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First,
World of Warcraft took the world by storm, it took the basic premises of earlier models and enhanced the experience 10x over. Sure some fixated first generation players grumbled, but the masses loved it.
Very powerful time for a popularity standpoint…..As time passed people wanted more of the same.
Second,
Vanguard and Warhammer Online was in the making… People that loved World of Warcraft were expecting more of the same but something new.
I can't stress enough the MILLIONS that were waiting in anticipation. Warhammer highly publicized, Vanguard not so much, but people found a way to know about its development anyway….. They were millions if not a Billion with slight exaggeration on the billion part.
Third,
Something unexpected happened… A major tragic event took place…Both had failed !
-Vanguard for it's coding and associability along with bad politics.
-Warhammer because undenounced change to third generation, it didn't play like a second generation game like the public was expecting. RvR failed…. But more importantly the introduction of "Public events" caused the solo experience that later made the world seem cold and players found they didn't need others. The beginning of third generation. This game was riddled with bad design with small zones, Scenario PvP that took the player out of the world for player instanced content. People didn't like being pulled from the world. They wanted cohesive Multi player communities. They were expecting more World of Warcraft, instead they were blind sided with THE FIRST OF ITS KIND THIRD GENERATION.
This game proved something. Third Generation was not mmorpg like, but something all together new and different. This in not really a bad thing, just not mmo.
Last,
Second generation was no more. Developers decided to market and push for something that fit their own agenda and tell the people that’s what they wanted, ignoring the failure of Warhammer.
This is how it went down.
Now some of my thoughts,
Second Generation took the place of First generation and Third Gen took the place of Second.
Why not have all three ?.... All three would be very popular…. Instead we only have one !.... Nostalgic older games are not the answer, their old and most are revamped to Third Generation anyway.
Comments
I would love to see others view on "how it went down "
That would be some interesting reading
A lot of good stuff here, I respect that,
I don't feel I left much out but more the basics. I just feel Vanguard and Warhammer played an extremely large roll at a critical time in when people were expecting GREAT Sequels that kept the mojo running high.
People loved this time in history they were expecting advancement, not dramatic overhauls to something new altogether being Third Generation.
Perhaps if Vanguard worked, the mojo could have continued, unfortunately it failed. Warhammer was the first cross over that's why I use that example.
Then you talk about Eastern games and other changes that came about.... All this is true, just that the post was getting too long to go beyond.
Think of it as the first part or the beginning of the end of mmorpg.
Effectively we now have a genre which is one big mash up of gameplay, with anything new school being given the priority. That is why it is so difficult to feel that one modern MMO is distinct from any other.
To me, there are two basic game play concepts.
- There's Sandbox, where you find open world game play.
- Then there's Levelling games (Themeparks), where you move through the game world and content according to level.
In either case, quests can be used to move a story along, and quests work great in the levelling games because there's a need to find the content suited to levels.
And some games add some elements of the other into their design, but at their core they are one or the other.
It's all about how a game is designed for a player to play it.
Once upon a time....
As to Warhammer,i took a long look at that game,expected perhaps something decent.However i watched all those dev pod casts and the more i saw of the team i knew no way was that game going to be any good.Then near release day more stuff was dumbed down or removed until it became a very mundane boring game that i lasted one day in and never wanted to go back.
To me i see simple reason why i don't see enough good games,all the people that came about when DSL became a big thing have way different standards for quality gaming than i do,mine are high,theirs are very low.Basically the standards i see right now are...i have internet,give me games,gimmee gimmeee,here is my money.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Vanguard was slightly similar in regards to technical difficulties. Again, a bad engine and rough character feedback and especially zone chunks where when running across the world the game would literally hitch and make mobs chasing you disappear. Vanguard was more sandboxy, with themepark elements, something I still prefer to this day it, just didn't have the budget or marketing to compete with the big guy.
This is why I think sandbox is going to come back or at least hybrids of it and will hopefully have nice, fluid engines running them with precise UI and character feedback coupled with nice graphics and sound. I'm looking at Pantheon as an example of potential games coming that reflect this. Also possibly Ashes of Creation and Camelot unchained and Chronicles of Elyria, but we won't know till they come out, but I ever the optimist will gladly wait for the, because what else am I going to do.
Blizzard start publishing sub numbers again, a new Sooperdata report? Anything besides randomly making stuff up?
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Can't really any decent comparisons with the lack of any solid information these days.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The public quests were also quite nice -- and unique at the time -- nobody else had done it before. You could group without grouping.
Where Warhammer failed and failed miserably was world balance. You had far too many chaos and not enough order. If you have 1.5 to 1, it completely breaks the game and 2 to 1 just makes things utterly miserable.
The other place Warhammer failed was the huge battles prior to invading the city. The game simply couldnt handle that many people. They likely knew this at release (because progressing the map really wasn't possible for quite a long time) and were scrambling to make it be able to work with that many people, but the 300v300 battles just crashed the game, and slideshowed everything before it crashed. The city battles themselves were kind of tagged on like an after thought.
Really what should have happened was if you took over altdorf, the game should have essentially ended. You would then fight against another server that won, and the loser would go against another server that lost.
I remember the day after a server merger, altdorf was sacked FOUR TIMES in a single day. The ratio was like 2.1 to 1 and order didn't have a chance. It also wasn't at all fun. In essence once the balance became really bad, it got even worse because the weaker side would be pounded into the ground and stop showing up.
Warhammer was a good game that a lot of people liked -- but the endgame, both in PvP and PvE with its many timers and RNG issues (if you continually failed to get items, you essentially became worthless to your guild in progression -- and it was all luck and you could only try every 5 days -- if you failed to get a couple of items the first 7 times you essentially had to drop back to the B squad then the C squad).
IF they had some method of balancing the sides such that things were relatively fair, and they had fixed the ability to do 300v300+ battles or handled that aspect differently, the game would have been a complete success.
You either copy WoW and do it well, i.e. FFXIV or u do your own thing like GW2(of course this game is just suffering from no trinity, hahaha)
Warhammer has my favorite classes. Really wish it made it. The mmo world I want.
Also, you said GW1 is better than GW2 but I disagree on that point. I couldn't stand GW1 and wanted more of an MMO, which I finally got in GW2. It would have been better if it had kept the trinity from MMOs but, well it didn't so it's what it is, but I love it far more than anything GW1 ever did.