2 years later... the almost sad state of MMOs in the new era

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calhoonjugganaut

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In my opinion most of the MMO's that came out after EQ and WoW had too many complex elements. In EQ if you needed to upgrade an item you had to save a certain amount of platinum and you bought it directly from another player if it wasn't a drop that you won. Some of the new MMO's have too many servers that are all linked or something and it suggests the price that you pay.

Auction House type of game play makes the game lose that social element. EQ was great because the EC tunnel was the only place for you to really go to search for a particular item unless you hit the message boards. I don't like the mixed server stuff either. I'd prefer to play with the same people and in a game like WoW if I can't find a group automatically through an instanced system (last resort that I don't like either), well I guess I'll play an alt.

Somewhere along the line the UI's of the these newer games over complicated themselves. The games themselves over complicated themselves. There isn't much you need for a successful game. You shouldn't have to run through a tutorial of every aspect of the user interface and action system to be comfortable fighting a level 1 mob. Figure that shit out on your own I say. And now I have rambled on long enough for none of this to really tie together. /bow
 
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MusicForFish

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We just need to make a mmorpg. FOH style.
It may be the only way to correct the terrible crash of our favorite genre.
 
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Kharzette

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I can do it! It might take me 10 years though. And I don't think we could ever agree on what to make.
 
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TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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And that brings up the resetting content every expansion too. Which fucks your end game content even more. Imagine if WOWs content was more like EQs, little Timmys casual guild eventually would maybe make it into BWL a few expansions later. But who gives a shit if all the gear there is replaced by greens in the next expansion.

Planes of Power is a good example of that. Despite 5 new levels and items and spells Vex Thal was still extremely useful to do for most guilds. However, the keying process was still balls and you had to organize your guild to handle that structural difficulty. But in the end Vex Thal items could be used through nearly all of PoP. It is also why Guk, Old Seb, Sol B and the like were camped well into the later expansions. The drops were still useful for alts, newer players and whatever else.

Despite how much I played EQ there were quite a few dungeons I never even did. Because they were way out of the way and only had a few drops of questionable use. I guess that is a con of non instance though. If you need a quest from far and out of the way shithole that nobody really goes to... yeah that's going to suck lol.

Looking at you Charasis! And I love that zone.
 
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Kaines

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We just need to make a mmorpg. FOH style.
It may be the only way to correct the terrible crash of our favorite genre.
It's a 1-man developer team and has a ways to go yet before it's even near finished. But it's got some promise to it and I'm smoking the hopium pretty hard on it.

 
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Noodleface

A Mod Real Quick
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Quite a few of us here that could make an mmorpg, but with 0 budget itd be something else.

And can you imagine the amount of arm chair devs here????
 
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Fucker

Log Wizard
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Quite a few of us here that could make an mmorpg, but with 0 budget itd be something else.

And can you imagine the amount of arm chair devs here????

You have 14 days to get it done...or else I am going to delete my account here and so will a number of other posters.
 
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Raes

Vyemm Raider
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Quite a few of us here that could make an mmorpg, but with 0 budget itd be something else.

And can you imagine the amount of arm chair devs here????

Thing is, 9 times outta 10, the only difference between an armchair dev and a studio dev is one is getting paid for it. Which is why so many games suck so bad.
 
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mkopec

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We could have a vote on systems in game, that would probably work.
 
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nevergone

Low IQ Vegan Pacifist
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Planes of Power is a good example of that. Despite 5 new levels and items and spells Vex Thal was still extremely useful to do for most guilds. However, the keying process was still balls and you had to organize your guild to handle that structural difficulty. But in the end Vex Thal items could be used through nearly all of PoP. It is also why Guk, Old Seb, Sol B and the like were camped well into the later expansions. The drops were still useful for alts, newer players and whatever else.

Despite how much I played EQ there were quite a few dungeons I never even did. Because they were way out of the way and only had a few drops of questionable use. I guess that is a con of non instance though. If you need a quest from far and out of the way shithole that nobody really goes to... yeah that's going to suck lol.

Looking at you Charasis! And I love that zone.

Weird thing was Howling Stones wasn't even that far out of the way.
 

iannis

Musty Nester
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Draegan tried it. I think he gave it a somewhat honest attempt before he came to realize that creating a MMO requires a small group of professionals with well defined skillsets willing to work far below their market value.

It's thousands of man hours. It's a large project that will span years. If believing hard enough accomplished anything, pantheon would be good. I don't love that, but it's just how it is. 99% of it is absolutely tedious work.
 

