) characters predominantly group. In fact my fastest levelled character spent like 95% of his time grouping.
If you were measureing "fastest leveled" with /played, you should take in account that in WoW time spent in instances doesn't add to your /played time. (At least didn't when i played some year ago).
Blizzard next games are likely to be considerably different from WOW's playstyle, yet adhere to the same underlying design tenets which caused it's ridiculous success. More than anything I say here, they'll prove to you that these tenets (including a focus on gameplay and eradicating player inconvenience or time-wasting) are the reason for Blizzard's rampant success.
Blizzard chases after the fundamental way people have fun in games. This isn't some passing fad, which is why they've been consistently successful. The specific genres people have played over the years has changed, but the fundamental reasons they have fun in those games have remained constant, because they're psychological fundamentals.
If "Blizzard chases after the fundamental way people have fun in games", they've obviously missed the bus entirely, lol. That bus was caught by Zynga long ago, and they now own the whole bus fleet. The reported 54 million regular users of Farmville apparently generate more revenue than the paltry 10-12 million WoW subscribers...
But then again, Farmville "is not a game", and the horde of users are not "fundamentally having fun in a game", amirite ?
If Blizzard are TRULY pursuing "the fundamental way people have fun in games", then their next "MMO" will have some heavy Facebook tie-ins, might even be browser-based (HTML5) and could most likely be played on tablets and smartphones... Watch this space for announcements of: "Angry Birds - The MMO" !
I'm sure EA-Blizzard would love to knock Zynga off their pedestal
I've been posting here for years that the most underrated reason for WoW's success was that you could play the game on any hardware north of a calculator. We must be approaching the point where you could rebuild WoW in a browser and not lose a bit of its standard quality.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
What? Did you just imply that the most succesful MMORPG of all time is a fluke? Stroke of luck? Listen, I don't care about WoW, but even I think that that is crazy.
You automatically take a stand that WoW is bad, and games like it are also bad. There is no reason to look down on those games. Many of those games were succesful: Rift, LotRO, AoC (after the launch dismal launch) etc. Your post is trickling with bias and you're trying to belittle that success.
Sorry but you missed the point entirely. I'm not claiming that WOW being succesful was a result of a "stroke of luck", i'm claiming that the LEVEL of success was primarily due to human psychological nature to assume that something thats popular is good, and to get onboard the bandwagon before they're not cool and "in with the crowd" etc.
Also, i absolutely love when people try to play the "your post is biased" card, as if we're all a bunch of journalists and we're trying to adhere to some code of ethics. I never hid, tried to hide, or in any way imply that my post was anything other than biased. I think that its pretty clear that i don't like WOW or what it represents and what i feel it did to the genre.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
The world is evenly split between those who pursue only the popular (Bieber) and those who pursue the ecclectic (terrible no-name indy bands) just for the sake of being "unique" rugged individualists. One is a conformist, the other a poseur. As "sins", I'd rate them approximately equal.
There's no right or wrong, there's just games. Play what you enjoy and stop preaching.
Incidentally, argumentum ad numerum is a primary fallacy in either direction.
This is where you are wrong, the world is not evenly split. The world is not black and white. Yes, there are people (and a healthy number of them) who pursue things only because they're popular, and there are people (and a healthy number of them) who hate things *because* they're popular. To imply that those are the only two options people are capable of is just ridiculous.
You are correct that there is no right and wrong as far as games. And like i said, i don't begrudge people who play these games. What i am pissed and many like me are pissed about is that due to the money/developer situation, that we have NO OPTIONS to play the type of games we want. In every other field of the entertainment industry people have options. In music you can go buy you bieber CD and enjoy it, or you can go buy a CD from some super underground electro house DJ that has only sold 10k copies and listen to that. If you want to go watch a film festival or independant movie, you can do that. You dont have to watch the newest michael bay film.
And i agree 100% to argumentum ad numerum in either direction is a fallacy.
All i ask is that you actually try to read the posts we make, give us the benefit of the doubt, and not apply your pre-bias of what type of people you think we might be (i.e. conformists/poseurs) before you hear what we have to say.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I do missed the point on talking about games that should be no more by now.
