It's not dying, there is just too many games out and the crowds wore thin across them all.
Well is there a way to fill in the missing gaps to all these games?
Yup, by shutting down half of em or introducing another couple million players across the board (not just to one game like *wink wink*).
A big part of this is that some games are built to hold less people and do fine. Love/Wurm are fine with under 100 people in a single server, they are just built that way. Other games are just dead feeling if there is under 1000 on at once. I think indie games that take small crowds and do their best with it will last far longer than big-time games that can't hang unless tons of people are on board.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4 Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Personally i dont think the genre is dying but is suffering from a glutton of bad games with little content, story, or feeling of a relationship with the game.
(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH wonders if the Minmataar, Amarrian, Caldarian, or Galentee ladies know how to dance since he can only see thier heads.)
All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care. Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes
Personally i dont think the genre is dying but is suffering from a glutton of bad games with little content, story, or feeling of a relationship with the game. (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH wonders if the Minmataar, Amarrian, Caldarian, or Galentee ladies know how to dance since he can only see thier heads.)
Yes, I do think this MMO push is very similar to how Atari broke the market back in the day, and soon the whole lineup will face the obvious issues of competition and scattered audiences.
As for EVE, I'm coming back for ambulation... because the aesthetic of a *body* is fairly important to me. Was never digging being a ship all the time.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4 Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
This is just my opinion so take it for what its worth.
The MMO Genre itself is doing very very well. The marketing of WoW has turned MMO and WoW itself into an almost household word. What seems to suffer is the community and what the drive is for people to play.
My 1st MMO was DAoC, I was a noob to online gaming in general and a big time noob in MMO's. I started playing it the week of release as a suggestion from a buddy of mine. Loved the game and played it for 3 years straight. People in that game were not driven by loot or greed it seems. Community was the main focus, getting a group of people out there and doing RvR, or Raids, or group open dungeon crawls. Very rarely saw people argue or fight over a drop.
There were some elitist asshats to be sure, but overall I made more friends and had a better sense of community than in any MMO i have played since.
Just as an example. My last day of WoW was this.
Dual spec had just come out that week. I was spec holy for raiding and had been rolling off spec and saving badges for my shadow set . I put on my shadow set which was all epic pieces, joined a Sarth PuG 10 man doing with 1 drake up. We smoked the place, not even 1 death. The leader kept ragging on everyone who was not doing what he thought was enuff dps, " shadow priest you suck" , " druid L2P", ect ect.
All people cared about was that little meter running in the corner of the screen with numbers on it for dps and heals. Never mind that we just cleared it with no deaths.
After this and the bitching going on in guild the night before over loot I exited, logged off, cancel sub and never looked back.
Community has what has taken a hit with the newer MMO's, either that or I am just getting too old for the genre lol
The genre is going through a lull as many of the most recent releases have sought to emulate the WoW formula rather than innovate. There is now an awful lot of rubbish on the market, which still absorb gaming hours.
Much of the lull is a matter of perception - not even counting WoW, I think far more people are playing MMOs than ever although the playerbase of the genre is more distributed due to the number of games on the market.
From a mainstream perspective, certain AAA games like AoC and Warhammer were probably only ever likely to win over a niche market due to the nature of the IP. In this respect I think these games have actually done well (although their investors may disagree), given that comparing them to WoW is like comparing Terminator to Bambi.
There are established reasons for WoW success and when it eventually becomes too dated, I feel it will be replaced by another MMO - the genre won't die.
A percentage of the MMO fanbase will need to accept a more flexible definition of the term MMO as the genre will and is evolving. The traditional 'button bar' style gaming from days of old will eventually be replaced by more engaging interfaces and many new and unreleased games are looking to employ a 3rd Person Shooter-style UI. In addition, I think the format of the content will need to become increasingly bite-sized to avoid alienating players with limited time. I don't think this will see a 'goodbye' to epic gaming, but it will say 'hello' to more manageable and inclusive gaming.
Aryas
Playing: Ableton Live 8 ~ ragequitcancelsubdeletegamesmashcomputerkillself ~
Personally i dont think the genre is dying but is suffering from a glutton of bad games with little content, story, or feeling of a relationship with the game. (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH wonders if the Minmataar, Amarrian, Caldarian, or Galentee ladies know how to dance since he can only see thier heads.)
