I'll keep waiting. I've got my $50 a month ready right here to go to the first game developer to make an MMO that caters to the more mature set...
(And in the meantime, I play the best sandbox style game I have found for us oldsters - Fallen Earth with the occasional dash of WAR! PvP when I feel like it. Two subs to games, $30 a month, plus my wife's - that's $60 a month in my household spent on MMO's alone. I'd happily pay more, too, because you know something? This is the best entertainment value for the dollar you will ever get. An expensive dinner out for 2 and a movie with drinks can cost me $200, easy. Think people my age won't pay that for a premium, everything-included MMO game? I'd cream my... you know what. )
I'd really like the opportunity to discuss your point with you Jon. You see, I think if your premise was correct then the new games catering to the new audience would be remarkably successful. I don't see that, however. Many of the "new" games have struggled incredibly. What I see are games with less polish, less content, less depth, less immersion, fewer ingame options, less development time, more fees, and more "innovative revenue generating strategies" (i.e. behaviour modification strategies that prime people to spend more on virtual goods). Are customers really clamouring for this, even the next generation of gamers? I think you make a very logical point that game companies have always been interested in revenue. I agree; that's what business does. However, what you may be missing (probably because you don't think like this yourself, which is a good thing), is that there are at least two vastly different business philosophies that both have the same end in mind--fiscal growth. One philosophy says the customer is always right. Money is earned "the hard way" via excellence in product, service, marketting and support. I think WoW and EvE are two games that have historically been driven by this philosophy. How they continue to respond to the lure of the other philosophy is something only time can tell. The other philosophy is this: a fool and his money are soon parted. Some companies base their revenue on this cornerstone. They see customers as dupes, and making money as a shell game. There is less interest in providing a good service, and more interest in marketting psychology, or how to get people to hand over their cash, preferably for very little (or even nothing) in return. I'm a social science professor, head of my department actually. I see all kinds of behaviour modifications strategies built into games based on the latter philosophy. The games are not viewed as an entertainment service, and gamers are not viewed as valued customers. The game's are merely a revenue generating vehicle. The less development and support, and the more psychological manipulation, the better. Tbh, I'm starting to think that most of the people motivated by the first strategy now have jobs with Blizzard or CCP. That leaves others to congregate in other MMO houses. churning out sub-par games as quickly as possible, with as many cash grabbing strategies as they can cram into them. So, I agree that "it" has changed. I think, however, that "it" is the philosophy that development houses base their revenue generating strategies upon. Actually I saw a Dilbert comic that illustrated this nicely. A CEO of a failing company said something like this: "Well we can't compete in quality, service or price, which leaves us with fraud--get me the marketting department." That may be a bit overstated, but I think it highlights an important concept.
Just to clarify something folks. I didn't say that all of the ills of the MMO industry come down to this one, single thing. It's a contributing factor, but of course bad games are going to fail. A bad game is a bad game, a game without polish lacks polish. That's why i didn't make any specific reference to any game in particular. It's because this is an underlying issue. The article refers to people who are just generally dissatisfied with the core designs of today's MMOs. Issues like polish and implementation are topics for another day's column.
Personally, I don't share your pessimism about business philosophy. doing the whole "pull the wool over your eyes" thing works when you're talking about businesses that rely on single purchases for their primary source of revenue. The appeal of going to all of the trouble to make an MMO, however, is the idea that there might be a continued revenue stream. I would suggest that an MMO company looking to maximize its revenue would look at ways to entice people to stay over the long term, not to fool them into buying the box. The box is just the beginning, the real money's in the subs.
Just my opinion though.
Thanks for thinking out loud with me about this. It's fun. I'd like to continue a bit if you don't mind ^_^. I agree that the "pull the wool" over your eyes approach has traditionally been found in one-shot marketting scams. Playing this out over the long term is vastly more complex, but I believe it is happening, in some instances.
I believe this not just because of the b-mod principles I see in bad games, but because I'm currently looking at the slides for an online game training seminar that teaches people how to string people along and milk them of their cash over the long haul. I'll lay out the strategy for you. (All of it is not contained in the one training seminar, btw, it's just one of many examples I have to draw from).
So, it begins with a marketting splash. Something needs to get people's attention and draw them to the virtual environment. A good IP is helpful with this. Flashy marketting also plays a role. I'm looking at some just to my left actually. Then when people enter the world, it needs to tap into core social-emotional needs. The game needs to give people opportunities for connection, accomplishment, identify, emotional expression etc.. Virtual goods can easily be plugged into these needs. Initially, these goods are made available for free. The training explains that this is done in order to "prime" people. In other words, they become accustomed to the goods and attached to them--or dependent upon them to have their social-emotional needs met. Then, you monetize the crap out of every aspect of the virtual world that you possibly can.
Some people will put up with this. Why? They're hooked, and they don't recognize what's happening. They now rely on the game and its virtual items to maintain friendships, express their feelings, feel good about themselves etc. They may also have already purchased an extended subscription, so they feel hooked monetarily as well.
On top of these hooks, some companies intentionally use intermittent positive reinforcement strategies connected with the marketting of their virtual goods. Gamers pay money and are sometimes rewarded in ways that meet social-emotional needs ingame. The fact that they are only sometimes rewarded is pivotal. This keeps them trying, and spending, more and more cash, hoping that (a) they'll be rewarded again, and (b) that the money they've already spent (wasted) will somehow seem justified. This is hard sciece btw, and anyone familiar with the strategies can spot them at a glance.
With these strategies in place, an MMO company can milk vulnerable gamers for months or years before the gamer ever realizes how badly they're being taken for a ride--if they ever wake up to it at all. Quality, customer service, depth, all become secondary concerns. The bad MMO is like a bad drug.
Do I think that all MMO companies are doing this? Absolutely not. Some are, however, and some of their CEO's even brag about it at their summits and seminars. I've seen and heard it first hand.
It may be that you and are are both correct in our observations. I can accept that some new gamers want things that differ from my preferences. At the same time, I see this other issue as having an important impact--for the negative--on the MMO genre.
This article identifies the problem precisely. However, i think it falsly assumes the new strategy developers are taking is working...
I dont think it is. And i dont think the developers are seeing the subscriptions they were hoping for.
Granted, yes, teenagers are the prime market. Its alot easier to get money out of them than it is the 30-40 year old people. We are alot more discriminating. We work for our money so we dont want to waste it. Whereas a teen has a parents credit card to pay and play at a whim.
The developers have given up trying to create a "Great" game, and instead are working franticaly to try and ismply devise some tool for hitting those teenagers with whatever will make money fall form their pockets.
Ive heard all the arguments and im convinced now, it is money it is greed. Its one thing to say "Its a business, people want to make money". Ok fine, but so did Banks and Real Estate lenders. And look where that got us. Its a totally different thing for an industry to go down the drain because everyone is frantically trying to dig more pennies out of the rotting pile of corpses.
I think its time we put our foot down and say enough is enough. Its not ok to just do whatever you want ismply because youve laid down the "But its business, not personal" card.
Its not ok to keep developing crap games simply because Blizzard is your new god.
What really amazes me is how many people are just ok with the mmorpg industroy producing crap games. All you have to say is "But its a business, they want to make money" and all of a sudden its like anythign they are doing is ok.
They are gettign away with it because there are enough teen market people who just dont know any better. They dont know that mmorpg's can be really really good. They think WoW is like the epitome of mmorpg design, and so antyhing that even comes remotely close to wow is a success in their minds. And so they are willing to keep paying their subs.
Those of us who have played UO, and the greatest of sandbox mmorpg's Asherons Call, and many others, know there is a better way to make an mmorpg. Unfortunately, we are outnumbered by the throngs of new players with their parents credit card numbers.
I see the problem, i dont liek it. But at the same time i dont see it resolving itself any time soon. Once an indsutry gets in that frenzy state they keep going over and over and over until it literally destroys the industry and burns everything down to the ground. Then they try and mkae money off the ashes, and until there literally is nothign left in existence, they wont change.
I look at games like LOTRO, created by the same developers who made Asherons Call. AC was an awesome game. It was sandbox, open ended, dynamicly changing world, character customization was outrageously good in comparison to any mmorpg out today. The loot generator was like a Rolls Royce to a skateboard compared to WoW or any other game. It was just a far better game in every aspect.
Then WoW is released, 48 trillion people play it over night, and the entire industory lit up into a frenzy of themepark meyhem.
From what ive heard, Turbine originally was creating Middle Earth online. Which was going to be a sandbox style game set in the Middle Earth realm. Massive landmasses, open ended gameplay, character developm,ent, the whole massive multiplayer online game we were all wanting to play.
Then when WoW released and had instant success they scrapped the project and set to work creating a themepark ride with Middle Earth costumes and banners and called it Lord of the Rings ONLINE.
It only takes a couple weeks playing the game to see how its a dead end linear path. Almost like reading a book. Every moment of your characters life is carefully planned out, and rigidly enforced. Your only allowed to be in themepark area alpha, and then when you level you move to this other area because instantly everythign in the old area is worthless. Its so stupid.
With each patch they have automated more and more of character development. Reember the old days when character leveling meant you were given say 15 points, and then you assigned points to make your character the way YOU wanted it to be. Nowadays all of your character development is done by the game istelf, and most people dont even know they are missing out. WHen i bring this up in game they just sit there O.o "What do you mean..."
They removed all difficulty from quests/activities. And basically turned it into an insta win hotkey fest. No matter how hard you try your character will never fall behind or get ahead of any other character of the same class. 7000 Hunetrs in the game wear the exact same armour from head to toe, and have the exact same weapon, or are looking for their own exact copy of it. And if you mention any of this in game people cry like they are hippy cult children angry because you insulted their god.
I see their reasoning, "We dont want anyone to feel like they are left behind, or their characters are less than someone elses". But in the process of doing th is, extreme socialism, they have removed any and all motivation to play your character. Log in for 30 a night doing a single raid run, any time spent above this is wasted time because your character has no means of gaining any sort of benefit from playing longer or doing anything else.
In LOTRO each wepon use to have a speed raiting. So it had a damage rating, say 100 damage, and then a speed rating say 2.00 speed. This together gave you your dps. Dif weapons had dif speeds, dif damages, etc etc. Well some Turbine develper reasoned "A burglar might equipt a club, which isnt the best option for a burglar, and then no one will play with him...." And so they removed all speed variance from ALL wepaons and put them all on one static speed. This way, if someone equipts a dagger, or a club, or a sword, it wont matter, its the same weapon, just a different name... How fricken stupid is that.
