If that were the case one could always just play an older MMO. I know several that are still in existence. I play Ryzom and it wsa released around the time of WoW and has some of the features I have come to really enjoy from the older generation of MMOs. I happen to think that older MMOs are the better ones.
Lets just pretend for a moment, just pretend, those are the two main issues that the old-school-players want in their game. If they want them, how come you say “no one wants them”? Are they no one?
As a financial force, no they are not. Just because one guy somewhere wants some bizarre game mechanic doesn't mean their desire is worth taking into consideration. Games are all about making money. Either you bring a large contingent of people to the table that can pay enough to make the game mechanic worthwhile (while not having a mechanic that drives away other paying players) or you're not going to get what you want.
Nor should you.
So now it's no one to one person. There is just no reasoning, end of line.
1. There us no old school MMO because there isn't a market for it.
2. No company has been smart enough to exploit the huge potential market.
Why hasn't there been a true old school for 10 years and hundreds of game launches? My bet is on number 1. If you think number 2 is true you have an excellent opportunity to get rich.
No there isnt anyway to know about a present full feature MMO sandbox....but those of ya that keep spouting on about games like SWG sure indeed were the niche before WOW.
The biggest sandbox to date is EVE with ~350k....and it still doesnt top EQ1 sub numbers from 04 era which stood at 450k.
You guys belong to the virtual reality/sims clubs of America....which wasnt popular among us longtime video-gamers back then. Well before MMOs went mainstream, bringing in a mulititude of newer gamers which joined in the WOW phase.
That's right it was a niche, where were these "longtime video-gamers" when many of us were playing MUD's before we developed them into what is now called old school mmorpg's? Most of the pioneers of the old school mmorpg's were mud developers, and old school mmorpg's reflected that.
See, I don't care about WoW, I played it for a bit and it's not the experience the niche has been playing for years. If people want to play WoW, that's fine, but when they go to all the other game sites and say we want this and we want that and the devs listen to them because of their numbers, well it destroys that niche, especially in the end when they wind up not playing those games and they are left for ghost towns.
Well, you can't really blame developers to listen to their customers. Niches are being destroyed everyday in the business world. Corner independent bookstore is giving way to B&N, Borders & Amazon. There is no going back. Ditto for MMORPGs.
If you don't want to move forward with the genre, be left behind and play niche games.
Plus, "they" have as much right to go to game sites and state what THEY want as you.
Which is cool. It's just more often than not the "THEY" you refer to get down right beligerent with the "they" that I guess you'd put me into for even mentioning some of the things I'd like. Outright attack mode. Evidence here on these forums and on the TOR forums if it is required. Rarely do I see those coming from my side of the table (not all of whom I agree with on every little feature) launch a nuclear verbal attack on another for liking a certain style of gameplay. I can count, for certain, 3-4 individuals in this thread who have and if they had addressed me in the real world, face to face, in this manner they'd be on their way to a hospital (or worse) and I'd be on my way to county or federal.
I still just don't see why it's so terrible to have AAA versions that appeal to both sides. Currently AAA means around 300K to 500K subscriptions. A goal which both types can achieve.
Really Khal? You wanna play that "We are innocent card"?
How many "if you dont enjoy sandbox games you are an idiot" threads have you spouted out in alone? It is an epidemic on this site....the same threads basically re-gurgitated ad-nauseum.
The bottom line is this....even before WoW, themeparks controlled the NA subs charts thanks to my native EQ1. The thing it did share with old sandboxes was the persistent open world. Later themeparks have gotten away from it to their detriment. Instead many went with instance hubs, thus further diminishing the role of communites.
With the influx of new gamers, of the WoW generation, it has further pushed the ratios of those who prefer directed content vs those who are content to sit around the camp fire telling stories. Which goes back to the analogy I ripped from a DnD book I once read....Role Play vs Roll Play. Roll players(be it PVE or PVP) far outnumber the Role players(tradeskills and dedicated role players). The proportions arent even close.
As far as what constitutes the AAA rating...I would disagree. I would think of it more in terms of budget used to produce a game. The sandbox crowd should be looking to indie developers. CCP as a prime example of what happens if folks support their sandbox style. Pity other games havent had that fortune(Ryzom/DF/etc).
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
1. There us no old school MMO because there isn't a market for it.
2. No company has been smart enough to exploit the huge potential market.
Why hasn't there been a true old school for 10 years and hundreds of game launches? My bet is on number 1. If you think number 2 is true you have an excellent opportunity to get rich.
Note that these old school stuff have been TRIED. It is not like they are new or innovative or anything. There are good reasons why they are abandoned.
1. There us no old school MMO because there isn't a market for it.
2. No company has been smart enough to exploit the huge potential market.
Why hasn't there been a true old school for 10 years and hundreds of game launches? My bet is on number 1. If you think number 2 is true you have an excellent opportunity to get rich.
Note that these old school stuff have been TRIED. It is not like they are new or innovative or anything. There are good reasons why they are abandoned.
Neither of these options is right.
No, there is no HUGE potential market to be exploited...
There is just no market in which a HUGE profit can be attained.
Make no mistake... there is a market for old school (walked uphill both ways in the snow) gaming values . It's just a small market. Oh snap I said the "S" word.
It was abandoned because it isn't going to make stockholders obscenely wealthy due to the fact that old school stuff does not cater to the lowest common intellectual denominator. You know the people that don't actually know anything just look everything up on google.
The current trend is developing for no-patience, no-thinking, no-time to game gamers. Of which there are more of those than patient, thinking, dedicated hard core gamers.
The kids that do actually have the time to play, have never been exposed to games that actually take some effort, so you can't blame them, they are just innocent bystanders sucked up in the whirlwind or money hungry game companies, and since they know nothing else, they are also less likely to accept something different.
That, my friends, is the real reason, the reason which governs almost everything... the almighty $.
1. There us no old school MMO because there isn't a market for it.
2. No company has been smart enough to exploit the huge potential market.
Why hasn't there been a true old school for 10 years and hundreds of game launches? My bet is on number 1. If you think number 2 is true you have an excellent opportunity to get rich.
