why should people who aren't in MMOs now get into MMOs today, given that they have MySpace, Facebook, XBox Live, YouTube, and a whole lot of other things? Moreover, why should the WoW diehard try other MMOs if they are sick of WoW, when they have a whole lot of other non-MMO online stuff to do?
fully agree
- altho I wouldnt be surprised if ex-WOW fans hang around looking for another mmo
MMO genre will always have fans, but MMOs are not for everyone
I personally dont like Consoles -- but Consoles have their fans too
I feel that they are not going away as much as that their is a lack of ideas at the moment. It seems that all the great MMO's that have come out like Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, UO, ect... were the base for all other games. While they are different in some ways they are just an old idea with a new twist and few nice features. In my opinion there needs to be more creativity and a feel from developers that they are willing to take chances and think outside the box.
So, why should people who aren't in MMOs now get into MMOs today, given that they have MySpace, Facebook, XBox Live, YouTube, and a whole lot of other things? Moreover, why should the WoW diehard try other MMOs if they are sick of WoW, when they have a whole lot of other non-MMO online stuff to do?
Rofl, this has to be the most clueless comparison I have ever seen. Are you seriously comparing Myspace and Facebook with an MMO?
Ouch, did you fall really really hard on your head when you were young ?
I compare them as online entertainment services that have to compete for a person's time and money in the same arena.
You can't work on your Orc Shaman if you are working on your profile, or answering someone else's. The best part about these things is that they don't cost anything, yet provide a ton of distraction.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I feel that they are not going away as much as that their is a lack of ideas at the moment. It seems that all the great MMO's that have come out like Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, UO, ect... were the base for all other games. While they are different in some ways they are just an old idea with a new twist and few nice features. In my opinion there needs to be more creativity and a feel from developers that they are willing to take chances and think outside the box.
Yeah I do agree that alot devs are sticky to the "hey this makes money"syndrome but with titles like(yea I am bumming it again) TCOS thinking outside the box,Then maybe you should check them out.
If someone had came up to me in 1980 when I was on my Atari 2600 and said we will be playing games with thousands of people at the same time.I guess my response would have been,"but I only have 2 joysticks"
I'm so sick of all this B.S. from the extreme hard-right side of MMO gamers.. the so called "hardcore." They were around in the early days of the MMORPG. When games were a lot more tough and unforgiving. They are now the very loud and very vocal minority. They feel as if they are right and all the new MMORPG players are wrong or stupid or weak etc. etc.etc. They feel that they are special because they've been banging through MMOs for a long time. You are not special. You are the minority. Truth is, the genre has changed. Some of us old school MMO vets like me have changed with it and learned to enjoy the more casual aspects of our favorite MMOs. You "hardcore" seem to cling to the bygone days of old, somehow expecting that they'll come back. They won't. It's plain and simple. You have ONE game in development that promises to be an "old school" experience, and most would consider that game to be vaporware with no real chance of release. Besides that, there is one game out there that is still "hardcore" and follows the old school set of rules, EVE, and I know a lot of you enjoy it. Great, awesome, I'm happy for you.
Now shut the f*#$ up. I know there are a lot of newer MMO players that defend their modern-generation games with just as much zealotry and bias as you "old school" vets who do nothing but spit the same trash as the three posters before you did. (McDonalds, Brittney Spears, Chinese Gold farmers anyone?) Seriously. Get over it. Play EVE, hope for Darkfall, or move on. All this WoW bashing and "carebear" crap and "linear sucks this" and "linear sucks that" bull sh!t is annoying, childish, and just plan stupid. If you really are so "mature" and want games with more "challenge" that take more "intelligence" then you should learn to post with intelligence, maturity... or is that too challenging? The younger generation MMO players are just as guilty of immaturity and stupidity as they exhaustively defend their MMO of choice from the "hardcore" zealots. I know it won't end, I know ya'll don't care. You enjoy bickering back and forth about this that and the other thing, pretending as you type behind your anonymous screen name that you are more wise and intelligent then the poster before you, as if your opinion carries more weight. This thread is ridiculous. I petition for it to be closed. It has run its course and is no longer useful or productive (if it ever was.) The FACT is, there are more people playing MMOs today then there ever was before. Does this mean the MMO era is dying? No, no it does not.
You are very defensive against the wrong thing man, be offensive to the devs for making such watered down crap games as of lately and be angry with the people whom latch onto them, this is what is making the devs final decision on what the next games will be like.