That issue in itself sums up what they are doing tot hat game...
Im hoping the industory will learn their lesson. It would be one thing if they were making all these changes and people were flocking tot heir games. But the oens doing this are driving players away in masses and they dont get why its happening. Lotro recently released their "Skirmishes" system. Which, in concept, is a great idea. But then they went and remove any possibility of improving your character through it, removed ALL loot from ALL mobs in the skirmishes, and basically turned them into the perfect grind with zero reward....
Then they stand around shaking their heads wondering why people arent playing them.
Are they that disconnected form the playerbase that they just dont see it? No. I think the problem is market research and Questionaires.
They put out a quesitonjairre asking the playerbase what are 3 things you like about the game what are three things you dont like about the game. And of course the majority of people say "I dont like to grind, i dont like working to get items, i dont like that aspect x about my character isnt the best in the game".
And so they take this information and turn around and make the game so that every player regardless of time investment or work put into the game walks away witht he best armour, the best sword, the best anythign there is available.
The market research is asking people What do you like and what dont you like about the games. And of course people are answering "I want more reward for less work.". But this is comig from the same place that drives people to download cheat codes and trainers. And eventually causes them to stop playing the game the instant they get to the "end". Which happens immediately since there is no more work/time involved in getting there. The peoples feedback is ritually "I want more reward for less time/work committed.".
Anyone who has played AC will tell you "End Game" wasnt even in our vocabulary. Seriously, we didnt even know what that meant. There was no end game. In fact, end game seems outrageously opposed to what an mmorpg is suppose to be. This isnt some stupid single player game that has a start and finish. This is a living breathing world that my character lives in.
End game is the "I want it all and i want it now" mentality. Those people who salavate all over themselevs wanting the best whatever ti is and they want it now, and they have money so they demand they get it.... Those people commercials have created.....
Hopefully all these games will fail miserably, and then the next generation will fail miserbaly. And then, when enough development teams go out of business and bakrupt from doing it, someone somewhere will create an actuall mmorpg and renew the industry.
Until then.... this is it folks, pay for it or not.
What really amazes me is how many people are just ok with the mmorpg industroy producing crap games. All you have to say is "But its a business, they want to make money" and all of a sudden its like anythign they are doing is ok.
It's only a crap game if someone thinks it's a crap game.
As an example using the same statement: "What really amazes me is how many people are just ok with the music industry producing crap music".
Well ok, but people aren't looking at their music as crap. They are looking at it as something that warrants their attention for whatever reason. One can lay down any number of reasons why most popular music is crap but all those reasons are instantly deflated by someone else saying "well I don't think it's crap".
You can't really argue personal taste and the things that made earlier games (subjectively) great might not be of any importance for other people.
One can bring the discussion to video games. I can very easily look at video games as "crap" entertaiment. The stories are derivative at best bordering on silly and ridiculous at times. MMO's tend to have levels of repetition that border on the ridiculous.
Of course one could then say "well early games didn't have this" yet it seems to me that camping mobs was a very popular thing in these games. Or waiting around for boss spawns. Or what a friend of mine said of early swg crafting "it was like a 2nd job that I wasn't getting paid for".
Yet in the end I really like video games. I don't have to qualify that statement to my friends because it is what it is.
I imagine for players of today's games it's the same thing. You can tell them that it's crap all you want but they will just nod and smile and have fun because in the end "they are having fun".
Of course I've seen people try to trivialize players/fans of more contemporary games as "sheep" or "stupid" but quite frankly I could never get behind such sentiments.
I've never met a person who was a self proclaimed lover of 'high brow" entertaiment who didnt' like something that was considered low brow or ridiculous by some other group.
edit: lol, oh and "welcome to the forums"
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Vote with your money. Stop pre-ordering. Ever. Even if it is the most awesome looking game ever. Stop getting life time subscriptions. Yes they save you money if you play more than 18 months. So they don't make a game that's worth playing for 18 months. They don't have to cause you've already paid them for it. When you leave a game, write a calm, professional letter as to why. Then post it on every game forum you can. If even 1 person reads it and agrees, you've just saved a fellow gamer $50 AND helped talk to the devs. If you make them ask why their games are failing, It won't take them long to figure it out. You keep buying chocolate covered vomit labeled as truffles and they're going to keep giving it to us.
Exactly!
And i think this is exactly what the people's need
A way to actually tell the developers, this isnt ok. All of us do matter. mmorpg.comn posting this type of forum prompt is hint enough. WHy do we matter, because we are the maintay. We are the players who buy 3 accounts and leave them active for 5 straight years. We are the ones who anchor the kins. We are the ones digging thruogh content and bringin itout into the limilight. We are the ones most vocal to people not playing the game. Blizzard owes its success to word of mouth. People played the game and then got their buddies to play, who in turn got their grandparents to play, and grandchildren, and everyone.
The teen market kids are doing this too, but they are extremely whimsical. My youngest son will retart his wow account, play for a day, cancel it, and not return for 12 months. Whereas we "whatever we call ourselves" are the ones who activate subs, often more than one, and continue playing.
The developers are after the quick easy money. But they also know they cant do it without the masses of US clapping and preachign their game along the way. This thread in fact seems like a research market tool of its own.
I could full on see some developer paying mmorpg.com some sum of money to post such a thread, fuel it, and then dig out the information. What are the older crowd so angry about. What can we do to appease them. What are they really upset abnout. Is it possible to make them think they are outdated and that THEY are the problem, try and embarrass them into conforming. Maybe we can make them believe the new games are innovative, and the older crowd just arent hip to this new exciting way of gaming.... pfffft
Burn the house down. Blizzard got away with it because the hid the end of the tunnel far enough out of sight. You didnt see the linearity of it or the themepark of it right away. But that was a "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" situaiton.
It isnt going to happen twice. Developers the world round are finding that out right now the hard way. Millions of investor dollars ar ebieng lost by development teams that tried to do the same thing blizzard did...
Vote with your money. Stop pre-ordering. Ever. Even if it is the most awesome looking game ever. Stop getting life time subscriptions. Yes they save you money if you play more than 18 months. So they don't make a game that's worth playing for 18 months. They don't have to cause you've already paid them for it. When you leave a game, write a calm, professional letter as to why. Then post it on every game forum you can. If even 1 person reads it and agrees, you've just saved a fellow gamer $50 AND helped talk to the devs. If you make them ask why their games are failing, It won't take them long to figure it out. You keep buying chocolate covered vomit labeled as truffles and they're going to keep giving it to us.
Exactly!
And i think this is exactly what the people's need
A way to actually tell the developers, this isnt ok. All of us do matter. mmorpg.comn posting this type of forum prompt is hint enough. WHy do we matter, because we are the maintay. We are the players who buy 3 accounts and leave them active for 5 straight years. We are the ones who anchor the kins. We are the ones digging thruogh content and bringin itout into the limilight. We are the ones most vocal to people not playing the game. Blizzard owes its success to word of mouth. People played the game and then got their buddies to play, who in turn got their grandparents to play, and grandchildren, and everyone.
The teen market kids are doing this too, but they are extremely whimsical. My youngest son will retart his wow account, play for a day, cancel it, and not return for 12 months. Whereas we "whatever we call ourselves" are the ones who activate subs, often more than one, and continue playing.
The developers are after the quick easy money. But they also know they cant do it without the masses of US clapping and preachign their game along the way. This thread in fact seems like a research market tool of its own.
I could full on see some developer paying mmorpg.com some sum of money to post such a thread, fuel it, and then dig out the information. What are the older crowd so angry about. What can we do to appease them. What are they really upset abnout. Is it possible to make them think they are outdated and that THEY are the problem, try and embarrass them into conforming. Maybe we can make them believe the new games are innovative, and the older crowd just arent hip to this new exciting way of gaming.... pfffft
Burn the house down. Blizzard got away with it because the hid the end of the tunnel far enough out of sight. You didnt see the linearity of it or the themepark of it right away. But that was a "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" situaiton.
It isnt going to happen twice. Developers the world round are finding that out right now the hard way. Millions of investor dollars ar ebieng lost by development teams that tried to do the same thing blizzard did...
To quote:
"When you leave a game, write a calm, professional letter as to why. Then post it on every game forum you can. If even 1 person reads it and agrees, you've just saved a fellow gamer $50 AND helped talk to the devs."
This, exactly. If you hate a game, tell me why. I'm already staying the Hell away from Mortal Online because of the horrific customer service I've seen in their forums - mods get away with murder there. They aren't getting my disposable income.
What really amazes me is how many people are just ok with the mmorpg industroy producing crap games. All you have to say is "But its a business, they want to make money" and all of a sudden its like anythign they are doing is ok.
I imagine for players of today's games it's the same thing. You can tell them that it's crap all you want but they will just nod and smile and have fun because in the end "they are having fun".
The threead s filled with people who are seeing the same thing. Ask a Turbine developer if they are happy with the amount of subscribers they have. They havent added any new servers asince launch, ever. I hardly feel like they are sitting there saying "screw the older crowd, we are so happy with all this money..."
Blizzard... maybe. The Frnech company who owns them and takes all the profits... perhaps. But as far as everyone else? They are frantically trying to throw these games together and find that magic stick that knocks the money from the markets pockets. I feel comfortable in what im saying becasuse i know none of them are succeeding, with the noted exception.
I said earlier, it woudl be one thing if the games were just becoming massive successes, filled to the brim with players and just doing great. Thats not the case. The ones i have played go through routine mass exoduses. Players log in when theres a new patch, check it out, and then move on. And each time that happens its less and less. The hard core crowd is there, sure. But somethign tickles me when i think about the disproportion between the amount of subs they were thinking they could get doing it, versus the amount of subs they currently have..
If mmorpgs were succeeding and doing so great, yeah, i woudl probably rethink my position. I would probably start thinking about just getting along with the way things are now. But thats not the case. Teh games start up, like STO, and they are total complete empty facades. Its not even an mmorpg development, its like those movie title games that are released. You know what i mean, some popular movie comes out and then the producer sells the title rights to some developer who already has a game made on some shelf, and simple repaints the names and colors it in the same light as the movie and releases it.
You sound like you want us all to just shut up and like it. Like as if 3 trillion people are playing the new innovated awesome way of mmorpging and we few scraggly elders are grumpy off our meds. That isnt the case. And we arent going to be won over by the tactics.
