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Is WoW the ultimate manifestation of the mmorpg industry "Selling out"?
Bakhalla
Member Posts: 40
i had this thought yesterday and expressed it in another thread about classic everquest.
mmo genere was pretty large with UO and everquest. have the "improvements" that have been made in these games really improvments at all? or has it's been a dilution of the true core of what turned people on to the mmo's in the first place.?
more and more i feel like the mmo industry has taken old school dnd platforms and made them more user friendly. taking away any sort of challenge and replaced it with hand holding, spoon feeding to the masses.
is this good or bad? ever since eq1 "Sold out" became more user friendly whatever you want to call it, i've been searching for a game that would take me back to the days of pre kunark expansion mmo "life"
but all mmo's have changed. we went from a small group of players, i don't know how many folks EQ1 and UO had playing them, even if it was a million, it's no where near the numbers mmo's are generating now, and it's because they took away all the things i would preceive as good and replaced them with what the mass majority wants in a videogame. basically taking mario party and fusing it with dnd stylized dungeon crawls. basically, WoW. that is why it's sooooo successful, it totally collected everything from every pre-wow mmo that was distasteful to the platform playing public deluded it down, repackaged it, and pushed it out. it was a brilliant move. but in effort to keep up it pressures all the other companies to follow suit.
i was excited about AoC, and War, but i'm worried now. i believe they will both fall short of the good stuff, and be more wow-esc. discovering that AoC is being specifically designed for Xbox, (reasoning below) was a huge blow to my confidence in a return to good pvp integrated mmo's... we shall see about war in the future.
does anyone else feel what i'm trying to express here? not to sound like a moaning vet of the days of yore, but i feel, and have finally come to realize is that some serious elements of what i used to love about mmo's are gone!
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why aoc is being specifically designed for Xbox and not PC.
Aoc will be more successful monitarily if they have a strong xbox platform. you can see it in any EB/gamestop/retailer. the platform games absolutly dwarf the pc games in their little 3x4 display tucked away in the corner. at my local retailer anyways.
Xbox customers are the target audience i think. my evidence lies in what i read yesterday about the combat setup. above WASD, you use the 1,2,3,4, keys as your basic trusting,slashing,hacking, attacking commands etc. this is generally how all auto attack mmo's work, with hotkeys, and it works well, but that is in auto attack mmo's. in real time it would suck!!! (speaking from ignorance, but still)
how can a pc player manuver and attack wi the same fingers for the course of a battle? move chop move chop move chop, it just doesn't seem to work out in my mind.
am i over analyzing, maybe. but that's what i think.
Comments
I hear ya man,
I would give alot just to have another mmo that re-invents challenge into an mmo. And by challenge I don't mean just a darn grind.
Eq1 did it right..as did SWG-pre cu imo..I doubt with the direction mmo's are heading *due to WoW influence* that we will be getting anything thats truly good for awhile.
And I agree with you as well that WAR and AoC will probably have the usual quest exp grind that most mmo's seem to offer lately -_-
But I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.
I dont think that the problem will be in the combat... i think it can work (real time mmo, I found some games with lot of movement that aproach to it, and, its tabula-rasa flag), the problem is ever with wow, and marketing... and with this they need something for the "mass". So they didnt took out a mmoRPG they took a mmo, an action mmo, the statics on the char are near auto, so, you can only kill and collect items, action mmo... no rpg, and they said that they are THE mmorpg, to the point lot of people, today, think it was the first mmoRPG... but it isnt a rpg, there is no role playing, there is no alter-ego, there is only a toon that kills kills kills and also kills or broadcast for a group or flaming something like a toony elf that lives in year 2007, in earth... So where is the alter ego?
Its not a crussade to explain why wow sucks, but HOPE that AOC bring something new, also, with that you say, Im starting to feel that it wouldnt be possible. Why? umm how can socialice xbox users? there is no keyboard to write! >_< or they must buy a keyboard (cmon boy, buy a computer! you can do more things than play and let your parents see the tv!) so.. if all this people can only kill and run... where is the rpg? they will need to get a "simple" easy game for the pad?
Thanks to blizzard marketing ... will aoc be nothing else than another online arcade? perhaps...
hope that no
I played EQ1 off and on for about 5 years. I started the game fairly early in its "classic" stage, before any expansions. I have a lot of great memories of that game.
However, when you take off the rose colored glasses, and look at it realistically, EQ1 was god awful in many regards. Yes, it was challenging, and you got a great sense of accomplishment when you got that piece of loot you finally wanted, or dinged out of a hell level. But day to day EQ was often an exercise in frustration. One death could set you back an entire days' worth of xping. And just to get to that xp spot, it could take sometimes hours to put a group together, and when you got to the dungeon, you were put on a list for a certain spot. Xping in that spot was mind numbingly repetitive. You didn't "do" the dungeon, you camped in one area and pulled mobs to your group.