I really don't see this genre dying. It's, simply, evolving. Before I touch on the evolution, I need to point out a couple of things. First of all, there are more MMO's today then there ever was. Just look at the list on this website and you'll see. Howbeit, quantity and quality are entirely different things.
Secondly, the MMO industry has been making some terrible mistakes, resulting in a lot of failed titles. If you browse this site, you'll find articles as to what these mistakes are. One I will point out is that many of these companies are using beta-testing as a marketing tool to get sales. This is a bad thing beacause beta-testing is a very important step in the MMO creation process and by giving away keys for the sake of a game sale reduces the effectiveness of what the testing is all about. Budget planning is another problematic area. Many companies are not budgeting properly, forcing them to run out of capital early in the development phase. This forces them to rush out an unpolished game. I think we all know what can happen to a games reputation in such a case. Once a game has been branded poorly; it's hard to win back it's reputation.
This genre is evolving. AoC and Champions Online are two examples. The upcoming Secret World is another. We are slowly seeing MMO's evolving into more of an action style gameplay (active blocking, striking, etc.) I have also noticed a slight slip in community along with some of these games. It's not because of a lack of players either. There are plenty of players around in what games I currently play. Grouping and socializing still exists but there seems to be less of it. Regardless of the changes, this genre is still very much alive.
I, personally, think (and predict) that the medium of this genre will change as well. With a new generation of consoles on the horizon, I think we'll see a lot of these games headed the console way. Given the increase in power, every generation and the fact that the console market is much bigger than the PC market, these companies will look to consoles to develop future titles (along with the PC).
With the heavy RPG meshing FPS games and vice versa , they seem to be soldering the two genres together. I would argue that the genre is about to blast off.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
If you consider a community of players that help each other and interact a key factor in any MMORPG, then the genre is not dying, it is already dead. Otherwise, the genre is in very good health.
I used to think that also. Then I made some new friends. They are harder to find nowadays, I agree. But it's not impossible.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Not even remotely close. But the devs are sure giving it their best shot lol. Match creativity challenged devs with money sucking suits who know nothing about mmos, and you're gonna get a lot of wow clones. This genre probably won't revitalize until about 3-4 years down the road when the recession is (likely) over. But make no mistake, it WILL be back with a vengence.
Not even remotely close. But the devs are sure giving it their best shot lol. Match creativity challenged devs with money sucking suits who know nothing about mmos, and you're gonna get a lot of wow clones. This genre probably won't revitalize until about 3-4 years down the road when the recession is (likely) over. But make no mistake, it WILL be back with a vengence.
Well overall, is the MMORPG genre, a genre of video game that is worth the time to play on or is a single player game better these days?
Growing pains. A transition period. Expectations of consumers are up, those of studios are going down. When they balance out and meet at the middle we'll finally see dependable and innovative fun versus the flood of captial attention.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc. We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be. So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away. - MMO_Doubter
I hope the MMO market crashes like the video game market did in the early 80s. Then maybe developers will step back and realize that making 10 grinders that are nearly identical isn't such a good idea.
"spend an hour or 2 in a dungeon for some massive boss." - I think this is whats killing MMOs for me. Dungeons are boring and I'm tired of MMOs that encourage me to do them for the millionth time.
I hope the MMO market crashes like the video game market did in the early 80s. Then maybe developers will step back and realize that making 10 grinders that are nearly identical isn't such a good idea. "spend an hour or 2 in a dungeon for some massive boss." - I think this is whats killing MMOs for me. Dungeons are boring and I'm tired of MMOs that encourage me to do them for the millionth time.
Agree, I hope at some point people will stop paying every month for a lower quality single player game with a chat.
as soon as devs realise not everyone plays a mmo to do then quest leveling method and prefer to do good old fashioned camps /groups the genre will explode with activity again.
Questing is cool but there has to be a grind method for exp thats just as rewarding .
immersion is lost when you do 5 quests then move to another zone or area do 15 quests and so on and so forth compared to 6 friends getting together and doing a great dungion crawl /grind.
