Just say no to Korean grinders and you're all good. I've had my share of grind heavy games, I'm all done with them, completely. If they become the norm, then MMO's are dead as far as I'm concerned. If it's Korean, then I'm highly sceptical and will probably remain so for a long time. Aion was a grind fest too and that was probably the best thing coming out of Korea in years.
Waiting for Guild Wars 2, and maybe SWTOR until that time...
Okay, as much as I love my Korean homies, their games are crap and probably won't ever catch on in the west. Because, as I'm sure someone has pointed out already, Korean Grinders are really just glorified chat rooms. They're purely social and superficial, with the actual game as a sort of sideshow to the main event of the players' online social lives.
You, along with several others who are throwing out some pretty broad generalizations, have clearly never gotten very deep into Lineage 1 or Lineage 2.. to name just two.
The player-driven politics in that game *alone* brings more depth and intrigue to the game than I've ever seen in most Western MMORPGs. That's not even getting into the various other aspects of it that are anything but "social and superficial". Some of the most engaging and interesting experiences I've ever had or witnessed were in Lineage 2.
Part of the situation is that in most Western games, everything is laid out for you. Your activities, your goals, etc... everything is pre-ordained, with a path clearly set out for you. Conversely, in various Eastern games (again, like L1/L2), the developer merely sets the stage, sets the rules.. and then gets out of the way, to let the players have their way with it. There are no pre-determined enemy factions in L2. That's all decided by the players, and it's completely dynamic.
Some of the strongest alliances on my server in L2 ended up splitting up into two or more separate ones that have become bitter enemies... Conversely, I've seen bitter enemies come to the same side to ally against a common enemy. I've seen political back-stabbing, negotiations, betrayals, etc.. you name it. I've seen half the server band together against a super-power alliance that was dominating, helping to bring them down. And on and on. You will never see that happen in a typical Western MMO where everything is static and pre-determined, and everyone's wrapped un their own personal bubble.
And further, I've never played any Western MMORPG where someone's clan-mates, or friends of theirs, will drop what they're doing to come help them against gankers/griefers faster or more consistently than I did in L2. Not by a long shot.
I've noticed that many people who try Eastern MMOs go in looking for what they would expect to find in a typical Western MMO. When they don't find it, they assume "oh this game must be really shallow... it's all about grind". It isn't. Not by a long-shot. Thing is, you have to look past the surface to see that... and that's where many people fall short. People are far too quick to make an assumption, jump to a conclusion and walk away satisfied that "they're right".
I say this without condescension.. but when I see people make remarks about Lineage 2 as being "a shallow, Korean grind-fest", I can say with 100% certainty... they have no idea what they're talking about and are voicing a woefully uninformed opinion.
"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
Korean MMORPGs surpassed Western MMORPGs a very long time ago. You can go all the way back to 1998 and compare Ultima Online to Lineage. UO had 150k subs and Lineage had 500k and was trending upwards to be the first game to break 1million subs and then 2 million subs. Aside from WoW the Korean MMORPGs have always been dominating.
Korean MMORPGs surpassed Western MMORPGs a very long time ago. You can go all the way back to 1998 and compare Ultima Online to Lineage. UO had 150k subs and Lineage had 500k and was trending upwards to be the first game to break 1million subs and then 2 million subs. Aside from WoW the Korean MMORPGs have always been dominating.
I think the OP was talking about quality and innovation, two areas Korean Dev's haven't shown an ability to master.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Korean MMORPGs surpassed Western MMORPGs a very long time ago. You can go all the way back to 1998 and compare Ultima Online to Lineage. UO had 150k subs and Lineage had 500k and was trending upwards to be the first game to break 1million subs and then 2 million subs. Aside from WoW the Korean MMORPGs have always been dominating.
dominating the asian market. callo callay, they are meant to do that.
asian games invariably fall flat on their faces in west, and for sound reasons. few westerns enjoy being tied to a chair clicking their mouse 8 hours a day 7 days a week for 20 months, just so their ragdoll gets +0.2% stats. asians do.
they are pretty. thats it. asian developers seem to be trapped in 1990, thats how little the gameplay in their games have evolved.
of course from time to time one of their games is sort-of-almost-nearly-decent-but-not-quite.
it isnt hard, considering they churn out games by the hundreds each week.
they are the proverbial million monkeys hammering a million typewriters for a million years. sometimes you will get a bad soneto out of that....