My position stands. Im amazed at how many people are willing to just roll over and act the fanboi simply because... because... well i dont know, why is that?
I just recently turned 30, and i called my dad up and said , you know you where correct the music i listend to when i was 16 really did suck. It does not matter how hard i try to like listing to bleach it will never be the same, as when i first heard it sitting behind the supermarket, sitting in my friends jeep, on break. With FFXIV on the horizon i recently went back to FFXI , lets just say my memories of the game , and the realities did not match up. (nothing against the current ffxi players , but the UI is a bit clunky)
What i would like to see are more games, that have a similar learning curve as chess. Chess is very easy to pick up , there are a few piece with a set amount of rules for each piece. However wile the rules of chess are very easy , mastering the game is very difficult. A game does not need to break you in order to be challenging, and some of the most complex games i know of, have the least amount of rules.
A while there was a great article about scope, alot of us "older gamers" seem to be in the same place as the "younger" ones. We sure as hell know what "we" want and do not give a shit about what others want.
Welcome Home
Rev
/off topic STFU about SWG , it was along time ago most of us have gotten over it.
I just recently turned 30, and i called my dad up and said , you know you where correct the music i listend to when i was 16 really did suck. It does not matter how hard i try to like listing to bleach it will never be the same, as when i first heard it sitting behind the supermarket, sitting in my friends jeep, on break. With FFXIV on the horizon i recently went back to FFXI , lets just say my memories of the game , and the realities did not match up. (nothing against the current ffxi players , but the UI is a bit clunky)
What i would like to see are more games, that have a similar learning curve as chess. Chess is very easy to pick up , there are a few piece with a set amount of rules for each piece. However wile the rules of chess are very easy , mastering the game is very difficult. A game does not need to break you in order to be challenging, and some of the most complex games i know of, have the least amount of rules. Go for instance, is another great example of this. A while there was a great article about scope, alot of us "older gamers" seem to be in the same place as the "younger" ones. We sure as hell know what "we" want and do not give a shit about what others want. Welcome Home Rev /off topic STFU about SWG , it was along time ago most of us have gotten over it.
This seems to be the common strategy developers are taking to combat the problem of producing weaker and weaker games. Instead of spending the money and hiring the talent, they just spend twice as much money on PR. They figure its a lot easier to force people to like the game than it is to try and create a game people will like.
So they come up with these strategies of "Its innovation, let go of your VCR and embrace your dvd player..." Or the music analogy because everyone is a teen at some point and likes crazy music, then grows up. So now the industroy wants to try and bill their weak games as somethign we just arent hip enough to enjoy.
Britney spears is Britney spears, its not crappy music because im not hip, its just crappy. Teens like it because it plays into the scientificly devised sounds they have associated with the feelings and emotions teens are ging through. Teens arent set in their ways. Teens are malleable, whimsical. This is why marketting in general is aimed at younger people. Their taste in products isnt rigid yet, its still in clay form. So its a lot easier to get teens to like somethign than it is to get anyone else to like somethign.
The music analogy that keeps showing up on this thread is testament to the opposing argument. Its on jst about every page, on que, someone makes a good argument that the development teams arent putting as much work and resource into the games, and then right after that someone says "remember how you use to like pink floyd...."
The developers are trying to get away with spending less and less money developing the games while turning as much profit as they can. And until gamers get fed up with it and stop buying their games, they will continue.
Turbine completely got rid of all their creative talent and replaced it with business model developers. Spend an initial chunk of money developing the game, spent twice as much marketting the game, then strip the crew down to skeleton crew size maintaining the game, rinse repeat pocketing as much profit as possible.
If i were a businessman that didnt play mmorpgs and could care less about the people playing them, and could care less what happens to the industry, then sure, i could see myself doing the same thign. Lets just create somethign that looks spectacular, market it like mad, get people to sign up, sucker them into lifetime accounts or 6 month accounts, or hidden hard to cancel month to month accounts. Reduce our maintenace down to nothing, and soak it for all we can get out of it. In the mean time we start anew profescting our method along the way.
You see it happen in the movie industry all the time. Some producer gets his hands on a red hot IP. The Hulk comes to mind. And then they have 2 options. Get large investment and try to make a really good movie. Or go cheap on every aspect, spend the least amount of money possible making the movie, spend twice as much on marketting it as they did making it, and then just see how much money it can pull in. If it flops, well, we didnt invest all that much money from the start. And we can try again with this other IP we already are working on.
This would work TREMENDOUSLY well if not for one simple thing.... the interwebs! I cant count the amount of movies i didnt waste my money on after reading real people reviews on the web and finding out the movie was a low budget high marketting pos.
These forums, and many more like them have also saved me countless sums of money. STO for example. I was really excited when i first heard about it. Then i started to pick up bits and pieces. How long it wa sin development. Who was working on it. And then aspeople started to play it and came to the web "Its 2 dimensional space... pos game..." I went to the website, watched the movie trailers of it, and sure enough, you could see what people were talkign about... cha-ching just saved 50 bucks and a troublesome cancellation process.,..
Then there is the learning curve. Sure, a game shouldnt take a degree in philosophy to learn and enjoy playing it. But at the same time it shouldnt be themeparked and linear, while touting on the cover MASSIVE DYNAMIC EVER CHANGING GAMEWORLD THAT YOUR CHARACTER LIVES AND GROWS IN, ETC ETC ETC. Take a look at any game box, they ALL tout themselves as being the most exciting SANDBOX STYLE, OPEN ENDED, FULL CHARACTER CUSTOMIZABLE GAME, ever created.
Every box touts the game as being exactly what all these people are wanting. Then the actual game ends up ebign themeparked, end game orientated, canned character design. pos.
Its failry obvious the Developers know EXACTLY what each and every one of us are complaining about. Its no secret. I was amazed when i started finding these articles around the web. Forum threads, Etc etc. They dont spring up like this when its just one or two disgruntled nostalgics. It happens when there is a significant important element of the playerbase unhappy with the compromises developers are making for the sake of quick easy turn arounds.
Sandbox v Themepark is a whole lot more than just styl;e and taste. Its about quality products versus profitable products. As a consumer i want to do whatever i can to ensure my money doesnt get lifted from my wallet by marketting and post production tactics.
All of us older gamers remember all the times we got burnt by computer games back in the single player days. Awesome looking box, magazine company says its phenomenol... then we shell out $$$ for it, take it home and find out it sucks bad. Try and take it back and "doh! You actually opened the box? You cant return it if its been opened....".
Seriously, this was actually part of the early computer game business model. The non-return was an actual business model element. With the advent of the interwebs you dont need to own a magazine corporation to get the word out anymore. Anyone with a laptop and internet connection can scream across the world about how bad a game sucks. And within minutes millions are on to the scam.
What amazes me to no end though is why business continue to do this. I mean sure, you might get lucky and get a kajillion subscribers, but he odds are against you. Why not sink all your creativity and resources into a good game. And then just enjoy your work. Why does everythign have to be a sell out, quick money making scheme.
Would it really be that awful to just create a good game. So what if you dont reach WoW style subscriptions. None of these themepark wow clones are doing that either. Just make a good game. Support it with a post production budget. And let it be what supports you and your families. Your doing what you love. Your earnign a good living doing it. Do we all really need to be warren buffet and donald trump? Why cant we just settle into what we love best, be it writing code for mmorpg, or developing quests and storylines. And then enjoy a good living doing so.
Too many companies get sucked into the Google/Aol/WoW frenzy and end up destroying everythign in its path along the way.
Yeah, at the beginning of online gaming everything was about the choices players made. Today it's all about graphics and who has the best sword or armor or in some cases rifle. I'm actually considering swearing off anything with graphics all together, except single-player and hub and instance, though I'm not very good.
"As to the statement, “I submit though that businesses looking to turn a profit is nothing new to the world of games.” He is quite right, but misses the key trend. The corporate nature of MMO companies has increased drastically since the early days. Developers led the field because no one was sure what would work in a MMO. Now they think they know what works and it is all about marketing it to as many people as possible. Many of the heads of old MMO companies were designers, now they are nearly all corporate types."
I think you've identified what I see as a key behind the scenes trend that shows up in the quality (or lack thereof) in many new games. It's push it out fast and monetize the hell out of it, as opposed to take the time to get it right, and earn customer loyalty.
I don't think gamer preference or developers are steering the ship anymore; it's marketting psychologists and suits trying to hook people on bad online crack. I think they hook fewer of us than a quality game like WoW or EvE, but they suck a lot more cash out of each player by stimulating, perpetuating and escalating demand for virtual goods.
OP!i dont mind the fact that EA or blizzard decided to sell mo(multiplayer online)game instead of massive multiplayer online game .more money there cool they can all go make mo!what i feel is illigal is branding a game because they got multiblillion people on the server
come on!am i the only one seeing somethingwrong here!does this means that if i strart server about chess and that i have have billion of player on server i will be an mmo!
fi thats ALL it take to be an mmo is a huge amount of player (who cares if they are 1vs1,grin)then we might as well leave the mmo name to them and find a new term defining what truelly is a massive
i dont mind about instance ,i dont mind whatever ways they go at it
but me i consider AIKA a mmo
farmville (facebook)is a mo,wow,is ,as coutless other are
eve IT IS A MMO
now can somebody help me and all the massive player find a new term for what we play since noW
MULTIPLAYER ONLINE AND MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ARE ONE AND THE SAME
we need a new term for our segment of gaming (massive)
“I don't think gamer preference or developers are steering the ship anymore; its marketing psychologists and suits trying to hook people on bad online crack. I think they hook fewer of us than a quality game like WoW or EvE, but they suck a lot more cash out of each player by stimulating, perpetuating and escalating demand for virtual goods.”
I don’t want to sound like a mutual appreciation society, but you have summed up where the industry is headed now.
I mentioned the change from designer/programmers as the heads of gaming companies to corporates being the CEO’s. To give you some examples the founder of EA Trip Hawkins did his degree in Strategy and Game Theory. The current CEO is John Riccitiello who has a Business degree.
Lets take a look at Mythic Entertainment’s two founders; Mark Jacobs was a desginer and programmer, Rob Denton was a communications engineer who beame a lead programmer. Mythic was taken over by EA and lost Jacobs. So the CEO is now Riccitiello, a buisnessman.
