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

Ukerric said:

Money.

Given the amount of money necessary these days to produce a quality expansive game, nobody is going to go the MMO route. Any game with significant investment to produce a good quality, you will have transaction filled instanced lobby games, which means there's no need of a great open world.

It's a rat race between the rising costs required to produce a modern-era MMO and the simplification that create the revenue streams needed to persuade investors to give you the money - because your kickstarter does not produce enough money for that to happen. The upper bar for open world expansive MMO is basically Project Gorgon.

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So scale it down. Don't operate on a budget that requires seeing X00,000 players per month to achieve a return. Maybe instead operate on a budget that only needs X0,000 players or maybe even X,000 players per month. Target niche communities that prove they can be loyal, and let them determine the scope of your game and the size of your team.

WoW did everything so well for a good period of time (launch til end of WOTLK) that the competition either just couldn't hack it or didn't bother. As mentioned above, monetization has shifted from content to convenience and it's invaded and fucked every aspect of gaming no matter the platform.

There needs to be something meaningful outside of instanced content where having better gear actually matters. No syncing your level down, scaling enemies up to your item level, or having a constant setting regardless of what tier or xpac you're on. YOU get better and can do it faster, with less people, etc.

Kriptini said:

So scale it down. Don't operate on a budget that requires seeing X00,000 players per month to achieve a return. Maybe instead operate on a budget that only needs X0,000 players or maybe even X,000 players per month. Target niche communities that prove they can be loyal, and let them determine the scope of your game and the size of your team.

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Star Citizen done did it. And Mark Jacobs can't get Camelot funded.

It's not working out.

mkopec said:

No he does not.

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Yeah, dude leads off with "people were playing wrong", and we get a list of things that are either game-provided tools that didnt exist, or external technology we didnt have for years (and ignores that every guild and community had forums, and pinging through AIM and ICQ, and voice chat in ts, vent or wilco was a thing that happened).


His take is more correct to how the smaller CCG tournament scene played out (L5R was notorious for this, with different regions of the US having VASTLY different meta, and Europe doing a "hold my beer, watch this shit" moment at every euro championship for 15 years) and not how the majority of the MMO scene evolved at that point.

He was a couple years late on the era of that statement. If he wanted to say this was the case for the early days of EQ, yeah, nobody argues that.

Early days of WoW though? You had raid mods for DO THE THING NOW GOGO by the time BWL released (refined by BC into DBM, but I'm almost positive we had addons for specific MC fights because I remember getting multiple instant tells with "You have the bomb run to the center" before blackwing) and the industry-best database in Wowhead was live before Naxx.

You also couldnt shake your fist without seeing video guides for raid fights (which is still sacrilege, but I think some of that was due to youtube launching a couple months before BWL, and now people could have an easy place to host videos ) or full zone walkthroughs.

Spreadsheeting gear in early WoW was SO much easier than in EQ because I didnt have to use 5 different websites to even see full drop tables.

It DID impact the more casual and/or lower end, and forced them to start adopting the things the higher end of the community already knew (which they did haphazardly, and we got shit like gearscore, which didnt solve the problem they wanted it to solve) but people who raided in early wow, at least the guilds they seeded their testing with in the late alpha and early beta stages, had solved the "you're playing wrong" issues years prior.

For over 15 years now, retards have assumed that WoW can be dethroned simply by making a better version of it because they don't realize that, for better or worse, WoW is the apotheosis of the entire genre. This belief is tragically comic and akin to the mistaken notion that a system can be changed from within.

WoW doesn't need to be killed off, it just needs to be moved on from.

uniqueuser said:

For over 15 years now, retards have assumed that WoW can be dethroned simply by making a better version of it because they don't realize that, for better or worse, WoW is the apotheosis of the entire genre. This belief is tragically comic and akin to the mistaken notion that a system can be changed from within.

WoW doesn't need to be killed off, it just needs to be moved on from.

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It really depends on your tastes. WoW is the best if you like that type of mmorpg. But there are billions of people who don't like it.