I don't feel its dying at all. Compare the subscription numbers from 1999, 2005 and now 2007 and you will see the jump is huge in the numbers of people playing online subscription games.
Its changed for sure and I think the OP and many in this thread are just longing for the feeling of the original games. Like in EQ1 your first trip from Qeynos to Freeport-a memory from 1999 that I will never forget. Or from Daoc your first major RvR or Relic defense/offense. So its amazing for a time and then eventually the game wears out. I could never play any of these games for more then 6 months. I got burned out too fast, which is a major problem with the hardcore crowd.
WoW does not suck, it just rubs people the wrong way to be playing with 12 year olds I suspect. The chat in major cities and barrens bears this out, but in every server if you play long enough you get to know who is who and can find a more mature guild to hang with. I played WoW longer then any of the others and I had a great time. Its only as simple as you want it to be, but even with all the content it gets old after a time. You can only re-roll so many times.
I think the hardcore vets like myself will always have a hard time being satisfied because they can not design (or won't) a game that appeals to old school players. They want the casuals and the kids to play because its where the $$$ is and in the end this whole thing is about the cash. I wait for the next big thing like many of you but I don't hold my breathe because I know its impossible to recapture the feeling and energy of those first games. I envy the newer players just coming up because they get to feel what we all felt back 7-8 years ago.
I'll relate it to music. I'm sure on some level today's rock kicks butt, but as a child of the 80's nothing beats the classics. Even 90's grunge beats the snot out of today's generic emo bands. I know that's just my opinion, and today's music industry is doing just fine without my patronage. All media changes over time and is not necissarily produced for those that pioneered it or supported it in the past. New consumers step up and you either adapt to the change or disconnect.
MMOs Played: EQ 1&2, DAoC, SWG, Planetside, WoW, GW, CoX, DDO, EVE, Vanguard, TR Playing: WAR Awaiting 40k Online and wishing for Battletech Online
Originally posted by Dreadlich I'll relate it to music. I'm sure on some level today's rock kicks butt, but as a child of the 80's nothing beats the classics. Even 90's grunge beats the snot out of today's generic emo bands. I know that's just my opinion, and today's music industry is doing just fine without my patronage. All media changes over time and is not necissarily produced for those that pioneered it or supported it in the past. New consumers step up and you either adapt to the change or disconnect.
I don't believe the MMO era is dying, but there a lot of games [not just MMO's] out there that seem to be made just because suits and bean counters think they should be made. MMO's seem to be going through a pre-dot.com bubble phase. Lot's of venture capitalists pumping money into the business hoping that their game is another WoW, which by the way made $500 million last year. Truth is, pre-WoW no MMO made that much money and of course any other game will be competing with it.
I think we may see the death of the subscriber as the Korean model of micro-transactions, which they have be doing for nearly a decade, is adopted by westerners. There appears to be a lot of resistance to micro-transactions by Westerners (myself included obviously), but it may be forced upon us. It could also be a means to bail out MMO's that just aren't doing so well. Of course there may be a third MMO business model, or maybe more who knows, ad supported MMO's. Imagine instead of paying to play a great game all you had to do was answer a short survey every month and see related ads in the launcher or loading screens wouldn't you want that? [I believe NCSoft may include some adverts in GW2]
This topic seems to crop up every few months and until a particular business model is dead, i.e. subscription, then I don't see the era dying. If Warhammer Online [or any game that you carry as much weight as] was as good as World of Warcraft but was free wouldn't you play that rather than WoW? I know I would.
True, there are many potentially good MMOs coming out in the next couple of years but does anyone else get a feeling that MMOs today are just plain crap? I dont know...Im getting that feeling. Anyone else feeling this way?
I absolutely feel the same way. MMO's right now are just plain stagnant. No significant, new creative innovations in the genre to move it foward. Just the same boring stuff we've already seen and played before.
Maybe 'dying' is too strong a term... 'languishing' perhaps. As already mentioned, the titles cost too much to produce, which causes fear of innovation. Kind of like blockbuster movies are getting worse and worse imo as well. But what innovation 'could' occur, probably can't, because the technology (internet bandwidth) can not support it. The next big revolution/generation in gaming will be people wearing 3d goggle displays, communicating with voip, swinging a Wii type sword, fighting in 100v100 groups to take a castle, then ravaging pixelated wenches of the defeated nations.... or something like that. Until then, while we all live on DSL and Cable, there will just be clonage, with maybe a new feature here and there. Different titles may be promising a realistic world with mass battles and real time moves, but until I see it, I don't believe it. Even WoW with it's more simplistic graphics could not pull it off, (hence the creation of battlegrounds).... Until everyone gets fiber to their house, it ain't gonna happen... and fiber to every home is at least 15+ years away... So look for more 'low risk' .... 'un-innovative' .... 'famous IP' .... CLONAGE....(quests, skills, class-balancing, click click click dumb mobs, etc.)
