Focus groups and polls? LOL. In the amount of time that people have discussed MMO's on this board, or anywhere for that matter, when have you ever heard a developer mention a focus group or poll as the foundation of one of their design decisions? Never.
You're pretty sure?
My point (that hard-factions do more to hurt games than help) is still relevant. Your argument, however, is not.
I've heard straight from the mouth of Rift developer prior to it's launch that some of it's design choices were based from focus groups. I've repeated that story multiple times on these forums.
Apparently I've been out of the loop.
Maybe, maybe not. Considering hard factions was done before WoW and in games for quite some time.
Certain MMOs (i.e. Rift) used focus groups to better understand 'the average gamer' in order to create a product that will be appealing to them. One of the (many) horrible design decision that results from these focus groups is hard factions. In a nutshell the argument is that without an 'us' versus 'them' atmosphere players feel that they're not a significant part of the world. To counteract this, designers create hard factions where the player is meant to feel that every time they achieve something they're progressing their character and making a difference in the world. The problem is that the execution of this has been horrible/lazy across every MMO (yes, even including WoW). The end result is that developers spend a significant amount of time creating two separate leveling experiences and run out of time/money to create any type of meaningful endgame content however since having an exciting & easy to progress leveling experience creates box sales (which is another one of those beautiful things learned in those focus groups) we continue to have the same cut & paste MMOs. Typically, the ones that try to move away from that formula end up not even making it to launch, which is why so few of them even attempt to get made anymore. It's also why the MMO industry doesn't have any real up & coming stars; in the industry if you've launched a title (no matter how bad) you've achieved a certain measure of success. It's all types of fucked up.
Who the hell would have said that ? again there are single player experiences that will always be better ... I will never believe that the crap we are getting is anything other than "let's do what wow did" which could work even today but these developers can't even copy WoW and get it right.
Almost everyone playing EverQuest, which is why WoW had exactly those features (everyone solo, dying has little consequence).
Pretty much, take the major complaints people had about EQ and WoW fixed them. There's a reason the industry turned that corner and its because that is what majority of the then current players wanted. What was unexpected was the huge influx of new blood.
Sojourn!
Major difference was that the population of MMORPG players pre-WOW was incredibly small. Post TBC/Wrath it was much larger and much more diverse. Pre-WOW the majority of MMO players were hardcore. Not so much in 2009/10 whatever.
Ok I will buy that but then why the repetitive epic fails? Because WoW was a hell of a lot more than Soloable. You had a huge world to explore and there were rails but leveling choices as well and a reason to ALT. New games lack this... Point is you can't cherry pick a feature and think that is all that is needed..RIft in particular gave u no reason to level another character from a leveling path perspective .. He'll there are parts of WoW I still have not seen.