Note that these old school stuff have been TRIED. It is not like they are new or innovative or anything. There are good reasons why they are abandoned.
No, there is no HUGE potential market...
There is just no market in which a HUGE profit can be attained.
Make no mistake... there is a market for "these old school stuff".
It was abandoned because it isn't going to make stockholders obscenely wealthy due to the fact that "these old school stuff" does not cater to the lowest common intellectual denominator.
That, my friends, is the real reason, the reason which governs almost everything... the almighty $.
Oh please, get off your high horse. There was no more intellect needed for old school games, just more patience. I played MMO's before I started college and after I finished college. I have enjoyd the ones after I finished a lot more than the once i played before. By most standards I have become more intellectual after my education thus negating your point from my situation.
Gamas are not made by charitable organizations, nor have they ever been. So yes, it's all about the dollars. Just like its always been.
With the influx of new gamers, of the WoW generation, it has further pushed the ratios of those who prefer directed content vs those who are content to sit around the camp fire telling stories.
You get back into the bad formula, this "WoW generation" (fork in the road) is locked onto World of Warcraft. Many of these only started playing mmo's because Blizzard got into the market, hear of Warcraft, Diablo, Star Craft? RTS's and Hanck-n-Slash, not mmorpg's. But it's Blizzard, so they took the carrot, and nothing else will do no matter how much they pester other game companies into doing their bidding.
Publishers are stuck on this phenomenon, they think they can abandon the traditional mmorpg style and draw from the 10 million subscriber pool, looks like big money, but they just cant break it, they have been trying for a few years now wile they loose their subscriber base or fail on start-ups. In the end, they fail and collect food stamps. At some point some will return, start new projects with the mmorpg community in mind, and their games will float as they did before. But they are only beginning to realize the rude awakening now as once popular games (now changed) of the mmorpg community fail and new ones are ignored by the fickled Blizzard players.
I agree on one point though, at least in part, the indie community is getting there, maybe not the spectacular graphics that the people seeking carrots want (better than awful though), but the engines and features are emerging for the core mmorpg players to get back to community based gaming. Not the end, but may be for a time as publishers work on finally getting a clue and then spend the years to dev mmorpg’s again, with both ‘m’s’. That may happen before or when Blizzard releases the next carrot an all their players funnel to that game, which may not necessarily be an mog.
Oh please, get off your high horse. There was no more intellect needed for old school games, just more patience. I played MMO's before I started college and after I finished college. I have enjoyd the ones after I finished a lot more than the once i played before. By most standards I have become more intellectual after my education thus negating your point from my situation.
Gamas are not made by charitable organizations, nor have they ever been. So yes, it's all about the dollars. Just like its always been.
I know... the truth hurts.
Try not to take it too personally.
Even in your rebuttle, you confirmed my entire post with your last sentence.
We are all entitled to our opinions, even the impatient.
I find it amusing and disturbing that anyone who appreciates thought provoking, patience and critical thinking are pounced upon with such disdain when speaking against the masses.
1. There us no old school MMO because there isn't a market for it.
2. No company has been smart enough to exploit the huge potential market.
Why hasn't there been a true old school for 10 years and hundreds of game launches? My bet is on number 1. If you think number 2 is true you have an excellent opportunity to get rich.
Note that these old school stuff have been TRIED. It is not like they are new or innovative or anything. There are good reasons why they are abandoned.
Neither of these options is right.
No, there is no HUGE potential market to be exploited...
There is just no market in which a HUGE profit can be attained.
Make no mistake... there is a market for old school (walked uphill both ways in the snow) gaming values .
It was abandoned because it isn't going to make stockholders obscenely wealthy due to the fact that old school stuff does not cater to the lowest common intellectual denominator. You know the people that don't actually know anything just look everything up on google. This is the current trend, developing for no-patience, no-thinking, no-time to game gamers. Of which there are more of those than patient, thinking, dedicated hard core gamers.
That, my friends, is the real reason, the reason which governs almost everything... the almighty $.
^This.
Despite the ridiculous arguments between console players and pc players, game developers have been saying for years that every genre has been growing every single year to date. If there were 5 million mmo players, or old school, pre-WoW, there are probably more than 20 million after WoW. Of course the AAA companies know that it was the casual themepark nature of WoW that brought most of those players. And they are just going to chase that money. But to say there is zero market, or even more ridiculous, that that style was dying, is absurd.
This threat asked a simple question directed to people who currently don't have many options to their style of play. And not surprisingly, the same 4 to 5 members show up to tear it down, and turn it into an argument. You really don't understand why these threads pop up? You have literally, as stated by yourselves, hundreds of choices. We have, what... 3? And they are all bloody FFA PvP games, which I don't care for personally.
If the answer is because some old schoolers belittle the new players, yeah, I agree its taken too far often. But in the same light, most of your counter-arguments ( again, why does it always have to devolve into arguments when you already have tons of games in your playstyle? ) are taking the most extreme forms of the old game, or even better, mechanics which didn't work, and brushing the whole genre with those.
Open FFA PvP, huge worthless downtime ( 30 min boat rides or whatever ), harsh death penalties and spawn camping does not have to represent the old mechanics, just as pointless kill boars quests, cartoony graphics and instanced only battlegrounds do not represent themeparks. Those are all just flawed designs that should be improved. I would bet even your favorite game has stuff in it you don't like.
As always, people devolve into arguing for the sake of arguing, with exaggerated facts and idiotic conclusions.
Even for those in which your comment is true am I to sit here and to believe that the possibility totally escapes your mind that an inherent "but adjusted" variable is also in play here? Or do they have to specifiy it to you with each feature they mention? Sure, I think I could be on board with ditching instances and going back to camping mobs? I also think that each mob should be evaluated as to whether it is a high traffic quest mob or a rare item quest mob, and that the game should look at how many people are in the area with that quest and adjust up or down the spawn times.