Originally posted by Sagasaint they are the proverbial million monkeys hammering a million typewriters for a million years. sometimes you will get a bad soneto out of that....
Pretty much the best description of korean MMO developers I've seen in this thread. The vast majority of their games are nigh unplayable by western standards, but when they release some MMO previews that happen to look decent then we're tempted to assume that the finished products are going to be the greatest things ever. Let's at least wait for games like Tera to be released before making wild claims like that.
Korean MMORPGs surpassed Western MMORPGs a very long time ago. You can go all the way back to 1998 and compare Ultima Online to Lineage. UO had 150k subs and Lineage had 500k and was trending upwards to be the first game to break 1million subs and then 2 million subs. Aside from WoW the Korean MMORPGs have always been dominating.
I think the OP was talking about quality and innovation, two areas Korean Dev's haven't shown an ability to master.
Since Korean MMOs have a track record of smoother releases, more stable game worlds, regular feature and content updates, have introduced more new gameplay AND more variations on the standard MMO (Action RPGs, sidescroller RPGs, MMO FPS, etc) than NA/EU MMOs I'd say the Korean MMOs long since surpassed the endless stream of western EQ variants long ago.
Note: You may not like the art style, you may not like the various game designs and mechanics introduced, and you may not like the content they release but that doesn't change the fact that they are for beyond anything the western world has offered lately. I know that won't stave off ridiculous replies from people saying that it's false because it's stuff they don't like or don't want to believe, but... one can dream, no?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Well america is in general decline, if you equate america with "the west" then the answer is yes. There is some evidence the the EU may get itself into a stronger union and who knows what happens then. But China and India are powerful up-and-comers in the next few years. If they can get their internal issues straightened out the future is theirs.
Well america is in general decline, if you equate america with "the west" then the answer is yes. There is some evidence the the EU may get itself into a stronger union and who knows what happens then. But China and India are powerful up-and-comers in the next few years. If they can get their internal issues straightened out the future is theirs.
You realize that most of the game development in the US revolves around the console market? The mmo market is an afterthought (possibly abortive in the eyes of most developers and investors) here in the US. The current investment in mmos exists purely due to Blizzard's success, and when Blizzard (not if) can't replicate their success then I think that'll mean bye-bye to the gobs of money being pelted at the niche market of mmos.
Edit: I want to make it clear that I have no ill will toward mmos, hell I bought a copy of FFXI to go through San d'Oria one more time (it's surprisingly doing well). But I won't stand around and let people blame X thing on the fundamental limitations of the MMO genre. The MMO genre bears many of the same flaws as JRPGs: highly technical game mechanics, relatively simple storylines (excluding Guildwars and possibly TOR), insular playing communities (not developer's fault), and large divide between haves and have-nots. A handful of developers are possibly competent to tackle these flaws and possibly remedy them, but the majority of developers don't have the interdisciplinary knowledge or skills to do that. Knowing how to hammer out code or even cobble together a rendering engine doesn't mean you know how to see architectural decisions as actual playable implementations or even how a player could see a way around an implementation to exploit it.
Considering that the west and east have two totally different views on what makes a good MMO, its hard to say. But to be honest Western gamers are alot more open to playing say, Vindictus or Tera, than a korean is likely to play Runes of Magic or Lotro. (Pardon me if those are poor examples but you get the jist).
Considering that the west and east have two totally different views on what makes a good MMO, its hard to say. But to be honest Western gamers are alot more open to playing say, Vindictus or Tera, than a korean is likely to play Runes of Magic or Lotro. (Pardon me if those are poor examples but you get the jist).
I think culture has much to do with MMOs since I remember some of the words exchanged between Richard Garriott's team and the Korean team working on Tabula Rasa lead to them scrapping the original implementation since neither team could grasp what they felt was important or significant for the game. Garriott wanted a game where players could be immersed in the lore not only through the look and feel of the game, but also the decisions a player could make. The Korean developers were probably focused on things like the artwork and game mechanics which promoted teamwork (this oddly a common cultural theme/trait among the various asian cultures).
