You realize there were other MMO's right? What's your explination for them having 1/10th the population of EQ? (There were at least 5 other MMO's in direct competition with EQ. 4 with 3d graphical views.)
You said it yourself(at least, I'm pretty sure it was you), community trumps gameplay. And there weren't 5 MMOs in direct competition with EQ. There were 2, until 2001. Of which there were then 4 and one of them is
stillwidely regarded as having the worst MMO release of all-time. By then, EQ had a stranglehold on most of the market that it had grown, thanks in large part to that community > gameplay situation. On top of that, games were mostly following the "EQ" model, so it was similar to what we are seeing with games copying WoW today. They release, steal a few thousand players from WoW for a month or three, and then they all end up right back. So, again, it absolutely was due to lack of competition and not knowing any better(we didn't know any better, because nobody was really trying anything "new" or "innovative" yet. We were still stuck in the model of grinding mobs for levels, camps, slower leveling curves, etc.)
Eve is not a PvE game; I can't say for certain because I haven't read any real reports which include them, but I think if you were to do research? You'd find the people that play Eve only have some cross over into the DIKU games, and instead that market was grown more out of the exploding LoL/WoT, discreet PvP markets that have been huge. Or maybe from Anarchy Online/UO. But I can't say for certain, it would be just a guess. It's not really a DIKU competitor. But you are right, it is an example of how a different focus, and different mechanics, can be successful because it doesn't need to compete with WoW.
Nor was EQ(directly? Yes. Indirectly? Hell no). Hell, half of the "good times" people pine for here are because of PvP related issues. Guild drama, loot drama, server drama, PvP servers, etc. EVE offers all of that and a whole lot more. It has a fairly robust PvE system, rife with exploration, "dungeons", large consequences/setbacks for dying, etc. So, I'm not really sure what point you're trying to get at by saying EVE is not a "PvE" game, nor how it is really relevant one way or the other.
And the whole time I had the bad points of the game on my mind, and how inferior it was to WoW; but yet certain mechanics which got left behind in the first "market refinement" of the genre? For me? Obviously still work. And deserve to be explored.
Absolutely they do. I agree with you entirely. Do you honestly feel confident that Brad is the man up to that task?
In the end, the market might just never support another growth; but I still think the future is niche games. I don't think in 20 years the landscape will be one big MMO, but instead a bunch of fragments. Some of them hardcore, some of them more like WoW, some of them in between. As tools get easier and cheaper to use, someone outside the triple A space is going to make a DIKU that plucks out a different set of mechanics from EQ and refines them, and then sprinkles in WoW's access---and you're going to see a shift in the market again. (Heck you might just see that from EQN/L even though I think that's less of an iterative shift and instead will be a growth--like EVE, since Landmark is not direct competition)
I also agree here. I'm not entirely sure there is going to be another large growth of the market, like we saw with EQ and WoW. I definitely think the MMO space is going to segment down into niches, once things become cheaper/faster to build. I think EQN/L has the
potentialto grow the market, but even if it does, I really don't think we'll see another explosion like we did with EQ and WoW, from a pure percentage standpoint.
I think Dark Souls is a great example of people who understand the difference between difficulty, and frustration, or tedium.
And that's the issue with "difficulty" in the MMO space. There's a very fine line between real,
actualdifficulty, and just simple tedium. I think EQ did a horrible job with that balance. 99% of the "difficulty" associated with EQ was nothing more than tedium. Does that mean it'll be impossible for a team to strike
justthe right balance? Absolutely not, but I think it's going to take many iterations before it's struck, and like we've been discussing, MMOs aren't exactly cheap ventures at this moment in time.