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Will we have another MMORPG like the 2004 and prior days?
Veiled_light
Member UncommonPosts: 855
I haven't played one for more than the initial trial since 2004 with WoW being the last, but I quit that in 2006 as I hated changes Blizzard were making to dumb it down. Since WoW there was only one mechanically that impressed me, that was SWTOR.... sadly the world design was not there an so it felt like a mix between a crap Single Player RPG and a crap MMO, appealing to no one.
I've just not wanted to be in an MMO world since those days, and when I look back it was mostly SOE delivering MMOs I loved, but then destroying them soon after with stupid changes like Blizzard did to WoW, only with less quality. Now SOE do not exist, there are no MMO developers any more
You have the small indie ones, but they're making all the same mistakes again that we've seen over the years... I can see they will flop, why can't they?
I was hoping someone could come in and make a VR MMORPG, because funnily enough you need less fidelity like Rec Room... it's manageable to smaller developers. You'd think it would be the other way around and it would require a massive budget, but your brain fills in the gaps in VR graphically and the immersion is what is important. I always thought if someone took Rec Room and turned it into a SWG type game it would be a huge hit.... no one is pulling it off yet though. For me that's probably the only way you can capture that feeling everyone got playing WoW with a small budget. Someone like Valve or Blizzard could probably pull off a WoW 2, but it will require hundreds of millions.
I really want a world to be lost in again, I mean not even single player RPGs have done it for me since Skyrim. Bethesda flopped with Fallout 4 and I hated The Witcher 3, I thought the world looks out of proportion, like everything was too small compare to your character model.
I knew the writing was on the wall for SOE in Planetside 2 Alpha, I played it an told the developer it felt like Battlefield, not Planetside. They wanted that slice of the pie thinking people would love it, but it was just boring..... they did the same with EverQuest Next wanting the Minecraft audience and the game wasn't fun.
You keep seeing this, developers like SOE become blind, none of them seem to understand what we want. I look at SWTOR and mechanically it felt so good, I was really surprised as Bioware have never been good at that part. However you got to Tatooine and could sum up the whole problem with how the Cities were split off from the questing area, with a mandatory Griffon like ride. Why? We want worlds that feel like worlds, not game levels, which make it feel like a single player game. They had one really cool thing and that was a Balloon ride for a Holocron or something, where everyone was PVPing over it. That was so good I bet they got rid of that at some point lol, but that is what we want from an MMO, interaction with other players.
I've just not wanted to be in an MMO world since those days, and when I look back it was mostly SOE delivering MMOs I loved, but then destroying them soon after with stupid changes like Blizzard did to WoW, only with less quality. Now SOE do not exist, there are no MMO developers any more
You have the small indie ones, but they're making all the same mistakes again that we've seen over the years... I can see they will flop, why can't they? I was hoping someone could come in and make a VR MMORPG, because funnily enough you need less fidelity like Rec Room... it's manageable to smaller developers. You'd think it would be the other way around and it would require a massive budget, but your brain fills in the gaps in VR graphically and the immersion is what is important. I always thought if someone took Rec Room and turned it into a SWG type game it would be a huge hit.... no one is pulling it off yet though. For me that's probably the only way you can capture that feeling everyone got playing WoW with a small budget. Someone like Valve or Blizzard could probably pull off a WoW 2, but it will require hundreds of millions.
I really want a world to be lost in again, I mean not even single player RPGs have done it for me since Skyrim. Bethesda flopped with Fallout 4 and I hated The Witcher 3, I thought the world looks out of proportion, like everything was too small compare to your character model.
I knew the writing was on the wall for SOE in Planetside 2 Alpha, I played it an told the developer it felt like Battlefield, not Planetside. They wanted that slice of the pie thinking people would love it, but it was just boring..... they did the same with EverQuest Next wanting the Minecraft audience and the game wasn't fun.
