Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Mega servers?....I would like to know my community
delete5230
Member EpicPosts: 7,081
Lets see, how can I put this :
I guess I'm old school in a way that I'm longing for a community that I'm just not seeing in any new releases of mmos. I'm not compleatly up on Elder Scrolls Online, but I take it that will be zoning to play with friends. If so Ill be dissipointed again ! I would like to know my community on my server. Will this game be another GW2, where your solo with others around you ?
Please don't say " You gotta find a good Guild " because that a bull crap answer. Being in a good Guild does not save an mmo where developers key on solo auto grouping. I'll put it another way.......Do you think all 2 million players will be in a good guild ?
Comments
Sadly I think most MMO's have caught on that most players treat MMO's like single player campaigns. We storm through the content then move on. That sense of community is long gone in MMO's. It used to be nice to log into a game, say hello's to yuor guildmates and know alot people scrolling in the chat box. Heck people used to be well known on servers , people knew who to do raids with and who was the ninja. Now we have dungeon finders and mostly single player questlines.......I guess it's just how things evolved in this genre. I'm lucky enough to belong to a long time guild,with some RL friends, and we game together.
So yes, it's the answer you didn't want, attach yourself to a good guild, one's you have to apply to at their website always seem to be more serious guilds.............not always in the "hardcore" manner. Alot of guilds have been around for a very long time, and I much more enjoy gaming with guilds than solo jumping from game to game.
Happy gaming!
Well you will be put with guild mates, people in your friends list and like minded players for pve.
In pvp it wont be an issue at all as you get assigned to a permanent campaign of 2k people, that acts exactly like a server would.
So as long as the pve sorting system works (which is a big if), it really shouldn't be an issue at all because you will always be with players you have either played with before or who play in a similar way to you
I would like to know my community
Decrease your game's scale by 3 or 4 orders of magnitude.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
The days of knowing the community slipped by when MMOs became popular. I know I made a lot of friends in mmos in the past who weren't in my guild, but that was mostly out of the fact that I was sitting in a spot for hours sometimes looking for a group. Then when you found a group, you then typically sat in one or two spots camping a spawn location, and could talk in between pulls, etc. This wasn't bad, but it also wasn't exactly the most fun and rewarding experience...well the spamming for group part.
Due to how popular mmos are now, "finding a good guild" is really the key to finding a good community. It's just the nature of the beast. You might have smaller communities pop up among the millions of players, but those seem to revolve around specific types of content like crafting, pvp, and trading.
I agree with OP 100%.
Loved DAOC for the fact that you knew eveyrone, ppl you didnt like, ppl you liked, the good guilds the shit guilds.
I always kept a notebook next to my desk with names of people to avoid or who I wanted to suck up too.
Was great.
WoW main streamed MMOs and they genre is too large now. When you mainstream anything good it goes to shit, happens with eveything.
The way mmo's were: Community, Exploration, Character Development, Conquest.
The way mmo's are now : Cut-Scenes,Cut-Scenes, solo Questing, Cut-Scenes...
www.CeaselessGuild.com
You can't have longevity without a good community.
With a Mega-server and zoning to find friends and others to play with, you cant develop a good community.....Soooo.........Were gonna have another GW2 on our hands. Another well developed game where people stop playing anyway no matter how much content and expantions are added !
It's ALL about community. Not one developer got it right since Everquest 2 and Vanilla WoW.
Guilds won't have a strong presense anyways, since there are 3 factions, and to explore the whole game someone has to play the other segregated factions. Making an alt of the same faction as your main will just mean someone has to repeat all the themepark content they already did. I forsee many healthy size guilds that slowly have issues with people logging those characters on ..
Guilds will just be constantly recruiting, recycling players as they play new factions. That's not very sustainable for a healthy community.
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
Its something I have always wanted to see done. I kinda like the idea for a few reasons.
1. No where for bad players to hide. Cant jump servers when your name becomes @#$%&;
2. Low level areas tend to turn into ghost towns, so new players end up not wanting to play. With a mega server someone will always be there
3. Finding someone your level to run dungeons should be a lot easier and unlike cross server dungeon finders where the people dont care about who you are as they most likely will never see you again. They know, your on their server.