This is a trend in it’s self, smaller companies taken over by larger ones who do not have a designer or programmer leading the company. But even some businessmen are more in touch with gaming than others. The medical students who began the small gaming company that was Bioware wanted to form a gaming company which shows where their interets lay. Bioware, now owned by EA ends up being run by a buisnessman who has a background in Pepsi Cola and Haggan-Dazzs, but enough about EA.
Cryptic Studios were conceived by Michael Lewis and Rick Dakan who describe themselves as roleplayers who wanted to continue what they had done in their youth online. I could not find anyone to be named as the first CEO, but essentialy it was founded by roleplayers. In the summer of 2008 John Needham became the CEO, an excutive from SOE. The company was now being run by a corporate, in the winter of the same year Cryptic was sold to Atari. I do not know if Needham was brought in to pave the way for that move, or as a corporate the new CEO could only see a benifit in joining a larger company; but I really doubt that is a conicidence. David Gardner is the CEO of Atari, he started in sales and marketing and moved on to management. Cryptic now go on to produce the disaster of Champions Online. Need I say more?
I have backed up my statements about the gaming industry by doing a little digging on the internet. It would be nice if the staff writers occasionly did a bit of journalism as well instead of just telling us we complain because we are old crusties, without anything to back up their point of view.
I am not saying you must have a creative person as the CEO to get a good game, but it sure helps and now we are entering an era where the only only people at the helm of MMO’s will be suits.
Its not only the MMO genre, its seen everywhere and ofcourse its the suits that is ruining the gaming industry
Just look at another popular genre, the FPS genre. There is either the futuristic doom/quake kinda FPS, The alien/experiment Half-Life kinda FPS or WW CoD FPS.
As soon as the suits sees these games sells good they tell their developers to make 1045,6 games just like it. It doesnt matter if its good or not, as long as they can sell the boxes with marketing.
Its really easy to sell "Box sale mmos". Either just get a big name (Warhammer,Lotro, Star Wars) or have alot of female chars with big boobs and skimpy clothes ( and make that the box cover)
Why make mmos that will last longer when you can make one mmo, sell some boxes, put it on life support and then make a new mmo so you can sell some more boxes. There is alot of companies that does this (NCsoft, Codemasters etc)
Even one of my favorite companies Bioware is doing it now. They even said before they released Dragon Age that they have 2 years of content to release, but do they add that in the box? no they make a short game not nearly as good with content as Baldurs Gate, just so well have to pay for the DLC content (damn you EA!) same thing with Mass Effect 2.
One thing you can look for in new mmos is if they have lifetime subscriptions, then calculate how many months that would be in normal subscriptions, that is pretty much how long the developer thinks the game will last. Just look at Lotro, we now have to pay for so called "expansions" with very little content that we got for free before and gets boring after 1 week of play. Lotro ahs outlived its lifetime subscription but many is still playing it becouse theres nothing better to play.
Its not really like games before had better storyline, but i still enjoy taking out my old consoles to play some SMB, GunSmoke or Punch-Out much mroe then playing most of the new mmos.
I also think that while many people say the want "casual games" that is solo friendly and whatnot is becouse most mmo players have only played WoW and dont know what they were missing in UO, DaoC, AC etc
Truth is not so much that they do not make games for the older crowd they do what every other money making company does. Go after the new flavor of the month and try and push a game out before it is no longer The IT thing.
Games that are bulit on another Media is the thing to do or so the game Dev's think, I for one think that SWG/LOTR/D@D/Warhammer ect, ect, are all junk. Wow was the downfall of the MMO world by bringing in people who never played an MMO before but could easly be brought into one so that your 75 year old grandmother could roll faces.
Until we see more games that are made from scratch with new ideas every company will follow blizzard in the quest to make a MMO as easy as they can to attrack old and new players to the game so they can see the $$$ going into thier bank account.
Look at the upcoming games and see the top 3 are all made from another media Final fantsy in my opnion should have never been made into a MMO, Lucas Arts has shown us in the past that they care not for the player playing the game only what will drive in more money. I for one am tired of seeing games pushed out from another media and not living up to the hype. So really for me I try MMO's that maybe have 100 players in them and some of those MMO's out there are fun but without players feels like a huge single player game to me. Until the pattern stops and people quit paying for these games we will never see a MMO that has it all.
So in ending we are to blame for this more so then anyone else cause we give money to Companies to pre order a game we think will be great and turns out to be nothing more then a medicore game, for ex, warhammer/STO/CO/aion/ ect ect.
Originally posted by Rhish What really amazes me is how many people are just ok with the mmorpg industry producing crap games.
Funny I had the exact same feeling in my first MMO regarding tons of bugs it had. And I was a QA in single player games at the time, wondering why did people pay for such crappy games.
Originally posted by Rhish Anyone who has played AC will tell you "End Game" wasnt even in our vocabulary.
I'm always puzzled with the end game concept but I guess it IS the hindrance that comes with levels based games. Remove levels and there you go, no more need for end content.
Originally posted by Rhish All of us older gamers remember all the times we got burnt by computer games back in the single player days. Awesome looking box, magazine company says its phenomenol... then we shell out $$$ for it, take it home and find out it sucks bad. Try and take it back and "doh! You actually opened the box? You cant return it if its been opened....". Seriously, this was actually part of the early computer game business model. The non-return was an actual business model element. With the advent of the interwebs you dont need to own a magazine corporation to get the word out anymore. Anyone with a laptop and internet connection can scream across the world about how bad a game sucks. And within minutes millions are on to the scam. What amazes me to no end though is why business continue to do this.
Soon or later they will understand that the word of mounth is a killer.
Originally posted by Minion552 Wow was the downfall of the MMO world by bringing in people who never played an MMO before but could easly be brought into one so that your 75 year old grandmother could roll faces.
At least blizzard brought quality to the genre. Before that studios didn't really care publishing a game bugded to hell. Their excuse was it wasn't possible to make polished MMO as too complex.
Originally posted by Minion552 Lucas Arts has shown us in the past that they care not for the player playing the game only what will drive in more money
I concur, I do think LA is at least responsible for 50% of SWG failure. We arlready can see the trend in SWTOR.
I always thought playing MMO was to: 1) Have Fun 2) Experience a living world 3) Evolve / customize my character the way I want to 4) Play / group with anybody no matter of levels, classes, gear...
What a great article, and I will keep my response short since there are so many down the list. I'm 29 and this also resonated with me. Yes, games have become way too easy for me, but age has little to do with it. Anyone that started playing games, even MMO's in the late 90's or very early 2000's realizes this. What those players have been exposed to is drastically different than what players are doing now.
The difficulty and the depth of the game is a big builder of it. I read way back on the earlier pages about priests becoming high priests or popes of a town and warriors command guards or etc. The RPG element has died for the seemingly immediate rewards. WoW was going to create hero classes without levels based off of quests and RP, but that went to the wayside due to trying to cater to their massive crowd. I can't blame them either!
So, here is where older gamers that have experienced the evolution of gaming are being left out. We are indeed like old war veterans saying "I remember the day when there was no LFG channel, or tab. I remember when there was no thottbot." One could say we created this huge monstrosity. Imagine what WoW would be like if they prevented add-ons, if there were no sites that shared how to beat a boss, where the awesome gear is, or etc. I can garauntee you that it would be a world of different right now, just like it was when it first launched. The genre is adapting to the speed of the gamers themselves (or is it the other way around?).
The only way to do this is to build a totally dynamic, fluid, and highly adaptive game. I can't see that happening anytime soon, the depth to it would require a set of GM's always changing the world, but that would be a great job! I would love to mess with thousands of players every day, no, don't kill them but give them some world events to deal with. If there's any hope for a return to what "we" enjoyed, it is a move from data mining these poor games to death to creating a world where the players cannot command it.
Originally posted by Shiymmas I just can't help but disagree with most of this.
People buy and play what's available. Short of being an actual part of the business, none of us have control other than to buy and play what we like, but that only goes so far when so little is available that fits that category. For little Johnny, however, there's a plethora of games out there, all of which are "amazing" when you've never had better, so Johnny will continue to buy the crap that's given without knowing better. At the end of the day, the companies still profit, and whether or not we continue to pay, they'll still prosper.
Of the posts I read I tend to agree with this the most.
I find it difficult to believe that the human race has changed so much in ten short years. Demographics be damned, people are people. Fun is fun.
The only reason us old geezers are doing most of the complaining is because the younger gamers don't know that they should be complaining. They don't know what they missed. It's not their fault. They aren't mutants they just don't know any better.
After reading some of these responses, I feel bad for you old farts. I'm surprised (well, not really) that you tell me that I'm only having fun in a dumbed-down themepark like LotRO instead of a massive, open world because I don't know any better. I'm glad that I wasn't around for the "glory days" so that my opinions aren't tainted by nostalgia. I'm glad that I can enjoy both sandboxes (EVE) and themeparks (LotRO) because I don't spend my time blaming developers for creating shallow, stupid games that I have no interest in, in order to "save the genre" or whatever other righteous cause you think you have.
After reading some of these responses, I just had to let it out. I like where the MMO genre is today. I like that we're getting quality themeparks (TOR) and, hopefully, quality sandboxes (Earthrise). Plus new types of MMOs that I'm sure you'll still shoot down because they're not like the games you remember (APB, Global Agenda, etc). But, hey, you guys have a right to complain, like I said earlier in this thread. Perhaps it's time to move on, aye?
Well said!!!
Old does not equate to maturity. I to enjoy some of the newer games and have no desire to go back to mudding,UO, Whatevergame. While I enjoyed Adventure in the Big Cave, Zork, Gladiator and a few others there is no way I want that now.
People have learned to be overly harsh on line. Its safe and oh yeah, very leet. Some feel that the problem is no games are being made by gamers....not true! Just look at LIv ( Aion). She is a gamer as are many folks on saff. They made a game they like. Iplay it. albeit less and less. Its just not my game.
Another game by gamers in Guild Wars. Check out an interview on utube with Jeff Grubb of the GW2 team. He is just giddy about the game. I will definetly give it a seious look. Great storyline including 3 books so peeps can be up to date on the lore and what has passed to change the world since GW1.
I'm 62 and hope to live to be 100 to see what games are like in the mid 2000s.
I hope all kinds of people make games in the hope one of them will be a 'home' for me for as many years possible.
Funny, I am upset on the modern MMOs because of the opposite reason: Nothing freaking changes. The graphics is better but otherwise are things basically the same since EQ came out.