You keep seeing this, developers like SOE become blind, none of them seem to understand what we want. I look at SWTOR and mechanically it felt so good, I was really surprised as Bioware have never been good at that part. However you got to Tatooine and could sum up the whole problem with how the Cities were split off from the questing area, with a mandatory Griffon like ride. Why? We want worlds that feel like worlds, not game levels, which make it feel like a single player game. They had one really cool thing and that was a Balloon ride for a Holocron or something, where everyone was PVPing over it. That was so good I bet they got rid of that at some point lol, but that is what we want from an MMO, interaction with other players.
Comments
MMOs prior to WoW were very niche and usually had a steep learning curve - usually resulting in a very rewarding and deeply layered game (EQ, EQ2, and SWG for example). When WoW hit it big and became a mainstream cash cow, naturally, every other company wanted to follow suit. SWG (the game I played from 2004 until it died) is probably the biggest and most notorious example of this.
To maximize profits and maximize players, everyone just started dumbing down their games and opening in-game item stores. It used to be that only F2P games had item stores, and you just kind of stayed away from those games because you knew they were the equivalent of a B movie. Then, companies realized they could also make you pay for the incomplete game AND have an in-game store that people would go crazy for AND make you pay for content locked behind a pay wall instead of just having a standard subscription for a full game experience without countless confusing P2P/F2P hybrid options.
So in my opinion, it all goes back to money ruining the MMO golden age. Sometimes I wish I hadn't even experienced the awesomeness of SWG or other MMOs in their prime because literally nothing I play now remotely compares in terms of being immersed into a living breathing world with a real community that relies on each other both socially and in terms of gameplay design.
In my opinion, for a game to cater to the early-to-mid 2000s style of MMOs, it would have to be funded so well that it's not even setting out to make money. It would just have to exist for pure enjoyment. The problem is that no business is going to do that for obvious reasons.
Those days are long gone when developers actually created games with the attitude, "What can we do that is fun?" Now it's all formulaic, shooting for the way to make the most money, because everyone and their suit knows that half a million players subbing every month equals poverty for all.
Gone are the deep, rich worlds in which to explore and play in. Gone is the diversity in races, classes, cities, and zones. Gone is the danger and excitement of discovery. Gone is desire to sit down and play for more than 1 hour, let alone a whole weekend. Gone is the RPG half of MMORPG,where players actually talked (typed) to one another. Gone is the love so obviously shown an MMORPG by the developers.
Now it is all cut up and sold piecemeal by design for maximum dollars. They are played in small chunks of player's time. Time that "we" no longer have to devote to a rather intensive gaming experience. Gone are the majority of players who seek to "play" rather than "beat" a game.
No, those old times are gone forever, lost to business first and continuous money grabbing. No suit is ever satisfied. It is never enough money
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
But you'll find it quite a bit easier to locate a fun new game to play if you do this first.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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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
Devoid of gameplay altering revenue models, without the casino play that has substituted for solid MMO game play; MMOs would go back to being about quality and long term playability. About paying for what you get rather than what you might get.
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No one wants another Everquest, they want incredible real to life graphics, endless worlds, voice acting everywhere, and AI that is difficult to distinguish from real player.
All of that costs years and hundreds of millions to assemble a team large enough to pull it off. And its risky, because a $60 box price just won't cover it anymore.
Ashes of Creation for one is making a large scale world thats all about exploring and getting lost. Dungeons are also on a large scale that will support many teams fighting in the same dungeon. You will have to wait another year + for that one but its looking like a winner. This will be a land and sea kind of game. Own a ship and go explore.
CorePunk is a different type of MMO, its top down like a MOBA but it also is all about a large world you can get lost in. It has a fog of war mechanic, so you will really need to jump into the world to find out whats out there. It also has an awesome question system.
Archage 2 is also in the works, they did a good job of an expansive world in the first one. Will be interesting to see how they do with the second. Many did get turned away from the game by their payment model but friends that loved deep and rich worlds love Archage.
