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Go to worldofwarcraft.com, and look at the news. What do you see as the majority? Art crap. More and more wallpaper, player concept art/drawings and comic contests.
WTF is this game? Is it a role-playing game, or a freaking art convention??
Back in the "old days", what EQ was released, we the players, were sometimes treated to something knows as GM events. These events were sometimes the coolest thing ever. All of a sudden 3 named ghouls would appear in Befallen, and start tearing people apart. Once killed, one might drop a "special" item. A GM item. One-of-a-kind, sometimes very powerful. The ghouls were being controlled by GM's or volunteer Guides.
These things were usually run weekly on a per server basis. They were alot of fun and there was something special about it, as it broke the rules of the game, and was a fresh experience.
Now, why can't WoW have something like this? Why all the focus on art design, and publicity? Who cares about the freaking art!? Why not post something like actual NEWS, or upcoming events?
WoW is a decent game, but Blizzard being the paranoid perfectionists they are (afraid to do anything new, because it might take forever to "polish" it to perfection), pretty much ruin it all.
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On WoW things like this would require a lot of staff and a lot of effort. How many WoW servers are there again? 300+? Of course this doesn't mean they CAN'T do events like this? It means the WON'T
The only game that comes to mind where the devs participate in events are SWG and City of Heroes/Villains.
"There's no star system Slave I can't reach, and there's no planet I can't find. There's nowhere in the Galaxy for you to run. Might as well give up now."
Boba Fett
Im surprised thats all you came up with--my list of wow hates is alot longer. Dont get me wrong..I have fun pvping but even that gets ruined by the obscenely geared out bloobs.
Dont let anyone fool you... Gear > skill in WoW
This was my #1 complaint about AO when i quit a while back.Im playing for free now BTW but rarely do i log in.As a matter of fact id say imho that AO is directly responsible for lack of events ingame for any mmo.
When i 1st started playing AO 4.5 years ago it was a new game.This was when a "gm" would have a green name and be say level 250.At the time there were only 200 levels in the game.Rarely would a GM hand out a mission to players but they could if they wanted to.I was one of the rare few that received such a mission from a socalled gm.
It made for a very engaging and fun,immersive experience.
But then the mission booths took over for instancing.Thus the end of the "gamemaster" as we know it today in ANY mmo.Think of the npc's in WoW as a mission booth in AO and you will see what i mean.
Here are my issues with mmo's now:
1.Devs build a static world that is unaffected with exceptions.
2.A "mission"booth is installed.Coh/Cov,WoW pop into mind immediatley.
3.Install dungeons that require supreme effort and immense time to conquer.
4.Put in "rare" mobs with even "rarer" drops to keep the players enticed.
I remember at 1 point in AO the "news" items for ingame events didnt change for a year and a half.Devs now build worlds that built to be left alone with minimal maintenance.
Get used to it.Players dont affect the worlds in mmo's with the exceptions of Shadowbane or L2.
Want to ENJOY an mmo?
Dont start a guild and dont be a leader or volunteer to be coleader or captain.
Just play the damn game:)
If you talk about the server side events, those kind of events are overrated...at least for now.
If you talk about player side events, then that does not exist in a crappy game like WOW.
maybe they're just not very good at doing events, as proven by the aq gate openings.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
There's no middle ground with you people.
Eve can't just be good, it has to be "the game the will revolutionize the MMO genre".
WoW can't simply be a bad game, it's "single-handedly ruining the MMO genre".
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
How did EQ ruin it? EverQuest is basically the father of todays MMO's, just about all these games out there have things taken from EQ. If it wasnt for EverQuest there wouldnt be any MMO's for you to play, unless you like UO and EA.
"There's no star system Slave I can't reach, and there's no planet I can't find. There's nowhere in the Galaxy for you to run. Might as well give up now."
Boba Fett
--The next WoW killer is not going to be anything that the hard-core MMOer that hates WoW will want to play.
--The smaller and more innovative developers will find it much harder to find the funding from traditional sources to produce a truly good game without feeling the pressure to conform to the lowest common denominator...hence compromising the game and possibly reuining it.
--Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is trying to get his noodle wet in the MMO market including previously uninterested big money players (ie EA). So the sheer number of prospective projects is really going to spread the "talent" thin.
Everyone involved wants to make money, but only a few want to make a truly good game...and even they are likely under the authority of the former. Anyone remember the Atari saturation and what it did to the console market? It took a few years for the market to recover. The same thing here, although very different circumstances. The video game industry is STILL a relatively new industry and even more so for that of MMOs. It's only in the last 5 years that major corporations have taken it seriously enough to invest significant capital.
Basically, WoW has blown the lid off the market and now everyone knows about it. Over time though, with the failure of more and more projects, this gold rush will settle down and you will have your big companies starting to take chances on innovative projects once they realize that plopping an MMO on the market != instant cash flow.
Another thing to consider is that MMOs are quite different animals than any traditional form of media. Companies make a movie or a game in the past and it is what it is, there's no changing it. MMOs however are constantly under threat of change and larger, profit driven companies will likely change the game in reaction to subscription trends. Can't tell you how many times I've heard someone talk about Game A before Patch B or Expansion C. It will probably be a very rare thing for you to find a game you enjoy in the future and have no change that you dislike.
I don't know what I'm talking about.