Really? I'm still waiting for one that is an RPG, and I'm ecstatic that BioWare appears to finally be merging RPG with MMO in The Old Republic.
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Really? as far as we know, SWTOR will become the most storycentric game we ever saw. and story are these rails they introduced since EQ2 and WoW massively, in order to replace setting and pure lore, and as an alternative for grinding. and these story-rails leaded just to story-grinding and linear gameplay where you are just another acter strongly acting according to a storybook written by the devs with all possible details (refining).
so definatley NO! SWTOR might become succesful, but it is more some last nail in the coffin of MMORPGs.
SWTOR will not bring us MMORPG back. it will at least ruin the MMO part finally. well if you think that something like Dragon Age with laserwords which you can play with friends 8 times in a row is RPG, then it is your game.
for me MMORPG means just an open virtual breathing world, where i can develop my character to represent a certain role. and i can do that, like i myself like to do it and not like devs prepared it should be done in detail.
honestly, SWTOR will never allow this. not what we saw so far on their homepage. there is no freedom in SWTOR: massive story is the natural enemy of freedom and roleplaying. "setting" is the friend of freedom and the best way to start with in an MMORPG.
You play a role as another person in a virtual world. Sound like roleplaying to me.
By your overly-broad definition, all video games are RPGs.
I would say that that is actually a true statement "all video games are RPG's". Face it, no matter what you are doing in a game, you ARE taking some role. It may not be the traditional pen and paper role playing that some are used to but it IS a role of some sort. No matter if you are playing a game of checkers or a session in you favorite MMO, you are taking a role in the game...it is all just a point of degree as to what that role is or how it is played out. So, it does not matter if any game calls itself an MMORPG or just a "game"....they are all essentially role playing games.
Really? I'm still waiting for one that is an RPG, and I'm ecstatic that BioWare appears to finally be merging RPG with MMO in The Old Republic.
As far as I'm concerned, MMOs have been their own genre apart from RPGs since Day One, which also happens to be the day since which I've longed for an MMO/RPG hybrid.
Either you're using 'RPG' as a synonym of 'fantasy,' or you and I have very different ideas of what an RPG is.
By which you mean... single player game? MMORPGs have always been RPGs, well, until WoW came along. The Old Republic won't be any more of an RPG, unless you mean the fact that everythings instanced and small scale.
To me, and from what I have seen from the industry, an RPG is a game that allows you to grow and progress through your characters' life. Even if its through a storyline, on rails, through maps or open cities. If you can play as a character and watch them grow and progress I would consider it an RPG. Even if the combat system is through the first person (Deus Ex or Elder Scrolls), third person (Zelda or Tomb Raider), or multi-character control (Final Fantasy) they are still to be considered RPG's..
To me RPG has always been about creating a character I can give a personallity to and I can watch evolve as I play it.
This is why I always considered WoW to be better in the RPG department than SWG or EVE. My WoW characters feel like their have their own personalities which is reflected in the way I play them. In turn my SWG character always felt stunted and at loss for a real identity. In SWG and EVE I would reach a point where I could not see my character evolve more as a 'personality' and the games quickly lost their appeal to me from that point on. In WoW even if get bored and burned out with gameplay mechanics, the characters still maintain the potential to evolve and acquire new traits, at least in my imagination.
To me RPG has always been about a character 'existing' in a world rather than 'controlling' the world.
It seems that some people here don't understand what an RPG in terms of video games is. A game being an RPG has absolutely nothing to do with it involving any kind of roleplaying whatsoever. An RPG is a game that uses similar mechanics for stats that can be found in tabletop RPG games such as DnD.
I'm gonna quote this because this is a common misconception as to what an "RPG" actually is.
An RPG stands for "Role Playing Game". A Role Playing Game comes in many varieties, but the main function of a role playing game is for the players to assume, to pretend, a role for them to play. Actually, toddlers to little kids do RPG's all the time.
Remember when you were a little kid and you put on that Superman cape and pretended to save people in danger? That is a Role Playing Game.
Now there are different forms of this. There is "Pen and Paper" which is mainly inspired from DnD; which is the basis for many of the RPG video games out there. However, there is also something called "LARP" - Live Action Role Playing" in which you assume the character in "real life" and play with others in an organized fashion.
Another form of RPG is the forum RPG, in which you can create a character on a forum and role play via posts with other characters. Its actually quite fun and helps develop your writing skills.
But the "mechanics for stats" argument is bollocks. That is only one form of RPG. Mass Effect 2 got some flak from so called "RPG Purists" because it became too much of a "shooter". But ME2 is just as much of an RPG as the first one, in fact, its more of an RPG than other RPG's before it, with such in depth character interaction, its amazing. To call ME2 "non RPG" is just plain old wrong.
No Game has done this to date. Every game has had repeatable quest in a never changing world. Oh sure they add an expansion from time to time. But you still won't do one thing to actually CHANGE THE WORLD. Doesn't matter if your the first person on the server to beat the quest / slay that monster / talk to that race of people ect. ect. You might get a title to show you where first to do it. But in the end it won't mean a thing because everyone else on the server can come behind you and do it also. First to slay that epic raid monster ? don't mean nothing when another guild kills it two days later.
actually, by your argument, EVE is the closest to a "MMORPG" that was ever created due to its sandbox design. player corps/player controlled space actually change the way the game plays. player actions actually does changes the world per se in a sandbox type game. following that logic, no MMORPG would actually have a story because player actions dictates the story in a true RPG.
No Game has done this to date. Every game has had repeatable quest in a never changing world. Oh sure they add an expansion from time to time. But you still won't do one thing to actually CHANGE THE WORLD. Doesn't matter if your the first person on the server to beat the quest / slay that monster / talk to that race of people ect. ect. You might get a title to show you where first to do it. But in the end it won't mean a thing because everyone else on the server can come behind you and do it also. First to slay that epic raid monster ? don't mean nothing when another guild kills it two days later.
You mean like say... opening the gates of Ahn'qiraj in WoW?
The one big hope for me in regards to MMORPGs is the upcoming World of Darkness. From what I've heard the game could be very open and might even promote roleplaying. Fingers crossed!
Really? as far as we know, SWTOR will become the most storycentric game we ever saw. and story are these rails they introduced since EQ2 and WoW massively, in order to replace setting and pure lore, and as an alternative for grinding. and these story-rails leaded just to story-grinding and linear gameplay where you are just another acter strongly acting according to a storybook written by the devs with all possible details (refining).
so definatley NO! SWTOR might become succesful, but it is more some last nail in the coffin of MMORPGs.
SWTOR will not bring us MMORPG back. it will at least ruin the MMO part finally. well if you think that something like Dragon Age with laserwords which you can play with friends 8 times in a row is RPG, then it is your game.
for me MMORPG means just an open virtual breathing world, where i can develop my character to represent a certain role. and i can do that, like i myself like to do it and not like devs prepared it should be done in detail.
honestly, SWTOR will never allow this. not what we saw so far on their homepage. there is no freedom in SWTOR: massive story is the natural enemy of freedom and roleplaying. "setting" is the friend of freedom and the best way to start with in an MMORPG.
I don't think it will be that bad. Bioware do have some things that are right. They have well thought backgrounds and if a game have npcs talking to them is acvtually a good idea.
But overusing of instancing, phasing and cut scenes is bad, but I still think Bioware can add some things to the genre. If we are lucky it will be the good ideas and not the bad ones,
And at least Bioware are trying to add some new ideas, the reason MMOs have been standing in the same point so long is because so few companies have new ideas. With WoDO and GW2 coming pretty soon the genre can get revitalized if the future games becomes a mix of all the good aspects from those games. We could of course get the bad ones instead and in that case will it hit the genre badly.
And the term Massive can have different meanings depending on genre. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.
The problem with MMOs is the RPG part. There's a huge list of tropes and genre obligations that get tied up with RPGs. The reason you all feel so burned out on MMORPGs is because you've been straped to the same genre for over a decade. I don't care how much you may love RPGs, twenty or more hours a week of them for years on end will lead to ennui at some point.
And then there's the fact that we're all waiting around for a WoW killer. It seems that developers can't even come up with a new MMO that isn't a direct challenge with the current king of the hill. Every MMO between 2000 and 2005 was trying to be Everquest and every MMO since 2005 has tried being World of Warcraft. Sure the mechanics are tweaked a little and sometimes they throw another skin on top of it, but it always turns out to be just another poor man's version of WoW.
Maybe it's time to stop competing with WoW. Maybe it's time to break out into other genres. You know? Untapped markets?
We're only just starting to see the beginings of this. MMOFPS games, though few, are starting to crop up. MMORTS games are even rarer, but there are some pretty promising prospects on the horizon. But why stop there? Why not have MMO Business sims? Or MMO Sports games? MMO murder mysteries?
Everyone else here seems to want the industry to inject life back into a dead horse. I want a new live one. Give me some variety that isn't chained and shackled to the work of B. F. Skinner. Give me games that are more about gameplay than reading spreadsheets. Seriously, give us something that isn't an RPG. The market is there. People played the hell out of Planetside when it first came out. People are playing the hell out of MAG. And I'm sure that people would have no problems running a total fantasy football or racing league. I personally wouldn't mind seeing a truely massive RTS along the lines of DoW: Dark Crusade only with thousands of planets unstead of just one.
We aren't going to see any progress until the MMO is separated from the RPG.
You make your point very well, something rare on these forums, and while I disagree with your opinion I definitely respect it.
The problem with your argument, to me, is two-fold, (1) definitional and (2) player-based.
(1) I don't think that MMO is a genre, it's the way multiplayer is done with a particular game in a particular genre. Because MMO is not a genre but a multiplayer mechanism the game itself has to be tailored to suiting that method of play, something that hasn't been very easy to do save for the RPG genre. MMO is a multiplayer mechanism that is very taxing on system resources and technology still isn't cheap enough, and people still refuse to be tech-savy enough, to make it work well for consumers.
(2) Too many players of any game simply don't want to learn how to play the game, they simply huck the manual (or what passes for a manual nowadays -I'm looking at you Valve!) and have at it. This bumbling sort of learn-as-you-go methodology is troublesome and mostly because many games include manuals that have relevant information. That aside, players seem to ubiquitously want to be the very best at everything withouth learning how to do it well. This means that players are going to be far less team-focused and cause problems within the team because they are too ego-centric and of the 'don't tell me what to do' mentality to do otherwise. The same problems we have in mmorpgs we will have in other mmo games because of the players. I say all of this because in a rpg game, the sort of game in question here, people are playing the game as if it is some sort of mmofps. Folks complain about quests but they don't read the quest text or the lore to see why their character may be doing what they are doing, or anything else related to the story elements of the game. The bottom line is that a mmorpg is still a rpg, story-driven, and too many players just don't want that. They need something more like what you suggest, a mmofps.
I don't think that there is any problem with the mmorpg genre (it would have to include 'rpg' to be a genre), however I do agree that the mmo mechanism could do well branched out into other areas. It would be very taxing on the hardware, but mmofps and mmorts would be something really kickass to see.
(1)TL:DR must be your way of saying that thinking hurts. Then again, this may explain why it looks like you responded to the post without using your brain. (2) It's not about community, is it? You just have nothing better to do.
Comments
Really? as far as we know, SWTOR will become the most storycentric game we ever saw. and story are these rails they introduced since EQ2 and WoW massively, in order to replace setting and pure lore, and as an alternative for grinding. and these story-rails leaded just to story-grinding and linear gameplay where you are just another acter strongly acting according to a storybook written by the devs with all possible details (refining).
so definatley NO! SWTOR might become succesful, but it is more some last nail in the coffin of MMORPGs.
SWTOR will not bring us MMORPG back. it will at least ruin the MMO part finally. well if you think that something like Dragon Age with laserwords which you can play with friends 8 times in a row is RPG, then it is your game.
for me MMORPG means just an open virtual breathing world, where i can develop my character to represent a certain role. and i can do that, like i myself like to do it and not like devs prepared it should be done in detail.
honestly, SWTOR will never allow this. not what we saw so far on their homepage. there is no freedom in SWTOR: massive story is the natural enemy of freedom and roleplaying. "setting" is the friend of freedom and the best way to start with in an MMORPG.
played: Everquest I (6 years), EVE (3 years)
months: EQII, Vanguard, Siedler Online, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2
weeks: WoW, Shaiya, Darkfall, Florensia, Entropia, Aion, Lotro, Fallen Earth, Uncharted Waters
days: DDO, RoM, FFXIV, STO, Atlantica, PotBS, Maestia, WAR, AoC, Gods&Heroes, Cultures, RIFT, Forsaken World, Allodds
What role do you play in Tetris
?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
By which you mean... single player game? MMORPGs have always been RPGs, well, until WoW came along. The Old Republic won't be any more of an RPG, unless you mean the fact that everythings instanced and small scale.
To me RPG has always been about creating a character I can give a personallity to and I can watch evolve as I play it.
This is why I always considered WoW to be better in the RPG department than SWG or EVE. My WoW characters feel like their have their own personalities which is reflected in the way I play them. In turn my SWG character always felt stunted and at loss for a real identity. In SWG and EVE I would reach a point where I could not see my character evolve more as a 'personality' and the games quickly lost their appeal to me from that point on. In WoW even if get bored and burned out with gameplay mechanics, the characters still maintain the potential to evolve and acquire new traits, at least in my imagination.
To me RPG has always been about a character 'existing' in a world rather than 'controlling' the world.
I'm gonna quote this because this is a common misconception as to what an "RPG" actually is.
An RPG stands for "Role Playing Game". A Role Playing Game comes in many varieties, but the main function of a role playing game is for the players to assume, to pretend, a role for them to play. Actually, toddlers to little kids do RPG's all the time.
Remember when you were a little kid and you put on that Superman cape and pretended to save people in danger? That is a Role Playing Game.
Now there are different forms of this. There is "Pen and Paper" which is mainly inspired from DnD; which is the basis for many of the RPG video games out there. However, there is also something called "LARP" - Live Action Role Playing" in which you assume the character in "real life" and play with others in an organized fashion.
Another form of RPG is the forum RPG, in which you can create a character on a forum and role play via posts with other characters. Its actually quite fun and helps develop your writing skills.
But the "mechanics for stats" argument is bollocks. That is only one form of RPG. Mass Effect 2 got some flak from so called "RPG Purists" because it became too much of a "shooter". But ME2 is just as much of an RPG as the first one, in fact, its more of an RPG than other RPG's before it, with such in depth character interaction, its amazing. To call ME2 "non RPG" is just plain old wrong.
actually, by your argument, EVE is the closest to a "MMORPG" that was ever created due to its sandbox design. player corps/player controlled space actually change the way the game plays. player actions actually does changes the world per se in a sandbox type game. following that logic, no MMORPG would actually have a story because player actions dictates the story in a true RPG.
You mean like say... opening the gates of Ahn'qiraj in WoW?
This is roleplaying at its best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zng5kRle4FA
The one big hope for me in regards to MMORPGs is the upcoming World of Darkness. From what I've heard the game could be very open and might even promote roleplaying. Fingers crossed!
I don't think it will be that bad. Bioware do have some things that are right. They have well thought backgrounds and if a game have npcs talking to them is acvtually a good idea.
But overusing of instancing, phasing and cut scenes is bad, but I still think Bioware can add some things to the genre. If we are lucky it will be the good ideas and not the bad ones,
And at least Bioware are trying to add some new ideas, the reason MMOs have been standing in the same point so long is because so few companies have new ideas. With WoDO and GW2 coming pretty soon the genre can get revitalized if the future games becomes a mix of all the good aspects from those games. We could of course get the bad ones instead and in that case will it hit the genre badly.
You make your point very well, something rare on these forums, and while I disagree with your opinion I definitely respect it.
The problem with your argument, to me, is two-fold, (1) definitional and (2) player-based.
(1) I don't think that MMO is a genre, it's the way multiplayer is done with a particular game in a particular genre. Because MMO is not a genre but a multiplayer mechanism the game itself has to be tailored to suiting that method of play, something that hasn't been very easy to do save for the RPG genre. MMO is a multiplayer mechanism that is very taxing on system resources and technology still isn't cheap enough, and people still refuse to be tech-savy enough, to make it work well for consumers.
(2) Too many players of any game simply don't want to learn how to play the game, they simply huck the manual (or what passes for a manual nowadays -I'm looking at you Valve!) and have at it. This bumbling sort of learn-as-you-go methodology is troublesome and mostly because many games include manuals that have relevant information. That aside, players seem to ubiquitously want to be the very best at everything withouth learning how to do it well. This means that players are going to be far less team-focused and cause problems within the team because they are too ego-centric and of the 'don't tell me what to do' mentality to do otherwise. The same problems we have in mmorpgs we will have in other mmo games because of the players. I say all of this because in a rpg game, the sort of game in question here, people are playing the game as if it is some sort of mmofps. Folks complain about quests but they don't read the quest text or the lore to see why their character may be doing what they are doing, or anything else related to the story elements of the game. The bottom line is that a mmorpg is still a rpg, story-driven, and too many players just don't want that. They need something more like what you suggest, a mmofps.
I don't think that there is any problem with the mmorpg genre (it would have to include 'rpg' to be a genre), however I do agree that the mmo mechanism could do well branched out into other areas. It would be very taxing on the hardware, but mmofps and mmorts would be something really kickass to see.
(1)TL:DR must be your way of saying that thinking hurts. Then again, this may explain why it looks like you responded to the post without using your brain.
(2) It's not about community, is it? You just have nothing better to do.