Both EQ and WoW were truly successful games in their times, only difference being is that WoW is still alive. It pushes 10 million subscribers, give or take a mil, and is still running and looking good. What i mean by "good" is that Blizzard has by powerful marketing instrumentation, correct judgement of mmorpg market and clever game design managed to take WoW for a long run, and even if WoW loses many thousands of players and will turn out to by the end of 2012 with a, lets say 5 million player base subscriber, wont they still be the developer with the most successful game ever?
Clearly the OP is right in almost everything he states, and i wont even comment on those things i dont quite agree taking in account the sheer correctness in his post.
What again leaves me to ask to vet gamers (not new ones because those dont know what the frik we are talking about), dont you guys want something new and captivating, something with long last appeal that can make us have that feeling we had when playing our fav games, like EQ and WoW? ( i used to be a WoW junkie btw)
Then stop playing those games so the market can open to a new era ppl. Dont hang on to them just because you spent valuable time of your life playing them. I know you like them, or you can relate to them, you made friends there, you laughed, you joked, you bashed your keyboard, etc etc, but they are what they are and what no one can ever take away: great games, great launch bases for what become a golden age for this genre, but they need to go...we are stalling here...let them kids with the pandas, just friking stop what you are playing and paying now (except SWTOR and EvE) and send a clear message to developers:
Vet gamers may now be fewer than panda-loving-kids, but we are here, we supported this genre for many years and we want a mmorpg game now!!! We want to be challenged, we want it to be hard and harsh, we want the death penalty to be our pc exploding, we want to leave our girlfriends alone in the bed, we want to cry "HAVOC!!!" everytime anyone says "leroy jenkins", we want to launch the dogs of war in a game where its possible once again to make friends, because if you share 3,4,5,6,7,8 hours a day with a given person, sooner or later, you risk becoming friends.
Tolkien, Haka, Simuil, Nightstalker, Alana, Drood, Aleesha, you still there mates? Lost track of you ppl...miss you ppl...love from the other side of the world.
One thing that I find interesting about these types of posts is that they seem to feel that it is the companies, the dev's that have changed the genre and not the desire of the players to change the genre. It was why Blizzard hired a few guys who had been hardcore Everquest players to oversee development of WoW and they decided to remove what most consider the heart of early MMO gaming, harsh death penalties, long travel times, forced grouping (Everquest), FFA PVP (UO) etc... and add in what they considered improvements, instancing, mounts, flight paths, instance travel, non FFA PVP etc... My personal feelings are that the genre has changed due to the desire of the playerbase to not want to camp for hours to bring down a boss, travel an hour on foot to get to the actual gameplay, be forced to LFG for an hour just to play the bloody game, thats no fun at all.... all the things that were put in the early games was all great on paper but once out in the hands of gamers many rejected these conventions and made their voice heard and the genre started to evolve into what we have today.
So now we have vets looking back thinking that the genre has been evolved by the games companies forcing this new world order upon us but I say no that is not true, Everquest started to break down the early conventions way before Blizzards WoW was known to exist. I read many many posts of Everquest, UO and AC vets bemoan that such and such expansion pack ruined their precious game, it was these things that started the genre evolving towards what we have today and the games did not really suffer they actually, in the case of Everquest and UO (after the Renaissance xpac), grew their player base. The modern day conventions or wiki's, third party add ons, AA and Talent calculators etc.. started way before WoW was released, Alakazam was started up when? 2000? you can not keep blaming what you see as the woo's of the MMO industry on a company and game that just made what they thought would be a fun MMORPG. Blizzard looked at all the previous games and how they were evolving and made their version, basically Diablo with a Warcraft skin, all their single player games had cartoon graphics and were easy to run on any PC's so no big conspiracy there, all their games are accessable so again no big conspirarcy there just a game company making an MMO version of what they had been doing in the single player arena.
A year or so ago I put up a thread that earned me the spotlight poster tag and it asked... "What made older MMO's harder than modern MMO's"and the answers that came out of that thread, presented by many a seasoned vet, were that the older MMO's were no more harder or deeper in gameplay than modern ones they were just more tedious to play, it is all in the minds of some vets that believe the opposite to be true and I'm afraid you have to really open up your memories and see that at the end of the day its was always the desires of the playerbase that changed the MMO landscape, it was the players that made and used quest trackers, better maps, threat & damage metres, gearscore calculators before even WoW was released and not these evil money grabbing dev's you so want it to be.