That won't help with high-end characters who are camping the boss for the rare drop so they can sell it or give it to lower-level toons. That happens all the time, I've seen groups of top-end characters camping rare drop mobs for weeks or months at a time, 24/7. Every time it respawns, they kill it, they get the drop, they get to set the prices on the sales because they're the only ones who can get the item. Making it respawn faster won't help, it'll just make those characters richer.
Besides, even if you're going to modify the old-school elements, you'd have to modify them so dramatically in most cases that the old-schoolers wouldn't want to play. It's a matter of financial stability vs. minority desires. There was a discusison around here not too long ago about scaling mobs. They get harder and act differently depending on whether a soloer is playing or a group, therefore everyone gets a challenge and the game doesn't cater to one gameplay style over another. The groupers hated it, they wanted mobs to *ONLY* work for groupers, they wanted it to be absurdly hard so that no soloer ould ever do the content and they'd be forced to group. That's exactly the same thing that I foresee with modifying old-school content. Either it stays primarily old-school, which will drive away the majority mainstream players, or it changes so much that the old-school players keep complaining. I'm not seeing a middle ground.
I doubt that anyone really wants to wait 30 minutes on a a boat, for example. That said, I see nothing wrong with a 5 or 10 minutes wait. If anything it'll give those with ADD who cower at that little bit of time a chance to go to the bathroom, get a drink/smoke or go check on their kids/check facebook/make pub plans (for those who complain that they don't want downtime because they "have a life").
Funny, people were saying they liked it in this very thread. They hailed the downtime as forced socialization because you really had nothing else to do and if people weren't talking, at least they could be beating each other's brains out. I'd have a problem with a 5 or 10 minute wait because my playtime is limited and valuable. I'm playing to have a good time, to be entertained. I'd no more sit around waiting for a boat in a game that I'm paying for than I would go to a movie and sit around for 10 minutes watching a blank screen in the middle.
That's the problem (as I see it and I'm certainly not suggesting you you see it). Those older systems haven't seen subsequent iterations. They instead were dumped sum total for something totally else and the people that loved them but knew they could do with a little tweaking here or there were left hanging in the wind. And those aren't the only features that get brought up. As I said before, those are just the ones some folks keep focusing on because of the possible shock value they can get out of them in a counter argument. Especially when they don't even acknowledge that time variable of those, which seems to be causing all the fuss, can be pared down a little to not be as extreme as before but not be so insignificant.
They were dumped because they didn't make the cut. They were evolutionary dead ends. The majority of people who liked them moved on to WoW-style games, as well as the millions of mainstream players who would never have played UO or EQ to begin with. The marketplace changed, you have to deal with it.
You're missing the point that to many, perhaps most players, *ANY* time variable will be too extreme and these are the people who pay the bills of MMO developers. I don't want to wait 30 minutes to have fun. I don't want to wait 10 minutes to have fun. I want to have fun right now. That's what I'm paying for. I'll bet you anything that if you gated off an area with a 10 minute boat ride, that area would die a slow, lingering death. People just wouldn't do it and if they had to, they'd complain long and loud about how long it took. That's the MMO marketplace today and they have a lot more money than your group does, by several orders of magnitude. Who do you think will get catered to?
And ultimately, I haven't seen one single person who likes the old school style demanding that all future games be made in that manner such that everyone has to play those type games. They're just looking for one modern made game to capture those things made by a company who has the money to even be in this business in the first place.
What you miss is that every game out there has to make money. All of them. So you can't ask that some company throw away their financial future and millions of dollars in investor money to make your tiny little niche group happy. The companies who have money have it because they make intelligent business decisions. They know who their audience is and what their audience wants. Unfortunately for you, the vast majority of MMO players do not want what you want. It would be a crapshoot to even try to modify old-school mechanics into a new-school game for the reasons I outlined above. There's no guarantee that *ANYONE* would like it and that's millions of dollars and years of development down the drain if they're wrong.
So yes, it is too much to ask for a single game to cater to your minority playstyle, at least unless you can demonstrate that such a game has as much potential to make as much money as a modern day game would. But every time I bring that up, old-schoolers whine "It's not our job!" Of course it is. You want the game, you have to show it's financially viable. Of course, I think the old-schoolers know that it isn't, which is why they don't even try. It's easier to whine about something you know is wrong than to try and prove it and have everyone else know it's wrong too.
If you played as much as you type in forums, you would be a hardcore gamer. In fact I don't think you should have an issue with downtime to chat in a game. That is what we do on these forums and we keep coming back.
First off a game can't and shouldn't please both. I can honestly say I do hate 80 % + of Wowplayers. They know nothing about MMORPG's but still claiming they'd have a clue, its obvious most of them don't. This thread is the best proof for the big of returning old school mechanics. If things like long downtime, campspots, no instances and slow progression are keeping people like uquipu, Aercus, nariusseldon and Cephus away --->instant better community.
If I've learned one thing from the ez-mode MMO's (they aren't really MMORPG's) its this: give the instant crowd one finger and they'll ask for the full hand -->endless dumbing down. Hell this whole thing wouldn't even be a problem, if our beloved games were still the same but because of some stupid greedy companies they all got dumbed down to please a crowd that already has a game. Vanguard could have become our new home its so sad what happened to this game, hopefully FF14 will be our next savior without having to deal with the ROLLplaying crow, we want to play ROLEplaying games. If you can't deal with down time, camp spots and slow progression leave the game alone better for everyone
as a side note: had WAR tried a more oldschool (Daoc fashioned) skin the game wouldn't gimp at a 100k base, they'd have 500k + and a loyal playerbase. There is a really big market for oldschool games just the stupid big dogs are blindsided by the game that shall not be named.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
1. There us no old school MMO because there isn't a market for it.
2. No company has been smart enough to exploit the huge potential market.
Why hasn't there been a true old school for 10 years and hundreds of game launches? My bet is on number 1. If you think number 2 is true you have an excellent opportunity to get rich.
Note that these old school stuff have been TRIED. It is not like they are new or innovative or anything. There are good reasons why they are abandoned.
Exactly. If there was a huge market for old-school MMOs, people would be making old-school MMOs. The market goes where the money is. If there is no money in old-school MMOs, which clearly there isn't, then the market won't go there.
