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When did innovation stop
allegria
Member CommonPosts: 682
When did innovation stop ? Curious what folks think ?
Year / game ?
Let's hear it....
Comments
I'd personally say around 2005 with WoW.. Not at its release but when it started gathering tons of subscribers everyone said "Hey i want a piece of that Pie too" and almost everyone went with a "tried and true" formula.
The guys in the suits (aka investors) now run the show as they want the easiest route to popularity by following the established formula..
Hindsight is 20/20.. I did enjoy WoW for a little while, but I realized something. In the end of the day, the treadmill grind for items is only useful as long as you play that game (this is why some people are so hesitant to start another game). But the bonds you make with your fellow players & the challenges you overcome can and will last much longer than the game.
Ironically I can name far more people from my EQ playing days (pre 2004ish) than i can in all the newer mmo's ive played combined. Call it rose tinted glasses if you like but the tighter communities the older MMO's had back then easily makes up for all the difficulties and annoyances of the older games..
DAOC, Then it all went to what OberanMiM talks about.
Sometimes its good to think deep. Some times it good just to play games.
I cannot fully agree with you.
You mention WoW and there is some truth on what you say, but i have a diferent perspective.
For me the impact WoW had on this genre was made through the unsuccessful entrance of a couple of major titles. Speaking names like AoC, WAR, AION and to some extent LotRO and DCUO, all of them aimed to bring something new to the genre. Sure they share many elements in common and they barely pass outside the traditional mmo design, but all of them brought something new along.
So the investors take in account that the working formula of WoW has managed to surpass and survive through a bombardement of new games and that customers are stuck to it. Trying to shred a piece out of this genre with something new is risky and not worth looking at.
Proof of this is the recent released SWTOR. They had a great chance to innovate the genre, but instead they went for the old recipe with some sugar on it.
If innovation is defined as "everything is absolutely, completely, utterly different", innovation stopped with the very first videogame ever created.
But if defined like most people define it, innovation still happens at the exact same rate it always has.
And if you want the most innovation you don't camp in the same genre (because by definition that means more of the same.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Sep 24, 1997, the day UO opened.
Possibly earlier with M59, but I never personally had the pleasure.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I honestly think innovation stopped when players stopped buying it. Refinement and improvement on existing models are what player prefer and they vote with their wallets. Also, there have been many innovations but most of these have been at a server achitecture level and these are seldom of interest to the gaming public. Virtualisation has revolutionized the way that games are delivered over the net and cloud computing (as much hot air as that buzzword may entail) is set to offer even more innovation. We forget that MMOs are a very young genre and that an online game is an iceberg. We play and primp on the surface while most of the mass exists on the layers below. MMOs are both the software and the service. I doubt the pace of innovation will ever be equal in those two areas.
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy.
______________________________
"This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
I think everything was covered by UO/EQ wasnt it,
Everything else just feels like a minor add in, i personally like public quests in Warhammer for instance, whereas i dont find soemthing like instancing an innovation but more of a temporary workaround for todays generation of gamers or when they brought out seamless worlds before their time, at the expense of content.
someone had a thread about which innovations came from which game, i think that helps.
I would argue that innovation has never stopped. World of Warcraft is a prime example of why it is continued to be innovating. Look at a patch, not an expansion, but one patch. The latest patch, 4.3, has three key innovations: raid finder, transmogrification, and void storage.
It didn't and hasn't. The entire premise of this thread is all wrong. Sure, there are some games that don't have much innovation. Maybe even all of the games that you personally play don't innovate much. But that's a statement about the games that you personally play, and not a statement about what is out there.
It is not that important anyway.
Good polish & implementation trumps innovation for the sake of new any day any time.
Just take COD, ,Skyrim and Arkam City. Are they that innovative? Nope. Just very good implementation of past ideas with GREAT attention to details.
A bettter thread would involve a "How many 'innovations' would we have been better off without?"
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
very true. Now add in people trying to sound clever and enlightened and you end up with topics like this, and innovation seems to be the buzz word atm. This genre is more alive than ever, more games, more players, more investment and an increasing need to offer something better. Why do people still confuse their own apathy with that of a failing genre?
These threads have ran out of innovation. Seriously.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Except it's not defined like that, your first sentence,(I know you know that, but other people seem to think so). That is invention, not innovation.
People seem to think that they are both the same definition and confuse the two.
I know a lot of people talk about innovation but with MMO's I know I wasn't looking for anything 'new' as much as I was expecting the fulfillment of the potential. IMO MMO's were originally world simulators, so my expectation as with other simulator type games (i.e. flight sims) was that the simulation would be come more faithful to what was trying to be represented. More detail, greater verisimilitude, greater fidelity, greater immersion.
So my disappointment is not in the lack of innovation but the seeming change of the genre's focus from simulators to just regular video games.
Stopped in general? Never.
With WoW's success which became obvious very fast, game makers producing AAA titles saw that's WoW model provide amount of player's that is in totally diffrent league compared to other western mmropg's.
This model began spreading around 2005.
Had this stopped innovation?
Depends how you look at it. It clearly showed investors and devs that there is huge market for mmropg games ,propably bigger that they though it would be ,at least at that time.
So obviously many WoW's game concepts were "copied" into existing games and into games that were in works.
No mmropg's even came close to WoW's success.
Market is oversaturated and either major investors & developers will shift their focus to other MMO game types (non-rpg) or some / many of upcoming games will try to win consumers with differentiating their gameplay more between themselves instead of fighting with very similar gameplay - as this just does not work.
CoH was probably last innovative game
WOW basicly copies the COH formula, newb friendly, same UI etc..
Just about everything else after copies WOW
or iff they don't they copy DAOC or EVE - badly.
WHAT are you talking about?? In less than 3 months from now a game is coming that basically threw the standard MMORPG progression system right out the window. No levels, and no classes in this MMO! What more drastic changes or ballsy invention can you ask for.
I am talking about TSW. Do not underestimate the potential of funcoms new formula. It have never been seen before and it might change MMOs forever.
The Ultimate Breakdown
About the same minute Wow got over a million players (early 2005).
It was also the same time EA and Activision noticed the genre. Those 2 are masters of turning gold into sh*t.
TSW is not the first game to have no levels or classes.
As long as we speak of AAA MMORPGs it certainly is.
This MMO is a fully fledged attempt to change the MMO marketplace forever. This is not a javascripted boyroom experiment.
The Ultimate Breakdown
While about 90% of all innovations are dead ends the rest of them is what makes the world move.
Innovation is the difference between humans and chimps and with computer games innovation and change is a must. The hardware changes and devs needs to find new ways to use that new cool hardware. They will also have to figure out new fun ways to make a MMO interesting long term and how to make combat feel different.
If the genre continues like it have the last 7 years there will be close to zero players 2019. You can already see that people stay less time in new MMOs than they did earlier and that is not a good sign.
I am pretty sure UO was AAA when it came out.
Investigations, sabotage missions and args apart its not doing anything that hasn't been done before. but......... At least its taking ideas from AO, AC, UO, DAOC, GW & COH etc.. instead of bloody WOW, WOW & WOW again!
ditto. GW2, can't call either game a wow clone
It stopped when customers like this became the norm:
"I don't want to play a game like Warcraft! I'm sick of this!"
Same guy after a new game release:
"This game sucks! It doesn't do this, this, this, and that, like WoW!!!"