First i wanted to thank you for responding like an adult and not attacking the person, well done.
I dont really want to spend a lot of time on this response but i did want to touch on a few things.
First, i don't really believe that WOW started out with blizzard conspiring to "ruin" the MMO genre for us old schoolers. I agree with you 100% that they were making a game in their style, etc that was an MMO. Part of Blizzard's methods though are to focus on making their games accessible, and that is where my second point comes in. I do believe that blizzard is using WOW in its current form purely as a money maker. Nobody will convince me that any of the changes they have made to that game in the last 1-2 years was anything other than for money grabs. Hell, look at the starcraft release (having to buy 3 different versions of the game to play all the single player content) for evidence of what their "success" with wow has turned the company into. They have $$$ in their eyes, its just sad.
You mention that the genre has changed due to the desire of the playerbase and this is where i disagree and will explain to you why i feel you are misunderstanding.
My point has been that "the playerbase" as it existed Pre-WOW did not have those desires. The "playerbase" post WOW does have those desires. The playerbase pre wow was around 1.5million people. WOW came out and opened that pie up to gamers who normally wouldnt have played MMO's by making a game that was inclined towards a more casual style of play.
Now, you are correct that there were many things wrong with EQ original formula (which was based off of popular MUD's). And that ultimately those tenets started to change. Nobody here is arguing that EQ at release was perfection. What our problem is that if you consider a pendulum, and put EQ at release on one end of the pendulum, and put WOW (or in reality now SW:TOR) at the other end of that pendulum. That we would like something between the center of the pendulum swing and the EQ "end" of the pendulum swing. Instead what we're getting is everyone developers trying to make the pendulum swing even further to the WOW side til its past WOW.
I'll be the first to say that things like instancing, mounts, having teleporters to bring u to different parts of the world (outside of wizards and druids) are all good things. The problem has been the pervasion of it many of these things. Was original EQ leveling speed too slow? yes. Does that mean we need to go to the opposite end of the spectrum with MMO's like SWTOR (people have hit max level in less than 70 hours). NO. Do we need to have a teleporter in every zone? NO. Do we need to have the ability to press a button and insta port to a dungeon instead of spending 2 or 3 min travelling? NO.
People think things like this are a good thing, but they are the primary reason why no current or modern MMO has anything resembling a real community, and why so many people complain that MMO's dont feel like world and just feel like theme parks. The whole "theme park" idea didnt get created until after WOW was released. Same thing with the idea of an "end game".
The simple fact is that something gained easily has no instrinsic value to you. If you have to work for something you value it more than if you dont. Thats basic human nature.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Comments
Axehilt, im not gonna respond point by point because frankly it would be a waste of time. But your main argument throughout has been that the success of the games on the market is determinate of what players want.
What many of us are trying to explain to you is that we feel that WOW was representative of wht is normally called a fad. Its one of those things that for some psychological reason becomes apeshit popular, sells like gang busters, and then 5 years later people wonder WTF they were thinking.
In a perfectly logical world, yes, your argument would be valid. The reality is though that human psychology plays a large role, and human psychology is fickle and inconsistent and will randomly make weird decisions about what is good.
I can give tons of examples of things that the vast majority of society realizes was completely retarded and useless that sold like gangbusters that completely negates your "popularity/success defined as by number of sales/subscriptions = quality" argument.
Also, assuming your argument is valid, then it actually defends our point, because thus far no game based on the WOW model has been even remotely as succesful. Rift has done well, SWTOR appears to be one that will do well, but the problem with both is longevity. Are people only playing it because its the only polished MMO content out there worth playing, or because they actually enjoy that style of MMO. Only time will tell.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
What? Did you just imply that the most succesful MMORPG of all time is a fluke? Stroke of luck? Listen, I don't care about WoW, but even I think that that is crazy.
You automatically take a stand that WoW is bad, and games like it are also bad. There is no reason to look down on those games. Many of those games were succesful: Rift, LotRO, AoC (after the launch dismal launch) etc. Your post is trickling with bias and you're trying to belittle that success.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
The world is evenly split between those who pursue only the popular (Bieber) and those who pursue the ecclectic (terrible no-name indy bands) just for the sake of being "unique" rugged individualists. One is a conformist, the other a poseur. As "sins", I'd rate them approximately equal.