Personally, I'm pretty much done with any mmorpg that does the quest fetch thing, and mmorpg's in general. Been there, done that for 20 years. It's time for something new, has been for a long time. That is part of the reason why there aren't any AAA companies working seriously on mmorpg's. The kids don't want them and even us older players have grown tired of the formula. It's dead Jim.

Neranja said:

Then you have to specify in what direction you want this "new" to go. The "grind your way through mobs without purpose to level up" is older than the quest/fetch thing. We had that with DikuMUD and its incarnations. The social/story/puzzle driven MUDs predate all those--MUD1 was modeled after Zork.

I think we have come full circle somewhat, only that most players haven't been there for the whole ride and think Meridian 59/UO/EQ were the first of its kind. Now many games have the subscriptions (they call it battle pass or such nonsense), the cash shop and the player retention mechanics. The new generation isn't interested in these time/effort games like old people were. They have Twitter feeds to check and Instagram posts to make and TikToks to dance!

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If I knew, I would be making it. Didn't know what a fps was when I started playing Doom. Didn't know what a mmo was when I started playing EQ. Eventually there will be a new genre, hopefully soon.

I dont know too many people that desire going out of their way to grind something out anymore. The carrot on the stick for an MMO has devolved substantially and is usually just a stepping stone of no importance in order to get to the next stepping stone of no importance. Thats not necessarily reserved to just MMORPG's anymore either, but FPSMMO's, ARPGMMO's and basically anything that has become a "Service". These companies have developed their monetization to a point where what made these games special to begin with has become a vague memory, an empty shell.

We all know that items have become less sought after and less remembered because they are generic, and created inside of a spread sheet. We know that levels, although perceived to have an increase in character power, really dont. It's all just an illusion in order to get you to play longer. They can take an NPC from a noobie area, level match it with a 120 and it will be roughly the same difficulty. The idea behind quests has transformed from taking you on an epic journey with a major reward, to a treadmill that indoctrinates you into the level and item reward system in its current iteration. So now you're doing mindless quests in order to mindlessly grind mobs in order to get just another level with just another reward that'll be replaced within the next 15-20 mindless quests. When its put on such a base level as that, does that sound interesting to anyone? Really?... Remind yourself that you're paying for this service and now its pretty evident why theyre doing that exact thing.

When they made EverQuest, Ultima Oline, Asherons Call, Dark Ages of Camelot etc. - the idea was to make a game that was fun and had fun things to do and work towards. They didnt have an abundance of quests and the ones they did have, were mostly memorable. Such as the Epics, or the Shawl etc. The quest for Crushbone belts was a basic fetch quest, right? But a surprisingly large amount of people had no idea about that quest cause it wasnt in your face demanding to be done. The fact it was a fetch quest isnt what made it memorable, its the fact that if you turned in enough of those belts - you would save yourself tons of time that you would just be sitting on Orc Hill running from a bad pull every 5 minutes.

Gear and items were worth your time because in those early expansions of EverQuest - that shit made a difference. A Sword of Ykesha, even just one, would dramatically change your life as a Warrior with threat. Add in an Flowing Black Silk Sash, and watch tf out cause NOW you truly have aggro on mobs. Mask of the Deceiver? Now your shit life as a fat ass Ogre is made good cause you can go places where you previously couldnt. Manastone? You just saved yourself a chunk of down time.

MMO's are only dead in the nature of how theyre built. The sooner we reach the point where hundreds of millions of dollars do not have to be spent to make an MMO - we can expect a company to make one that isnt a vapid clone of any other service model MMO.

Daidraco said:

I dont know too many people that desire going out of their way to grind something out anymore.

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FPS and MOBAs rolled that up and threw it in the trash. WoW is ant-size comparatively and a drop in the bucket.

jayrebb said:

FPS and MOBAs rolled that up and threw it in the trash. WoW is ant-size comparatively and a drop in the bucket.

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Not quite sure what you’re saying.

But from my experience people in MOBAs grind matchmaking ranking points.

nu_11 said:

Not quite sure what you’re saying.

But from my experience people in MOBAs grind matchmaking ranking points.

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MOBAs =/= grind

They're right next to FPS in my book. There is no "grind" in the MMO sense.