Well, now what?

K

kahilm_sl

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Yeah, I'm late to this thread but I don't agree with the "MMO cherry popping" theory.

I started with GemStone III on AOL (text based MUD). It was fucking awesome. Huge world, lots of lore, interesting combat mechanics, role-players, GM mobs/merchants... so deep and so awesome.

Then there was UO. Which was even MORE awesome. A graphical MMO based on a series I already knew and loved? Open world, sandbox, skill based, player homes, PVP, etc.? What the fuck could be better than that?

Well, EQ wasn't better but it was still pretty awesome. And then FFXI was also pretty awesome. Both of those games sucked away a large chunk of my youth.

And then WoW was even fucking god damn better than those games.

So, no, it's not that I'm old and jaded and am chasing the first high again and again. It's that most everything sucks since WoW was released. Everything is a clone of a clone of a clone now. Even if it's a new world, it just feels too familiar too quickly.

Something is eventually going to break the mold and save us from this MMO limbo. I BELIEVE.
 
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shabushabu

shabushabu

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One thing I have learned is to manage my expectations. My favorite MMO experiences came from all different games and over a bit of time but basically I have learned to just out the hype and I roll with my gaming moods.

If I feel like playing something light I do like neverwinter and enjoy it for what it is. If I want to dig into something deeper of course these days is hard to find but just go with what you feel like day to day and week to week. I have given up on the great game to rule them all .. I am a gamer and I game, in many different ways. For example revisited nwn2 recently and man I just loved that series to death had some great gaming moments there.

Looking forward to: WildStar with the hope that the world is as immersive as wow. Archange because on paper it has basically everything I want which means it will likely disappoint. DDO expansion this summer. Sprinkled with single player games of course... It's funny though in the past year or 2 nearly all my great gaming experiences where u get that hook and can't let it go have come from single player stuff.

I even went back to vanilla wow and it's just amazing how damn immersive that game was..from level 1 in teldrassil it was like, no shit I am in a different world now... Miss that from MMOs
 
Mr Creed

Mr Creed

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Maybe everone has different thresholds for immersion but to me WoW moved away from it more and more and instead focused on its theme park ride aspects - so I mostly expect a well done theme park from Wildstar and would be surprised if it gets you that 'being there' immersive feeling.
 
kitsune

kitsune

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7 years later the answer to my question is still not clear but I am back where I started, onwards to wow classic!
 
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Locnar

Locnar

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Good refresher thread for people who doubt the basic truth that the first gen of MMOs got the formula right but later on the developers grew weak and gave in to the basic human instinct to complain and want things easier and "less tedious". That poisoned the well until this day.
 
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mkopec

mkopec

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Locnar said:
Good refresher thread for people who doubt the basic truth that the first gen of MMOs got the formula right but later on the developers grew weak and gave in to the basic human instinct to complain and want things easier and "less tedious". That poisoned the well until this day.
Click to expand...

Its definitely a slippery slope once you go down the path of making shit easier/quicker.

I think a lot of the fundamental problems with mmos these days is the focus too much on "end game" and raiding type shit. I mean, dont get me wrong, these things should definitely be a part of these games, its just that the core and base should always revolve around the group. Raids IMO should be more rare type events, maybe even spur of the moment instead of planned 200 wipe sessions until you beat boss xx then move on to wiping on boss YYY for another 200 tries before you get it right in some instance.

I like how older mmos focused more on the journey rather than the end game. Shit, even vanilla wow was more like this, although I hated that 1-60 was more about soloing (because more efficient questing).

I really dont know what the answer is. I feel too many people these days are just too conditioned to the current "end game" type mmos.
 
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gshurik

gshurik

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People grew up, and the medium tried to do that too.

I mean I know for a fact I have no-where near enough time to farm a single item for literally months at a time anymore. I spent so much time just preparing to farm in XI, and as much as I fucking love XI, I could never go back.

The medium evolved by making faster paced experiences for people with less time in order to try to maintain the same group of players, but sadly that doesn't exactly equate to a quality MMORPG normally.

I do think that XIV is the best MMO out there right now, for the simple fact that you can obsess over it for a few months and then take a break for a year until you obsess over it again with all the new content.
 
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Locnar

Locnar

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Right the modern focus on raiding and end game is a flaw, but they painted themselves into a corner by making the journey to max level so quick and trivial. Look at what is going on these days, people just grind mobs in a handful of places basically NAKED (cause they can) and then raid. No memories of questing for those low level weapons or armor pieces, because why spend a couple hours to get a shinning star of light or a bonethunder staff that you will outgrow after killing 30 mobs in 5 mins??

No memories of anything actually. Just a numb grind to max, exchanging people out in your grind group and not even bothering to look at their names. Sad.

MMOs only work if there is interdependence from level 1 onwards and things take enough time to make forming relationships actually part of the game. There has to be SHARED experiences, be it traveling, waiting for a boat, med breaks between pulls, coordinating corpse runs, all that. Without shared experiences, your character is is meaningless and the game is meaningless and easily put aside.
 