There's no right or wrong, there's just games. Play what you enjoy and stop preaching.
Incidentally, argumentum ad numerum is a primary fallacy in either direction.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
C'mon. Did you have to use Bieber as an example?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
You'd prefer GaGa? Miley Cyrus maybe?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Why not Katy Perry, Rihanna, Foo Fighters, Eminem or other best sellers of this year? Miley is definitely not one.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Hmm, last I heard she was still the highest grossing tour in the world.
Shrug, makes no difference to the point. Sometimes people like what's popular. Others instantly hate it because it's popular. That's been the music world for at least the last 40 years. (Looking at you, Donny Osmond)
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
One thing that I find interesting about these types of posts is that they seem to feel that it is the companies, the dev's that have changed the genre and not the desire of the players to change the genre. It was why Blizzard hired a few guys who had been hardcore Everquest players to oversee development of WoW and they decided to remove what most consider the heart of early MMO gaming, harsh death penalties, long travel times, forced grouping (Everquest), FFA PVP (UO) etc... and add in what they considered improvements, instancing, mounts, flight paths, instance travel, non FFA PVP etc... My personal feelings are that the genre has changed due to the desire of the playerbase to not want to camp for hours to bring down a boss, travel an hour on foot to get to the actual gameplay, be forced to LFG for an hour just to play the bloody game, thats no fun at all.... all the things that were put in the early games was all great on paper but once out in the hands of gamers many rejected these conventions and made their voice heard and the genre started to evolve into what we have today.
So now we have vets looking back thinking that the genre has been evolved by the games companies forcing this new world order upon us but I say no that is not true, Everquest started to break down the early conventions way before Blizzards WoW was known to exist. I read many many posts of Everquest, UO and AC vets bemoan that such and such expansion pack ruined their precious game, it was these things that started the genre evolving towards what we have today and the games did not really suffer they actually, in the case of Everquest and UO (after the Renaissance xpac), grew their player base. The modern day conventions or wiki's, third party add ons, AA and Talent calculators etc.. started way before WoW was released, Alakazam was started up when? 2000? you can not keep blaming what you see as the woo's of the MMO industry on a company and game that just made what they thought would be a fun MMORPG. Blizzard looked at all the previous games and how they were evolving and made their version, basically Diablo with a Warcraft skin, all their single player games had cartoon graphics and were easy to run on any PC's so no big conspiracy there, all their games are accessable so again no big conspirarcy there just a game company making an MMO version of what they had been doing in the single player arena.
A year or so ago I put up a thread that earned me the spotlight poster tag and it asked... "What made older MMO's harder than modern MMO's" and the answers that came out of that thread, presented by many a seasoned vet, were that the older MMO's were no more harder or deeper in gameplay than modern ones they were just more tedious to play, it is all in the minds of some vets that believe the opposite to be true and I'm afraid you have to really open up your memories and see that at the end of the day its was always the desires of the playerbase that changed the MMO landscape, it was the players that made and used quest trackers, better maps, threat & damage metres, gearscore calculators before even WoW was released and not these evil money grabbing dev's you so want it to be.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Yeah. I would love to say that people like competence artists but I had more than one girlfriend who asked me how I could know if I liked an artist first them I hear him/her, some people need to hear stuff 20 times on the radio to like it.
Still, Miley at least write her own songs and that is more than Rhianna and Gaga.
Myself, I prefer Rob Zombie & Tori Amos...
This is exactly how I played WoW I grouped up far more than solo'd then when my small guild imploded and I was forced to solo I left the game shortly after as I became bored stiff with the game. Its such a falacy that WoW killed grouping.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
In the days before MMO's, there was a wide selection of genre's to choose from in single-player games. There were hugely successfull games in each genre. However, the average Civilization fan was not automatically a huge supporter of Quake, BUT those Civ fans were not forced to play Quake because the Civ franchise had died...
I guess the gameplay of the "early" MMO's suited the people that liked simulation games better. But a they were also played by a vast number of players who hated the "virtual world" aspects like travel time and harsh death penalties. They played within those rules because they had no choice, there were no alternatives in the early days. Then WoW came along...