It's not difficult if you actually think about it, but a lot of these people are reacting entirely emotionally, not intellectually. They want it, whether or not they have any rational reason to think they can get it. Then they treat it like a giant conspiracy by the MMO industry to specifically deny them these wildly popular games that would make billions if anyone ever made them, but they're not, just out of spite.
Oh please, get off your high horse. There was no more intellect needed for old school games, just more patience. I played MMO's before I started college and after I finished college. I have enjoyd the ones after I finished a lot more than the once i played before. By most standards I have become more intellectual after my education thus negating your point from my situation.
Gamas are not made by charitable organizations, nor have they ever been. So yes, it's all about the dollars. Just like its always been.
I know... the truth hurts.
Try not to take it too personally.
Even in your rebuttle, you confirmed my entire post with your last sentence.
We are all entitled to our opinions, even the impatient.
I find it amusing and disturbing that anyone who appreciates thought provoking, patience and critical thinking are pounced upon with such disdain when speaking against the masses.
Please ... it is laughable to think that EQ needs any "thought provoking, patience and critical thinking" .. I was there.
All you need is time. Sit there and wait 10 min before the next xp grind. What is there to think about? You repeat the SAME damn fight 100000x to gain xp to level up. If that is thought provoking .. then watching pain dry is thought provoking.
At least there are MORE types of mobs to fight diong WOW quests and you get to do different stuff.
Oh please, get off your high horse. There was no more intellect needed for old school games, just more patience. I played MMO's before I started college and after I finished college. I have enjoyd the ones after I finished a lot more than the once i played before. By most standards I have become more intellectual after my education thus negating your point from my situation.
Gamas are not made by charitable organizations, nor have they ever been. So yes, it's all about the dollars. Just like its always been.
I know... the truth hurts.
Try not to take it too personally.
Even in your rebuttle, you confirmed my entire post with your last sentence.
We are all entitled to our opinions, even the impatient.
I find it amusing and disturbing that anyone who appreciates thought provoking, patience and critical thinking are pounced upon with such disdain when speaking against the masses.
Ah.. An excellent reason why the old school gamers should be allowed to retire. Are you telling me that you are superior to me because your ability to play a game which I didn't care for?
Who wants it back? Obviouisly its those who's lives haven't changed a bit since 1989. Can anyone with a family honestly admit that being glued to a PC for hours at a time is healthy? Will anyone with a family camp a boss mob at 4am on a Tuesday? Face it. Most of the old schoolers have moved on, grew up, got married and can't play old school games anymore because everything that made them old school depended on huge blocks of time commitment that anyone with a family doesn't have.
Forced grouping? Lots of time commitment. Face it, you're not forming groups and getting all that much accomplished in an hour when you add the following factors oldschoolers need..
Downtime? Obvious time sink.
Travel time? Time sink
Harsh Death penalty? Time sink.
Put it all together and you're glued to the PC all over again.
Everything else oldschool games had, new games have basically improved, so I don't see the point of bringing back time sinks to make the extreme minority happy.
If the market was there, it would be exploited. It doesn't need to be a blockbuster, but why waste all the resources and effort as a large corporation if you're not going to see a return. Old schoolers are in niche territiry which is exactly what the original MMO were. NICHE games.
In MMO's I started in the "gateway/bridge era", games like Asheron's Call 2. The "DOS love thread" shows I've been a far older single player gamer than that. (C64|Atari2600|Coleco|Intellivision era)
Bring back AC2 and it will satisfy me realistically.
Ideally give me back exploration and make caravans instead of recalls. Through merchants, I should have everything I need for a long haul but at the same time eventually need to come back towards civilization.
Make a way to defeat the online strategy and map posters.
I'm against min-maxing and don't want myself, or my group, to be a slave to the mechanic but merely a proponent of the journey. It's the reason I think the above suffers. It should be a mystery not how many times you ran the dungeon.
The fallacy about new MMO’s is that as they are newer they must be better designed. We can all remember reasons why we disliked old MMO’s, this is about realising that every new element of MMO design is not necessarily the best option. Some examples and the reasoning behind them:
We need a death penalty that is harsher than a tiny debuff but more easy mode than corpse looting. So here I don’t advocate a return to old school, more a rebalancing.
We need all the old RP tools back like races having their own language which others could slowly learn by being around them when they used it. Allowing people to own and run their own shops and so on. Here I want what we had before and have lost with nothing to replace it.
Finally we need to learn the lessons of the past, 3 way RvR works better than 2 way and so on. Retroing certain elements of MMO design and innovation in current design are the way forward.
What we need are more well-realized virtual *worlds*... and not merely "games".
I can completely relate to the OP and those here who have voiced similar opinions. If you could show me a world where I'm dropped in the middle of nowhere and told "Here you are. Here's the world around you and everything it offers... Have at it"... I would be in heaven. No ? or ! or other indicators over NPCs heads, turning them from denizens of a virtual world into Quest Vending Machines. No quest helpers showing me exactly where to go, or "sparklies" or "glowing" effects on quest items showing me exactly where they are. Give me quest dialog, in the form of conversation, that includes important hints of where I'm going and what I need to be looking for, and let me put the pieces together myself.
Give me a death penalty that's more than a mere "slap on the wrist". I'm not made of glass, I'm not going to freak out if I lose xp once in a while from dying - particularly in a game that I'm spending 100s of hours on potentially over the course of many months, or even years if it keeps me interested that long. If I'm dying often enough that it becomes a problem, then I'm doing something wrong.
I'm not in a hurry to get to the end-game, so I don't care how long it takes to level. Leveling is a given, to me... not a goal. If you're out in the game playing, doing things, exploring, fighting, questing, etc... you're going to get experience and you're going to level regardless. Make the experience of playing the game entertaining and engaging enough and I dont' care if it takes me 3 years to get to "the end" - which a MMO shouldn't have anyway. To me, too many newer MMOs are "all about the end game" and so the lower level game suffers significantly.
What's kinda funny about the whole thing is that even many proponents of the newer, post-WoW games are getting fed up with the playstyle. They're getting bored of the constant raid grinding for better loot... They're getting bored of the same game repackaged in a new skin.