The problem with 3d goggles is that they have circuits. Circuits release radio waves. Radio waves charge the electrons in your skin cells and cause them to shoot out. This causes your cells to decay and form into tumors. Eventually, if the 3d goggles are on long enough, you will be the proud owner of a self induced brain tumor.
The MMO era is not dying. It is actually just leveling off to something more reasonable. Instead of having to choose from 10 friggin MMOs a year, you have 3 good ones.
As a matter of fact the MMO market is getting flooded by a new breed of MMO games. The Korean "Free to play!" MMO. There are so many of these games that I just can't track of them all. (And they all lok vaguely alike )
I think the biggest problem right now is that developers are expected to code and be creative, even though both processes use different parts of the brain. They need to start hiring people who don't code and can spend all their time on art assets, story lines, world building, class and skill systems and so forth, then have the coders do what they're told by the real professionals. I'm sure some companies do this to a small extent, but obviously it's not nearly enough. There has been very little innovation in this genre over the last 10 years or so and it's not just the fault of the suits.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
it is only begining guys...look - only a few years since diablo via battle.net and what we have now: huge, amazining worlds such wow, eve and so on..
moreover this kind of business attracts more and more sums of $$ in it, it will push everyone and everything forward from game developers to hw equipment..
I thought it was dying when World of WarCraft did well, and further thought it was dying when Vanguard fell apart, as well as when Wolfpack Studios announced what looks like a sad testament to their desperation.
Now, though, with certain key projects on the horizon, it seems like we are in the eye of a storm.
Favorites: EQ, EVE | Playing: None. Mostly VR and strategy | Anticipating: CU, Pantheon
I think a lot of veteran MMO players are getting bored. The games have changed as well. I remember getting EQ when Shadows of Lucin came out. It was my first MMO experience and I have never forgotten it. I didn't have a computer up to the task at the time, and wasn't able to play again for a few years. By then, the game had changed. It didn't have the same feel.
No, actually the MMO world is just getting started. They just need to learn to embrace some new ideas and we need to learn to stay away from some of the low budget garbage.
You are playing a video game. By definition that means you are not hardcore.
True, there are many potentially good MMOs coming out in the next couple of years but does anyone else get a feeling that MMOs today are just plain crap? I dont know...Im getting that feeling. Anyone else feeling this way?
No it isn't not with BioWare new MMORPG and Blizzards new MMORPG being made.
The mmo world has been tainted and moulded into something else.
It started out a big playground where your only limits where what you could think up.
See EVE, SWG and Ryzom for these types - ie sandbox stuff
WOW - has a lot to answer for.
It changed the MMO world and turned it upside down.
Its bred the new breed of uberpwnz gamers, the mmo chat room channels, all the bad things of mmo (althought most already there) WOW just made it so this was the "thing" to do - to get from A to B or to get that top end armour.
Wow bred that state of mind also, that must be first, must be the best and must be the most aggressive in open chat. Again these were already there in the mmo world it just got heightend and brought out in masses due the system wow worked around.
Also it set the bar so high for any other mmo - all these other companies are now either comepeting for a slice of the wow market or trying to spin it and come up with something original. With the something original this is a hit and miss process. Youll either hit it on the head or you will fail miserably.
And then theres the middle of the roaders - LOTRO, VG, COH, GW
If they were released before WOW they would be the major players, but theyve each in their own right tried to copy the wow format to some degree and whilst not bombed they havent made it either adn never will to the extent of wow.
I personally wish WOW had never even been thought up as a mmo, its clever and does what it says on the tin and i take my hat of to blizzard it is a good game, but what happened the mmo market isnt.
Its like monoplised the market and that in any field of commerce is never a good thing for the industry.
So whilst I await all the wow fanbois to attack this post (yawn whatever) just sit back adn think of industry your hurting by subbing to it.