The complaints by the UO and EQ vets are mostly because the gaming industry has abandoned their preferred playstyle. They are the ones who have no choice in the current MMO market. Due to the huge cost of developing modern AAA MMO's, developers go for the biggest possible target audience, and that audience doesn't like "virtual world simulation" features. They want MAX GAME ACTION !
There is no "right and wrong" comparison between the classic MMO style and the modern "casual friendly" style. It's only a matter of personal taste. It is, however, patently clear which style makes more money. And that's where the development-dollar will be spent...
You confuse the skin-deep featureset of WOW with why WOW was actually successful.
Blizzard next games are likely to be considerably different from WOW's playstyle, yet adhere to the same underlying design tenets which caused it's ridiculous success. More than anything I say here, they'll prove to you that these tenets (including a focus on gameplay and eradicating player inconvenience or time-wasting) are the reason for Blizzard's rampant success.
Blizzard chases after the fundamental way people have fun in games. This isn't some passing fad, which is why they've been consistently successful. The specific genres people have played over the years has changed, but the fundamental reasons they have fun in those games have remained constant, because they're psychological fundamentals.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If you were measureing "fastest leveled" with /played, you should take in account that in WoW time spent in instances doesn't add to your /played time. (At least didn't when i played some year ago).
If "Blizzard chases after the fundamental way people have fun in games", they've obviously missed the bus entirely, lol. That bus was caught by Zynga long ago, and they now own the whole bus fleet. The reported 54 million regular users of Farmville apparently generate more revenue than the paltry 10-12 million WoW subscribers...
But then again, Farmville "is not a game", and the horde of users are not "fundamentally having fun in a game", amirite ?
If Blizzard are TRULY pursuing "the fundamental way people have fun in games", then their next "MMO" will have some heavy Facebook tie-ins, might even be browser-based (HTML5) and could most likely be played on tablets and smartphones... Watch this space for announcements of: "Angry Birds - The MMO" !
I'm sure EA-Blizzard would love to knock Zynga off their pedestal
I've been posting here for years that the most underrated reason for WoW's success was that you could play the game on any hardware north of a calculator. We must be approaching the point where you could rebuild WoW in a browser and not lose a bit of its standard quality.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Sorry but you missed the point entirely. I'm not claiming that WOW being succesful was a result of a "stroke of luck", i'm claiming that the LEVEL of success was primarily due to human psychological nature to assume that something thats popular is good, and to get onboard the bandwagon before they're not cool and "in with the crowd" etc.
Also, i absolutely love when people try to play the "your post is biased" card, as if we're all a bunch of journalists and we're trying to adhere to some code of ethics. I never hid, tried to hide, or in any way imply that my post was anything other than biased. I think that its pretty clear that i don't like WOW or what it represents and what i feel it did to the genre.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
This is where you are wrong, the world is not evenly split. The world is not black and white. Yes, there are people (and a healthy number of them) who pursue things only because they're popular, and there are people (and a healthy number of them) who hate things *because* they're popular. To imply that those are the only two options people are capable of is just ridiculous.
You are correct that there is no right and wrong as far as games. And like i said, i don't begrudge people who play these games. What i am pissed and many like me are pissed about is that due to the money/developer situation, that we have NO OPTIONS to play the type of games we want. In every other field of the entertainment industry people have options. In music you can go buy you bieber CD and enjoy it, or you can go buy a CD from some super underground electro house DJ that has only sold 10k copies and listen to that. If you want to go watch a film festival or independant movie, you can do that. You dont have to watch the newest michael bay film.
And i agree 100% to argumentum ad numerum in either direction is a fallacy.
All i ask is that you actually try to read the posts we make, give us the benefit of the doubt, and not apply your pre-bias of what type of people you think we might be (i.e. conformists/poseurs) before you hear what we have to say.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I do missed the point on talking about games that should be no more by now.
Both EQ and WoW were truly successful games in their times, only difference being is that WoW is still alive. It pushes 10 million subscribers, give or take a mil, and is still running and looking good. What i mean by "good" is that Blizzard has by powerful marketing instrumentation, correct judgement of mmorpg market and clever game design managed to take WoW for a long run, and even if WoW loses many thousands of players and will turn out to by the end of 2012 with a, lets say 5 million player base subscriber, wont they still be the developer with the most successful game ever?