I want something new and fresh, not playing the same old junk as I had since Meridian 59 came out.
MMORPG.com's Jon Wood writes this week's column on how many gamers are dissatisfied with the current crop of MMOs because the kind of game they like are things of the past. Now, in all of the complaining that we're seeing recently, there is a large and vocal part of the crowd that feels that these changes are happening because developers and publishers have given up on trying to make games and are instead trying to make a profit. I submit though that businesses looking to turn a profit is nothing new to the world of games. Do people honestly believe that Mythic, as a company, was any less concerned with making money when they released Dark Age of Camelot than they were when they released Warhammer? How about SOE? Did they develop pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies out of some kind of dedication to the art while the NGE was brought in to make money? No. Pre-NGE was designed to make money. It didn't so they tried the NGE (with limited success). With very few exceptions, contemporary game making has been about money.
I don't think this is true. To a certain extent games have always been a labour of love, more on the art side of the spectrum than the profit side. The reason for this is that games traditionally had a very limited audience. Back when DAoC was made there was a far, far smaller market than when Warhammer was made, thus it stands to reason that when DAoC was developed the developers weren't concerned with gaining as many subscriptions as possible, or making as many items that could be sold in an item mall as possible.
Games are much, much more mainstream now than they were even just 5 years ago, they're a billion dollar a year industry. It's wrong to assume that game companies wanting to make a profit over all other considerations is an on/off switch, it's actually a spectrum, and it's naive to assume that corporate greed hasn't started lusting after the lucrative gaming industry.
I agree with this assessment, I've read posts about how the "new" mmo player is "polluting" the genre but was forced to look at that statement in context, yes for that poster we are but truth be told nothing to be done about it now but realize what side of the fence one stands on and react from that. My thought is many of the people who played the first crop of mmo's are at what I call a "move on" point, there aren't enough of them out there to make a highly successful and profitable game anymore atleast not as far as the suits are concerned so instead of having a game to play we are forced to here constant dino whines about how the entire genre is borked to no end. This makes me think personally if these games keep launching and finding success who is really wrong then? Is it all the complainers who feel STO,DF,AOC,AION don't reach there expectations or is it the players who keep these games going? I think though we are in a middle ground right now as I see it game survival is not different enough to say but for certain sub numbers across the board are only time will tell though.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
But MMO’s don’t keep launching and find success, that is the litmus test they keep failing. What is a success? Well it is being able maintain a viable player base after launch, one that generates enough income to update the game with a reasonable amount of content and keep those players in the MMO. While generating the comapny a decent profit as well. None of your examples is doing great numbers wise apart from Aion which already had a huge eastern following. STO is just out, you can’t use that as a judge of success or failure as yet.
Even gamers who I tend to think of as rather naïve; that is teenagers (yes I know we were all new to gaming once) are starting to catch on. Go and check out the forums for FPS games, where they are more strongly represented than here, check the player reviews. They are starting to talk about the easy mode, the online cash tie ins, the way games are getting smaller with dlc left out so it can be sold later.
Those with passion for the gaming industry like programmers, designers and writers are being removed from the helm of gaming companies and being replaced by business suits. What do you think is more likely to happen? An explosion of creativity and gameplay styles, or the remarketing of the same old products redesigned to milk as much cash out of players as they can?
Comments
Yes, i would give my good knee to be 30 again....
Still stop sometimes to think what fun it was to play Tir na Nog on the Spectrum.
"it" will never be the same, just face it.
40 man raids in WOW is as good as life gets.
I'll keep waiting. I've got my $50 a month ready right here to go to the first game developer to make an MMO that caters to the more mature set...
(And in the meantime, I play the best sandbox style game I have found for us oldsters - Fallen Earth with the occasional dash of WAR! PvP when I feel like it. Two subs to games, $30 a month, plus my wife's - that's $60 a month in my household spent on MMO's alone. I'd happily pay more, too, because you know something? This is the best entertainment value for the dollar you will ever get. An expensive dinner out for 2 and a movie with drinks can cost me $200, easy. Think people my age won't pay that for a premium, everything-included MMO game? I'd cream my... you know what.
)
Just to clarify something folks. I didn't say that all of the ills of the MMO industry come down to this one, single thing. It's a contributing factor, but of course bad games are going to fail. A bad game is a bad game, a game without polish lacks polish. That's why i didn't make any specific reference to any game in particular. It's because this is an underlying issue. The article refers to people who are just generally dissatisfied with the core designs of today's MMOs. Issues like polish and implementation are topics for another day's column.
Personally, I don't share your pessimism about business philosophy. doing the whole "pull the wool over your eyes" thing works when you're talking about businesses that rely on single purchases for their primary source of revenue. The appeal of going to all of the trouble to make an MMO, however, is the idea that there might be a continued revenue stream. I would suggest that an MMO company looking to maximize its revenue would look at ways to entice people to stay over the long term, not to fool them into buying the box. The box is just the beginning, the real money's in the subs.
Just my opinion though.
Thanks for thinking out loud with me about this. It's fun. I'd like to continue a bit if you don't mind ^_^. I agree that the "pull the wool" over your eyes approach has traditionally been found in one-shot marketting scams. Playing this out over the long term is vastly more complex, but I believe it is happening, in some instances.
I believe this not just because of the b-mod principles I see in bad games, but because I'm currently looking at the slides for an online game training seminar that teaches people how to string people along and milk them of their cash over the long haul. I'll lay out the strategy for you. (All of it is not contained in the one training seminar, btw, it's just one of many examples I have to draw from).
So, it begins with a marketting splash. Something needs to get people's attention and draw them to the virtual environment. A good IP is helpful with this. Flashy marketting also plays a role. I'm looking at some just to my left actually. Then when people enter the world, it needs to tap into core social-emotional needs. The game needs to give people opportunities for connection, accomplishment, identify, emotional expression etc.. Virtual goods can easily be plugged into these needs. Initially, these goods are made available for free. The training explains that this is done in order to "prime" people. In other words, they become accustomed to the goods and attached to them--or dependent upon them to have their social-emotional needs met. Then, you monetize the crap out of every aspect of the virtual world that you possibly can.
Some people will put up with this. Why? They're hooked, and they don't recognize what's happening. They now rely on the game and its virtual items to maintain friendships, express their feelings, feel good about themselves etc. They may also have already purchased an extended subscription, so they feel hooked monetarily as well.
On top of these hooks, some companies intentionally use intermittent positive reinforcement strategies connected with the marketting of their virtual goods. Gamers pay money and are sometimes rewarded in ways that meet social-emotional needs ingame. The fact that they are only sometimes rewarded is pivotal. This keeps them trying, and spending, more and more cash, hoping that (a) they'll be rewarded again, and (b) that the money they've already spent (wasted) will somehow seem justified. This is hard sciece btw, and anyone familiar with the strategies can spot them at a glance.
With these strategies in place, an MMO company can milk vulnerable gamers for months or years before the gamer ever realizes how badly they're being taken for a ride--if they ever wake up to it at all. Quality, customer service, depth, all become secondary concerns. The bad MMO is like a bad drug.
Do I think that all MMO companies are doing this? Absolutely not. Some are, however, and some of their CEO's even brag about it at their summits and seminars. I've seen and heard it first hand.
It may be that you and are are both correct in our observations. I can accept that some new gamers want things that differ from my preferences. At the same time, I see this other issue as having an important impact--for the negative--on the MMO genre.
Loved the article! Amen brother.
This article identifies the problem precisely. However, i think it falsly assumes the new strategy developers are taking is working...
I dont think it is. And i dont think the developers are seeing the subscriptions they were hoping for.
Granted, yes, teenagers are the prime market. Its alot easier to get money out of them than it is the 30-40 year old people. We are alot more discriminating. We work for our money so we dont want to waste it. Whereas a teen has a parents credit card to pay and play at a whim.
The developers have given up trying to create a "Great" game, and instead are working franticaly to try and ismply devise some tool for hitting those teenagers with whatever will make money fall form their pockets.
Ive heard all the arguments and im convinced now, it is money it is greed. Its one thing to say "Its a business, people want to make money". Ok fine, but so did Banks and Real Estate lenders. And look where that got us. Its a totally different thing for an industry to go down the drain because everyone is frantically trying to dig more pennies out of the rotting pile of corpses.
I think its time we put our foot down and say enough is enough. Its not ok to just do whatever you want ismply because youve laid down the "But its business, not personal" card.
Its not ok to keep developing crap games simply because Blizzard is your new god.
What really amazes me is how many people are just ok with the mmorpg industroy producing crap games. All you have to say is "But its a business, they want to make money" and all of a sudden its like anythign they are doing is ok.
They are gettign away with it because there are enough teen market people who just dont know any better. They dont know that mmorpg's can be really really good. They think WoW is like the epitome of mmorpg design, and so antyhing that even comes remotely close to wow is a success in their minds. And so they are willing to keep paying their subs.
Those of us who have played UO, and the greatest of sandbox mmorpg's Asherons Call, and many others, know there is a better way to make an mmorpg. Unfortunately, we are outnumbered by the throngs of new players with their parents credit card numbers.
I see the problem, i dont liek it. But at the same time i dont see it resolving itself any time soon. Once an indsutry gets in that frenzy state they keep going over and over and over until it literally destroys the industry and burns everything down to the ground. Then they try and mkae money off the ashes, and until there literally is nothign left in existence, they wont change.
I look at games like LOTRO, created by the same developers who made Asherons Call. AC was an awesome game. It was sandbox, open ended, dynamicly changing world, character customization was outrageously good in comparison to any mmorpg out today. The loot generator was like a Rolls Royce to a skateboard compared to WoW or any other game. It was just a far better game in every aspect.
Then WoW is released, 48 trillion people play it over night, and the entire industory lit up into a frenzy of themepark meyhem.
From what ive heard, Turbine originally was creating Middle Earth online. Which was going to be a sandbox style game set in the Middle Earth realm. Massive landmasses, open ended gameplay, character developm,ent, the whole massive multiplayer online game we were all wanting to play.
Then when WoW released and had instant success they scrapped the project and set to work creating a themepark ride with Middle Earth costumes and banners and called it Lord of the Rings ONLINE.
It only takes a couple weeks playing the game to see how its a dead end linear path. Almost like reading a book. Every moment of your characters life is carefully planned out, and rigidly enforced. Your only allowed to be in themepark area alpha, and then when you level you move to this other area because instantly everythign in the old area is worthless. Its so stupid.
