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MMO Creators Today Lack Vision for meaningful games...
fisherc
Member Posts: 134
It's all about the phat loot, gaining levels and showing off your loot or at best taking part in some meaningless battle where nothing is truly at stake... Games like these don't hold my attention because meaningless content (A battle won today means nothing tomorrow) is just... mindless.
Comments
When your a business and that's whats selling thats what they are going to make. When that style of game stops selling well they will stop and start thinking of something new. However WoW has pretty much nixed that since it's just an EQ 1 clone and has how many subs now? Don't plan on the encounter based level grind MMO to go away anytime soon
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Yup.
WOW was good for SOE because it forced them to improve their customer service and quality of product. But I think it's going to wind up being bad for the industry because now it's going to be even harder for companies to 'break away from the mold' since WoW was so successful by just copying what's already been done.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Hmm...Customer service I cant comment on because I've never had real
need of it in an SOE game, but how has their quality of product become
greater? When comparing EQ to EQ2 I see just the opposite effect.
Have you played EQ2 recently?
I played EQ for almost 7 years.
I am currently playing SWG, EQ2 and PlanetSide (All Access Pass)
The difference between EQ and EQ2's launches:
EQ: Unplayable Lag. Servers weren't able to handle the load. Many bugs. Classes unfinished
EQ2: Stable environment but crafting wasn't finished and some quests were bugged.
The differrence between EQ and EQ2 support:
EQ: At launch we flat out didn't have enough guides (I was a Senior Guide in the Guide program back then). Players had to wait FOREVER for responses because we were simply overwhelmed. This caused a really vicious circle where guides burned out (remember, we were just normal players who wanted to help) and left the program because they got bitched at by cranky players non-stop and we couldn't replace them fast enough to grow the program quickly. Eventually things got better but the first 9 months were pure hell.
EQ2: Not in the program
I burned out after a year in EQ1. But as a customer I have never had a problem getting service in EQ2. It's not as fast as I would really like it to be but it beats the service in EQ1 hands down.
The difference between EQ and EQ2 patching:
EQ1 broke several classes in several ways almost every single patch. Ask any ranger, bard, shadowknight or shaman about how often their spells or abilities got broken when Verant/SOE tweaked someone ELSE'S power. Hell.. I played a Bard from day 1 till I finally retired from the game last year. And EVERY SINGLE FREAKING PATCH broke at least 1 of my abilities.
EQ2: Still some bugs happen when patches go in but they hotfix whatever breaks almost immediately. Patches are bigger, bring in more content, bring in more quests, bring in more sounds, bring in more features to the game. Patches don't break nearly as many things.
EQ2 is heads and tails better than EQ1 on every front. And now, 6 months after release, it's a vastly superior product to what it was in November. I played EQ1 for years. It was so damn addictive that even though I frequently tried other games I never cancelled my account because I kept going back. Despite trying almost every MMO on the market. When I tried EQ2 in January I felt similarly to most other EQ1 players back then... it just wasn't EQ2... But now, in August, I'm trying it again... and it's far far far superior to EQ1 in so many ways it's not even funny. The game has grown to be one of the best MMO's out. It's better than WoW in my opinion and only EVE has better quality control, in my opinion. I wish SWG would be brought up to the level of dedication that the EQ2 Dev Team has shown. If our patches and content updates were as good as EQ2's in SWG the game would be worlds better.
Though there is a glimmer... lately the patching in SWG has shown pretty dramatic improvements (Mostly since ROTW came out).
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Oh by all means they have advanced technologically, its content that I think was seriously lacking. Yes there were multitude of quests available in EQ2, but it seems that very little thought was put into other aspects of the game.
-Individuality is probably the most commonly voiced deficiency the game has, having been noted by both fans of the game and others. You almost always look exactly the same as anyone else within the same 10 lvl tier, and race as you, the system of autodistributing spells/skills among everyone at given levels means your abilities always match those of others your lvl/class (although they have added new racial traits recently, many of which have little use, but is a step in the right direction). Also, your starting race plays little importance in what class you pick. This, along with other factors, means that those wishing to concentrate on one aspect of their class moreso than another are unable to do so, and all are forced to play any given class the same way. For example, how one could become a Dark Elf Shadowknight in EQ for added INT and mana pool if they wanted to make greater use of spells, or an Ogre Shadowknight with higher HP and strength if they wanted to take a more physical approach to the class.
-Choice and versatility were thrown to the wind as well with this installment. You start off in one of two cities no matter what, and each city is in essence just a mirror of the other, with it's districts, large outdoor zone (Antonica/Commonlands), problem creature (Gnolls/Orcs), lower midlvl zone extending from the large outdoor zone (Steppes/Nektulos), it goes on. Everything is so cookie-cutter. After lvl 10 there's essentially only one zone per city that you can progress in at any given level. Two at higher levels. It's as if they only bothered to create one city (for example Qeynos), then tweaked it a little and called it Freeport. There's such a horrible assortment of equipment to wear. Typically you get to choose from one of three pieces per 10 level phase. The cheap, the expensive, and the storebought, which is hardly an option expecially for weapons since you're now required to have at least crafted items to be capable of damaging about 30% of the creatures out there.
All in all, production value (not to be confused with production cost) of this game is far below that of the original. It seems they decided that high quality graphics, and voice acting negated the necessity for a well thought out game world, classes, and among other things, story. With as much history and story from the first game that they had to work with, they could've come up with something much more interesting than "the gods went away". I dont know if this is true or not, but it seems to me to be just a way of throwing all that away because they didnt want to deal with integrating it into a future world.