I honestly don't care who suprasses each other, so long as something decent comes of it from time to time. There is one thing that bothers me, which is people calling korean games grinders, because I have yet to play a single MMO that WASN"T grindy. Whether it was a hidden fluffed up to look like something else grind, or a flat out grind that was obvious. Honestly, I have a short attention span when it comes to MMO's both western and eastern. But most of the friend's I've made and kept in touch with after the game tired me were from eastern games. But whatever.
probably not ki-yi,but kawai(or such)if i am right it would sound like this in english,the girl:WOW!ITS SO CUTE!yep its a girl thing!
Isn't kawaii Japanese? I thought the words were kyoo or kyoota or aegyo in Korean. But, languages being as they are, you'll always lose something in translation, a nuance, a deeper significance or added layer of meaning. I even have it with english, sometimes I just use the english word because it comes closer to what I mean than the word in my native language that comes closest, just because there's just that bit of difference in meaning.
As for the OP topic, some very good things have been said in posts from several people. I agree that their MMO's have been designed foremostly with their own market in mind. From what I've learnt so far from the Korean culture, there's some significant differences with culture in the west. Koreans are far more community oriented, a lot of their activities are done and focused on community. I read an article a while ago where the difference between the Japanese and Korean gamer was described; where as the Japanese gamer tends to cocoon at his dorm and prefers to game individually, the Korean gamers spend their time in internet cafes with their friends, gaming together. Also, the Koreans are less bothered with having to work hard and long for their rewards. You see it with their artists and celebrities - the number of long hours they make compared to their western equivalents sometimes up to the level of their endurance and over it - and you also see it in their gaming.
This leads to their MMO's initially being focused on group and mass group play and less on solo play, as someone already mentioned in this thread. It also means that they're less bothered with having to grind to progress than MMO gamers here, in US/EU. Well, MMO gamers currently, that is, in the beginning years of MMO's, MMO gamers here were less bothered with mob grinding or level grinding for hundreds of hours than current MMO gamers are today.
As for the appeal of Korean MMO's, iirc Aion had something like 200-250 million dollar revenues worldwide in 2010, and it still has something like 70-100 active servers worldwide, a lot of them outside Korea. So it seems it's doing quite alright. L1 and L2 did alright too, but they were more purely an interest to the Korean/Asian market.
I think it's with the new batch of MMO's starting with Aion that things have become more international, also in design: TERA, ArcheAge, Vindictus and Blade & Soul all seemed to bring some new mechanics and design features into MMO gameplay. How they'll fare, only time can tell.
And then you have the smart move that NCSoft made with ANet: just like Activision with Blizzard and EA with Bioware and Mythic, NC Soft is the publisher for ANet's GW and GW2, which is their foot in the western market. Besides that, with both western and eastern designers under the same firm, there could be some sharing of expertise.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Comments
probably not ki-yi,but kawai(or such)if i am right it would sound like this in english,the girl:WOW!ITS SO CUTE!yep its a girl thing!
Just say no to Korean grinders and you're all good. I've had my share of grind heavy games, I'm all done with them, completely. If they become the norm, then MMO's are dead as far as I'm concerned. If it's Korean, then I'm highly sceptical and will probably remain so for a long time. Aion was a grind fest too and that was probably the best thing coming out of Korea in years.
Waiting for Guild Wars 2, and maybe SWTOR until that time...
You, along with several others who are throwing out some pretty broad generalizations, have clearly never gotten very deep into Lineage 1 or Lineage 2.. to name just two.
The player-driven politics in that game *alone* brings more depth and intrigue to the game than I've ever seen in most Western MMORPGs. That's not even getting into the various other aspects of it that are anything but "social and superficial". Some of the most engaging and interesting experiences I've ever had or witnessed were in Lineage 2.
Part of the situation is that in most Western games, everything is laid out for you. Your activities, your goals, etc... everything is pre-ordained, with a path clearly set out for you. Conversely, in various Eastern games (again, like L1/L2), the developer merely sets the stage, sets the rules.. and then gets out of the way, to let the players have their way with it. There are no pre-determined enemy factions in L2. That's all decided by the players, and it's completely dynamic.