Pantheon is a long ways off if it releases but is also a large scale world that has some deep PvE content. Large scale dungeons that will support many teams and an in-depth way to quest with the perception system.
There are more games that are in the works that are not making a cookie cutter MMO that become the norm over the past 10 years. 2021 is looking like a good year for MMOs, there is more MMOs coming out in 2021 then we have seen in many many years.
There will come a point at which developing high quality MMOs becomes a more realistic investment prospect. And at that point, they won't mimic the MMOs of 2004 - they'll far exceed them.
I think that AI will play a huge roles in this, but not just an AI that controls NPC behavior. No, I mean an AI that will actually build out these "deep rich worlds" and allow for near limitless stories to be told.
I think there will be disruptive advances in how we see our games (video screens go away), I think we will see advances in how we control our actions (I love KB and Mouse but... I think we have taken it as far as we can), and in how we interact with each other (instant voice synthesizer?)
While I am a short term pessimist about todays games and companies, I am quite confident that in the long term we have just scratched the surface of what the genre can be.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
It's been 20 years since MMO's hit the market. 16 since WoW steamrolled the domain.
A lot of players got older, we were younger back then, I wager a lot of us had free time, money, and a willingness to spend it on our hobbies.
Online games were new, they were a different world for us, and they did something magical.
They took away those 3 hour rules arguments that most social games ended up with. It went from needing to deal with your local circle of gamers, to having people across the world you could run with, and these games bridged cultural, social, and even language gaps.
It was magical in the sense we could just get in and play with other people.
Exploring worlds in EQ was a new thing, the whole idea of zones, going from one point to another in a game, discovering paths, and dangers along the way as it where, was new to many (if not all) of us.
I remember back in 2001, when EQ launched, and I was trying to get some friends into it, and trying to explain what it was like, and there was nothing really exactly like it, it was that new.
Then there was a surge, like a wild west of ideas, everyone jumped in, and the genre split into a million parts, with complexity, diversity, and challenge, being the hallmark keywords.
Our game has a million skills, and you will learn to master them all or go insane trying!
Play as a Devil Paladin arch Necromancer with our diverse class building systems!
Kill Huge Hydras using only a scissors and shaving cream as you can play any of our 47 classes, including a barber!
And this was the name of the game.
Then WoW came, and said "Yah.. let's streamline this, let's make it easy, not hard"
and that idea worked.. and it worked well.
So, game developers learned that being complex, throwing too much into the mix, was in fact, not a good thing.
That there were a lot of RPG players out there, that wanted their hand held, they did not want to be tossed into a vast world and told "Go make your own fun"
Even then, some games like to use an example, GW2, opted to try and use hybrid idea, where there was a story if you wanted to do it, if you wanted the rails, you could ride them, but if not, no big and you could go out and make your own fun without any loss.
Anyway, so over time, the rules lawyer that used to be a buzzkill at the gaming table, evolved into the meta gamer, the players that tried to play with the system to optimize their game, and get the most out of everything.
This gives rise to the elitist and the like.
The thing is, as time passes, you had a lot of players get older, and between jobs, house, family, and life, they didn't want a second job playing games, they didn't want to deal with assholes and buzzkills, they wanted a fun game, like sitting at the table and half the time was talking about boobplate and buttcapes.
They wanted something easy, that they could escape into and have fun with other people.
You also had a group of players that did not have any of those things, and could invest into a game like it was a second job, or even a primary job, and in some cases wanted to find their validation in their game presence.
And you have MMO makers trying to make a game to get both of them to spend money.
As I have said many times before, an MMO should be made to target it's market, find a demographic they want to pull in, and focus on that one group, target the hell out of them, and make the best game you can for that group of players, if other people want to play as well, the door is open to them to come in, but, if they are unhappy there, the door is also open to them to leave.
The biggest mistakes that these game companies make, is they have a game that is good for one group, and they go and fuck with things to try and attract some other group.