The answer to that - to some of us - is to try a MMO that's more "old school"... where the journey is what's important... not the destination. Of course to do that, they have to learn to take their time and stop trying to race through everything as though some trophy awaits them at the finish line. The way you approach a MMO - or any game, really - has a huge influence on how much you will enjoy it.
There's an interesting and very observable division between playstyles in terms of which one is getting the most out of a given MMO they choose to play.
The first is what I'll call the "End-Gamer". To them, a MMO is all about getting to that finish line. It's all about getting through the low and mid level content, which many of them consider "pointless filler", to get to the end game so they can raid for all the "phat lewt"... then complain because they've run out of things to do and the game sucks and they're going to the newest MMO to do the whole thing over again. They may roll a few alts before finally moving on. A given MMO will not keep them satisfied for very long because they have decided that 80% of it is "useless" and not worth their time, and so they're repeating the same 20% or so over and over and over... Of *course* they're going to get bored. Who wouldn't?
Yet, none of them - at least that I've seen - will ever stop to consider that perhaps their own playstyle is the problem. Nope.. it's just that the developers "don't get it". In every new MMO they go to they're *certain* the developers will "get it", and provide that elusive end-game that they crave... only to reach the same burn-out time and again, always blaming the developers on their way out the door to the *next* new MMO...
The second category is what I'll call the "Adventurer". The Adventurer enjoys the journey, sees everything in the game - from level 1 up - as content there to be engaged in. They get into and enjoy the community such a game can foster. They don't do anything for the "phat lewt" alone, but for the fun of doing it. They can take a year to get a single character to level cap and it wouldn't phase them, because they're enjoying the game to its fullest along the way. To them, there is no "lack of content", because they're not skipping past it all. After the "End Gamer" has moved on to their 4th or 5th MMO, repeating their race to end game burn-out over and over again, the Adventurer is still cruising along in their first MMO, having a ball and with no intention of leaving.
Now... one of these playstyles is getting the most of what a MMO can offer... the other isn't.
But given that context, it's understandable why the "End Gamer" would find the "old-school" setup so undesirable... becuase it doesn't let them race to end game as quickly as they want. Old-school MMOs are "too slow" to them only because they're in a hurry. To those who are there to experience the world in its entirety, the pacing is just fine.
Anyway.. that's my take.
That said, I think I'd like to see some more old school style MMOs being given attention as a viable alternative. Those who prefer the faster-paced post-WoW MMOs have their pick, and there's no need to begrudge them that, though there are a very vocal group of people who seem intent on doing just that. *They* don't enjoy the old-school playstyle... so it shouldn't exist for anyone. There is a market that would enjoy the more old-school approach as well, and I don't think they should be begrudged that either.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Please ... it is laughable to think that EQ needs any "thought provoking, patience and critical thinking" .. I was there.
All you need is time. Sit there and wait 10 min before the next xp grind. What is there to think about? You repeat the SAME damn fight 100000x to gain xp to level up. If that is thought provoking .. then watching pain dry is thought provoking.
Of course it does. Do you know how difficult it is to come up with witty banter on a relentless basis while trying to find your buddy's corpse or waiting for your camp to respawn? Not to mention when you get into arguments over who has the rights to the area being camped or trying to come up with new, refreshing way to warn the zone about the mobs you're training.
>_>
<_<
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Most people seem to think that there is no market for many of the features from older mmo's.
I don't think this is true; I have played mmo's since the very start, and when me and my friends go out for a beer and obviously get into 'do you remember when...' our 'new' friends who started their mmo experience with World of warcraft, or Age of Connan, Warhammer etc, always go blank
What do you mean, you could build your own house? In an instance you mean, or how, in the world? Didn't it get crowded?
Guild houses? Guild run towns, with their own transportation system, shops, defence structures, guard npc's, mayor.
Different stats on the 'same' weapon/armor/veichle because the crafter found a rare material to make it from? How did they balance that?
What, the game masters showed them self in game and hosted events?
Capture a baby animal and raise it to become a mount and fight companion? Any baby animal can be tamed? And also sold to other players?
Fields of rows of over 200 mining machines going 24/7 and a caravan of lowbies working extra to carry the ore to the factories? (And in some cases high levels who patrolled the area to protect the runners from other faction)
No levels? You started out as a commoner and can learn different profession and master them. Later on if you get bored, drop some skills and focus on a new goal. No alts, just one character, that could be 'all' that. (Just not at the same time
I think large games such as Wow, warhammer etc has brought a lot of new players to the mmo market, and those player has never experienced the old content, thus it is impossible to say that 'there is not market for it'.
(If this was mentioned in a previous reply, sorry if I missed it)
Please ... it is laughable to think that EQ needs any "thought provoking, patience and critical thinking" .. I was there.
All you need is time. Sit there and wait 10 min before the next xp grind. What is there to think about? You repeat the SAME damn fight 100000x to gain xp to level up. If that is thought provoking .. then watching pain dry is thought provoking.
Of course it does. Do you know how difficult it is to come up with witty banter on a relentless basis while trying to find your buddy's corpse or waiting for your camp to respawn? Not to mention when you get into arguments over who has the rights to the area being camped or trying to come up with new, refreshing way to warn the zone about the mobs you're training.
>_>
<_<
hahahah .. yeah ... I camped this one boss for 6 hours once (NEVER did such a stupid thing again) and it was pretty hard to come up with conversations after the first 3 hrs.
Don't worry for sure theres a market its just the "I know nothing but I claim to do so" crowd thinking they have a say because they played some post 2005 MMO's. You can easily make more money with an oldschool game than an half assed braindead "the game that shouldnt be named" clone why? Its easy people liking this style of gameplay will play it forever so its time focusing on the people wanting something more challenging and different.
Take a look at all the failed games. Warhammer, Lotro, Age of Conan, Everquest 2, Champions Online, Star Trek Online (not a MMO), Tabula Rasa, Hellgate London ... all are as easy as it gets and failed to succeed. Oldschool will bring you a good healthy loyal playerbase without the scum the post 2005 era brought into the genre.
