I personally like anarchy's post. I don't want a game that appeals to everyone. That game was called WoW, and anyone who ever sat through 15 minutes of "Barrens" chat has seen my nightmare and my personal hell. I agree, MMO's have degraded in quality, and in part, I blame this on "casual" gamers. It is my personal belief that casual gamers are the reason that sites like www.ige.com exist, becayse they are too lazy, not dedicated enough to the game, or unwilling to gather their own funds, level their character, etc etc. The thing I despise even more about this, is the fact that certain companies (such as SoE with EQ2) have even encouraged players to be lazy, with the Station Exchange and such.
Now, it's not entirely fair though to blame casual gamers for this. This all goes back to the "omgzphatlewt=skill" problem. I think if items could be acquired primarily through questing, and not just by throwing all your currency at a crafter, that this problem could be fixed. Granted now, some people don't want to quest, and would rather just buy their items and level. I just think that if you made upper-end items questable-only, there wouldn't be 100's of players running around with the best equipment, acting like smacktards.
Death penalties in today's games are jokes too. EQ2's debt system was a laugh, and dying in WoW hardly even seemed like a penalty (I for one used it for quick warps to town occasionally). This is another reason I believe games' overall quality has devolved. Weak death penaltis allow even the biggest moron to exp mindlessly. So what if he dies 3-4 times, it only set him back by a few minutes, and I guarantee he didn't learn from his mistakes or care. Back in the days of the dreaded corpse fetching, or in the days where dying - permadeath, you didn't see dumbass players at the max level cap. You know why? They died. Harsh death penalties discourage idiocy in my eyes; if someone knows that they're going to be fucked for a few hours because they forgot to avoid linking agro's, they're not going to foolishly run into a battle. They also won't take unneccesarily dangerous risks. I guess I consider harsh death penalties a n00b filter.
My biggest problem with casual gamers is that it seems to bring forth a level of ignorance. In the older games, people seemed to be more interested in immersing themselves in their game. There was more to it than just leveling to cap out. People also seemed to be more interested in their character and their reputation among the community. Casual games have brought along a sense of "I'm higher level which means I'm obviously more skilled". It makes me sad to see level 60's running around in World of Warcraft who still don't even know their roles in a party. I remember a time when the highest level players also seemed to be the most knowledgeable. Nowadays it seems it's just the people who grind out level after level who own the servers, and frankly, a mjaority of them are complete idiots. I guess I just yearn for a game where time + level + stats doesn't automatically lead to you being the best.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Because World of Warcraft has proven that you can't make money if your target audience are Hardcore players! Welcome to reality! Hardcore players are a minority, casual players are the majority. If you think the 90's are the way a MMORPG should be... WAKE UP!!! What MMORPG is outselling Lineage? WORLD OF WARCRAFT! Maybe World of Warcraft is the way MMORPG should of been from the start.
Originally posted by Johnark Because World of Warcraft has proven that you can't make money if your target audience are Hardcore players! Welcome to reality! Hardcore players are a minority, casual players are the majority. If you think the 90's are the way a MMORPG should be... WAKE UP!!! What MMORPG is outselling Lineage? WORLD OF WARCRAFT! Maybe World of Warcraft is the way MMORPG should of been from the start.
Games like wow should exist, they keep the majority of casual players in a game environment they want. I have no problems with this. We are not asking for all games to be converted, we are asking for one good game designed for those who want challenge in their game.
Lineage 2 is not hardcore, it is a glaring example of everything that is wrong with most mmorpgs today.
UO may not be the biggest, hell it honestly is even a shadow of its former self but it is honestly the most successful mmorpg because it has run longer with a steady population then any other game on the market in its genre. Not to mention the thousands of free shards for it where players can get any flavor of it they like.