Some of the strongest alliances on my server in L2 ended up splitting up into two or more separate ones that have become bitter enemies... Conversely, I've seen bitter enemies come to the same side to ally against a common enemy. I've seen political back-stabbing, negotiations, betrayals, etc.. you name it. I've seen half the server band together against a super-power alliance that was dominating, helping to bring them down. And on and on. You will never see that happen in a typical Western MMO where everything is static and pre-determined, and everyone's wrapped un their own personal bubble.
And further, I've never played any Western MMORPG where someone's clan-mates, or friends of theirs, will drop what they're doing to come help them against gankers/griefers faster or more consistently than I did in L2. Not by a long shot.
I've noticed that many people who try Eastern MMOs go in looking for what they would expect to find in a typical Western MMO. When they don't find it, they assume "oh this game must be really shallow... it's all about grind". It isn't. Not by a long-shot. Thing is, you have to look past the surface to see that... and that's where many people fall short. People are far too quick to make an assumption, jump to a conclusion and walk away satisfied that "they're right".
I say this without condescension.. but when I see people make remarks about Lineage 2 as being "a shallow, Korean grind-fest", I can say with 100% certainty... they have no idea what they're talking about and are voicing a woefully uninformed opinion.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Korean MMORPGs surpassed Western MMORPGs a very long time ago. You can go all the way back to 1998 and compare Ultima Online to Lineage. UO had 150k subs and Lineage had 500k and was trending upwards to be the first game to break 1million subs and then 2 million subs. Aside from WoW the Korean MMORPGs have always been dominating.
I think the OP was talking about quality and innovation, two areas Korean Dev's haven't shown an ability to master.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
dominating the asian market. callo callay, they are meant to do that.
asian games invariably fall flat on their faces in west, and for sound reasons. few westerns enjoy being tied to a chair clicking their mouse 8 hours a day 7 days a week for 20 months, just so their ragdoll gets +0.2% stats. asians do.
they are pretty. thats it. asian developers seem to be trapped in 1990, thats how little the gameplay in their games have evolved.
of course from time to time one of their games is sort-of-almost-nearly-decent-but-not-quite.
it isnt hard, considering they churn out games by the hundreds each week.
they are the proverbial million monkeys hammering a million typewriters for a million years. sometimes you will get a bad soneto out of that....
Pretty much the best description of korean MMO developers I've seen in this thread. The vast majority of their games are nigh unplayable by western standards, but when they release some MMO previews that happen to look decent then we're tempted to assume that the finished products are going to be the greatest things ever. Let's at least wait for games like Tera to be released before making wild claims like that.
Since Korean MMOs have a track record of smoother releases, more stable game worlds, regular feature and content updates, have introduced more new gameplay AND more variations on the standard MMO (Action RPGs, sidescroller RPGs, MMO FPS, etc) than NA/EU MMOs I'd say the Korean MMOs long since surpassed the endless stream of western EQ variants long ago.
Note: You may not like the art style, you may not like the various game designs and mechanics introduced, and you may not like the content they release but that doesn't change the fact that they are for beyond anything the western world has offered lately. I know that won't stave off ridiculous replies from people saying that it's false because it's stuff they don't like or don't want to believe, but... one can dream, no?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Well america is in general decline, if you equate america with "the west" then the answer is yes. There is some evidence the the EU may get itself into a stronger union and who knows what happens then. But China and India are powerful up-and-comers in the next few years. If they can get their internal issues straightened out the future is theirs.
You realize that most of the game development in the US revolves around the console market? The mmo market is an afterthought (possibly abortive in the eyes of most developers and investors) here in the US. The current investment in mmos exists purely due to Blizzard's success, and when Blizzard (not if) can't replicate their success then I think that'll mean bye-bye to the gobs of money being pelted at the niche market of mmos.