Only problem good companies such as Sigil are making wonrg decissions by partnering with the industry devils.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Don't worry for sure theres a market its just the "I know nothing but I claim to do so" crowd thinking they have a say because they played some post 2005 MMO's.
Oldschool will bring you a good healthy loyal playerbase without the scum the post 2005 era brought into the genre.
Really now, scum? A bit overdramatic don't you think?
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
MMOs sell more than ever no thanks to the old school mechanics. They were dropped for a reason. Mainly because they are not fun or not worth the effort of implementing.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Comments
If that were the case one could always just play an older MMO. I know several that are still in existence. I play Ryzom and it wsa released around the time of WoW and has some of the features I have come to really enjoy from the older generation of MMOs. I happen to think that older MMOs are the better ones.
www.ryzom.com
So now it's no one to one person. There is just no reasoning, end of line.
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.
In the end it boils down to one of two things:
1. There us no old school MMO because there isn't a market for it.
2. No company has been smart enough to exploit the huge potential market.
Why hasn't there been a true old school for 10 years and hundreds of game launches? My bet is on number 1. If you think number 2 is true you have an excellent opportunity to get rich.
Really Khal? You wanna play that "We are innocent card"?
How many "if you dont enjoy sandbox games you are an idiot" threads have you spouted out in alone? It is an epidemic on this site....the same threads basically re-gurgitated ad-nauseum.
The bottom line is this....even before WoW, themeparks controlled the NA subs charts thanks to my native EQ1. The thing it did share with old sandboxes was the persistent open world. Later themeparks have gotten away from it to their detriment. Instead many went with instance hubs, thus further diminishing the role of communites.
With the influx of new gamers, of the WoW generation, it has further pushed the ratios of those who prefer directed content vs those who are content to sit around the camp fire telling stories. Which goes back to the analogy I ripped from a DnD book I once read....Role Play vs Roll Play. Roll players(be it PVE or PVP) far outnumber the Role players(tradeskills and dedicated role players). The proportions arent even close.
As far as what constitutes the AAA rating...I would disagree. I would think of it more in terms of budget used to produce a game. The sandbox crowd should be looking to indie developers. CCP as a prime example of what happens if folks support their sandbox style. Pity other games havent had that fortune(Ryzom/DF/etc).
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Well said. I would place money on #1 too.
Note that these old school stuff have been TRIED. It is not like they are new or innovative or anything. There are good reasons why they are abandoned.
Neither of these options is right.
No, there is no HUGE potential market to be exploited...
There is just no market in which a HUGE profit can be attained.
Make no mistake... there is a market for old school (walked uphill both ways in the snow) gaming values . It's just a small market. Oh snap I said the "S" word.
It was abandoned because it isn't going to make stockholders obscenely wealthy due to the fact that old school stuff does not cater to the lowest common intellectual denominator. You know the people that don't actually know anything just look everything up on google.
The current trend is developing for no-patience, no-thinking, no-time to game gamers. Of which there are more of those than patient, thinking, dedicated hard core gamers.
The kids that do actually have the time to play, have never been exposed to games that actually take some effort, so you can't blame them, they are just innocent bystanders sucked up in the whirlwind or money hungry game companies, and since they know nothing else, they are also less likely to accept something different.
That, my friends, is the real reason, the reason which governs almost everything... the almighty $.
Oh please, get off your high horse. There was no more intellect needed for old school games, just more patience. I played MMO's before I started college and after I finished college. I have enjoyd the ones after I finished a lot more than the once i played before. By most standards I have become more intellectual after my education thus negating your point from my situation.
Gamas are not made by charitable organizations, nor have they ever been. So yes, it's all about the dollars. Just like its always been.
You get back into the bad formula, this "WoW generation" (fork in the road) is locked onto World of Warcraft. Many of these only started playing mmo's because Blizzard got into the market, hear of Warcraft, Diablo, Star Craft? RTS's and Hanck-n-Slash, not mmorpg's. But it's Blizzard, so they took the carrot, and nothing else will do no matter how much they pester other game companies into doing their bidding.
Publishers are stuck on this phenomenon, they think they can abandon the traditional mmorpg style and draw from the 10 million subscriber pool, looks like big money, but they just cant break it, they have been trying for a few years now wile they loose their subscriber base or fail on start-ups. In the end, they fail and collect food stamps. At some point some will return, start new projects with the mmorpg community in mind, and their games will float as they did before. But they are only beginning to realize the rude awakening now as once popular games (now changed) of the mmorpg community fail and new ones are ignored by the fickled Blizzard players.
I agree on one point though, at least in part, the indie community is getting there, maybe not the spectacular graphics that the people seeking carrots want (better than awful though), but the engines and features are emerging for the core mmorpg players to get back to community based gaming. Not the end, but may be for a time as publishers work on finally getting a clue and then spend the years to dev mmorpg’s again, with both ‘m’s’. That may happen before or when Blizzard releases the next carrot an all their players funnel to that game, which may not necessarily be an mog.
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.
I know... the truth hurts.
Try not to take it too personally.
Even in your rebuttle, you confirmed my entire post with your last sentence.
We are all entitled to our opinions, even the impatient.
I find it amusing and disturbing that anyone who appreciates thought provoking, patience and critical thinking are pounced upon with such disdain when speaking against the masses.
^This.
Despite the ridiculous arguments between console players and pc players, game developers have been saying for years that every genre has been growing every single year to date. If there were 5 million mmo players, or old school, pre-WoW, there are probably more than 20 million after WoW. Of course the AAA companies know that it was the casual themepark nature of WoW that brought most of those players. And they are just going to chase that money. But to say there is zero market, or even more ridiculous, that that style was dying, is absurd.
This threat asked a simple question directed to people who currently don't have many options to their style of play. And not surprisingly, the same 4 to 5 members show up to tear it down, and turn it into an argument. You really don't understand why these threads pop up? You have literally, as stated by yourselves, hundreds of choices. We have, what... 3? And they are all bloody FFA PvP games, which I don't care for personally.
