Were done.

delete5230

Here's how it is:
MMOs are too expensive to make.  HOWEVER it seemed lucrative for Triple A companies to cash in anyway on the market as long as they can run a large false marketing campaign that everyone would like that's a cheaper, smaller, easer, solo experience game.  Something their investors would except.  Lets not forget bankruptcy is always a good option (see Donald Trumps business tactics).

The vision WAS promising........ Focusing on Blizzards World of Warcraft, they researched the current market at the time and found mmos other than WoW were somewhat crude.  Some moderately successful but crude none the less, there was room for a huge cash cow.  The only hindrance was up front money, super millions but on a video game ?....... Investors could understand a new automobile manufacture Like Hyundai or KIA, but selling the idea of a video game was suicide unless the promise of major cut backs.  Remember, Blizzards success was the only thing keeping investors interested at any level.  Developers and Marketers had to work in tandem with cheaper, smaller, easer, solo to keep cost down, yet fun and interesting with good advertisement. They had the Law on their side.  They knew how to play the fine line between false advertisement and simply leaving out the oblivious short comings. 

Make the game appear exciting before release, capture the audience with intrigue.  After all "up front box sales is everything", this is where we get our money back and more.  This along with Blizzards $15 a month style of charging. 

Triple A investors don't care about consumers at all.  However, they do care about their reputation.  Fresh ideas have to make up for lack of high cost.  Give them something fun too ! 

"give them something fun too "...... Is a key that worked on all of us for several years.  Dynamic events, destructible worlds, story modes, the list goes on.  But we can all admit it was temporary, something was always lacking.  They were not mmos anymore, they were games online.  It had to be that way to keep cost down, this was an absolute !
 



To build a traditional mmo the world had to be huge if natural occurrences were to come into play.  Spreading natural would require large land mass if it were to be believable.   Far off lands to be with friends and their situations became too costly.  Tight small worlds full of puzzles and mini games were more viable.  And again, it worked for awhile.


It seems that shiny lost it's luster, where as a living breathing world would last forever !!!!!..... We now have Asian cash shops, Triple A is no more.

Let's hope smaller developers with passion can give us our dream back.              

RexKushman

Its We're not were.

And I completely disagree with the entire word salad above. Gamers have more choices now than ever before in the 30 years I've been playing video games. You can pick giant AAA games, tiny little 8 bit retro games or anything from the plethora of games in between. This goes for MMORPG's, FPS games, MOBA's or any of the other genres. Heck, my hardest gaming decisions are trying to figure out which one of the 10 games I'm currently playing I want to spend time in at any given moment.

kitarad

You're all over the place with this thread  and were (correct use) you absent during the lesson on contractions.Your ideas behind why we are done cannot be supported plus your insult on Asian games are misplaced probably because you have not played any Japanese games. It's a shallow conclusion with a poorly researched body.

A game like SWTOR sunk  a lot of money into its making and advertising too and that game alone debunks what you have posted.

Nepheth

You again? You remind me of someone from this forum back then. He was posting weekly threads about how he didn't spend any money for any mmorpg since bla bla... Then one day he disappeared. Maybe banned I don't know. Sometimes I think maybe if you're him and using an alt account. Let's see when will you get bored of this kind of threads and give up eventually...

delete5230

kitarad said:

You're all over the place with this thread  and were (correct use) you absent during the lesson on contractions.Your ideas behind why we are done cannot be supported plus your insult on Asian games are misplaced probably because you have not played any Japanese games. It's a shallow conclusion with a poorly researched body.

A game like SWTOR sunk  a lot of money into its making and advertising too and that game alone debunks what you have posted.

I guess your right. I guess I'm all over the place, however I don't see it but many others would agree so I believe its true.

However, the substance is true. It's the history behind what happened. 

Many feel, their is no problem.  This community is split, where at one time we were one, now we are two. 

- MMO players 50%
- Games online players 50% 

With two community groups nothing could ever be stated without opposition..... I guess this is for the mmo players.



SWTOR was popular just because it was StarWars, this was stated so many times I can't even count.  I'll not even address the Asian cash grab, that's a different topic. 


Understand, this is not an attack on this community.  It's about greedy business.  

Elsabolts

In my opion CIG's Star Citizen has become an expert Dairy Farmer and were the Cow's.

lahnmir

I like salad.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

ciely

it's like those triple A mmos gave up half way or spent the rest of the investment in a casino 

delete5230

DMKano said:

Just as a reminder... OP

P99 is your online world, it has everything you keep writing about that todays games no longer have

But you are still level 3 in P99?