Edit: I want to make it clear that I have no ill will toward mmos, hell I bought a copy of FFXI to go through San d'Oria one more time (it's surprisingly doing well). But I won't stand around and let people blame X thing on the fundamental limitations of the MMO genre. The MMO genre bears many of the same flaws as JRPGs: highly technical game mechanics, relatively simple storylines (excluding Guildwars and possibly TOR), insular playing communities (not developer's fault), and large divide between haves and have-nots. A handful of developers are possibly competent to tackle these flaws and possibly remedy them, but the majority of developers don't have the interdisciplinary knowledge or skills to do that. Knowing how to hammer out code or even cobble together a rendering engine doesn't mean you know how to see architectural decisions as actual playable implementations or even how a player could see a way around an implementation to exploit it.
Considering that the west and east have two totally different views on what makes a good MMO, its hard to say. But to be honest Western gamers are alot more open to playing say, Vindictus or Tera, than a korean is likely to play Runes of Magic or Lotro. (Pardon me if those are poor examples but you get the jist).
I think culture has much to do with MMOs since I remember some of the words exchanged between Richard Garriott's team and the Korean team working on Tabula Rasa lead to them scrapping the original implementation since neither team could grasp what they felt was important or significant for the game. Garriott wanted a game where players could be immersed in the lore not only through the look and feel of the game, but also the decisions a player could make. The Korean developers were probably focused on things like the artwork and game mechanics which promoted teamwork (this oddly a common cultural theme/trait among the various asian cultures).
No.
"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted.
Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world."
Hans Margolius
If we're talking about inovations then yes else if we're talking for same ole same ole with new graphics and less grind and more polish then west.
I honestly don't care who suprasses each other, so long as something decent comes of it from time to time. There is one thing that bothers me, which is people calling korean games grinders, because I have yet to play a single MMO that WASN"T grindy. Whether it was a hidden fluffed up to look like something else grind, or a flat out grind that was obvious. Honestly, I have a short attention span when it comes to MMO's both western and eastern. But most of the friend's I've made and kept in touch with after the game tired me were from eastern games. But whatever.
Isn't kawaii Japanese? I thought the words were kyoo or kyoota or aegyo in Korean. But, languages being as they are, you'll always lose something in translation, a nuance, a deeper significance or added layer of meaning. I even have it with english, sometimes I just use the english word because it comes closer to what I mean than the word in my native language that comes closest, just because there's just that bit of difference in meaning.
As for the OP topic, some very good things have been said in posts from several people. I agree that their MMO's have been designed foremostly with their own market in mind. From what I've learnt so far from the Korean culture, there's some significant differences with culture in the west. Koreans are far more community oriented, a lot of their activities are done and focused on community. I read an article a while ago where the difference between the Japanese and Korean gamer was described; where as the Japanese gamer tends to cocoon at his dorm and prefers to game individually, the Korean gamers spend their time in internet cafes with their friends, gaming together. Also, the Koreans are less bothered with having to work hard and long for their rewards. You see it with their artists and celebrities - the number of long hours they make compared to their western equivalents sometimes up to the level of their endurance and over it - and you also see it in their gaming.
This leads to their MMO's initially being focused on group and mass group play and less on solo play, as someone already mentioned in this thread. It also means that they're less bothered with having to grind to progress than MMO gamers here, in US/EU. Well, MMO gamers currently, that is, in the beginning years of MMO's, MMO gamers here were less bothered with mob grinding or level grinding for hundreds of hours than current MMO gamers are today.
As for the appeal of Korean MMO's, iirc Aion had something like 200-250 million dollar revenues worldwide in 2010, and it still has something like 70-100 active servers worldwide, a lot of them outside Korea. So it seems it's doing quite alright. L1 and L2 did alright too, but they were more purely an interest to the Korean/Asian market.
I think it's with the new batch of MMO's starting with Aion that things have become more international, also in design: TERA, ArcheAge, Vindictus and Blade & Soul all seemed to bring some new mechanics and design features into MMO gameplay. How they'll fare, only time can tell.
And then you have the smart move that NCSoft made with ANet: just like Activision with Blizzard and EA with Bioware and Mythic, NC Soft is the publisher for ANet's GW and GW2, which is their foot in the western market. Besides that, with both western and eastern designers under the same firm, there could be some sharing of expertise.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."