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Locnar

Locnar

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Also there is no character (and therefore game) investment if you are not afford the opportunity to distinguish yourself in the community. If you can't make a name for yourself as a "expert puller" because they trivialized all encounters and made it so everyone can faceroll pull then thats bad. If you can't make a name for yourself as a awesome group tank because they trivialized all encounters and let naked casters face tank zoos thats bad, etc. Same works for things like tradeskills, back in the day you invested and sweated blood and tears farming mats and slowly becoming one of the only grandmaster tailor, blacksmith etc. and people knew you and went to you for your expert service...

then they trivialized that and who cares about your tradekill, ill just have my auto-bot alt do the combines, bye!.

That is why these games need to be hard, so we the players can achieve and find our special niche in the world/community.
 
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Locnar

Locnar

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gshurik said:
People grew up, and the medium tried to do that too.

I mean I know for a fact I have no-where near enough time to farm a single item for literally months at a time anymore.
Click to expand...

The only thing worse than not having the time to carve out your niche and make yourself "special" in your virtual MMO world is not even having the opportunity to make the choice in the first place. If you don't have time to camp or quest item x,y,z then you get the pleasure of admiring the few that do. There will be peons down the ladder that will be admiring your x,y,z that you do have time to farm and so on and so forth. Much better then EVERYONE having their personal instance and copy of x,y,z

"I don't have the time to train for the Olympics, ban them".

When everyone wins, everyone loses. Or I can't win so no one should. This is modern MMO philosophy unfortunately.
 
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mkopec

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Yeah people grow up, they have families, blah blah, all that jazz. Shit back when I played EQ in 2000 I was 26 yrs old with wife and kid already. If you like something, you will make time for it. Besides, mmorpgs should be perfect game for people like this since it should not matter in the least that it takes you 5 months to level to cap while others can do it in 2 weeks. Its really up to you how long you want to play the game. But there is that problem, people just expect to rush in these games now and therefore they have degraded in quality, immersiveness, and challenge through the years because of this entitlement that some people have.

Back when I played EQ I was never a part of some high end raiding guild and it took me probably a year to level to cap, if not longer. But I did not care because I was having fun every time I logged on. And im sure there were tons of people just like me.

Now granted these games are not really meant for people that want to log on for 30 min and gain 2 levels and have meaningful accomplishments. there is other genres of games that cater to that style of gamer, why should this genre degrade itself to cater to those people? If you cannot commit 2+ hours per night to the game, then go play CS-Go or run a few matches of COD or some shit, maybe mmorpgs are just not made for you.
 
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Flipmode

Flipmode

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Interdependence is a double edged sword though. What happens when there aren’t tons of new players feeding into the game anymore. How would a lone new player go about leveling up in game like that? Eventually, it would become a ghost town and the game would just trend into a death spiral.

Mentoring could help alleviate this, but what if you don’t have any friends? If a game wants to sustain its success for any length of time, they have to tackle this issue or their game will eventually end up top heavy and slowly (or rapidly) die off.
 
Flipmode

Flipmode

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For the record, I am a fan of class interdependence and grouping. I’ve just never seen a game do both ends of the spectrum successfully.
 
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Lambourne

Lambourne

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Twink gear can help characters level solo until they get to a range where they can find groups, and best of all it happens naturally in the game world as the game ages. Yesterday's top gear can be bought by a noob willing to farm some bone chips and bear pelts, it just needs gear to be tradeable. It's another victim of WoW's incessant focus on "play it this way or else" game design.
 
jayrebb

jayrebb

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kahilm_sl said:
Yeah, I'm late to this thread but I don't agree with the "MMO cherry popping" theory.

I started with GemStone III on AOL (text based MUD). It was fucking awesome. Huge world, lots of lore, interesting combat mechanics, role-players, GM mobs/merchants... so deep and so awesome.

Then there was UO. Which was even MORE awesome. A graphical MMO based on a series I already knew and loved? Open world, sandbox, skill based, player homes, PVP, etc.? What the fuck could be better than that?

Well, EQ wasn't better but it was still pretty awesome. And then FFXI was also pretty awesome. Both of those games sucked away a large chunk of my youth.

And then WoW was even fucking god damn better than those games.

So, no, it's not that I'm old and jaded and am chasing the first high again and again. It's that most everything sucks since WoW was released. Everything is a clone of a clone of a clone now. Even if it's a new world, it just feels too familiar too quickly.

Something is eventually going to break the mold and save us from this MMO limbo. I BELIEVE.
Click to expand...

Agree there was a time where the games just kept getting better.

For me, Vanguard was yet another capitalization on top of WoW. So literally 4-5 MMO's in a row (EQ2 also had its charm after they repaired launch).

Thats a 10 year span where games just progressively kicked more ass and gameplay became more innovated and better.
 
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