With each patch they have automated more and more of character development. Reember the old days when character leveling meant you were given say 15 points, and then you assigned points to make your character the way YOU wanted it to be. Nowadays all of your character development is done by the game istelf, and most people dont even know they are missing out. WHen i bring this up in game they just sit there O.o "What do you mean..."
They removed all difficulty from quests/activities. And basically turned it into an insta win hotkey fest. No matter how hard you try your character will never fall behind or get ahead of any other character of the same class. 7000 Hunetrs in the game wear the exact same armour from head to toe, and have the exact same weapon, or are looking for their own exact copy of it. And if you mention any of this in game people cry like they are hippy cult children angry because you insulted their god.
I see their reasoning, "We dont want anyone to feel like they are left behind, or their characters are less than someone elses". But in the process of doing th is, extreme socialism, they have removed any and all motivation to play your character. Log in for 30 a night doing a single raid run, any time spent above this is wasted time because your character has no means of gaining any sort of benefit from playing longer or doing anything else.
In LOTRO each wepon use to have a speed raiting. So it had a damage rating, say 100 damage, and then a speed rating say 2.00 speed. This together gave you your dps. Dif weapons had dif speeds, dif damages, etc etc. Well some Turbine develper reasoned "A burglar might equipt a club, which isnt the best option for a burglar, and then no one will play with him...." And so they removed all speed variance from ALL wepaons and put them all on one static speed. This way, if someone equipts a dagger, or a club, or a sword, it wont matter, its the same weapon, just a different name... How fricken stupid is that.
That issue in itself sums up what they are doing tot hat game...
Im hoping the industory will learn their lesson. It would be one thing if they were making all these changes and people were flocking tot heir games. But the oens doing this are driving players away in masses and they dont get why its happening. Lotro recently released their "Skirmishes" system. Which, in concept, is a great idea. But then they went and remove any possibility of improving your character through it, removed ALL loot from ALL mobs in the skirmishes, and basically turned them into the perfect grind with zero reward....
Then they stand around shaking their heads wondering why people arent playing them.
Are they that disconnected form the playerbase that they just dont see it? No. I think the problem is market research and Questionaires.
They put out a quesitonjairre asking the playerbase what are 3 things you like about the game what are three things you dont like about the game. And of course the majority of people say "I dont like to grind, i dont like working to get items, i dont like that aspect x about my character isnt the best in the game".
And so they take this information and turn around and make the game so that every player regardless of time investment or work put into the game walks away witht he best armour, the best sword, the best anythign there is available.
The market research is asking people What do you like and what dont you like about the games. And of course people are answering "I want more reward for less work.". But this is comig from the same place that drives people to download cheat codes and trainers. And eventually causes them to stop playing the game the instant they get to the "end". Which happens immediately since there is no more work/time involved in getting there. The peoples feedback is ritually "I want more reward for less time/work committed.".
Anyone who has played AC will tell you "End Game" wasnt even in our vocabulary. Seriously, we didnt even know what that meant. There was no end game. In fact, end game seems outrageously opposed to what an mmorpg is suppose to be. This isnt some stupid single player game that has a start and finish. This is a living breathing world that my character lives in.
End game is the "I want it all and i want it now" mentality. Those people who salavate all over themselevs wanting the best whatever ti is and they want it now, and they have money so they demand they get it.... Those people commercials have created.....
Hopefully all these games will fail miserably, and then the next generation will fail miserbaly. And then, when enough development teams go out of business and bakrupt from doing it, someone somewhere will create an actuall mmorpg and renew the industry.
Until then.... this is it folks, pay for it or not.
It's only a crap game if someone thinks it's a crap game.
As an example using the same statement: "What really amazes me is how many people are just ok with the music industry producing crap music".
Well ok, but people aren't looking at their music as crap. They are looking at it as something that warrants their attention for whatever reason. One can lay down any number of reasons why most popular music is crap but all those reasons are instantly deflated by someone else saying "well I don't think it's crap".
You can't really argue personal taste and the things that made earlier games (subjectively) great might not be of any importance for other people.
One can bring the discussion to video games. I can very easily look at video games as "crap" entertaiment. The stories are derivative at best bordering on silly and ridiculous at times. MMO's tend to have levels of repetition that border on the ridiculous.
Of course one could then say "well early games didn't have this" yet it seems to me that camping mobs was a very popular thing in these games. Or waiting around for boss spawns. Or what a friend of mine said of early swg crafting "it was like a 2nd job that I wasn't getting paid for".
Yet in the end I really like video games. I don't have to qualify that statement to my friends because it is what it is.
I imagine for players of today's games it's the same thing. You can tell them that it's crap all you want but they will just nod and smile and have fun because in the end "they are having fun".
Of course I've seen people try to trivialize players/fans of more contemporary games as "sheep" or "stupid" but quite frankly I could never get behind such sentiments.
I've never met a person who was a self proclaimed lover of 'high brow" entertaiment who didnt' like something that was considered low brow or ridiculous by some other group.
edit: lol, oh and "welcome to the forums"
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Exactly!
And i think this is exactly what the people's need
A way to actually tell the developers, this isnt ok. All of us do matter. mmorpg.comn posting this type of forum prompt is hint enough. WHy do we matter, because we are the maintay. We are the players who buy 3 accounts and leave them active for 5 straight years. We are the ones who anchor the kins. We are the ones digging thruogh content and bringin itout into the limilight. We are the ones most vocal to people not playing the game. Blizzard owes its success to word of mouth. People played the game and then got their buddies to play, who in turn got their grandparents to play, and grandchildren, and everyone.
The teen market kids are doing this too, but they are extremely whimsical. My youngest son will retart his wow account, play for a day, cancel it, and not return for 12 months. Whereas we "whatever we call ourselves" are the ones who activate subs, often more than one, and continue playing.
The developers are after the quick easy money. But they also know they cant do it without the masses of US clapping and preachign their game along the way. This thread in fact seems like a research market tool of its own.
I could full on see some developer paying mmorpg.com some sum of money to post such a thread, fuel it, and then dig out the information. What are the older crowd so angry about. What can we do to appease them. What are they really upset abnout. Is it possible to make them think they are outdated and that THEY are the problem, try and embarrass them into conforming. Maybe we can make them believe the new games are innovative, and the older crowd just arent hip to this new exciting way of gaming.... pfffft
Burn the house down. Blizzard got away with it because the hid the end of the tunnel far enough out of sight. You didnt see the linearity of it or the themepark of it right away. But that was a "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" situaiton.
It isnt going to happen twice. Developers the world round are finding that out right now the hard way. Millions of investor dollars ar ebieng lost by development teams that tried to do the same thing blizzard did...
Exactly!
And i think this is exactly what the people's need
A way to actually tell the developers, this isnt ok. All of us do matter. mmorpg.comn posting this type of forum prompt is hint enough. WHy do we matter, because we are the maintay. We are the players who buy 3 accounts and leave them active for 5 straight years. We are the ones who anchor the kins. We are the ones digging thruogh content and bringin itout into the limilight. We are the ones most vocal to people not playing the game. Blizzard owes its success to word of mouth. People played the game and then got their buddies to play, who in turn got their grandparents to play, and grandchildren, and everyone.
The teen market kids are doing this too, but they are extremely whimsical. My youngest son will retart his wow account, play for a day, cancel it, and not return for 12 months. Whereas we "whatever we call ourselves" are the ones who activate subs, often more than one, and continue playing.
The developers are after the quick easy money. But they also know they cant do it without the masses of US clapping and preachign their game along the way. This thread in fact seems like a research market tool of its own.
I could full on see some developer paying mmorpg.com some sum of money to post such a thread, fuel it, and then dig out the information. What are the older crowd so angry about. What can we do to appease them. What are they really upset abnout. Is it possible to make them think they are outdated and that THEY are the problem, try and embarrass them into conforming. Maybe we can make them believe the new games are innovative, and the older crowd just arent hip to this new exciting way of gaming.... pfffft
Burn the house down. Blizzard got away with it because the hid the end of the tunnel far enough out of sight. You didnt see the linearity of it or the themepark of it right away. But that was a "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" situaiton.
It isnt going to happen twice. Developers the world round are finding that out right now the hard way. Millions of investor dollars ar ebieng lost by development teams that tried to do the same thing blizzard did...
To quote:
"When you leave a game, write a calm, professional letter as to why. Then post it on every game forum you can. If even 1 person reads it and agrees, you've just saved a fellow gamer $50 AND helped talk to the devs."
This, exactly. If you hate a game, tell me why. I'm already staying the Hell away from Mortal Online because of the horrific customer service I've seen in their forums - mods get away with murder there. They aren't getting my disposable income.
Shrug.
I imagine for players of today's games it's the same thing. You can tell them that it's crap all you want but they will just nod and smile and have fun because in the end "they are having fun".
The threead s filled with people who are seeing the same thing. Ask a Turbine developer if they are happy with the amount of subscribers they have. They havent added any new servers asince launch, ever. I hardly feel like they are sitting there saying "screw the older crowd, we are so happy with all this money..."
Blizzard... maybe. The Frnech company who owns them and takes all the profits... perhaps. But as far as everyone else? They are frantically trying to throw these games together and find that magic stick that knocks the money from the markets pockets. I feel comfortable in what im saying becasuse i know none of them are succeeding, with the noted exception.
I said earlier, it woudl be one thing if the games were just becoming massive successes, filled to the brim with players and just doing great. Thats not the case. The ones i have played go through routine mass exoduses. Players log in when theres a new patch, check it out, and then move on. And each time that happens its less and less. The hard core crowd is there, sure. But somethign tickles me when i think about the disproportion between the amount of subs they were thinking they could get doing it, versus the amount of subs they currently have..
If mmorpgs were succeeding and doing so great, yeah, i woudl probably rethink my position. I would probably start thinking about just getting along with the way things are now. But thats not the case. Teh games start up, like STO, and they are total complete empty facades. Its not even an mmorpg development, its like those movie title games that are released. You know what i mean, some popular movie comes out and then the producer sells the title rights to some developer who already has a game made on some shelf, and simple repaints the names and colors it in the same light as the movie and releases it.
You sound like you want us all to just shut up and like it. Like as if 3 trillion people are playing the new innovated awesome way of mmorpging and we few scraggly elders are grumpy off our meds. That isnt the case. And we arent going to be won over by the tactics.