Originally posted by Fadeus I am going to have to argue some of the points of the OP. It was a good article however I don't think its accurate in some respects. Firstly I will start out saying I am 33, I have been gaming since the atari vcs came out. My first RPG I ever played was on my Atari 800xl. So I beleive its fair to say I am not a part of some new softer generation that "can't handle it" so to speak I feel your comments about UO are very innacurate. If you had said UO was conceptually the best ATTEMPT at open PVP I would agree. However in reality UO ended up being a joke for accountability of a player that decided to become a Murderer. They had their own city without guards to go to for their banking needs. All the newbies that put out rewards for them would end up paying the very person that they put the bounty on because the PK frequently enough would kill himself and turn in his own head for the reward with an alt. Macroing took care of any skill loss issues without having to suffer via labors for your actions. I see everyone say how UO was great yet it's USUALLY (yes I did say usually and not always) the gankers and griefers saying it). I have yet to date see a game that has worked out these problems and made open PvP fun. If I want Open PvP I will go play Battlefield 2 or Battlefront, or even planetside where its handled in a far more mature manner. DAoC came up with what I felt was a feesible attempt and lucrative reality for PvP however it has it's flaws as well. Instead of true realm versus realm on any grand scale it has boiled down to little 1-4 man hit squads just running around wracking kills. I gamed with MANY in UO the first and second year it was released and I hardly ever remember the majority being happy about open PvP. As a matter of fact I remember most just dealing with it from the start. And the longer the game went the more immature the PvP became, there was no accountability for a player that decided to go that route. Macroing could wipe away any murder. As for debt from death, I don't think I have ever found that enjoyable since the concept was conceived. I think the difference is gamers accepted the outlook of what was acceptable by the game companies for fair trade for death back then, and now people are getting alittle more consumer oriented since gaming has become such a big industry and the cost of games is through the roof and demanded more satisfaction. The fact is in the 90's there was only a handful of gamers in comparison to now, so the cry's for something different or better were far less. Now you have millions of people using video games for entertainment and not just a small elite group, there are gonna be alot more opinions to be heard. I don't need the pain of penality to feel the burden of death in a game. When I am in EQ 2 or any other MMO death is always hardly avoided by me. I won't take some risks because I know it will get my group killed and that would be hugely irresponsible of me. Now I agree completely with transportation. I think even UO made it way to trivial. However in order for me to want to have to trek for my rewards I do expect it to be an adventure each time. If all I am doing is running the same path yet again across antonica to get to the zone where I can get experience, then travel needs to be trivialized because thats gonna get real boring while I am paying by the month. Morrowind I feel is the best example thus far of a good trade on travel and reward, but even it can get alittle rough in terms of tedious and boring sometimes. I do agree that games are WAY to gear-centric these days. Especially MMO's. However I don't think it will be going away anytime soon because as soon as you advertise "500 new items" on an expansion pack people flock to have it like leeches. Thats pure and simple marketting and I doubt it will go away. A company isn't going to take a less economical route, the people speak with their money. And the money currently is saying "more loot" unfortunetly. My biggest peive with games currently that I think stems ALL the other issues in curren't MMO's is how taken for granted meeting X monster and slaying him and his 500 other family members for a nights leveling. I beleive an encounter should take far longer and be much more work to acheive. I beleive combat should be the last resort because there is no other option simply because you don't want to risk the death of a group member or yourself or discovery if the mob survives and calls for help. I also beleive healing is grossly trivialized and that it should be toned way down. I have a hard time with immersion when a person goes from about to keel over to healthy as a horse auto-magically over and over. Very good write up Lil, thank you for sharing it with us.
You got me there. I agree totally that UO was the best attempt. The macro'ing issues could have been handled much better. There were a lot of ways around the penalties for death, but at least it was a deterant as opposed to some other games, but yes you are right, it definitely had room for improvement. They could have gotten rid of Buc's Den or made it easier to kill afk macro'rs in their house. I for one remember finding reds in their houses macro'ing and trying to kill them for a few minutes with quake and whatnot before giving up. It was possible if they were doing magery against themselves but it still was way too hard and dependant on the type of script they ran.