Comments
- altho I wouldnt be surprised if ex-WOW fans hang around looking for another mmo
MMO genre will always have fans, but MMOs are not for everyone
I personally dont like Consoles -- but Consoles have their fans too
EQ2 fan sites
I feel that they are not going away as much as that their is a lack of ideas at the moment. It seems that all the great MMO's that have come out like Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, UO, ect... were the base for all other games. While they are different in some ways they are just an old idea with a new twist and few nice features. In my opinion there needs to be more creativity and a feel from developers that they are willing to take chances and think outside the box.
Rofl, this has to be the most clueless comparison I have ever seen. Are you seriously comparing Myspace and Facebook with an MMO?
Ouch, did you fall really really hard on your head when you were young ?
I compare them as online entertainment services that have to compete for a person's time and money in the same arena.You can't work on your Orc Shaman if you are working on your profile, or answering someone else's. The best part about these things is that they don't cost anything, yet provide a ton of distraction.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Yeah I do agree that alot devs are sticky to the "hey this makes money"syndrome but with titles like(yea I am bumming it again) TCOS thinking outside the box,Then maybe you should check them out.
If someone had came up to me in 1980 when I was on my Atari 2600 and said we will be playing games with thousands of people at the same time.I guess my response would have been,"but I only have 2 joysticks"
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/235780/page/8
Thanks for the tip I will keep an eye on them for sure!
You are very defensive against the wrong thing man, be offensive to the devs for making such watered down crap games as of lately and be angry with the people whom latch onto them, this is what is making the devs final decision on what the next games will be like.
playing eq2 and two worlds
I don't feel its dying at all. Compare the subscription numbers from 1999, 2005 and now 2007 and you will see the jump is huge in the numbers of people playing online subscription games.
Its changed for sure and I think the OP and many in this thread are just longing for the feeling of the original games. Like in EQ1 your first trip from Qeynos to Freeport-a memory from 1999 that I will never forget. Or from Daoc your first major RvR or Relic defense/offense. So its amazing for a time and then eventually the game wears out. I could never play any of these games for more then 6 months. I got burned out too fast, which is a major problem with the hardcore crowd.
WoW does not suck, it just rubs people the wrong way to be playing with 12 year olds I suspect. The chat in major cities and barrens bears this out, but in every server if you play long enough you get to know who is who and can find a more mature guild to hang with. I played WoW longer then any of the others and I had a great time. Its only as simple as you want it to be, but even with all the content it gets old after a time. You can only re-roll so many times.
I think the hardcore vets like myself will always have a hard time being satisfied because they can not design (or won't) a game that appeals to old school players. They want the casuals and the kids to play because its where the $$$ is and in the end this whole thing is about the cash. I wait for the next big thing like many of you but I don't hold my breathe because I know its impossible to recapture the feeling and energy of those first games. I envy the newer players just coming up because they get to feel what we all felt back 7-8 years ago.
I'll relate it to music. I'm sure on some level today's rock kicks butt, but as a child of the 80's nothing beats the classics. Even 90's grunge beats the snot out of today's generic emo bands. I know that's just my opinion, and today's music industry is doing just fine without my patronage. All media changes over time and is not necissarily produced for those that pioneered it or supported it in the past. New consumers step up and you either adapt to the change or disconnect.
MMOs Played: EQ 1&2, DAoC, SWG, Planetside, WoW, GW, CoX, DDO, EVE, Vanguard, TR
Playing: WAR
Awaiting 40k Online and wishing for Battletech Online
Guns N Roses FTW!!!
The MMO era is not dying.
Creative developers seem to be on the endangered specie list tho.
Think of War, AoC, and Aion as resurrection scrolls. :P
I don't believe the MMO era is dying, but there a lot of games [not just MMO's] out there that seem to be made just because suits and bean counters think they should be made. MMO's seem to be going through a pre-dot.com bubble phase. Lot's of venture capitalists pumping money into the business hoping that their game is another WoW, which by the way made $500 million last year. Truth is, pre-WoW no MMO made that much money and of course any other game will be competing with it.
I think we may see the death of the subscriber as the Korean model of micro-transactions, which they have be doing for nearly a decade, is adopted by westerners. There appears to be a lot of resistance to micro-transactions by Westerners (myself included obviously), but it may be forced upon us. It could also be a means to bail out MMO's that just aren't doing so well. Of course there may be a third MMO business model, or maybe more who knows, ad supported MMO's. Imagine instead of paying to play a great game all you had to do was answer a short survey every month and see related ads in the launcher or loading screens wouldn't you want that? [I believe NCSoft may include some adverts in GW2]
This topic seems to crop up every few months and until a particular business model is dead, i.e. subscription, then I don't see the era dying. If Warhammer Online [or any game that you carry as much weight as] was as good as World of Warcraft but was free wouldn't you play that rather than WoW? I know I would.