My position stands. Im amazed at how many people are willing to just roll over and act the fanboi simply because... because... well i dont know, why is that?
Hey Hey
I just recently turned 30, and i called my dad up and said , you know you where correct the music i listend to when i was 16 really did suck. It does not matter how hard i try to like listing to bleach it will never be the same, as when i first heard it sitting behind the supermarket, sitting in my friends jeep, on break. With FFXIV on the horizon i recently went back to FFXI , lets just say my memories of the game , and the realities did not match up. (nothing against the current ffxi players , but the UI is a bit clunky)
What i would like to see are more games, that have a similar learning curve as chess. Chess is very easy to pick up , there are a few piece with a set amount of rules for each piece. However wile the rules of chess are very easy , mastering the game is very difficult. A game does not need to break you in order to be challenging, and some of the most complex games i know of, have the least amount of rules.
Gofor instance, is another great example of this.
A while there was a great article about scope, alot of us "older gamers" seem to be in the same place as the "younger" ones. We sure as hell know what "we" want and do not give a shit about what others want.
Welcome Home
Rev
/off topic STFU about SWG , it was along time ago most of us have gotten over it.
This seems to be the common strategy developers are taking to combat the problem of producing weaker and weaker games. Instead of spending the money and hiring the talent, they just spend twice as much money on PR. They figure its a lot easier to force people to like the game than it is to try and create a game people will like.
So they come up with these strategies of "Its innovation, let go of your VCR and embrace your dvd player..." Or the music analogy because everyone is a teen at some point and likes crazy music, then grows up. So now the industroy wants to try and bill their weak games as somethign we just arent hip enough to enjoy.
Britney spears is Britney spears, its not crappy music because im not hip, its just crappy. Teens like it because it plays into the scientificly devised sounds they have associated with the feelings and emotions teens are ging through. Teens arent set in their ways. Teens are malleable, whimsical. This is why marketting in general is aimed at younger people. Their taste in products isnt rigid yet, its still in clay form. So its a lot easier to get teens to like somethign than it is to get anyone else to like somethign.
The music analogy that keeps showing up on this thread is testament to the opposing argument. Its on jst about every page, on que, someone makes a good argument that the development teams arent putting as much work and resource into the games, and then right after that someone says "remember how you use to like pink floyd...."
The developers are trying to get away with spending less and less money developing the games while turning as much profit as they can. And until gamers get fed up with it and stop buying their games, they will continue.
Turbine completely got rid of all their creative talent and replaced it with business model developers. Spend an initial chunk of money developing the game, spent twice as much marketting the game, then strip the crew down to skeleton crew size maintaining the game, rinse repeat pocketing as much profit as possible.
If i were a businessman that didnt play mmorpgs and could care less about the people playing them, and could care less what happens to the industry, then sure, i could see myself doing the same thign. Lets just create somethign that looks spectacular, market it like mad, get people to sign up, sucker them into lifetime accounts or 6 month accounts, or hidden hard to cancel month to month accounts. Reduce our maintenace down to nothing, and soak it for all we can get out of it. In the mean time we start anew profescting our method along the way.
You see it happen in the movie industry all the time. Some producer gets his hands on a red hot IP. The Hulk comes to mind. And then they have 2 options. Get large investment and try to make a really good movie. Or go cheap on every aspect, spend the least amount of money possible making the movie, spend twice as much on marketting it as they did making it, and then just see how much money it can pull in. If it flops, well, we didnt invest all that much money from the start. And we can try again with this other IP we already are working on.
This would work TREMENDOUSLY well if not for one simple thing.... the interwebs! I cant count the amount of movies i didnt waste my money on after reading real people reviews on the web and finding out the movie was a low budget high marketting pos.
These forums, and many more like them have also saved me countless sums of money. STO for example. I was really excited when i first heard about it. Then i started to pick up bits and pieces. How long it wa sin development. Who was working on it. And then aspeople started to play it and came to the web "Its 2 dimensional space... pos game..." I went to the website, watched the movie trailers of it, and sure enough, you could see what people were talkign about... cha-ching just saved 50 bucks and a troublesome cancellation process.,..
Then there is the learning curve. Sure, a game shouldnt take a degree in philosophy to learn and enjoy playing it. But at the same time it shouldnt be themeparked and linear, while touting on the cover MASSIVE DYNAMIC EVER CHANGING GAMEWORLD THAT YOUR CHARACTER LIVES AND GROWS IN, ETC ETC ETC. Take a look at any game box, they ALL tout themselves as being the most exciting SANDBOX STYLE, OPEN ENDED, FULL CHARACTER CUSTOMIZABLE GAME, ever created.
Every box touts the game as being exactly what all these people are wanting. Then the actual game ends up ebign themeparked, end game orientated, canned character design. pos.
Its failry obvious the Developers know EXACTLY what each and every one of us are complaining about. Its no secret. I was amazed when i started finding these articles around the web. Forum threads, Etc etc. They dont spring up like this when its just one or two disgruntled nostalgics. It happens when there is a significant important element of the playerbase unhappy with the compromises developers are making for the sake of quick easy turn arounds.
Sandbox v Themepark is a whole lot more than just styl;e and taste. Its about quality products versus profitable products. As a consumer i want to do whatever i can to ensure my money doesnt get lifted from my wallet by marketting and post production tactics.
All of us older gamers remember all the times we got burnt by computer games back in the single player days. Awesome looking box, magazine company says its phenomenol... then we shell out $$$ for it, take it home and find out it sucks bad. Try and take it back and "doh! You actually opened the box? You cant return it if its been opened....".
Seriously, this was actually part of the early computer game business model. The non-return was an actual business model element. With the advent of the interwebs you dont need to own a magazine corporation to get the word out anymore. Anyone with a laptop and internet connection can scream across the world about how bad a game sucks. And within minutes millions are on to the scam.
What amazes me to no end though is why business continue to do this. I mean sure, you might get lucky and get a kajillion subscribers, but he odds are against you. Why not sink all your creativity and resources into a good game. And then just enjoy your work. Why does everythign have to be a sell out, quick money making scheme.
Would it really be that awful to just create a good game. So what if you dont reach WoW style subscriptions. None of these themepark wow clones are doing that either. Just make a good game. Support it with a post production budget. And let it be what supports you and your families. Your doing what you love. Your earnign a good living doing it. Do we all really need to be warren buffet and donald trump? Why cant we just settle into what we love best, be it writing code for mmorpg, or developing quests and storylines. And then enjoy a good living doing so.
Too many companies get sucked into the Google/Aol/WoW frenzy and end up destroying everythign in its path along the way.
Yeah, at the beginning of online gaming everything was about the choices players made. Today it's all about graphics and who has the best sword or armor or in some cases rifle. I'm actually considering swearing off anything with graphics all together, except single-player and hub and instance, though I'm not very good.
Responding to this comment from Scot:
"As to the statement, “I submit though that businesses looking to turn a profit is nothing new to the world of games.” He is quite right, but misses the key trend. The corporate nature of MMO companies has increased drastically since the early days. Developers led the field because no one was sure what would work in a MMO. Now they think they know what works and it is all about marketing it to as many people as possible. Many of the heads of old MMO companies were designers, now they are nearly all corporate types."
I think you've identified what I see as a key behind the scenes trend that shows up in the quality (or lack thereof) in many new games. It's push it out fast and monetize the hell out of it, as opposed to take the time to get it right, and earn customer loyalty.
I don't think gamer preference or developers are steering the ship anymore; it's marketting psychologists and suits trying to hook people on bad online crack. I think they hook fewer of us than a quality game like WoW or EvE, but they suck a lot more cash out of each player by stimulating, perpetuating and escalating demand for virtual goods.
OP!i dont mind the fact that EA or blizzard decided to sell mo(multiplayer online)game instead of massive multiplayer online game .more money there cool they can all go make mo!what i feel is illigal is branding a game because they got multiblillion people on the server
come on!am i the only one seeing somethingwrong here!does this means that if i strart server about chess and that i have have billion of player on server i will be an mmo!
fi thats ALL it take to be an mmo is a huge amount of player (who cares if they are 1vs1,grin)then we might as well leave the mmo name to them and find a new term defining what truelly is a massive
i dont mind about instance ,i dont mind whatever ways they go at it
but me i consider AIKA a mmo
farmville (facebook)is a mo,wow,is ,as coutless other are
eve IT IS A MMO
now can somebody help me and all the massive player find a new term for what we play since noW
MULTIPLAYER ONLINE AND MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ARE ONE AND THE SAME
we need a new term for our segment of gaming (massive)
“I don't think gamer preference or developers are steering the ship anymore; its marketing psychologists and suits trying to hook people on bad online crack. I think they hook fewer of us than a quality game like WoW or EvE, but they suck a lot more cash out of each player by stimulating, perpetuating and escalating demand for virtual goods.”
I don’t want to sound like a mutual appreciation society, but you have summed up where the industry is headed now.
I mentioned the change from designer/programmers as the heads of gaming companies to corporates being the CEO’s. To give you some examples the founder of EA Trip Hawkins did his degree in Strategy and Game Theory. The current CEO is John Riccitiello who has a Business degree.
Lets take a look at Mythic Entertainment’s two founders; Mark Jacobs was a desginer and programmer, Rob Denton was a communications engineer who beame a lead programmer. Mythic was taken over by EA and lost Jacobs. So the CEO is now Riccitiello, a buisnessman.
This is a trend in it’s self, smaller companies taken over by larger ones who do not have a designer or programmer leading the company. But even some businessmen are more in touch with gaming than others. The medical students who began the small gaming company that was Bioware wanted to form a gaming company which shows where their interets lay. Bioware, now owned by EA ends up being run by a buisnessman who has a background in Pepsi Cola and Haggan-Dazzs, but enough about EA.
Cryptic Studios were conceived by Michael Lewis and Rick Dakan who describe themselves as roleplayers who wanted to continue what they had done in their youth online. I could not find anyone to be named as the first CEO, but essentialy it was founded by roleplayers. In the summer of 2008 John Needham became the CEO, an excutive from SOE. The company was now being run by a corporate, in the winter of the same year Cryptic was sold to Atari. I do not know if Needham was brought in to pave the way for that move, or as a corporate the new CEO could only see a benifit in joining a larger company; but I really doubt that is a conicidence. David Gardner is the CEO of Atari, he started in sales and marketing and moved on to management. Cryptic now go on to produce the disaster of Champions Online. Need I say more?