The only reason I feel a need for death penalties is because with the lack of them, people try to do incredibly stupid crap just to see if they can get away with it. Mix that with PvP and it's incredibly annoying, cause morons have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Anyway, glad to see a lot of discussion on this.
Although I don't see how some flamers think I'm all for grinding and time-sinks and stuff, I don't remember typing that anywhere but I could be wrong.
--Lilfunaho
___________________ Killer 73% Explorer 60% Achiever 46% Socializer 20%
Originally posted by Johnark Because World of Warcraft has proven that you can't make money if your target audience are Hardcore players! Welcome to reality! Hardcore players are a minority, casual players are the majority. If you think the 90's are the way a MMORPG should be... WAKE UP!!! What MMORPG is outselling Lineage? WORLD OF WARCRAFT! Maybe World of Warcraft is the way MMORPG should of been from the start.
World of Warcraft proved that you can make money by catering to the casual (carebear) players. It doesn't prove ANYTHING about the success of a hardcore mmorpg. You have no idea how large the hardcore player base is, for all you know it could be 10 times as large as WoWs playerbase. Therefore for all you know a hardcore mmorpg could be 10 times as successful as WoW (only taking number of subscriptions into account). Don't presume to know something beyond your means.
WoW only takes a sample of the population, one that is biased by the lack of competition. There are no hardcore mmorpgs out (at least none with equal footing technologically). For all you know 90% of the WoW players could actually be hardcore players, just waiting for something they REALLY like to come out, but in the mean time are stuck playing WoW. Once an mmorpg comes out that is on par with WoW technologically, but at the same time catering to hardcore players. THEN AND ONLY THEN can a comparison be made.
*Signature*The Pessimist says the cup is half empty. The Optimist says the cup is half full. The Pragmatist says the cup is half full of air. The Engineer says the cup is operating at 50% capacity. The Psychologist says the cup is your mother. The Punk Kid also says the cup is your mother. The Cricket Player says his cup is definately full. Everyone knows that Pamela Andersons cups are full. The Defendant says it was like that when he found it. Me, I just ask the waitress for a refill.
Originally posted by LilFunaho You got me there. I agree totally that UO was the best attempt. The macro'ing issues could have been handled much better. There were a lot of ways around the penalties for death, but at least it was a deterant as opposed to some other games, but yes you are right, it definitely had room for improvement. They could have gotten rid of Buc's Den or made it easier to kill afk macro'rs in their house. I for one remember finding reds in their houses macro'ing and trying to kill them for a few minutes with quake and whatnot before giving up. It was possible if they were doing magery against themselves but it still was way too hard and dependant on the type of script they ran. The only reason I feel a need for death penalties is because with the lack of them, people try to do incredibly stupid crap just to see if they can get away with it. Mix that with PvP and it's incredibly annoying, cause morons have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Anyway, glad to see a lot of discussion on this. Although I don't see how some flamers think I'm all for grinding and time-sinks and stuff, I don't remember typing that anywhere but I could be wrong. --Lilfunaho
Well then I think we are in complete agreement Lilfunaho.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
brought up a very good point: Many players like myself that craved an unforgiving, open PVP environ were driven to WoW, because of it's current graphics and it's fluid gameplay and immersion (three degrees of freedom are a MUST nowadays).
There are very few technical aspects of WoW that I would change: The controls, movement and even character creation have little more to be desired (although I would make the skill trees more complex and weighted and rescind any possibility of redeeming points) .
Although the graphics do not appeal to most because of their "cartoony" look, I found that the problem did not lie in the graphics itself, but the art; the graphics were VERY efficient and easy on the video-card.
I doubt that many people would be complaining if the WoW templates were used to create another mmorpg with the parameters that they desire.
That is precisely what blizzard does best: It provides the efficient, user-friendly abstraction needed for customization (look at Starcraft and WC3).