Some lead and some follow I prefer to stand beside!
as soon as devs realise not everyone plays a mmo to do then quest leveling method and prefer to do good old fashioned camps /groups the genre will explode with activity again. Erm. I think you might be massively overestimating the amount of pro-grinders in the genre. I'm sure that there are some out there, but enough to make the genre "explode with activity" seems rather far-fetched. Especially when you consider just how many people are playing MMOs these days. Questing is cool but there has to be a grind method for exp thats just as rewarding . You can grind in virtually all MMOs, even ones where the primary levelling method is via quests. If the mob kill grants XP then you are entirely free to ignore the quests and just grind mobs to level if that is your preference. immersion is lost when you do 5 quests then move to another zone or area do 15 quests and so on and so forth compared to 6 friends getting together and doing a great dungion crawl /grind. Immersion (the way that you mean the term here) has never really existed.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
as soon as devs realise not everyone plays a mmo to do then quest leveling method and prefer to do good old fashioned camps /groups the genre will explode with activity again. Questing is cool but there has to be a grind method for exp thats just as rewarding . immersion is lost when you do 5 quests then move to another zone or area do 15 quests and so on and so forth compared to 6 friends getting together and doing a great dungion crawl /grind.
Grinding has to be one of the most boring, tiresome and fruitless methods of play I have ever had the misfortune to try. I felt as if there was nothing to the game I was playing, as if the entire world was made of nothing but things I was supposed to kill, and there was no lore, no story, no meaning to the game at all. And without those it meant nothing to play it, so I stopped.
Questing gives me a reason to play. It gives the story structure and meaning, and it gives my character a reason to exist.
As soon as grinders quit complaining about how there are even quests in the game at all, and just learn to enjoy the fact that they can level up in the fields if they so choose, there will be an explosion of activity from them, and while they're slowly leveling up by grinding, the questers will shoot past them in level and get the best gear, the best toys, and know more about the world they play in, leaving grinders to post questions as to why X faction is getting Y race in the next expansion because they don't know anything about the lore of the game, nor what's going on in the game world. They just sit in the fields all day killing mobs for no reason.
Can you describe a scenario for grinding that could possibly be as rewarding?
Currently, I think the MMO market is saturated with games that really have no creative choices to follow within the game.
You don't see to many games bosting leveling alternative areas of play for starting areas or even end game content (they herd you into the same bottle neck point). Original ideas are almost null to void in the MMO market. Also (due to 99.9% of games being fantasy based) just how many ways can you play a orc, or a human Warrior, Rogue, Sorc, etc (getting sick of this)?
Developers and even marketing people do not realize this but the market for MMO growth is ver small (got the same forum members in WOW and DDO on these and Star Wars/Trek forums).
On a note to it is like eating meat loaf for 3 years straight seasoned differently (once you get sick of eating it you will not want it ever again, unless your slow).
I hope the MMO market crashes like the video game market did in the early 80s. Then maybe developers will step back and realize that making 10 grinders that are nearly identical isn't such a good idea.
Im with you there. Hopeing for a big crash that will kill all these boring things that are promise alot and does so little.
I'm getting the feeling that the MMORPG genre is slowly dying out, what I mean by this is, WoW is ruled by trollers and hardly anyone plays the lesser known MMO's like Lord of the Rings, Warhammer and Aion. I really don't know where the MMORPG genre is heading from here, is it going to continue in a strong pace with other games on the market that use the Counter-Strike format of multiplayer or is it going to flat out disappear one day because I'm getting the feeling most people prefer to head snipe people with with a team of random people all the time for 5-10 minutes rather than spend an hour or 2 in a dungeon for some massive boss.
If the MMORPG is going down the shitter then I must be wasting my time playing these games rather than hoping to find people I could call as friends.
Well I can see an awful lot of ignorance in this topic, basically; ----not all aimed at op----
1. MMO burnout
2. Failure to grasp the fact that nothing will be as special as the first time you experienced an MMO world. We now know what we SHOULD expect. Once you have a preconceived idea of something it will often fail to impress, especially when it has to live up to your first awesome experience.
3. Total lack of the idea of genre, in order to quallify as an MMORPG it must contain certian elements of gameplay. Not static, not identical, but not a completey different concept.
4. Every community has it's clowns, online communities have super clowns.
5. ----OP---- your game, wow, has had some changes that I guess you don't like, running around proclaiming that the genre is dying out is stupid. The sky is not falling.
6. Look to the left <------ More games than I care to list, when I started playing MMO's 9 years ago we were not spoiled for choice.
7. Because a game does not have UO mechanics does not make it a failure, rushed, unpolished, unpopular or in any way prove that the genre is in a "lull".
Comments
It's not dying, there is just too many games out and the crowds wore thin across them all.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
What is that the monkey is holding?