Interesting.... your dream game right there remains unplayed

You love to kick a man when he's down ........ I noticed that's your style ! 

I have a temporary life situation and your taking advantage of it.



I love P1999, I had a very short time to play last night...... Hay I'm still level 3 !!!!


Because I don't have time to play long, I decided to mess around with the Orc camp by myself. It was suicide.  I've seen groups run by me and I was sad I can't devote time for the community, and I'll not until I have this time, reputation is everything in a real mmo.

Seeing this makes me love a REAL MMO....... P1999 could be the best mmo ever developed 

Dauzqul

MMOs aren't that expensive to make. With engines such as Unity / Unreal Engine and their Marketplaces, you can build a full-blown MMO for less than $1,000. It will, however, require a TON of time.

Amazing MMORPG template right here (PvP, Crafting, Housing, NETWORKING, Character System, Questing System etc etc etc etc: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/51212

Creating a giant world? Right here: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/54631

Beautiful trees? Right here: speedtree.com - These trees are in just about every single game out there.

3d models / structures? Here is one pack (thousands to choose from): https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/32972


I see these Unity / Unreal assets in all sorts of well-known games. Take Shroud of the Avatar for example. Here is a screenshot I found right here on MMORPG.com: https://images.mmorpg.com/images/heroes/news/45194.jpg. Do you see that wooden house? That house was taken from this asset pack: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/14706


Screenshot of Pantheon: https://images.mmorpg.com/images/heroes/news/40569.jpg. See the hut? Right here: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/12682


When you purchase these assets, you are able to manipulate them with ease. Most people have no idea that you can create the most expansive MMO world with ease. I wish I could show you some of the stuff I've made, but I'd get in some trouble ;/




The reason why we here about MMOs costing "300 million to make" or whatever is because of needless spending / hardcore marking. Instead of using a model created and sold on some asset store, the company will hire a team of artists to create something from scratch. The cost can add up so quickly.

Check out this Skeleton: https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/undead-warrior-3d-obj/1071036. I could edit that model in 20 minutes and make it look completely different. Giant studios, however, will pay an artist $1500 to create something similar from scratch.

TheDarkrayne

RexKushman said:

Its We're not were.

And I completely disagree with the entire word salad above. Gamers have more choices now than ever before in the 30 years I've been playing video games. You can pick giant AAA games, tiny little 8 bit retro games or anything from the plethora of games in between. This goes for MMORPG's, FPS games, MOBA's or any of the other genres. Heck, my hardest gaming decisions are trying to figure out which one of the 10 games I'm currently playing I want to spend time in at any given moment.

You get an Awesome for "word salad". Everyone give this guy an Awesome.

Ridelynn

Dauzqul said:

MMOs aren't that expensive to make. With engines such as Unity / Unreal Engine and their Marketplaces, you can build a full-blown MMO for less than $1,000. It will, however, require a TON of time.

You are assuming that time is free. Which it is probably the most expensive part of making any game.

A safe assumption I've heard thrown around: assume about $10,000/mo per employee. Which breaks down to about $62/hr. Even if your doing it yourself - you gotta pay rent, eat, pay utilities, buy that computer, etc. Even if your donating your time for free, that's cutting out of time that you need in order to work a job that can afford all of that...

Multiply that by "a TON of time", and it starts to add up pretty fast.

Unless you just want a game with random (albeit good looking) assets that don't really do anything - but then you could just play Goat Simulator and get more or less the same experience.

Loke666

You can just do the same thing so long unless you are EA Sports...

I don't think MMOs are done but the Wow model is. 

The idea that you put the player in a large explorable world with many other players and add a pinch of pen and paper roleplaying to it is still solid and I think we eventually will see a comeback for western AAA MMOs.

But almost all AAA devs tend to borrow the majority of their ideas from others and until someone figured out a new good way of accomplishing that it will be slim pickings.

The super quest heavy, gear based, trinity combat based MMO is fading. The majority of players have tired of it. Of course it might make a comeback eventually cateering to nostalgic people and new players but that is at least 10 years away.

Luckily there are other ways to make a MMORPG and if someone cal pull a good one off the AAA games would be back fast. 