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
I'm not so sure the 'hardcore' mmorpg player is such a niche. I think its a bigger market than most people think. I see a lot of people quitting eq2 or wow looking for something more.. and look at the number of views and replies to this post.
I often wonder myself what happend to the magic that captured a lot of us hardcore in the original EQ and other games. I look foward to a day where I can play a next generation mmorpg and will be engrossed and entertained for at least several years. A lot of the newer games just don't cut it at the moment for the hardcore. When will a game come that will break this lull for the hardcore player and sweep us all off our feet? I want to be able to roleplay a character and have meaningful adventures and interactions with her, other players, and the envoirnment over the course of a long period of time. I'm tired of deleting characters and cancelling subscribtions when I find out that there's nothing else more to do in the game world.
The casual gamers have their really great games that they will have fun with. When will it be the hardcore player's turn to play a next gen mmorpg that they will love? Some bright developer will own the market if they can create a world that will capture the hardcore again, when they get bored of the EQ2's and the WoW's.
Comments
I personally like anarchy's post. I don't want a game that appeals to everyone. That game was called WoW, and anyone who ever sat through 15 minutes of "Barrens" chat has seen my nightmare and my personal hell. I agree, MMO's have degraded in quality, and in part, I blame this on "casual" gamers. It is my personal belief that casual gamers are the reason that sites like www.ige.com exist, becayse they are too lazy, not dedicated enough to the game, or unwilling to gather their own funds, level their character, etc etc. The thing I despise even more about this, is the fact that certain companies (such as SoE with EQ2) have even encouraged players to be lazy, with the Station Exchange and such.
Now, it's not entirely fair though to blame casual gamers for this. This all goes back to the "omgzphatlewt=skill" problem. I think if items could be acquired primarily through questing, and not just by throwing all your currency at a crafter, that this problem could be fixed. Granted now, some people don't want to quest, and would rather just buy their items and level. I just think that if you made upper-end items questable-only, there wouldn't be 100's of players running around with the best equipment, acting like smacktards.
Death penalties in today's games are jokes too. EQ2's debt system was a laugh, and dying in WoW hardly even seemed like a penalty (I for one used it for quick warps to town occasionally). This is another reason I believe games' overall quality has devolved. Weak death penaltis allow even the biggest moron to exp mindlessly. So what if he dies 3-4 times, it only set him back by a few minutes, and I guarantee he didn't learn from his mistakes or care. Back in the days of the dreaded corpse fetching, or in the days where dying - permadeath, you didn't see dumbass players at the max level cap. You know why? They died. Harsh death penalties discourage idiocy in my eyes; if someone knows that they're going to be fucked for a few hours because they forgot to avoid linking agro's, they're not going to foolishly run into a battle. They also won't take unneccesarily dangerous risks. I guess I consider harsh death penalties a n00b filter.
My biggest problem with casual gamers is that it seems to bring forth a level of ignorance. In the older games, people seemed to be more interested in immersing themselves in their game. There was more to it than just leveling to cap out. People also seemed to be more interested in their character and their reputation among the community. Casual games have brought along a sense of "I'm higher level which means I'm obviously more skilled". It makes me sad to see level 60's running around in World of Warcraft who still don't even know their roles in a party. I remember a time when the highest level players also seemed to be the most knowledgeable. Nowadays it seems it's just the people who grind out level after level who own the servers, and frankly, a mjaority of them are complete idiots. I guess I just yearn for a game where time + level + stats doesn't automatically lead to you being the best.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Because World of Warcraft has proven that you can't make money if your target audience are Hardcore players! Welcome to reality! Hardcore players are a minority, casual players are the majority. If you think the 90's are the way a MMORPG should be... WAKE UP!!! What MMORPG is outselling Lineage? WORLD OF WARCRAFT! Maybe World of Warcraft is the way MMORPG should of been from the start.
___________ ___ __ _ _ _
Stealth - Ambush - Hemorrhage - Sinister Strike x2 - Cold Blood - Eviscerate - Vanish - Preparation - Cold Blood - Ambush - ... you're dead! :P
Games like wow should exist, they keep the majority of casual players in a game environment they want. I have no problems with this. We are not asking for all games to be converted, we are asking for one good game designed for those who want challenge in their game.
Lineage 2 is not hardcore, it is a glaring example of everything that is wrong with most mmorpgs today.
UO may not be the biggest, hell it honestly is even a shadow of its former self but it is honestly the most successful mmorpg because it has run longer with a steady population then any other game on the market in its genre. Not to mention the thousands of free shards for it where players can get any flavor of it they like.
___________________
Killer 73%
Explorer 60%
Achiever 46%
Socializer 20%
World of Warcraft proved that you can make money by catering to the casual (carebear) players. It doesn't prove ANYTHING about the success of a hardcore mmorpg. You have no idea how large the hardcore player base is, for all you know it could be 10 times as large as WoWs playerbase. Therefore for all you know a hardcore mmorpg could be 10 times as successful as WoW (only taking number of subscriptions into account). Don't presume to know something beyond your means.
WoW only takes a sample of the population, one that is biased by the lack of competition. There are no hardcore mmorpgs out (at least none with equal footing technologically). For all you know 90% of the WoW players could actually be hardcore players, just waiting for something they REALLY like to come out, but in the mean time are stuck playing WoW. Once an mmorpg comes out that is on par with WoW technologically, but at the same time catering to hardcore players. THEN AND ONLY THEN can a comparison be made.
*Signature*The Pessimist says the cup is half empty. The Optimist says the cup is half full. The Pragmatist says the cup is half full of air. The Engineer says the cup is operating at 50% capacity. The Psychologist says the cup is your mother. The Punk Kid also says the cup is your mother. The Cricket Player says his cup is definately full. Everyone knows that Pamela Andersons cups are full. The Defendant says it was like that when he found it. Me, I just ask the waitress for a refill.
Well then I think we are in complete agreement Lilfunaho.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Geld
brought up a very good point: Many players like myself that craved an unforgiving, open PVP environ were driven to WoW, because of it's current graphics and it's fluid gameplay and immersion (three degrees of freedom are a MUST nowadays).
There are very few technical aspects of WoW that I would change: The controls, movement and even character creation have little more to be desired (although I would make the skill trees more complex and weighted and rescind any possibility of redeeming points) .
Although the graphics do not appeal to most because of their "cartoony" look, I found that the problem did not lie in the graphics itself, but the art; the graphics were VERY efficient and easy on the video-card.
I doubt that many people would be complaining if the WoW templates were used to create another mmorpg with the parameters that they desire.
That is precisely what blizzard does best: It provides the efficient, user-friendly abstraction needed for customization (look at Starcraft and WC3).
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
I'm not so sure the 'hardcore' mmorpg player is such a niche. I think its a bigger market than most people think. I see a lot of people quitting eq2 or wow looking for something more.. and look at the number of views and replies to this post.
I often wonder myself what happend to the magic that captured a lot of us hardcore in the original EQ and other games. I look foward to a day where I can play a next generation mmorpg and will be engrossed and entertained for at least several years. A lot of the newer games just don't cut it at the moment for the hardcore. When will a game come that will break this lull for the hardcore player and sweep us all off our feet? I want to be able to roleplay a character and have meaningful adventures and interactions with her, other players, and the envoirnment over the course of a long period of time. I'm tired of deleting characters and cancelling subscribtions when I find out that there's nothing else more to do in the game world.
The casual gamers have their really great games that they will have fun with. When will it be the hardcore player's turn to play a next gen mmorpg that they will love? Some bright developer will own the market if they can create a world that will capture the hardcore again, when they get bored of the EQ2's and the WoW's.