I think the industry has learned a lot from games like SWTOR, GW2 and FFXIV. How not to launch your game basically.
SWTOR had good content but a crappy engine, GW2 had a good engine but pretty crappy content. FFXIV has an OK engine with decent content but the one thing all these games have in common? They all slow it down to 5 MP/H after launch. Patches are nonexistent and new content takes forever.
When WoW launched, the REAL development began. It was a flurry of patches, dungeons, changes, raids and has continued like that since. Granted they've slowed more in their later years but it's one of the big parts of Blizzard's success.
I feel the industry has learned you need the following:
- A solid, modern engine
- A great world to explore
- Enough content to sustain the average user (note: not the hardcore user)
- Well designed and honed systems, not last minute afterthoughts which you rush out the door.
- Regular content patches.
So with any luck the companies behind the next wave of MMOs will have identified ALL the above and not just some of the above and give us the titles we've been hoping for.
You make a good point, but you've missed the key to a successful long lived mmo, it's player base. WoW's success was based largely on a loyal fanbase that waited for all that content and had great patience with the devs when servers crashed. At least on my server, for the first 2 months, you could consider yourself lucky to get through a whole night of gaming without the server coming down. If that happened today, forget about it.
If WoW was released in the last 6 years or whatever, it would have gotten crapped on the same as any other mmo. It probably would have never gotten past TBC.
low subs, management pulls funding/fires dev team, which in turn means no development. That simple.
In short, you want an mmo to have longevity, you need to sub for the long term, en masse.
The Elder Scrolls Online should do well, however, if that is the only main game that succeeds or even if they are all niche games with tiny, yet successful player bases, I wouldn't see that as a success for this generation. One success will not make the entire generation a success.
I wanted more out of Vanguard the Saga of Heroes and Star Wars Galaxies/ Star Wars ToR, as well as Star Trek Online, and Final Fantasy 14 A Realm Reborn is a cool game, but yes video games are missing the entire point. Now they put in almost no content, and no complexity , almost nothing to do, and everything is solo with terible non existant communities.
They are less mmos and more single player games now. MMOs have gone backwards since WoW, and I say that as a gamer who really loves playing WoW and wants it to be better instead of the boring camping/grind fest that it is now.
Cross Realm Zone phasing technology destroyed wow's solo questing overland content and rare name farming for achievements. Destroyed all the exploration fun of finding treasure chests or anything cool out in the world. Now that you have to fight against millions of people instead of only your realm.
However, before CRZ they had already dumbed down wow and made it simplistic, it is not the game that I first played at launch and enjoyed. It was easier than Everquest 1 and I liked it, but now it is way to easy and boring.
Why did games have to be simplistic and nerfed? Why can't we have deep complicated fun games again with challenging gameplay? Everyone is obsessed with shiny loots, and blinded to truth that the game mechanics are horrible and outdated archaic. That everyone has to camp bosses because its easier for them to design a camping grindfest with dailys, then to provide actual specific class and racial quests with lore. We should be doing fun unique quests for our gameplay, instead of spending a week or 3 months camping a mob spawn.
Sometimes , games like WoW have all the popularity, but they lost all sense of community and comraderie with CRZ. No one cares about their reputation when the person they are ninjaing is not even on their realm.
MMO's just don't last anymore and that is sad... I miss old Everquest 1 and Everquest 2 communities... When people were friendly and talkative, instead of silent zergers. To busy pressing hotbar rotations to talk.
People here seem to confuse longevity with big player-base...
An MMO doesn't need millions of players to be good or successful...
When a games can hold on to players for a longer time and have an increase in player-base during that time, that means it's a game with longevity IMO.
Wow have tons of players, and they are the only ones that have managed to have such big player-base for so long, but Wow still don't have either of the two points I made about longevity.... Players come and go from Wow all the time, there isn't a stable player-base, and Wow has been on a decline of players for a long time now, which means that players are losing interest.
EVE online started with a small player-base, but because the game had longevity, and was only mmo that appealed to a more hardcore audience, it has had a steady increase of players for 10 years now, and it's still increasing as we speak. Also, they have been able to keep players in the game for a very long time.
No I don't think those games will have any longevity at all.... We have had this discussion for many years now, and it never happens.
Wildstar: looks to have an interesting class/combat system, which looks to make dungeons more fun, but I don't know anything else that suggests I wouldn't just lose interest after a couple of months (or maybe even weeks).