My best bet would be to stop using AD&D as a model for MMOs and look on other successful roleplaying games like Vampire, Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu and other P&P games for ideas how to make new mechanics and at least depend less on quests then most MMOs do today.

Maybe adding more RPG elements then just combat as well, for instance would a MMO that borrowed ideas from the "thief" games be rather refreshing and so would having court intrigues , spying and a bit of sandbox mechanics.

I am working on a new pen and paper campaign at the moment where the players will be Barons sworn to a king. They will build and manage their own realms, interact with other nobles and their realm, create armies and lead them into battle with tactics against other realms and maybe other Barons from their own kingdom and so on... Something like that would be fun as a MMO, it is 50% sandbox and 50% themepark.

The possibilities for MMOs are almost limitless but we seen very little of that since 2004, almost 100% of the AAA MMOs have been the same reskinned game. Sooner or later will someone competent change that.

Dauzqul

Ridelynn said:

Dauzqul said:

MMOs aren't that expensive to make. With engines such as Unity / Unreal Engine and their Marketplaces, you can build a full-blown MMO for less than $1,000. It will, however, require a TON of time.

You are assuming that time is free. Which it is probably the most expensive part of making any game.

A safe assumption I've heard thrown around: assume about $10,000/mo per employee. Which breaks down to about $62/hr. Even if your doing it yourself - you gotta pay rent, eat, pay utilities, buy that computer, etc. Even if your donating your time for free, that's cutting out of time that you need in order to work a job that can afford all of that...

Multiply that by "a TON of time", and it starts to add up pretty fast.

Unless you just want a game with random (albeit good looking) assets that don't really do anything - but then you could just play Goat Simulator and get more or less the same experience.

This is being a bit overly analytical, IMO. It's safe to assume that most of us on this forum own a decent machine and spend time playing games. While we play these games, we still feed ourselves, pay the rent, pay the utilities etc.

I don't understand your Goat Simulator point. It sounds like your are implying that anyone who uses such assets will create a dull and boring game. Makes no sense at all.

Iselin

Loke666 said:

I don't think MMOs are done but the Wow model is. 

I don't think you can really say that when the most active and profitable MMOs in 2017 are still WOW and other MMOS like it.

All the wishful thinking in the world won't make that statement true until a new MMO comes along that is not WOW-like in the least and is hugely successful.

Wizardry

RexKushman said:

Its We're not were.

And I completely disagree with the entire word salad above. Gamers have more choices now than ever before in the 30 years I've been playing video games. You can pick giant AAA games, tiny little 8 bit retro games or anything from the plethora of games in between. This goes for MMORPG's, FPS games, MOBA's or any of the other genres. Heck, my hardest gaming decisions are trying to figure out which one of the 10 games I'm currently playing I want to spend time in at any given moment.

I think he is referring to QUALITY not quantity.

Naturally the market is flooded since new gimmicks like crowd funding,all they need is an idea to get money rolling,they don't need to actually have any work done or even a fully thought out game...just WING IT.

MMORPG's are 99% Themepark ,so the ANTI mmorpg,,how is that a CHOICE?yeah a choice of crap game designs is to me NO choice.

Moba's...an absolute garbage genre,little effort goes into those games,they are exactly like the browser based/mobile cash shop games,more effort thought into the cash shop than the game.

ARPG's,not that many really but ALL of them do the same thing>>>SPAM no brainer combat=no thanks.

Retro=CHEAP,VERY cheap low budget studios trying to make a buck in a flooded market.Most never make much headway but at low budget,low risk they don't really care that much.

There is another market out there that has been producing decent quality games but that is NOT the MMO market.Who is arguably making the most money...Blizzard?Name one MMO,they have WOW and it is mostly soloing and instancing,so NOT an mmo very often.

The non mmo market is all over with choices,geesh i own several of these from all types/genres but i am simply looking for a HQ MMO+RPG and i THINK that is what the OP is eluding to.

Ridelynn

Dauzqul said:

Ridelynn said:

Dauzqul said:

MMOs aren't that expensive to make. With engines such as Unity / Unreal Engine and their Marketplaces, you can build a full-blown MMO for less than $1,000. It will, however, require a TON of time.

You are assuming that time is free. Which it is probably the most expensive part of making any game.

A safe assumption I've heard thrown around: assume about $10,000/mo per employee. Which breaks down to about $62/hr. Even if your doing it yourself - you gotta pay rent, eat, pay utilities, buy that computer, etc. Even if your donating your time for free, that's cutting out of time that you need in order to work a job that can afford all of that...