4. I always end up having RL friends play on different servers for different reasons. Sick of talking to friends who are playing my MMO and I cant team with them.
5. Its time MMOs got smarter and this could work if done right. Saying no for the sake of no is never a good reason to say no. Let see them try.
For a lot of people I would tell them that's the best thing that can happen. A small sustainable profitable player base works better for everyone imo, you know who you are playing with and the people playing are more tight knit in general. A great example is Rift, spiked to 1mil at release and has settled around 200-300k subscribers. WoW clone and all, its the only game that has come out in 2 years that I actually enjoyed and still enjoy.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
I think TESO will do better then that. ES has a huge fan base that are stocked about it. I have lot of friends who are not MMOers that are going to play this. Also there is the MMO crowd that will jump ship to the game for their own reasons. I think we will see 2-3 mill + sales and settle with around 1-1.5 mill that will stick around. Drop my guess by 40% if they go with box sales + sub.
So did SWTOR, and we all saw how that worked out.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
Server size is only one part of the equation. If you do not build your game from the ground up to revolve around social interactions, then you will have a tough time getting to know the community.
If the game doesn't require interaction somehow, then most people will just go the easier of the route and avoid socializing.
The "downtime" coupled with limited sizes that came with many old games is what caused a community blend with each other and become a close knit community. Since neither of those seems to be coming back to MMOs, you can leave the thought of knowing your entire game community as a dream.
The other option, that you do not want to hear, is to limit your community to like minded individuals in a private chat... aka, guilds.
Ya, they said they needed 1 mill subs to make it and they are doing just that.
No it's not, sorry.
If you played TERA, you'll be familiar with the channel system.
If not, well, the way it works is as follows:
Yea back then only 400 or so people played per server and it was much easier to get a feel for community. Today's MMO's are vastly more popular and have tens of thousands of players per server.
its much better off using your guild as your community building blocks, which is what they were designed for in the first place. Other players are really nothing more then glorified NPC's to me. Ones in which I will never interact with.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Yes but swtor is a very very very bad mmo. If it substance have the starwars ip it would be closed by now.
It would take a very special effort from the ZOS team to put out something as bad as swtor, especially considering they are experienced mmo devs with 3 quality mmos under their belts (daoc, uo & coh). I would expect a drop after a few months like most mmos have, and then it will find its audience even though several usual suspects on here will call it a fail. Basicly it will probably be fairly successful, just like gw2.
It was 1500 per server in daoc, or was it per realm so 4500, can't remember. I would expect EQ and ac and what not to be similar.
Agreed but swtor didn't have anything to keep you playing long term, at launch swtor had an engine that couldn't handle more than 40 players in combat (which ruined open pvp) and a whole 5 bosses for end game raiding (that were on the whole unplayable due to bugs), and their pvp progression was completely rng based, and the re playability was hindered because you were repeating side quests (on the same faction) and zones
TESO can supposedly have 200 player battles, has an rvr system, a pvp progression system (based on daoc's realm points), they have mentioned raids, heroic dungeons, dark anchors (dynamic events), adventure zones etc for pve end game. Also having faction locked PvE means that 3 playthrough's will 100% new content
The RvR system alone means that teso will be a lot more "sticky" than swtor and also if (and its a big if) they deliver on what they have said for pve, the retention rate should be pretty good.
It's just a really good example of game developers being unable to think outside of the box. They don't actually think when doing game development, they just go and look at what other games do and then copy it. They hope that they come upon some unique combination of copying other's ideas that will make their game great.
MMO's should be moving in the opposite direction. Shards at peak gaming hours should have about 200 players on them. That's enough for 60x60x60 PVP but not so large that you fight someone and never see them again, or save someone's life (or meet them outside of a PVE dungeon etc etc etc) and never see them again.
This is how you build community. IT IS THE COMMUNITY ASPECT THAT DRIVES PLAYER RETENTION. Graphics and gameplay are what get people to try your game, but if they don't make friends (and enemies) they won't come back.
Saying "FIND A GOOD GUILD" is just lazy game desing. Design your game so that it encourages players to group and then form guilds of likeminded players. This is what Everquest, Ultima Online, DAoC and WoW did, and it's why they were able to have strong subscription player bases for years.