If the answer is because some old schoolers belittle the new players, yeah, I agree its taken too far often. But in the same light, most of your counter-arguments ( again, why does it always have to devolve into arguments when you already have tons of games in your playstyle? ) are taking the most extreme forms of the old game, or even better, mechanics which didn't work, and brushing the whole genre with those.
Open FFA PvP, huge worthless downtime ( 30 min boat rides or whatever ), harsh death penalties and spawn camping does not have to represent the old mechanics, just as pointless kill boars quests, cartoony graphics and instanced only battlegrounds do not represent themeparks. Those are all just flawed designs that should be improved. I would bet even your favorite game has stuff in it you don't like.
As always, people devolve into arguing for the sake of arguing, with exaggerated facts and idiotic conclusions.
Bravo.
If you played as much as you type in forums, you would be a hardcore gamer. In fact I don't think you should have an issue with downtime to chat in a game. That is what we do on these forums and we keep coming back.
First off a game can't and shouldn't please both. I can honestly say I do hate 80 % + of Wowplayers. They know nothing about MMORPG's but still claiming they'd have a clue, its obvious most of them don't. This thread is the best proof for the big of returning old school mechanics. If things like long downtime, campspots, no instances and slow progression are keeping people like uquipu, Aercus, nariusseldon and Cephus away --->instant better community.
If I've learned one thing from the ez-mode MMO's (they aren't really MMORPG's) its this: give the instant crowd one finger and they'll ask for the full hand -->endless dumbing down. Hell this whole thing wouldn't even be a problem, if our beloved games were still the same but because of some stupid greedy companies they all got dumbed down to please a crowd that already has a game. Vanguard could have become our new home its so sad what happened to this game, hopefully FF14 will be our next savior without having to deal with the ROLLplaying crow, we want to play ROLEplaying games. If you can't deal with down time, camp spots and slow progression leave the game alone better for everyone
as a side note: had WAR tried a more oldschool (Daoc fashioned) skin the game wouldn't gimp at a 100k base, they'd have 500k + and a loyal playerbase. There is a really big market for oldschool games just the stupid big dogs are blindsided by the game that shall not be named.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Prove it. Where is your evidence? Where is your market research? Come on, you're making a claim, now back it up or stop making the claim.
I'll wait.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Exactly. If there was a huge market for old-school MMOs, people would be making old-school MMOs. The market goes where the money is. If there is no money in old-school MMOs, which clearly there isn't, then the market won't go there.
It's not difficult if you actually think about it, but a lot of these people are reacting entirely emotionally, not intellectually. They want it, whether or not they have any rational reason to think they can get it. Then they treat it like a giant conspiracy by the MMO industry to specifically deny them these wildly popular games that would make billions if anyone ever made them, but they're not, just out of spite.
Give me a break.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Please ... it is laughable to think that EQ needs any "thought provoking, patience and critical thinking" .. I was there.
All you need is time. Sit there and wait 10 min before the next xp grind. What is there to think about? You repeat the SAME damn fight 100000x to gain xp to level up. If that is thought provoking .. then watching pain dry is thought provoking.
At least there are MORE types of mobs to fight diong WOW quests and you get to do different stuff.
Ah.. An excellent reason why the old school gamers should be allowed to retire. Are you telling me that you are superior to me because your ability to play a game which I didn't care for?
Who wants it back? Obviouisly its those who's lives haven't changed a bit since 1989. Can anyone with a family honestly admit that being glued to a PC for hours at a time is healthy? Will anyone with a family camp a boss mob at 4am on a Tuesday? Face it. Most of the old schoolers have moved on, grew up, got married and can't play old school games anymore because everything that made them old school depended on huge blocks of time commitment that anyone with a family doesn't have.
Forced grouping? Lots of time commitment. Face it, you're not forming groups and getting all that much accomplished in an hour when you add the following factors oldschoolers need..
Downtime? Obvious time sink.
Travel time? Time sink
Harsh Death penalty? Time sink.
Put it all together and you're glued to the PC all over again.
Everything else oldschool games had, new games have basically improved, so I don't see the point of bringing back time sinks to make the extreme minority happy.
If the market was there, it would be exploited. It doesn't need to be a blockbuster, but why waste all the resources and effort as a large corporation if you're not going to see a return. Old schoolers are in niche territiry which is exactly what the original MMO were. NICHE games.
In MMO's I started in the "gateway/bridge era", games like Asheron's Call 2. The "DOS love thread" shows I've been a far older single player gamer than that. (C64|Atari2600|Coleco|Intellivision era)
Bring back AC2 and it will satisfy me realistically.
Ideally give me back exploration and make caravans instead of recalls. Through merchants, I should have everything I need for a long haul but at the same time eventually need to come back towards civilization.
Make a way to defeat the online strategy and map posters.
I'm against min-maxing and don't want myself, or my group, to be a slave to the mechanic but merely a proponent of the journey. It's the reason I think the above suffers. It should be a mystery not how many times you ran the dungeon.
AC2 Player RIP Final Death Jan 31st 2017
Refugee of Auberean
Refugee of Dereth
What we need are more well-realized virtual *worlds*... and not merely "games".
I can completely relate to the OP and those here who have voiced similar opinions. If you could show me a world where I'm dropped in the middle of nowhere and told "Here you are. Here's the world around you and everything it offers... Have at it"... I would be in heaven. No ? or ! or other indicators over NPCs heads, turning them from denizens of a virtual world into Quest Vending Machines. No quest helpers showing me exactly where to go, or "sparklies" or "glowing" effects on quest items showing me exactly where they are. Give me quest dialog, in the form of conversation, that includes important hints of where I'm going and what I need to be looking for, and let me put the pieces together myself.
Give me a death penalty that's more than a mere "slap on the wrist". I'm not made of glass, I'm not going to freak out if I lose xp once in a while from dying - particularly in a game that I'm spending 100s of hours on potentially over the course of many months, or even years if it keeps me interested that long. If I'm dying often enough that it becomes a problem, then I'm doing something wrong.