Multiply that by "a TON of time", and it starts to add up pretty fast.

Unless you just want a game with random (albeit good looking) assets that don't really do anything - but then you could just play Goat Simulator and get more or less the same experience.

This is being a bit overly analytical, IMO. It's safe to assume that most of us on this forum own a decent machine and spend time playing games. While we play these games, we still feed ourselves, pay the rent, pay the utilities etc.

I don't understand your Goat Simulator point. It sounds like your are implying that anyone who uses such assets will create a dull and boring game. Makes no sense at all.

I may be over-analytical, but you let me know how it works out if you decide to try it your way. I'll be the first to line up to buy your game when it releases.

dougha1

delete5230 said:

Here's how it is:
MMOs are too expensive to make. 

Citation needed.

Flyte27

It really depends on what you find interesting.  If you are more into old style MMOs or old style RPG games with stories that have a similar mindset to the 80s and 90s games you probably will find difficulty acquiring such games regardless of how many are out there.  Even the retro ones try to push certain modern day ideas.  I generally end up going back to play the old games more so than playing the new ones that seem to get me bored quickly.  Exceptions to the rule have been games like the Witcher series, Mass Effect series, and the Uncharted series.  Not much else has interested me of late.  I also think having more games just makes it more difficult to find one you enjoy.  I was almost always happy with the games I played in the 80s and 90s.  They always seemed to coincide with what I enjoyed.

sunandshadow

delete5230 said:

Tight small worlds full of puzzles and mini games were more viable.
          

Puzzles have never had a good monetary return for development effort - that's half the reason the adventure game genre went extinct except for super-cheaped-out cookie-cutter series which reuse the same code for several games.  Not that there's anything wrong with code reuse, except when you never add to the code base to enable new puzzle types.  But really this is the same problem our economy as a whole has - whole businesses run on a "no raises ever" model for salaried jobs or "no fulltime ever" model for hourly jobs.  It's the disgusting but natural outcome of high tech capitalism.

Hatefull

delete5230 said:

Here's how it is:
MMOs are too expensive to make.  HOWEVER it seemed lucrative for Triple A companies to cash in anyway on the market as long as they can run a large false marketing campaign that everyone would like that's a cheaper, smaller, easer, solo experience game.  Something their investors would except.  Lets not forget bankruptcy is always a good option (see Donald Trumps business tactics).

The vision WAS promising........ Focusing on Blizzards World of Warcraft, they researched the current market at the time and found mmos other than WoW were somewhat crude.  Some moderately successful but crude none the less, there was room for a huge cash cow.  The only hindrance was up front money, super millions but on a video game ?....... Investors could understand a new automobile manufacture Like Hyundai or KIA, but selling the idea of a video game was suicide unless the promise of major cut backs.  Remember, Blizzards success was the only thing keeping investors interested at any level.  Developers and Marketers had to work in tandem with cheaper, smaller, easer, solo to keep cost down, yet fun and interesting with good advertisement. They had the Law on their side.  They knew how to play the fine line between false advertisement and simply leaving out the oblivious short comings. 

Make the game appear exciting before release, capture the audience with intrigue.  After all "up front box sales is everything", this is where we get our money back and more.  This along with Blizzards $15 a month style of charging. 

Triple A investors don't care about consumers at all.  However, they do care about their reputation.  Fresh ideas have to make up for lack of high cost.  Give them something fun too ! 

"give them something fun too "...... Is a key that worked on all of us for several years.  Dynamic events, destructible worlds, story modes, the list goes on.  But we can all admit it was temporary, something was always lacking.  They were not mmos anymore, they were games online.  It had to be that way to keep cost down, this was an absolute !
 



To build a traditional mmo the world had to be huge if natural occurrences were to come into play.  Spreading natural would require large land mass if it were to be believable.   Far off lands to be with friends and their situations became too costly.  Tight small worlds full of puzzles and mini games were more viable.  And again, it worked for awhile.


It seems that shiny lost it's luster, where as a living breathing world would last forever !!!!!..... We now have Asian cash shops, Triple A is no more.

Let's hope smaller developers with passion can give us our dream back.              

Wizardry said:

RexKushman said:

Its We're not were.