Ebola.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Well is there a way to fill in the missing gaps to all these games?
Well is there a way to fill in the missing gaps to all these games?
Yup, by shutting down half of em or introducing another couple million players across the board (not just to one game like *wink wink*).
A big part of this is that some games are built to hold less people and do fine. Love/Wurm are fine with under 100 people in a single server, they are just built that way. Other games are just dead feeling if there is under 1000 on at once. I think indie games that take small crowds and do their best with it will last far longer than big-time games that can't hang unless tons of people are on board.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Personally i dont think the genre is dying but is suffering from a glutton of bad games with little content, story, or feeling of a relationship with the game.
(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH wonders if the Minmataar, Amarrian, Caldarian, or Galentee ladies know how to dance since he can only see thier heads.)
All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care.
Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes
Yes, I do think this MMO push is very similar to how Atari broke the market back in the day, and soon the whole lineup will face the obvious issues of competition and scattered audiences.
As for EVE, I'm coming back for ambulation... because the aesthetic of a *body* is fairly important to me. Was never digging being a ship all the time.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
This is just my opinion so take it for what its worth.
The MMO Genre itself is doing very very well. The marketing of WoW has turned MMO and WoW itself into an almost household word. What seems to suffer is the community and what the drive is for people to play.
My 1st MMO was DAoC, I was a noob to online gaming in general and a big time noob in MMO's. I started playing it the week of release as a suggestion from a buddy of mine. Loved the game and played it for 3 years straight. People in that game were not driven by loot or greed it seems. Community was the main focus, getting a group of people out there and doing RvR, or Raids, or group open dungeon crawls. Very rarely saw people argue or fight over a drop.
There were some elitist asshats to be sure, but overall I made more friends and had a better sense of community than in any MMO i have played since.
Just as an example. My last day of WoW was this.
Dual spec had just come out that week. I was spec holy for raiding and had been rolling off spec and saving badges for my shadow set . I put on my shadow set which was all epic pieces, joined a Sarth PuG 10 man doing with 1 drake up. We smoked the place, not even 1 death. The leader kept ragging on everyone who was not doing what he thought was enuff dps, " shadow priest you suck" , " druid L2P", ect ect.
All people cared about was that little meter running in the corner of the screen with numbers on it for dps and heals. Never mind that we just cleared it with no deaths.
After this and the bitching going on in guild the night before over loot I exited, logged off, cancel sub and never looked back.
Community has what has taken a hit with the newer MMO's, either that or I am just getting too old for the genre lol
Just my 2cp
Here's my thoughts on the matter:
Aryas
Playing: Ableton Live 8
~ ragequitcancelsubdeletegamesmashcomputerkillself ~
LOL, Rabbids are insane. XD
I really don't see this genre dying. It's, simply, evolving. Before I touch on the evolution, I need to point out a couple of things. First of all, there are more MMO's today then there ever was. Just look at the list on this website and you'll see. Howbeit, quantity and quality are entirely different things.
Secondly, the MMO industry has been making some terrible mistakes, resulting in a lot of failed titles. If you browse this site, you'll find articles as to what these mistakes are. One I will point out is that many of these companies are using beta-testing as a marketing tool to get sales. This is a bad thing beacause beta-testing is a very important step in the MMO creation process and by giving away keys for the sake of a game sale reduces the effectiveness of what the testing is all about. Budget planning is another problematic area. Many companies are not budgeting properly, forcing them to run out of capital early in the development phase. This forces them to rush out an unpolished game. I think we all know what can happen to a games reputation in such a case. Once a game has been branded poorly; it's hard to win back it's reputation.
This genre is evolving. AoC and Champions Online are two examples. The upcoming Secret World is another. We are slowly seeing MMO's evolving into more of an action style gameplay (active blocking, striking, etc.) I have also noticed a slight slip in community along with some of these games. It's not because of a lack of players either. There are plenty of players around in what games I currently play. Grouping and socializing still exists but there seems to be less of it. Regardless of the changes, this genre is still very much alive.
I, personally, think (and predict) that the medium of this genre will change as well. With a new generation of consoles on the horizon, I think we'll see a lot of these games headed the console way. Given the increase in power, every generation and the fact that the console market is much bigger than the PC market, these companies will look to consoles to develop future titles (along with the PC).