ESO: Interesting actually... Might bring something different to the table. But in terms of longevity, I think it will be very lacking.
EQN: (Will this game even come out soon ? Seeing as they haven't even finished developing the tools that are going to be used to develop the game....) To me it sounds like GW2 with some additions.... No...
Star Citizen: No idea.
This doesn't mean they aren't going to be good games though. Star Citizen is the only one I'm really interested in though, the others I will just see as the usual mmo that might be interesting to play for some while.
Comments
You make a good point, but you've missed the key to a successful long lived mmo, it's player base. WoW's success was based largely on a loyal fanbase that waited for all that content and had great patience with the devs when servers crashed. At least on my server, for the first 2 months, you could consider yourself lucky to get through a whole night of gaming without the server coming down. If that happened today, forget about it.
If WoW was released in the last 6 years or whatever, it would have gotten crapped on the same as any other mmo. It probably would have never gotten past TBC.
low subs, management pulls funding/fires dev team, which in turn means no development. That simple.
In short, you want an mmo to have longevity, you need to sub for the long term, en masse.
The Elder Scrolls Online should do well, however, if that is the only main game that succeeds or even if they are all niche games with tiny, yet successful player bases, I wouldn't see that as a success for this generation. One success will not make the entire generation a success.
I wanted more out of Vanguard the Saga of Heroes and Star Wars Galaxies/ Star Wars ToR, as well as Star Trek Online, and Final Fantasy 14 A Realm Reborn is a cool game, but yes video games are missing the entire point. Now they put in almost no content, and no complexity , almost nothing to do, and everything is solo with terible non existant communities.
They are less mmos and more single player games now. MMOs have gone backwards since WoW, and I say that as a gamer who really loves playing WoW and wants it to be better instead of the boring camping/grind fest that it is now.
Cross Realm Zone phasing technology destroyed wow's solo questing overland content and rare name farming for achievements. Destroyed all the exploration fun of finding treasure chests or anything cool out in the world. Now that you have to fight against millions of people instead of only your realm.
However, before CRZ they had already dumbed down wow and made it simplistic, it is not the game that I first played at launch and enjoyed. It was easier than Everquest 1 and I liked it, but now it is way to easy and boring.
Why did games have to be simplistic and nerfed? Why can't we have deep complicated fun games again with challenging gameplay? Everyone is obsessed with shiny loots, and blinded to truth that the game mechanics are horrible and outdated archaic. That everyone has to camp bosses because its easier for them to design a camping grindfest with dailys, then to provide actual specific class and racial quests with lore. We should be doing fun unique quests for our gameplay, instead of spending a week or 3 months camping a mob spawn.
Sometimes , games like WoW have all the popularity, but they lost all sense of community and comraderie with CRZ. No one cares about their reputation when the person they are ninjaing is not even on their realm.
MMO's just don't last anymore and that is sad... I miss old Everquest 1 and Everquest 2 communities... When people were friendly and talkative, instead of silent zergers. To busy pressing hotbar rotations to talk.
People here seem to confuse longevity with big player-base...
An MMO doesn't need millions of players to be good or successful...
When a games can hold on to players for a longer time and have an increase in player-base during that time, that means it's a game with longevity IMO.
Wow have tons of players, and they are the only ones that have managed to have such big player-base for so long, but Wow still don't have either of the two points I made about longevity.... Players come and go from Wow all the time, there isn't a stable player-base, and Wow has been on a decline of players for a long time now, which means that players are losing interest.
EVE online started with a small player-base, but because the game had longevity, and was only mmo that appealed to a more hardcore audience, it has had a steady increase of players for 10 years now, and it's still increasing as we speak. Also, they have been able to keep players in the game for a very long time.
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No I don't think those games will have any longevity at all.... We have had this discussion for many years now, and it never happens.
Wildstar: looks to have an interesting class/combat system, which looks to make dungeons more fun, but I don't know anything else that suggests I wouldn't just lose interest after a couple of months (or maybe even weeks).
ESO: Interesting actually... Might bring something different to the table. But in terms of longevity, I think it will be very lacking.
EQN: (Will this game even come out soon ? Seeing as they haven't even finished developing the tools that are going to be used to develop the game....) To me it sounds like GW2 with some additions.... No...
Star Citizen: No idea.
This doesn't mean they aren't going to be good games though. Star Citizen is the only one I'm really interested in though, the others I will just see as the usual mmo that might be interesting to play for some while.