CorePunk for instance is its own thing. Playing it will give you a different kinda of feels when you play it. Will everyone love it? Most likely not. But someone looking for something new to fall in love with. Games like CorePunk could give you the feels you are looking for. 2021 has allot of non-cookie cutter MMOs in the works.
We are even getting some ARPG-MMOs. Will they be the next WoW? I dont think so but that rush of playing something different and exciting. I think we have allot of that on the way over the next 12-24 months. IMO, this kind of development could change how we look at MMOs and energize the online industry.
2nd poster touches on part of the problem as all studios seem to be aiming towards greed,mtx f2p models.
Another problem is that the market is just way too big now,way too much competition with big money operations controlling the market with heavy marketing.
To make a really good HQ game which imo would be way better than Wow because Wow to me is very ho hum average it would take 7 or so years depending on sub contracting and a very large investment RISK.
These studios do not sit there and think what would make a great game,they think about what SELLS and how cheap can we do it.This is why Epic stopped all development and just threw everything away and turned FN into a BR shooter because it makes loads of money.This is why Riot/Valorant jumped on the bandwagon very late,doesn't matter selling skins seems to be an easy sell.
So as long as studios aim for highest profit monetization we will never see at the very least a ROBUST mmorpg.I feel this is fact and why i completely gave up playing mmorpg's they are going nowhere ....for now.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
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I am not going to say that is a bad idea but the whole VR idea was just a marketing scam to cash in ,no different than gaming chairs and mics and all the other peripherals trying to cash in on gaming.
Knowing that Facebook bought out Oculus Rift and you MUST have a good standing Facebook account just to use Oculus and to acquire your games pretty much puts a nail in that coffin.
Riot games making tons of money right....let's make a cheap Valorant game because MTX BR games are still rolling in the dough.These studios DO NOT care about making quality games,they care about easy ways to get rich.
The reason mtx works and subs have sort of died off is because consumers are dumb.They whine about being forced to spend but then go ahead and over spend on mtx like a bunch of dumb asses.Some of the MTX packaging is 6-50++ months worth of sub fees so go figure people were complaining lol.You can buy ONE weapon skin for Valorant and buy two games with that money,seriously how dumb are people?
So in reality ask yourself WHY would any developer want to risk a high investment when they can get rich doing it the easy way?
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
This hypothetical question is with special reference to my own experiences in the genre. I have always believed that Everquest was special and that I loved it so much because it was so immersive and gave me a world I could live in and get lost in for hours and hours and hours....., what if another game had come out at the same time that was like Everquest. Would my experience in Everquest be duplicated in the second game when I play it after having played Everquest?
It cannot because you can never go back and experience something for the first time. So I believe that Everquest cannot be supplanted by any other game. However I have found a lot of fun in other games even if they could not give me the awe and wonder of my first foray into the MMORPG genre.
Games have definitely been dumbed down and this has affected all of us in varying ways and most apparently our desire to continue playing. We play games for a lot less time now than we used to.
I have found worlds that I enjoyed a great deal like vanilla WoW when it came out and I was very happy to play the game and I did get lost in the game. Getting lost in a game is a state of mind that cannot be forced. It is natural and some people just don't get lost in a game because may be they are too rooted in our present world. I can vouch for feeling cold when I am surrounded in ice and cold or feeling actual fright and fear in a game and that is getting lost in a world. It is possible that some people think getting lost in a world is more than that but to me it is when you lose track of real time or are so involved in a game that a slight sound makes you jump. It does not have to be epic like Ready Player One , it happens even in single player games.
While VR may indeed be the next answer, I am unfortunately very aware of how badly I get sick in first person games and am personally convinced this technology as it is right now is deleterious to your health long term. May be in ten years once they have come up with better hardware I might consider it.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
It is not about doing NEW things, sometimes it is about finding those hidden gems that were lost under the treads of progress, polishing them off and exposing them as the diamonds they are.
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