Neranja

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I can do it! It might take me 10 years though. And I don't think we could ever agree on what to make.
I thought about this for a while, and the trick is basically to do the tools/servers first, and do it right:
- build a world/quest/item/spell editor that doubles as a beta client and that people with half a brain can use
- build a server where everyone developing with said tools works with, where you check in your progress in small bits and people can see and comment on - like a version control system, but for all the things you manage

With these two in place artists/designers can start building content while the developers can focus on the other things side:
- lag-free netcode
- secure server infrastructure with transactions and logging
- ticket system and GM tools
- release client and performance optimization

I thought about this for a while and even experimented a bit if git was usable as a repository backend--but as things are in an MMO you are managing a truckload of binary data (terrain maps, models, textures, sound files, animations, etc) and tables, which may not be ideal.

EDIT: Also, this is the reason why SW:ToR and ESO went with the Hero Engine - because they could ramp up their art/design pipeline almost immediately.
 
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Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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You keep throwing around the term "not cheap" like it means anything without context. Compared to a $300m AAA budget, $50m is cheap, but so is $5m.

I'll grant you that you probably can't do it as cheaply as you can do some Unity shovelware, but a game does not need to be a quarter-billion dollar AAA title to get financed or make money.
No, but it needs a minimum of a two-digit M$ to look good. We've spent so much time ridiculing those "amateur games" with their "2000 graphics and animations" that we've proved the point. The real cost of a MMO world like the kind we want it is the art & zones, not the game design. Your pre-packaged engine is not going to make that for you. If you want that, you need an AI revolution in graphical design.

(oh boy, I sooo want to see an AI designing creatures and assets for games. The human input would be eliminating the 80% crap it spews, but if your AI can throw an entire brand-new animated creature per hour, you win at production)
 
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Kharzette

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As said above about market value etc, I live in a third world area (Oklahoma) and it is dirt cheap for me to live. I don't have a job and haven't even been looking for the past year as I've been super ill. I could probably easily live off soybucks.

BUT I think everyone would want a different game, this clearly isn't a patient group (just look at the pantheon thread), and my health sucks so I can't grind really hard on it. I'd be putting in a few scattered hours a day on it, at least until I figure out wtf is wrong with me.

I've done most of the bits of mmos in the past. I guess the main things I don't have good knowledge about are networked physics for vehicles, and the scaling side of the database stuff. There's plenty of info on both of these out there, and I've got a lot of friends that do the latter.

I'd be inclined towards Unity, as I really like the direction they are going with the DOTS stuff, and Mike Acton kicks ass.

I hate git but I'm getting used to it, so that would be allright for code. Perforce is probably still king for binary assets. I've done perforce integrated clients in the past so checkins from within a game / editor are pretty easy to do via python.

Anyway, some answers I'd like out of polls or whatever:

Actiony dodgey spazzy combat, or diku style real time dice rolls ala EQ
Art styles? Weeb, Lowfi, western stylized, blocky, etc
Genre? Scifi hard, generic scifi, fantasy low or high, modern (expensive)
PVP? (aww shit here we go again)
Questy or Grindy? (I've got a new idea for the grindy side)
General interest? Whose willing to throw soy dollars to pay my internet bill.
 
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slippery

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There isn't going to be another truly good extremely popular MMO until VR tech is very immersive.
 
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Pharone

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Wow that was a lot to catch up reading.

I'm going to beat the dead horse, so just deal with it.

EQemu is a really good starting point for creating an OPEN SOURCE MMORPG engine, and here's why. It's already made from scratch by the EQ Emu community.

Now as for being able to use it for anything official with out getting sued, what the community needs is someone to create the CLIENT side from scratch. As long as your are using the EQ game client to play the game, then it is not allowed. The second you create a new game client that hooks up to the EQemu server, you have taken Everquest out of the picture, and you have an available open source MMORPG engine to go from.

Once you have created a new client to go along with the server, you can create tools that to be used to add art assets, animations, etc. Create tools for creating/editing content.

The thing holding EQemu back is the fact that you must use an existing EQ game client to play the game. I applaud the community on the efforts they have put forth on creating the EQemu server. They've done a great job. Someone needs to pick up the ball, and do the other half of the work now.

There has to be somebody out there that has the knowledge, time, and desire to create a new game client. Geeks and nerds didn't cease to exist just because our generations grew up. I guarantee you there are some college kids out there right now that would do this if they were pushed in the right direction.