With the heavy RPG meshing FPS games and vice versa , they seem to be soldering the two genres together. I would argue that the genre is about to blast off.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I used to think that also. Then I made some new friends. They are harder to find nowadays, I agree. But it's not impossible.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Not even remotely close. But the devs are sure giving it their best shot lol. Match creativity challenged devs with money sucking suits who know nothing about mmos, and you're gonna get a lot of wow clones. This genre probably won't revitalize until about 3-4 years down the road when the recession is (likely) over. But make no mistake, it WILL be back with a vengence.
Well overall, is the MMORPG genre, a genre of video game that is worth the time to play on or is a single player game better these days?
Can't believe the thread died just when I ask a question previously here.
Growing pains. A transition period. Expectations of consumers are up, those of studios are going down. When they balance out and meet at the middle we'll finally see dependable and innovative fun versus the flood of captial attention.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
I hope the MMO market crashes like the video game market did in the early 80s. Then maybe developers will step back and realize that making 10 grinders that are nearly identical isn't such a good idea.
"spend an hour or 2 in a dungeon for some massive boss." - I think this is whats killing MMOs for me. Dungeons are boring and I'm tired of MMOs that encourage me to do them for the millionth time.
Agree, I hope at some point people will stop paying every month for a lower quality single player game with a chat.
as soon as devs realise not everyone plays a mmo to do then quest leveling method and prefer to do good old fashioned camps /groups the genre will explode with activity again.
Questing is cool but there has to be a grind method for exp thats just as rewarding .
immersion is lost when you do 5 quests then move to another zone or area do 15 quests and so on and so forth compared to 6 friends getting together and doing a great dungion crawl /grind.
Some lead and some follow I prefer to stand beside!
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Grinding has to be one of the most boring, tiresome and fruitless methods of play I have ever had the misfortune to try. I felt as if there was nothing to the game I was playing, as if the entire world was made of nothing but things I was supposed to kill, and there was no lore, no story, no meaning to the game at all. And without those it meant nothing to play it, so I stopped.
Questing gives me a reason to play. It gives the story structure and meaning, and it gives my character a reason to exist.
As soon as grinders quit complaining about how there are even quests in the game at all, and just learn to enjoy the fact that they can level up in the fields if they so choose, there will be an explosion of activity from them, and while they're slowly leveling up by grinding, the questers will shoot past them in level and get the best gear, the best toys, and know more about the world they play in, leaving grinders to post questions as to why X faction is getting Y race in the next expansion because they don't know anything about the lore of the game, nor what's going on in the game world. They just sit in the fields all day killing mobs for no reason.
Can you describe a scenario for grinding that could possibly be as rewarding?
Currently, I think the MMO market is saturated with games that really have no creative choices to follow within the game.
You don't see to many games bosting leveling alternative areas of play for starting areas or even end game content (they herd you into the same bottle neck point). Original ideas are almost null to void in the MMO market. Also (due to 99.9% of games being fantasy based) just how many ways can you play a orc, or a human Warrior, Rogue, Sorc, etc (getting sick of this)?
Developers and even marketing people do not realize this but the market for MMO growth is ver small (got the same forum members in WOW and DDO on these and Star Wars/Trek forums).
On a note to it is like eating meat loaf for 3 years straight seasoned differently (once you get sick of eating it you will not want it ever again, unless your slow).
Im with you there. Hopeing for a big crash that will kill all these boring things that are promise alot and does so little.
I7@4ghz, 5970@ 1 ghz/5ghz, water cooled||Former setups Byggblogg||Byggblogg 2|| Msi Wind u100
Well I can see an awful lot of ignorance in this topic, basically; ----not all aimed at op----
1. MMO burnout
2. Failure to grasp the fact that nothing will be as special as the first time you experienced an MMO world. We now know what we SHOULD expect. Once you have a preconceived idea of something it will often fail to impress, especially when it has to live up to your first awesome experience.
3. Total lack of the idea of genre, in order to quallify as an MMORPG it must contain certian elements of gameplay. Not static, not identical, but not a completey different concept.
4. Every community has it's clowns, online communities have super clowns.
5. ----OP---- your game, wow, has had some changes that I guess you don't like, running around proclaiming that the genre is dying out is stupid. The sky is not falling.
6. Look to the left <------ More games than I care to list, when I started playing MMO's 9 years ago we were not spoiled for choice.
7. Because a game does not have UO mechanics does not make it a failure, rushed, unpolished, unpopular or in any way prove that the genre is in a "lull".