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Is This the Dark Age of MMORPGs? Upon These Ruins (Vanguard, AoC, WAR) Will Someone Create a WORLD?
declaredemer
Member Posts: 2,698
The World: Climate Crisis; MMORPGs: Creative Crisis
The challenge of MMORPGs is not who can create next WoW but who can capitalize on WoW's vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and flaws?
When the Roman Empire fell, the West entered into a period known as the "Dark Ages." Upon the ruins of the Roman Empire, we created the Western civilization.
Is that the future of MMORPGs, or will we continue to copy WoW and will immersion-gamers have no place, no voice, and no home in this industry?
Edit
The analysis of Vanguard is a tricky albeit fascinating one. The company probably tried to create a world, but due to management weaknesses and budget limitations was unable to. Moreoeer, the world had many flaws such as travel; lack of customization; a sense of sameness; too much bareness; and many others.
Comments
Vanguard is a world, just like what your asking for.
It's only failing was a poor launch, no one is willing to go back and play it now that it has fixed most of its original issues.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
if your expecting every inch of a massive gameworld to be "oh ah so beautiful!" you've got another thing coming to you. Try traveling the Canadian prairies, or the sahara desert. The world IRL has its share of barren locals, to expect an MMO which emulates this to be beauty around every turn is just expecting too much. Out of all the MMO's I have played to date VG has had the most impressive game environment, each continent was varried and quite impressive in its scale. Looks like we just have another picky gamer here that expects too much.
Usually when you pay for something you have a wee bit of a right to get more of what you expect. If it's a free game that's one thing but if you are a paying customer you should get more of what you're looking for. If you can't make that then don't try and sell it. Just my 2cents. Since the original EQ, I still haven't found what I'm looking for and am getting tired of trying.
maybe the creators of eq/vanguard and pre all crap SWG should get in a room and come out with a killer game and make us all very happy
First of all, it's the Renaiseance of MMORPGs. WoW with 11 MILLION players? More MMO"s than you can shake a stick at? Hardly the dark ages.
If you are asking, will developers eventually start catering to very small niche markets? I think at some point the cost of making an MMORPG becomes more reasonable with off the shelf engines, and access to outsourced modelers.
At that point you can make an MMORPG that doesn't cost 50 million bucks, which means it doesn't need a million subs to be profitable. Some developers will realize they can make a profit off of niche markets, and they will make these games.
BTW, global warming is not caused by man, and even if it is, what happens when cheap oil runs out? Will we plunge into an ice age? If the Earth starts to cool would you advocate burning coal and emitting Co2 as much as possible to warm it up? Somehow I doubt it.
Yup, Vanguard was big. Played it with my friends, I did. After the fixes even. Wasn't impressed. It was big but boring. And empty (as in not much players online). One of my friends liked it but preferred EQ2. I'm not a hater - I just didn't like it. Maybe they should've concentrated more on the content and then expand the world peace by peace. I hope everybody learned the lesson.
It is truly dark times for immersion gamers.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I think it was a poor game design. Why have such a huge world, then put all the different races so far apart in a game not based on PvP? You accomplish nothing except spreading out the player population.
Oi, Drama Queen(s),
Your titles and posts are becoming unbearable.
As for this one:
Ruins don't hold intelligent life. AoC, WAR, and even Vanguard in a small way all hold subscriptions and continue to update and function. Consider them different sized towns... with the analogy still holding for the problems larger towns experience.
Ruins are Hellgate London, Tabula Rasa, and whatever other MMO's are no longer around or closing.
Quit crying over the genre and start toughening up to do something about it.
For anyone that is considering crying and whining over how bad everything is, I recommend you watch this. Perhaps you'll learn something before it reaches this point:
Language in it, so don't let your parents see you.
I think most devs use a template design to start their games. You alway have a health bar, levels, buttons that represent special abilities. We can only hope for a good mmo when we hear about one.
Re: Vanguard.
I am playing Vanguard again, and having fun. Now is obviuous why It failed. There ares like New Targonor that are crazy big with crazy big streets... Is like one of these counter-strike maps where you fight in a single giganteous room and the players are small like mouses. This is not poor design, this is wrong design. Maybe by now these designers have learned... and seems so!.. there are stuff like the new island,that it feels much more coherente... Lets go the extra mile!.. go pick a trial or something and play the new island, is fun. And all the things around teh game (like diplomacy) are even better now.
Vanguard is one world, and a big one, I would love to see it evolve to become a more coherente, populated world. But I may need to edit some areas, and make the engine suffer less.. It seems that some areas where designed withouth testing how the engine support that much decoration, so the framerates become a single digit...
Pretty much.
No game will ever be perfect, and if you go into a game with a specific set of bullet points of what you want to see in order for "immersion" to exist, you will never be happy. All games will fall short in some way.
Besides, immersion is relative to the player. There's no arbitrary standard for what makes a game truly immersive for a player, so demanding a "world" from developers is ludicrous.
I think it was a poor game design. Why have such a huge world, then put all the different races so far apart in a game not based on PvP? You accomplish nothing except spreading out the player population.
True. Vanguard was just big for the sake of being big. No point to it really.
This reminds me or WAR where they spread the player base in each faction to 3 different RvR fronts and 3 different PvE campaigns in each 4 tiers. Not to mention the players involved in scenario grind in each tier which was quite fun for some time. I played WAR in Karak Eight Peaks(one of the most populated servers) and still thought fragmented player base was a problem.
---EDIT:
I admit I'm picky but just because some people might settle for lame game doesn't mean I'd have to. The youtube video someone referred here was about that. I'd rather take a break from mmorpgs altogether than play this shit. Without criticism there would be no development. Anywhere.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I had a bit of a hard time following you but ,i can try and respond to a couple.