I have backed up my statements about the gaming industry by doing a little digging on the internet. It would be nice if the staff writers occasionly did a bit of journalism as well instead of just telling us we complain because we are old crusties, without anything to back up their point of view.
I am not saying you must have a creative person as the CEO to get a good game, but it sure helps and now we are entering an era where the only only people at the helm of MMO’s will be suits.
Its not only the MMO genre, its seen everywhere and ofcourse its the suits that is ruining the gaming industry
Just look at another popular genre, the FPS genre. There is either the futuristic doom/quake kinda FPS, The alien/experiment Half-Life kinda FPS or WW CoD FPS.
As soon as the suits sees these games sells good they tell their developers to make 1045,6 games just like it. It doesnt matter if its good or not, as long as they can sell the boxes with marketing.
Its really easy to sell "Box sale mmos". Either just get a big name (Warhammer,Lotro, Star Wars) or have alot of female chars with big boobs and skimpy clothes ( and make that the box cover)
Why make mmos that will last longer when you can make one mmo, sell some boxes, put it on life support and then make a new mmo so you can sell some more boxes. There is alot of companies that does this (NCsoft, Codemasters etc)
Even one of my favorite companies Bioware is doing it now. They even said before they released Dragon Age that they have 2 years of content to release, but do they add that in the box? no they make a short game not nearly as good with content as Baldurs Gate, just so well have to pay for the DLC content (damn you EA!) same thing with Mass Effect 2.
One thing you can look for in new mmos is if they have lifetime subscriptions, then calculate how many months that would be in normal subscriptions, that is pretty much how long the developer thinks the game will last. Just look at Lotro, we now have to pay for so called "expansions" with very little content that we got for free before and gets boring after 1 week of play. Lotro ahs outlived its lifetime subscription but many is still playing it becouse theres nothing better to play.
Its not really like games before had better storyline, but i still enjoy taking out my old consoles to play some SMB, GunSmoke or Punch-Out much mroe then playing most of the new mmos.
I also think that while many people say the want "casual games" that is solo friendly and whatnot is becouse most mmo players have only played WoW and dont know what they were missing in UO, DaoC, AC etc
Truth is not so much that they do not make games for the older crowd they do what every other money making company does. Go after the new flavor of the month and try and push a game out before it is no longer The IT thing.
Games that are bulit on another Media is the thing to do or so the game Dev's think, I for one think that SWG/LOTR/D@D/Warhammer ect, ect, are all junk. Wow was the downfall of the MMO world by bringing in people who never played an MMO before but could easly be brought into one so that your 75 year old grandmother could roll faces.
Until we see more games that are made from scratch with new ideas every company will follow blizzard in the quest to make a MMO as easy as they can to attrack old and new players to the game so they can see the $$$ going into thier bank account.
Look at the upcoming games and see the top 3 are all made from another media Final fantsy in my opnion should have never been made into a MMO, Lucas Arts has shown us in the past that they care not for the player playing the game only what will drive in more money. I for one am tired of seeing games pushed out from another media and not living up to the hype. So really for me I try MMO's that maybe have 100 players in them and some of those MMO's out there are fun but without players feels like a huge single player game to me. Until the pattern stops and people quit paying for these games we will never see a MMO that has it all.
So in ending we are to blame for this more so then anyone else cause we give money to Companies to pre order a game we think will be great and turns out to be nothing more then a medicore game, for ex, warhammer/STO/CO/aion/ ect ect.
Soon or later they will understand that the word of mounth is a killer. At least blizzard brought quality to the genre. Before that studios didn't really care publishing a game bugded to hell. Their excuse was it wasn't possible to make polished MMO as too complex. I concur, I do think LA is at least responsible for 50% of SWG failure. We arlready can see the trend in SWTOR.I always thought playing MMO was to:
1) Have Fun
2) Experience a living world
3) Evolve / customize my character the way I want to
4) Play / group with anybody no matter of levels, classes, gear...
What a great article, and I will keep my response short since there are so many down the list. I'm 29 and this also resonated with me. Yes, games have become way too easy for me, but age has little to do with it. Anyone that started playing games, even MMO's in the late 90's or very early 2000's realizes this. What those players have been exposed to is drastically different than what players are doing now.
The difficulty and the depth of the game is a big builder of it. I read way back on the earlier pages about priests becoming high priests or popes of a town and warriors command guards or etc. The RPG element has died for the seemingly immediate rewards. WoW was going to create hero classes without levels based off of quests and RP, but that went to the wayside due to trying to cater to their massive crowd. I can't blame them either!
So, here is where older gamers that have experienced the evolution of gaming are being left out. We are indeed like old war veterans saying "I remember the day when there was no LFG channel, or tab. I remember when there was no thottbot." One could say we created this huge monstrosity. Imagine what WoW would be like if they prevented add-ons, if there were no sites that shared how to beat a boss, where the awesome gear is, or etc. I can garauntee you that it would be a world of different right now, just like it was when it first launched. The genre is adapting to the speed of the gamers themselves (or is it the other way around?).
The only way to do this is to build a totally dynamic, fluid, and highly adaptive game. I can't see that happening anytime soon, the depth to it would require a set of GM's always changing the world, but that would be a great job! I would love to mess with thousands of players every day, no, don't kill them but give them some world events to deal with. If there's any hope for a return to what "we" enjoyed, it is a move from data mining these poor games to death to creating a world where the players cannot command it.
Dang, my response got long.... haha!
Of the posts I read I tend to agree with this the most.
I find it difficult to believe that the human race has changed so much in ten short years. Demographics be damned, people are people. Fun is fun.
The only reason us old geezers are doing most of the complaining is because the younger gamers don't know that they should be complaining. They don't know what they missed. It's not their fault. They aren't mutants they just don't know any better.
After reading some of these responses, I feel bad for you old farts. I'm surprised (well, not really) that you tell me that I'm only having fun in a dumbed-down themepark like LotRO instead of a massive, open world because I don't know any better. I'm glad that I wasn't around for the "glory days" so that my opinions aren't tainted by nostalgia. I'm glad that I can enjoy both sandboxes (EVE) and themeparks (LotRO) because I don't spend my time blaming developers for creating shallow, stupid games that I have no interest in, in order to "save the genre" or whatever other righteous cause you think you have.
After reading some of these responses, I just had to let it out. I like where the MMO genre is today. I like that we're getting quality themeparks (TOR) and, hopefully, quality sandboxes (Earthrise). Plus new types of MMOs that I'm sure you'll still shoot down because they're not like the games you remember (APB, Global Agenda, etc). But, hey, you guys have a right to complain, like I said earlier in this thread. Perhaps it's time to move on, aye?
Well said!!!
Old does not equate to maturity. I to enjoy some of the newer games and have no desire to go back to mudding,UO, Whatevergame. While I enjoyed Adventure in the Big Cave, Zork, Gladiator and a few others there is no way I want that now.
People have learned to be overly harsh on line. Its safe and oh yeah, very leet. Some feel that the problem is no games are being made by gamers....not true! Just look at LIv ( Aion). She is a gamer as are many folks on saff. They made a game they like. Iplay it. albeit less and less. Its just not my game.
Another game by gamers in Guild Wars. Check out an interview on utube with Jeff Grubb of the GW2 team. He is just giddy about the game. I will definetly give it a seious look. Great storyline including 3 books so peeps can be up to date on the lore and what has passed to change the world since GW1.
I'm 62 and hope to live to be 100 to see what games are like in the mid 2000s.
I hope all kinds of people make games in the hope one of them will be a 'home' for me for as many years possible.
Add Global Agenda to that list of Made by/For Gamers
The folks at HiRez Studios told me one time I went up there that alot of them played UT3 for a few years and that some were even Ex-WoW/Ex-EQ Players.
Funny, I am upset on the modern MMOs because of the opposite reason: Nothing freaking changes. The graphics is better but otherwise are things basically the same since EQ came out.
I want something new and fresh, not playing the same old junk as I had since Meridian 59 came out.
I don't think this is true. To a certain extent games have always been a labour of love, more on the art side of the spectrum than the profit side. The reason for this is that games traditionally had a very limited audience. Back when DAoC was made there was a far, far smaller market than when Warhammer was made, thus it stands to reason that when DAoC was developed the developers weren't concerned with gaining as many subscriptions as possible, or making as many items that could be sold in an item mall as possible.
Games are much, much more mainstream now than they were even just 5 years ago, they're a billion dollar a year industry. It's wrong to assume that game companies wanting to make a profit over all other considerations is an on/off switch, it's actually a spectrum, and it's naive to assume that corporate greed hasn't started lusting after the lucrative gaming industry.
I agree with this assessment, I've read posts about how the "new" mmo player is "polluting" the genre but was forced to look at that statement in context, yes for that poster we are but truth be told nothing to be done about it now but realize what side of the fence one stands on and react from that. My thought is many of the people who played the first crop of mmo's are at what I call a "move on" point, there aren't enough of them out there to make a highly successful and profitable game anymore atleast not as far as the suits are concerned so instead of having a game to play we are forced to here constant dino whines about how the entire genre is borked to no end. This makes me think personally if these games keep launching and finding success who is really wrong then? Is it all the complainers who feel STO,DF,AOC,AION don't reach there expectations or is it the players who keep these games going? I think though we are in a middle ground right now as I see it game survival is not different enough to say but for certain sub numbers across the board are only time will tell though.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
But MMO’s don’t keep launching and find success, that is the litmus test they keep failing. What is a success? Well it is being able maintain a viable player base after launch, one that generates enough income to update the game with a reasonable amount of content and keep those players in the MMO. While generating the comapny a decent profit as well. None of your examples is doing great numbers wise apart from Aion which already had a huge eastern following. STO is just out, you can’t use that as a judge of success or failure as yet.
Even gamers who I tend to think of as rather naïve; that is teenagers (yes I know we were all new to gaming once) are starting to catch on. Go and check out the forums for FPS games, where they are more strongly represented than here, check the player reviews. They are starting to talk about the easy mode, the online cash tie ins, the way games are getting smaller with dlc left out so it can be sold later.
Those with passion for the gaming industry like programmers, designers and writers are being removed from the helm of gaming companies and being replaced by business suits. What do you think is more likely to happen? An explosion of creativity and gameplay styles, or the remarketing of the same old products redesigned to milk as much cash out of players as they can?