And god forbid you and your group wipe in some deep dungeon spot, because you could literally spend hours and several more xp loss deaths just trying to recover your corpses. Players used to simply just give up in disgust or sadness after a day of corpse recovery. And lets not forget the nightmare of corpse recovery in a place like Plane of Fear, where you often had to enlist the help of another guild to clear mobs just so your guild could get back on its feet. I could go one and on...
EQ was many things, but it wasn't the epitome of MMORPG design, it was merely an early prototype. I for one am glad that today's MMO's have put the focus of their games more on fun, rather than the "carrot on a stick" paradigm that was so prevalent in EQ.
Has WoW sold out? Not in my opinion. WoW simply took the initiative to utilize the best ideas of MMORPG's, improve upon them, and create a game that most gamers would enjoy. WoW has its share of issues, and Blizzard took PvP in a direction that I personally didn't like, but overall, IMHO, its a great game, and a great gaming experience for anyone.
Equal opportunity troll.
Your right WoW did sell out, but there are bigger issues here namely hello kitty island adventure. Hello kitty island adventure doesnt have hard death penalties, long travel times, and needs more blood and gore......... They sold out, it should be more like EQ1 AO DAoC.
What are becoming of video games today.
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BTW i couldnt agree more (besides camping/afew other things were rather fun)with the poster above me.
If only i could find a troll with a tin foil hat. =(
I almost feel sorry about bursting the bubble here..but I have a pin and it is my responsibility to use it.
Get over it.
What you (and many other "hardcore" gamers) call "selling out" is simply healthy economic forces at work. When MMO's started they were created by and catered to people who, bluntly, were obsessive-compulsive, anti-social, (hate to use this word) geeks. As they people grew up and tried to draw other people into their obsession, the people drawn in said "why does it work like that when doing it like this could would be so much easier?" Or "Why must it always be about beating the tar out of each other? Can't we go out on an adventure together and have fun?". These people, feeling disenfranchised by these "l33t" players, went off and created their own games and found out that MANY more people would be turned on by a game that was accessible and fun rather than one designed to punish you for playing (which is the feeling many of the older games gave off). This then was refined until we now have the mass-media called MMO's today. Old-school style MMO's are now "niche" product and all the whining in the world won't change it.
good accurate reply, thankyou for the head-check
The one thing EQ did better than any MMOG has ever done was world design. Other than that, the game itself has very little going for it.
Character classes were somewhat innovative for their time, but EQ's shortcuts in this area gave rise to some terrible paradigms that haunt the MMOG genre to this day, much to its detriment. I am referring to the "necessity" of taunting (created as a shortcut around creating a way to physically block a monster from reaching your back lines), the "necessity" of controlling fights down to a one-at-a-time beatdown (newer games are finally getting over this!), and the perpetuation and exacerbation of unrealistic Stealth and its bastardized tactical considerations (DAoC is even more to blame for this one).
Other problems introduced by EQ: catering to the endgame mentality (rather than encouraging people to enjoy all levels), the advent of formalized raids, controlling player advancement through downtime, forced (rather than encouraged) grouping, hard-coded level range restrictions for grouping. Many of these have been overcome in various games.
World of Warcraft only squelched the most obviously tedious of these, such as downtime and grouping restrictions, but retained a number of ideas that, while not immediately un-fun, are not healthy for the game or the genre. So what you are left with is a game that is extremely appealing to the masses, but is unhealthy and damaged at its core.
I'm the first to admit that WoW can be immensely entertaining in the short term. But for the long haul, someone is going to have to innovate a little bit and overcome some of the challenges EQ was not able to. If we are to be disappointed in Blizzard for anything, it is that they have not been willing to step up and solve problems rather than simply copying and polishing the most popular bits from other games.
I think they made improvements. Dropping you in a town without any hint or tutorial is not challenging. Its annoying. Having to talk to every NPC to see if they have a quest or not is not challenging. Its repetive and its annoying.having a harsh death penalty with an XP drop again, is not challenging, it only increases the timesink. Not having a clear map or/and minimap is not challenging. All it does is require you to:
1: Endlessly walk around
2: PM other people asking where to go next.
Again, I don't see how that is challenging
I could not agree more
I have not a doubt that AoC and WAR will be as you say WOW-esc, but that's all we have now. As someone said, MMOGS have to get more simple before getting complex again. At least one.
WoW didn't sell anything out. WoW is just a different type of game. Arcady, Cartoony, and takes half a brain to play, but hey, it's popular.
bad for players
Fully agree!
Iit's real simple: These games are created to make money, not to appeal to a select group of traditional mmorpg enthusiasts. WoW is a good game. People like it and people pay to play it. It has something like 8 million subscribers. Good for Blizzard.