Yes i also believe the more intensive zones were not tested properly.BUT!,here is the catch,they DO HAVE sliders and the ability to dumb down A LOT of things in the game,so really there is no need for testing other than testing the full blown wide open settings.Even so,every developer knows the technology will advance so testing again would be futile,with no idea how advanced the next year systems will be.So they could say ,right now the game will not play properly on the best systems but next year it may glide smoothly.This way it caters to many more users,the low end can scale down,the advanced can go nuts.
On your query about the massive size areas,i think you are maybe wrong,developers are actually leaning MORE towards larger open areas than tight corridors witch were the trademark of console games.Now i can see your argument if i was into PVP and wanted a PVP map,areas too large lend to sniper only action not much in the way of thinking skills.Some people prefer larger areas in PVP because they feel safer and can see everyone around them,so it is preference i guess.
What i think may happen in the future is ways to limit objects in the world,the way fauna is done in games.The developer would prioritize objects in the world so that a low end user could scale down and actually eliminate certain objects or vice versa.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I was talking about Vanguard imposible big stuff with really tiny (in comparation) characters.
Thanks for reading my comment, and sorry for my horrible english.
I think that after WoW, most people are expecting too much. Most MMOs that have come out have been perfectly fine, and had the potential to draw a profitable user base.
After Wow, the percentage of naysayers to hopefully seemed to tip way too far, and now everything is either a Wow-clone, is vaporware, or is full of "teh fail."
In short, to quote the cliche, "it's society's fault."
MMO games played or tested: EQ, DAoC, Archlord, Auto Assault, CoH, CoV, EQ2, EVE, Guild Wars, Hellgate: London, Linneage II, LOTRO, MxO, Planetside, SWG, Sword of the New World, Tabula Rasa, Vanguard, WWIIOL, WOW, Age of Conan
Although you probably don't want to hear it, this is my opinion. A good friend and I have started playing AoC after about 8 months off and have found huge changes. Things are getting fixed, the system runs great. they set out class advocates to help give input from a user side.
After having played FFXI, LOTRO, EQII, WoW, Guild wars, Perfect world, Vanguard, CoH,... the list goes on I think I've finally found a home. If you tried AoC when it released and haven't been back since and are looking for a new game I'd recommend giving it one more shot.
Vanguard had more than its share of problems but the size of its world wasnt one imo. It was designed that way because eventually you got flying mounts that made travel much easier and i have to say it was just brilliant flying over the world. It also needed to be big because of player housing and guild halls.
It was a pain to travel at first then you got the port stones which helped a lot.
VG had the right idea just the wrong person in charge (Brad).
I am waiting for a Second Life version of an MMO. Ok, maybe not a paper copy of SL, but I want to start out in a world that is not populated. It is up to the players to run out from a central starting point, claim some land, build and defend it. Single farmer/resident plots can be combined (at the cooperation of players) into villages and villages into cities and cities into nations. I would ask that developers maintain NPC based content ala dungeons and things within the world that the players have no control over. But, everthing else is up to the player. Players create the content, players create the economy (both ala EVE Online) and players live and die and gain experience and skill levels by defending their land or attacking other lands. That is all I want. Doesn't have to be as haphazard and varied as SL, maybe a limited tool set for combining pre-defined buildings and objects so that players are the one who creates the world....not the developers!
Guild Wars already did. It took all of several months after WoW was released. Do you really want me to copy and paste all the ways that Guild Wars fixes flaws of WoW?
You and me both! The creative direction of the industry went toward linearity, raiding end-game, and character "specialization." Edit: And to a certain extent PvP, which resoundingly failed, and many of us, particularly more discerning immersion-gamers, are not surprised.
The "new" creative direction is payment schemes and scams and online shops.
The industry needs a dramatic, indeed drastic, change in direction that focuses on innovation in the realm of player empowerment, worlds that literally evolve and change, and genuine character customization.
I want the PVE combat and raids of EQ, non-targetting concepts of Tera online, the openness of Vanguard, the stability of WoW, AND I want it all in one game.
Honestly, some companies are making actual worlds, but Vanguard failed, it could have been great, Darkfall is PVP, which I don't care for usually and every other game out there has PVE which is usually too easy to complete or doesn't require enough team-work. I like TERA so far, but something tells me that game is so far away, and it doesn't seem open world.
And innovation.
Creativity and innovation are frozen in MMORPGs right now, particularly in terms of world immersion, character customization, and even Questing.
My theory is that the copying and pasting of features, even with incremental innovation, will not be enough; we need entirely new concepts of how we interact with the world, and how the world reacts to our activities, in MMORPGs.
+ skillbased character system
VG has glorious moments where you look on the screen and think "wow! amazing" and one hour later youre totally frustrated because something isnt working as it should and you would like to throw some bomb on the SoE headquaters.
Anyway... Whats this non-targetting concept of Tera?
Normally you target a mob, run up to it and smash it, nod nod.
In tera you need to judge your position before you make an attack, are you close enough to strike when you leap forward and strike it, is your push correct so other people can hit it, etc..
Actually I'm going to find you the video that shows the concept, just a minute.
www.youtube.com/watch
The mob moves all over the place too, it also jumps, so you need to watch your push as a tank. Something I loved in EQ, mobs, especially raid mobs, could move all over the place because of raid melee push.
They somewhat patched this in EQ though like a year ago, now mobs have less "push". But I always liked push and judging your distance to the mob, it's highly tactical gameplay.