Clearly the OP is right in almost everything he states, and i wont even comment on those things i dont quite agree taking in account the sheer correctness in his post.
What again leaves me to ask to vet gamers (not new ones because those dont know what the frik we are talking about), dont you guys want something new and captivating, something with long last appeal that can make us have that feeling we had when playing our fav games, like EQ and WoW? ( i used to be a WoW junkie btw)
Then stop playing those games so the market can open to a new era ppl. Dont hang on to them just because you spent valuable time of your life playing them. I know you like them, or you can relate to them, you made friends there, you laughed, you joked, you bashed your keyboard, etc etc, but they are what they are and what no one can ever take away: great games, great launch bases for what become a golden age for this genre, but they need to go...we are stalling here...let them kids with the pandas, just friking stop what you are playing and paying now (except SWTOR and EvE) and send a clear message to developers:
Vet gamers may now be fewer than panda-loving-kids, but we are here, we supported this genre for many years and we want a mmorpg game now!!! We want to be challenged, we want it to be hard and harsh, we want the death penalty to be our pc exploding, we want to leave our girlfriends alone in the bed, we want to cry "HAVOC!!!" everytime anyone says "leroy jenkins", we want to launch the dogs of war in a game where its possible once again to make friends, because if you share 3,4,5,6,7,8 hours a day with a given person, sooner or later, you risk becoming friends.
Tolkien, Haka, Simuil, Nightstalker, Alana, Drood, Aleesha, you still there mates? Lost track of you ppl...miss you ppl...love from the other side of the world.
First i wanted to thank you for responding like an adult and not attacking the person, well done.
I dont really want to spend a lot of time on this response but i did want to touch on a few things.
First, i don't really believe that WOW started out with blizzard conspiring to "ruin" the MMO genre for us old schoolers. I agree with you 100% that they were making a game in their style, etc that was an MMO. Part of Blizzard's methods though are to focus on making their games accessible, and that is where my second point comes in. I do believe that blizzard is using WOW in its current form purely as a money maker. Nobody will convince me that any of the changes they have made to that game in the last 1-2 years was anything other than for money grabs. Hell, look at the starcraft release (having to buy 3 different versions of the game to play all the single player content) for evidence of what their "success" with wow has turned the company into. They have $$$ in their eyes, its just sad.
You mention that the genre has changed due to the desire of the playerbase and this is where i disagree and will explain to you why i feel you are misunderstanding.
My point has been that "the playerbase" as it existed Pre-WOW did not have those desires. The "playerbase" post WOW does have those desires. The playerbase pre wow was around 1.5million people. WOW came out and opened that pie up to gamers who normally wouldnt have played MMO's by making a game that was inclined towards a more casual style of play.
Now, you are correct that there were many things wrong with EQ original formula (which was based off of popular MUD's). And that ultimately those tenets started to change. Nobody here is arguing that EQ at release was perfection. What our problem is that if you consider a pendulum, and put EQ at release on one end of the pendulum, and put WOW (or in reality now SW:TOR) at the other end of that pendulum. That we would like something between the center of the pendulum swing and the EQ "end" of the pendulum swing. Instead what we're getting is everyone developers trying to make the pendulum swing even further to the WOW side til its past WOW.
I'll be the first to say that things like instancing, mounts, having teleporters to bring u to different parts of the world (outside of wizards and druids) are all good things. The problem has been the pervasion of it many of these things. Was original EQ leveling speed too slow? yes. Does that mean we need to go to the opposite end of the spectrum with MMO's like SWTOR (people have hit max level in less than 70 hours). NO. Do we need to have a teleporter in every zone? NO. Do we need to have the ability to press a button and insta port to a dungeon instead of spending 2 or 3 min travelling? NO.
People think things like this are a good thing, but they are the primary reason why no current or modern MMO has anything resembling a real community, and why so many people complain that MMO's dont feel like world and just feel like theme parks. The whole "theme park" idea didnt get created until after WOW was released. Same thing with the idea of an "end game".
The simple fact is that something gained easily has no instrinsic value to you. If you have to work for something you value it more than if you dont. Thats basic human nature.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche