So a quick look through these forums, most game forums and other sites and it's is easy to see the real issue with mmorpgs and video games in general is the vocal minority who litter forums with QQing.
The good news is those who QQ about games they don't play, games not being free enough, games are not the way they were back during 8bit and dial up, those who can't move on after a game they played closed and spend four failed years QQing about a game that took its place and those who think they are entitled to everything now are the minority.
The truth is Video Games have never been better, there has never been such a wide range of games available to us. The saying misery loves company and clearly there are some who can't understand sometimes you just grow out of a hobby. There is nothing wrong with that I remember when I was 7 and didn't like micro machines anymore. I can't believe I was more mature at 7 then some of the 50 year olds here who can't move on if they can't find a video game they enjoy.
The industry is fine and thriving it's not the developers that is the issue its those I mentioned above.
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Why bash the gamers that take an effort to share their desires and set down in writing what they would like and be willing to pay for. When that happens about the products that my company provides we are extremely grateful as it makes our jobs easier.
I have tried all modern MMOs and think they are terribly boring, so I play a 10 year old one. Unfortunately the UI is clunky, the graphics are dated but the worst is the lack of players. So I have tried everything else on the market and nothing was as good. Honorable mentions would be Eve which kept me for over a year and AoC about 2 months. The rest couldn't manage more than a few hours.
So I play a 10 year old one that gives me the play style that I crave, group based, challenging and with relatively open world, with no endless quest lines and ability to solo everything.
Skyforge has grabbed me for 4-5 days now and thats awesome but I can tell that it lacks certain things and it wont last long, probably a month but I am so happy and grateful when that happens these days.
I'm not bashing the players, I'm bashing the vocal minority who litter ever games forums, website like this with their tireless endless rants about how I play a ten year old game and everything new sucks. When the fact is very little people play your ten year old game for a reason, it's not what the masses want and enjoy. There is a reason there are more mmorpgs today that have far exceeded any of these ten year old games ever did when you compare them to any matrix available.
Again the developers are giving the gamers what they want, it's why the industry is thriving and more popular then ever before, it's why there is more competition then ever before. Yes they have left those like you behind, no that is not a bad thing.
The best thing today is Steam that lets small indie companies sell their game but there is a reason that most gamer magazines came out every 2 weeks and still had far more games in them then the modern monthlys have.
Funny enough were the game price about as high back then even though the budgets were a lot smaller and $50 in 1984 were a lot of cash back then. I guess that is the reason piracy have gone down so much since (whatever EA thinks). Having 500+ pirated games were more or less standard back then for a C-64 user.
Feel free to defend lack of originality and creativity as much as you want. There are always apologists in every industry.
To be fair you didnt define which industry, I took it as MMO industry which is certainly 'thriving'. Other gaming, well, even my mother plays games these days so its hardly surprising there are more people involved. She only learned to use a PC about 2 years ago, but its fair to say that the games she plays cant exactly be called 'great'.
A big issue I see personally as a whole with the industry having issue is the blatent cash grabs going along side games. No longer do we just have $50 games, now we have $60 games with a bunch of other pieces cut out and pasted in later for a lot more money. DLC itself has gone from a cool idea to a plague in many games as we find we get less and less, while being expected to pay more and more.
MMos in particular with the F2P model often have lack luster design choices being put in place to make the gameplay purposely more grindy to enforce use of the cash shop which cheapens the experience for those who play free, while making those who pay often spend a lot more cash then they would ever before in an old box + subscription model.
Games are advancing in many areas, but they are also falling back in other places.
Also, I honestly believe there is/has been a lot of innovation and experimentation in games over the years; masterpieces like Witcher 3 I think are really a showcase for how the industry has evolved. The same can be said for mmos imo, and I'm really looking forward to how some upcoming games take the genre further.
http://www.engadget.com/2014/02/12/npd-us-video-game-sales-reach-15-39-billion-in-2013/
I think its fair to categorize gaming "overall" as doing great. The MMORPG genre, however, is not. It is dismal compared to "back in the day." This is not to say that the genre hasn't modernized, because it has. It just hasn't innovated. It's old and dated, and ironically enough the old is better than the new because the new is not only the same ol' same ol', it is also an empty, meaningless, unrewarding, unchallenging and bastardized, fast food version of what was once the gem of the video game industry.
A lot of the genres got started back then and there were more innovation back then than ever before or since. That doesn't mean all new games suck today, but there is a huge lack in originality now for most games. Back then all games were made by gamers for gamers, now a lot of times do weasels in suits make the decisions.
Of course did a huge percentage of those games suck but that is still true. There are way fwer masterpieces around today, for every Witcher or Minecraft game there is 7 copied FPS and soccer games at least.
Now with MMOs things were a bit slower, the first MMO ish game is from 1991 but MMOs havn't really moved much forward in a long time. I am hoping we will see an end of the huge publishers with zero imigination we seen so much in the last 10-15 years and a return to indie companies doing games they themself want to play.
The first MMO, followed by meridian 59 5 years later.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
At least next year looks like it has some potential for some AAA JRPGs to release.
It's about opinion and I happen to think there are no MMOs right now that have anything I haven't seen dozens of times before which has made me a bit bored of the genre and I live in hope that a company will produce something amazing, as is happening with the single/mutli player games both last year, this year and to come later in the year. Sadly, no MMO of late is anything original and the older ones have been mostly done to death now and rehashing same-old types of content, or stuff they think their players want but don't.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
The console crowd still hangs on but the PC crowd is going back to the mid 90s now. It is particularly noticable with MMOs. MMOs that would have done greatly 5 or 10 years ago do very poorly now.
Candy crush and similar popular games are still games of course but something have hppened with PC games. More and more games release both on consoles and PCs today since they have to if they want as many copies sold as a few years back.
Gaming is indeed increasing in numbers but it isn't the games most of us here like to discuss. And with MMOs there have been a movement towards crowdfunded indie games lately, no larger Western publisher have a MMO in development. Daybreak is probably the largest one right now (assuming Undead labs/Microsofts zombie MMO is cancelled, not sure).
PC gaming is still growing in certain parts of the world, like China and South Korea but in the West we are more and more moving to a few huge games, sequels of already successful games and smaller indie games. Now that isn't really a bad thing unless you work for EA or Activision and small indie games can be huge fast like Minecraft.
There are so many games right now, on average day there is 20 new games published on steam.
And if we talk AAA titles the bar is rised so high with titles like Witcher 3 or GTA V, that if you dont have 500 people company with at least 300 million dollar investment , you are out of competition.
Do you read news ? Just this month : Gazzilion layoffs , Funcom is bankrupt and closing , Cryptic layoffs , Turbine closing servers and rumored to be on verge of closing , Pathfinder Online whole team fired. Thats just this month.
Right now working in game industry feels like episode of survivor
Console are hanging on? Both the xb1 and ps4 have outpaced the previous generation box. Sorry do you even bother to look up actual facts to your comments or do you just guess?
Worried if you work for EA? Are you kidding they just posted record profits same with activision! Again a little Google search will help you before you post this stuff.
The industry is pleasing most of the people it is trying to please.
The reason some are not pleased; They are not those people.