When they choose to do so, they'll create another game. Maybe it will be another mmorpg, maybe it won't. They will produce whatever they feel will make the most money. You and me may or may not like it. That doesn't mean they've 'sold out'.
Last I checked, Blizzard didn't sign a contract with the rpg community promising only to make certain types of games.
I understand your concerns, but I think it's a matter of the industry evolving rather than "selling out." Selling out involves compromising your initial integrity for a buck and I think that's hard to do in mainstream entertainment industries (be it the recording industry, television, or videogames) whose sole purpose is to RAKE IN CASH by making products that appeal to the widest audience they can reach. I think people romanticize the UO/EQ days because the industry was smaller then. MMORPGs didn't have as big a player base so there weren't 101 companies putting out crappy games left and right. Think about it--all top 40 radio sounds the same. 90% of network television shows are the same. Ever trailer you see for every crappy summer blockbuster has most of the same elements in it. But every so often something comes along that catches your eye or ear and gives you something different. This'll happen in the game industry but let's be realistic. Most companies are following the lead of the flavor-of-the-day (which happens to be WoW at the moment). In a couple years there will be a NEW flavor of the day and all the game manufacturers will be copying whatever THAT is. Overall, I think WoW did A LOT more good for the industry than it did harm. You can blame Blizzard for a lot of things, but you can't blame them for creating an extremely popular game that many newer MMORPGs use as a model. V:SoH proved that there's only a tiny segment of the gaming population that wants to get in a time machine back to 1999. The contributions UO and EQ have made to the MMORPG world are evident in every game on the horizon, from Tabula Rasa to WAR so though we're in a slump of cookie cutter games right now and you'll never be able to go back to the excitement of playing your first MMORPG, there will be that title that breaks the mold sooner or later--just like UO did, just like EQ did, and just like WoW did.
If selling out means making the genre better, then Blizzard sold out big time;) Theres a reason most people found older MMORPGs a bore. it wasn't because the gameplay was fantastic by the way. It really WAS tedious and repetitive, but it was new which made it kind of exciting. That gameplay ain't new anymore. Thats where Blizzard took over.
Gotta agree with Maxstone here. Blizzard took what was good and made it better and removed the crap that was annoying to many of us that just couldn't really get into those earlier games. WOW still has some problems, but these problems are more inherant with the genre and not unqiue to Blizzard. Grinds will always be there in one form or another. Can't avoid that if you expect to play a game for months or years.
All these hardcore gamers need to wake up and realize the genre is not just for you anymore. Your time has past. You're not the majority of the playerbase out there. You're the niche market now. Hard to accept but oh well. Many hardcore gamers have a new lifestyle now and can't do what they used to do, like sit motionless for 6+ hrs in a chair;)
Successful titles make it possible for more niche products to find their way to market.
Don't decry the success of a title with broad appeal (and therefore usually less enthusiast appeal) as the downfall of an industry. More dollars in the market means more ideas will take root.
However, I do feel that mobs outside of instances were way too easy to beat. Coming from FFXI to WoW, I did like the fact that I could actually solo (instead of LFG/LFM forever). The mobs still could have been tougher. I definitely think Blizzard did a great job at making certain things easy.
For example, crafting might not be that interesting in WoW (and for the most part useless... well maybe since BC things are better), but it wasnt a pain in the ass. I hated having to drag and drop every ingredient into boxes then clicking OK to craft in FFXI. Then you would hope it wouldnt fail and lose most/all your mats. Then you would repeat all the dragging and dropping on the next one. I dunno about you guys, but I hated that!
The new daily quest thing is pretty cool too. I mean I would much rather do daily quests to make a decent amount of money in a short time. Who wants to sit there and farm for things for hours and hours? Then again farming wasnt as bad as FFXI either.
The main problem I see with MMOs right now (especially wow) is endgame is the same old shit. What else is left to do besides raid or pvp? It's all about gear... nothing else. Personally, I would love to see mini games in MMOs. Theres a bunch of stuff that could be done. I mean look at all the sports (yes i know it will still be pvp, but different) you could implement into games. It doesnt have to be as good as madden. or fifa, or whatever. Mount races would be cool, any sport (with some sort of twist to it to give it some flavor), or even casinos and card games (regular cards or yugiyo lol). Also I would love to see a crafting system where the crafter can get creative. Give crafters the option to design armor and weapons, furniture, saddles... whatever. Maybe I'm asking for too much, but doing the same old crap over and over gets old. There should be a variety of things to do in the new MMOs, and they shouldnt be boring.
Just like Auto Assault, EvE, City of Heroes/Villains, Face of Mankind, The Matrix Online, Star War Galaxies, Planetside.
What a great list of titles with more ideas!
That doesn't even make sense.
In short, instead of killing mobs every day for money, you do the same quest every day for money. It's just as lame and stupid as farming, IMO.
Eight million accounts at fifteen bucks a month each? I'd sell out for just a fraction of that.