No annoying animated GIF here!
I absolutely feel the same way. MMO's right now are just plain stagnant. No significant, new creative innovations in the genre to move it foward. Just the same boring stuff we've already seen and played before.
The problem with 3d goggles is that they have circuits. Circuits release radio waves. Radio waves charge the electrons in your skin cells and cause them to shoot out. This causes your cells to decay and form into tumors. Eventually, if the 3d goggles are on long enough, you will be the proud owner of a self induced brain tumor.
but in the end...its all worth the brain tumor.
The MMO era is not dying. It is actually just leveling off to something more reasonable. Instead of having to choose from 10 friggin MMOs a year, you have 3 good ones.
As a matter of fact the MMO market is getting flooded by a new breed of MMO games. The Korean "Free to play!" MMO. There are so many of these games that I just can't track of them all. (And they all lok vaguely alike )
Fantasy MMO's like WoW / lineage etc will start to die, well the genre at least, I think. Cause it's tried and copied.
The healer / tank / dps model will fall one day and make room for other projects like Second Life etc.
I think the biggest problem right now is that developers are expected to code and be creative, even though both processes use different parts of the brain. They need to start hiring people who don't code and can spend all their time on art assets, story lines, world building, class and skill systems and so forth, then have the coders do what they're told by the real professionals. I'm sure some companies do this to a small extent, but obviously it's not nearly enough. There has been very little innovation in this genre over the last 10 years or so and it's not just the fault of the suits.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
it is only begining guys...look - only a few years since diablo via battle.net and what we have now: huge, amazining worlds such wow, eve and so on..
moreover this kind of business attracts more and more sums of $$ in it, it will push everyone and everything forward from game developers to hw equipment..
I thought it was dying when World of WarCraft did well, and further thought it was dying when Vanguard fell apart, as well as when Wolfpack Studios announced what looks like a sad testament to their desperation.
Now, though, with certain key projects on the horizon, it seems like we are in the eye of a storm.
MMORPG as we understood them in the early years is already dead. Now it's single player online games + horrible community, which make them unplayable.
I think a lot of veteran MMO players are getting bored. The games have changed as well. I remember getting EQ when Shadows of Lucin came out. It was my first MMO experience and I have never forgotten it. I didn't have a computer up to the task at the time, and wasn't able to play again for a few years. By then, the game had changed. It didn't have the same feel.
No, actually the MMO world is just getting started. They just need to learn to embrace some new ideas and we need to learn to stay away from some of the low budget garbage.
You are playing a video game. By definition that means you are not hardcore.
No it isn't not with BioWare new MMORPG and Blizzards new MMORPG being made.
The mmo world has been tainted and moulded into something else.
It started out a big playground where your only limits where what you could think up.
See EVE, SWG and Ryzom for these types - ie sandbox stuff
WOW - has a lot to answer for.
It changed the MMO world and turned it upside down.
Its bred the new breed of uberpwnz gamers, the mmo chat room channels, all the bad things of mmo (althought most already there) WOW just made it so this was the "thing" to do - to get from A to B or to get that top end armour.
Wow bred that state of mind also, that must be first, must be the best and must be the most aggressive in open chat. Again these were already there in the mmo world it just got heightend and brought out in masses due the system wow worked around.
Also it set the bar so high for any other mmo - all these other companies are now either comepeting for a slice of the wow market or trying to spin it and come up with something original. With the something original this is a hit and miss process. Youll either hit it on the head or you will fail miserably.
And then theres the middle of the roaders - LOTRO, VG, COH, GW
If they were released before WOW they would be the major players, but theyve each in their own right tried to copy the wow format to some degree and whilst not bombed they havent made it either adn never will to the extent of wow.
I personally wish WOW had never even been thought up as a mmo, its clever and does what it says on the tin and i take my hat of to blizzard it is a good game, but what happened the mmo market isnt.
Its like monoplised the market and that in any field of commerce is never a good thing for the industry.
So whilst I await all the wow fanbois to attack this post (yawn whatever) just sit back adn think of industry your hurting by subbing to it.
MMO era isnt dead - its in a state of opression
Do You think that every MMO game has a little bit same structure?