And I completely disagree with the entire word salad above. Gamers have more choices now than ever before in the 30 years I've been playing video games. You can pick giant AAA games, tiny little 8 bit retro games or anything from the plethora of games in between. This goes for MMORPG's, FPS games, MOBA's or any of the other genres. Heck, my hardest gaming decisions are trying to figure out which one of the 10 games I'm currently playing I want to spend time in at any given moment.

I think he is referring to QUALITY not quantity.

Naturally the market is flooded since new gimmicks like crowd funding,all they need is an idea to get money rolling,they don't need to actually have any work done or even a fully thought out game...just WING IT.

MMORPG's are 99% Themepark ,so the ANTI mmorpg,,how is that a CHOICE?yeah a choice of crap game designs is to me NO choice.

Moba's...an absolute garbage genre,little effort goes into those games,they are exactly like the browser based/mobile cash shop games,more effort thought into the cash shop than the game.

ARPG's,not that many really but ALL of them do the same thing>>>SPAM no brainer combat=no thanks.

Retro=CHEAP,VERY cheap low budget studios trying to make a buck in a flooded market.Most never make much headway but at low budget,low risk they don't really care that much.

There is another market out there that has been producing decent quality games but that is NOT the MMO market.Who is arguably making the most money...Blizzard?Name one MMO,they have WOW and it is mostly soloing and instancing,so NOT an mmo very often.

The non mmo market is all over with choices,geesh i own several of these from all types/genres but i am simply looking for a HQ MMO+RPG and i THINK that is what the OP is eluding to.

I think this is the same person. Neither can spell, neither can put together a coherent sentence or make anything approaching a valid point. One supposedly (as someone pointed out to the great relief of the rest of the community) quit this forum, and the other was, in my opinion, his drunken glue sniffing alter ego.

Oh and (insert game here) isn't an MMORPG, it's all a cash grab, Gorbachev did it.

Just saying.

cjmarsh

With billions of dollars on the line MMOs are not even close to "too expensive to make", even when their budget is in the hundreds of millions. The problem with the development quality (or lack thereof) in MMOs has more to do with the fact that game development is an incredibly risky venture and it is difficult to acquire the kind of funding needed for a AAA game, let alone an MMO, which results in many development studios attempting to make these extremely complicated games with too little funding. In addition, the traditional pricing model of monthly subscriptions is largely being phased out in favor of the F2P model and micro-transactions. This lets the community grow larger with free players but also supports development through the deep pockets of the few. There are significant issues being worked out along the way with this model, however, just look at EA's Battlefront II controversy or the incredibly high prices of the "micro"-transactions in certain asian games (which do find surprisingly good traction in eastern markets actually).

The point is MMOs are not only here to stay, they are stronger than ever. Despite the low-hanging fruit of the casual mobile game market, it is only a matter of time and proven technology before investors start pulling the trigger on larger projects.

Loke666

Iselin said:

Loke666 said:

I don't think MMOs are done but the Wow model is. 

I don't think you can really say that when the most active and profitable MMOs in 2017 are still WOW and other MMOS like it.

All the wishful thinking in the world won't make that statement true until a new MMO comes along that is not WOW-like in the least and is hugely successful.

Those games are dropping in popularity and earnings and have done so for years. The old can keep making profit for some time yet but you can't make a new one and expect it to do better then Wildstorm.

And breaking out of the model doesn't mean it can't have some similarities with Wow but it need to differ more then being similar.

So Wow still make an acceptable profit and what I mean with the model being done is that you can't make anything new like it, it is too expensive to make for the players you will get.

It was not so many years ago that Wow was Blizzards top earner, now Heartstone even earns more. It is still plenty of cash but the profit numbers gets down rather much each yearly report. They don't tell us the player numbers anymore but those numbers are connected to the income so I assume they drop with about the same speed.

There are games with a semi Wow model (like BDO and GW2) that done pretty well for themselves when you compare them with all other MMOs besides Wow and Lineage and it is possible that model still can work for a while yet.

It is not wishful thinking, Western MMOs are dropping in profit over the board and the  only logical possibility is that people are tired of them. The same isn't true in South Korea and Japan.

So if the genre want a comeback with western AAA MMOs it need something new.

Kyleran

lahnmir said:

I like salad.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Like most cats, I hate salad.  

Amathe

Somewhere I picture a high school grammar teacher sobbing inconsolably.  

Kajidourden

Can this guys just get banned already?  Never contributes anything to any post....his or others.