I'm not in a hurry to get to the end-game, so I don't care how long it takes to level. Leveling is a given, to me... not a goal. If you're out in the game playing, doing things, exploring, fighting, questing, etc... you're going to get experience and you're going to level regardless. Make the experience of playing the game entertaining and engaging enough and I dont' care if it takes me 3 years to get to "the end" - which a MMO shouldn't have anyway. To me, too many newer MMOs are "all about the end game" and so the lower level game suffers significantly.
What's kinda funny about the whole thing is that even many proponents of the newer, post-WoW games are getting fed up with the playstyle. They're getting bored of the constant raid grinding for better loot... They're getting bored of the same game repackaged in a new skin.
The answer to that - to some of us - is to try a MMO that's more "old school"... where the journey is what's important... not the destination. Of course to do that, they have to learn to take their time and stop trying to race through everything as though some trophy awaits them at the finish line. The way you approach a MMO - or any game, really - has a huge influence on how much you will enjoy it.
There's an interesting and very observable division between playstyles in terms of which one is getting the most out of a given MMO they choose to play.
The first is what I'll call the "End-Gamer". To them, a MMO is all about getting to that finish line. It's all about getting through the low and mid level content, which many of them consider "pointless filler", to get to the end game so they can raid for all the "phat lewt"... then complain because they've run out of things to do and the game sucks and they're going to the newest MMO to do the whole thing over again. They may roll a few alts before finally moving on. A given MMO will not keep them satisfied for very long because they have decided that 80% of it is "useless" and not worth their time, and so they're repeating the same 20% or so over and over and over... Of *course* they're going to get bored. Who wouldn't?
Yet, none of them - at least that I've seen - will ever stop to consider that perhaps their own playstyle is the problem. Nope.. it's just that the developers "don't get it". In every new MMO they go to they're *certain* the developers will "get it", and provide that elusive end-game that they crave... only to reach the same burn-out time and again, always blaming the developers on their way out the door to the *next* new MMO...
The second category is what I'll call the "Adventurer". The Adventurer enjoys the journey, sees everything in the game - from level 1 up - as content there to be engaged in. They get into and enjoy the community such a game can foster. They don't do anything for the "phat lewt" alone, but for the fun of doing it. They can take a year to get a single character to level cap and it wouldn't phase them, because they're enjoying the game to its fullest along the way. To them, there is no "lack of content", because they're not skipping past it all. After the "End Gamer" has moved on to their 4th or 5th MMO, repeating their race to end game burn-out over and over again, the Adventurer is still cruising along in their first MMO, having a ball and with no intention of leaving.
Now... one of these playstyles is getting the most of what a MMO can offer... the other isn't.
But given that context, it's understandable why the "End Gamer" would find the "old-school" setup so undesirable... becuase it doesn't let them race to end game as quickly as they want. Old-school MMOs are "too slow" to them only because they're in a hurry. To those who are there to experience the world in its entirety, the pacing is just fine.
Anyway.. that's my take.
That said, I think I'd like to see some more old school style MMOs being given attention as a viable alternative. Those who prefer the faster-paced post-WoW MMOs have their pick, and there's no need to begrudge them that, though there are a very vocal group of people who seem intent on doing just that. *They* don't enjoy the old-school playstyle... so it shouldn't exist for anyone. There is a market that would enjoy the more old-school approach as well, and I don't think they should be begrudged that either.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Of course it does. Do you know how difficult it is to come up with witty banter on a relentless basis while trying to find your buddy's corpse or waiting for your camp to respawn? Not to mention when you get into arguments over who has the rights to the area being camped or trying to come up with new, refreshing way to warn the zone about the mobs you're training.
>_>
<_<
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Most people seem to think that there is no market for many of the features from older mmo's.
I don't think this is true; I have played mmo's since the very start, and when me and my friends go out for a beer and obviously get into 'do you remember when...' our 'new' friends who started their mmo experience with World of warcraft, or Age of Connan, Warhammer etc, always go blank
What do you mean, you could build your own house? In an instance you mean, or how, in the world? Didn't it get crowded?
Guild houses? Guild run towns, with their own transportation system, shops, defence structures, guard npc's, mayor.
Different stats on the 'same' weapon/armor/veichle because the crafter found a rare material to make it from? How did they balance that?
What, the game masters showed them self in game and hosted events?
Capture a baby animal and raise it to become a mount and fight companion? Any baby animal can be tamed? And also sold to other players?
Fields of rows of over 200 mining machines going 24/7 and a caravan of lowbies working extra to carry the ore to the factories? (And in some cases high levels who patrolled the area to protect the runners from other faction)
No levels? You started out as a commoner and can learn different profession and master them. Later on if you get bored, drop some skills and focus on a new goal. No alts, just one character, that could be 'all' that. (Just not at the same time
I think large games such as Wow, warhammer etc has brought a lot of new players to the mmo market, and those player has never experienced the old content, thus it is impossible to say that 'there is not market for it'.
(If this was mentioned in a previous reply, sorry if I missed it)
hahahah .. yeah ... I camped this one boss for 6 hours once (NEVER did such a stupid thing again) and it was pretty hard to come up with conversations after the first 3 hrs.
Don't worry for sure theres a market its just the "I know nothing but I claim to do so" crowd thinking they have a say because they played some post 2005 MMO's. You can easily make more money with an oldschool game than an half assed braindead "the game that shouldnt be named" clone why? Its easy people liking this style of gameplay will play it forever so its time focusing on the people wanting something more challenging and different.
Take a look at all the failed games. Warhammer, Lotro, Age of Conan, Everquest 2, Champions Online, Star Trek Online (not a MMO), Tabula Rasa, Hellgate London ... all are as easy as it gets and failed to succeed. Oldschool will bring you a good healthy loyal playerbase without the scum the post 2005 era brought into the genre.
Only problem good companies such as Sigil are making wonrg decissions by partnering with the industry devils.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Really now, scum? A bit overdramatic don't you think?
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
MMOs sell more than ever no thanks to the old school mechanics. They were dropped for a reason. Mainly because they are not fun or not worth the effort of implementing.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky