What happened to free roam?

Sinaku

Am I the only one who's noticed that almost every free mmorpg and some p2p are just big roads that automatically lead to other areas...Aion for example I feel like there is 0 exploration because you can only enter and leave an area from a road and they are all narrow boring areas with no mystery. I hate to bring up WoW since it starts so much crap but they have a decent amount of free roam. What I guess I'm saying is I'd love to see entirely open seamless worlds created now. Darkfall seems to have a very nice world being open "go anywhere, do anything" kind of thing. Are there any other MMOs like this? Besides PvP and PvE content this is probably one of the most important things to me.

Vegetto

Fallen Earth has this at the moment and the world is mapped accurately to that of the grand canyon, it can even be overlayed onto a satellite image. Has a good apocalypse feeling to it, but does get lonely in the wilderness. Good game if it had more purpose to it.

Thillian

Fallen Earth, Vanguard, Darkfall to name a few.

TUX426

Originally posted by ReallyNow10

It'll come back.  Many folks have tired of on-rails gameplay and are ready to "get off the train."

Future of MMO's is:

1)  Open, free-range world

2)  Racial starting areas

3)  Random, repeatable, dynamic events

4)  Reduced questing

I think you're right.

Between the huge failures of STO and DCUO, I hope developers realize what they need to be going for. The potential market is HUGE...but it doesn't come without effort.

randomt

Earthrise is free-roam, non traditional, sandboxy

TUX426

Originally posted by randomt

Earthrise is free-roam, non traditional, sandboxy

Earthrise won't be one to judge this by though. The movement in that game looks painfully slow, no matter how 'free roam' it is.

Aganazer

Everytime I see this thread title I think of "free range" chickens. It seems appropriate though since the alternative is farm-raised chickens that are packed into small warehouses and have a much shofter lifespan. Sounds a lot like modern theme-park MMOG design.

VengeSunsoar

Originally posted by ReallyNow10

It'll come back.  Many folks have tired of on-rails gameplay and are ready to "get off the train."

Future of MMO's is:

1)  Open, free-range world

2)  Racial starting areas

3)  Random, repeatable, dynamic events

4)  Reduced questing

 Many games have this, even themepark games have this.  Even WoW has this except for the reduced questing.

Personally I dont' want reduced questing, as I prefer it to grind in one spot for hours gameplay, however I would like to see more long term, epic quests given.

Venge Sunsoar

edit: @Tux426 the failure of DCUO?  From all reports, reviews and the majority of forum posts the game is pretty good.

Valentina

Reduced questing will never actuallly happen, they'll just be hugely updated with a far more in depth progression system.

Sinaku

I actually liked Vanguard what little I got to play of it. Had that Old look and feel to it but haven't decided to buy it or not. I guess really thats what I'm looking for more on the terms of free roam. Would also be nice if stuff wasn't instanced anymore (Cataclysm). Totally kills the whole feel of "Massive Multi-player" if you never see anyone questing friend or foe. Same with dungeons I guess I never feel too accomplished if it wasn't a race to get to the boss and kill them before another guild/group.

pixeldogmeat

i dislike the invisible walls that were in fallen earth, just like in fallout.

I think WURM online is the only game out there that has a true open exploration feeling, too bad it takes a million years longer to get a character going in that game than it does in EVE.