As for the "next great MMO"... I think people remember the early days of mmo's when everyone paid $15 a month for their one game that they played for 6 years straight and those were the glory days, when mmoers could be satisfied with just EQ or WoW or DAoC or whatever.
I think those days are over
Those days arent necessarily over, its just developers havent put out a product good enough. Lots of people have had little problem playing WoW for 7 years
As for the "next great MMO"... I think people remember the early days of mmo's when everyone paid $15 a month for their one game that they played for 6 years straight and those were the glory days, when mmoers could be satisfied with just EQ or WoW or DAoC or whatever.
I think those days are over
Those days arent necessarily over, its just developers havent put out a product good enough. Lots of people have had little problem playing WoW for 7 years
True, some people can do that, but there will always be players who can play something forever. I played WoW for years and years myself. Just quit in 2011.
But the mmo market is so big now, and developers sink more money and time than ever to try to get a piece of it. Maybe it will revert to one big name owning the show again, but I doubt it. WoW mostly owned the show because it was the only blockbuster game at the time, and so people just stuck with it.
Besides there are plenty games that I feel are better than WoW in many ways (of course GW2 is the latest of this list, and possibly the best), but WoW has always been old familiar ya know. Old familiar is starting to become old primitive though...
This game is way below the hype before launch it s not even funny. Don t get me wrong I somewhat enjoy myself, but I find after an hour I want to log out and play PS2 beta or something else. I just don t get the it factor of it. To each their own, but I m now looking forward to Wildstar more, but don t want to get caught up in any hype.
Originally posted by Deto123 This game is way below the hype before launch it s not even funny. Don t get me wrong I somewhat enjoy myself, but I find after an hour I want to log out and play PS2 beta or something else. I just don t get the it factor of it. To each their own, but I m now looking forward to Wildstar more, but don t want to get caught up in any hype.
Before anyone jumps on you, I think it is very fair for you to say you don't like the game and for you it is below hype. For others, it will live up to hype. Personal taste is just that. For me, I frankly wasn't hyped for it because I didn't play GW1 and I didn't buy the game till a couple days ago and haven't been following it closely, so for me it exceeded my expectations greatly, which essentially were non-existant.
Originally posted by Deto123 This game is way below the hype before launch it s not even funny. Don t get me wrong I somewhat enjoy myself, but I find after an hour I want to log out and play PS2 beta or something else. I just don t get the it factor of it. To each their own, but I m now looking forward to Wildstar more, but don t want to get caught up in any hype.
Before anyone jumps on you, I think it is very fair for you to say you don't like the game and for you it is below hype. For others, it will live up to hype. Personal taste is just that. For me, I frankly wasn't hyped for it because I didn't play GW1 and I didn't buy the game till a couple days ago and haven't been following it closely, so for me it exceeded my expectations greatly, which essentially were non-existant.
Well, ya I should say for me. My guild of 45, I would say half said they ll play it here and there, but definately not a main MMO. I personally think thats what this game is built for. I don t know, some people will live in it, some won t, I just don t get that lure to log in like I did, bcak in my DAOC, or FFXI days.
WoW mostly owned the show because it was the only blockbuster game at the time, and so people just stuck with it.
WoW owned the show because nothing released after it was particularly good. LOTRO was the closest, but its clunky combat really hurt it bg time. Vanguard? worst launch ever. WAR? Developers had no clue, major balance issues, Good PvE content that never was supported further. AoC? I personally couldnt get into it at all, so cant comment much on it. Rift? Generic, soulless, cramped and tiny. If you want to see what I mean by soulless explore meridian or sanctum, and talk to the npcs and just look around. Then go to any of the GW2 cities and do the same. SWToR? Awful, awful world design, less than thrilling combat. TERA? Fun combat, absolutely hideous in any other game play aspect. Its been a giant stream of turds, with LOTRO and Rift being the only games even worth spending yor free month in. On top of that the classic games got old, and EQ2 has declined sharply the last few years.
As opposed to when you had EQ, DAoC, AC, UO, and SWG. There are more titles now, but the compeition isnt nearly as good.
Originally posted by Tekaelon Aording to my guild and myself the game is by all accounts a huge success. Gear grinders won't be happy because they can no longer distinguish with gear alone. They also have to be skilled. [mod edit]
It's a shame most people find the game a disappointment.
Funny I heard most people find it extremely fun...
The fact no one knows what "End Game" is going to be like is very telling. Arena Net avoided that question like the plague during development.
Actually, they already talked about endgame, with Orr, but i will admit they're avoiding it alot, since tehy never even released an official blog or video about it. However, nobody as reached Orr yet. Noone's done the 3 level 80 dungeons yet. We don't know how interesting a cosmetic gear treadmill's will be for the majority (i know i don't care mysel, but still).
We don't even know how fast their content updates will be. Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending the game, but just like it doesn't mean much how the game is 1 month in, making predictions of doom and fail and titanic are pointless aswell.
It's already lived up to the hype for me. Maybe I just had a clear conception about the game and the hype to begin with. Funny thing though, I never really thought it was overhyped.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
And somewhere in the middle, there are those of us who may not have initially been hyped. We were burned a few too many times and didn't feel the need to be disappointed yet again.
So, we approached GW2 with healthy skepticism., and in many cases caught hell here on these boards for it too.
Well. I'm here to admit. The game is fun. I want to play it more.
Is there any other sentiment that sums it up?
"I want to play it more."
Oh sure, I have issues with it. I think the DEs get repetitive, I don't like that we can't trade between players, the launch has been riddled with minor glitchyness. Lion Post was broken. Servers were down Sat morning. A lot of things to point a finger at but after all that is said and done..........
I want to play it more.
And I will continue to do so for as long as I feel this way. Then when I don't I'll stop and still feel like the game was a success.
I dont think its going to fall below TORtanic levels of let down but this isnt a sustainable model of game for the MMO sphere. Its an interesting single player experience but it feels a little to similar to GW 1 when it omes to the "MMO" aspects needed to sustain a community.
This game is already not living up to the hype.
what is a sustainable model then?
I've been a GW1 player for years and it doesn't feel anywhere near GW1... Feels very fresh, new and challanging... For me, it already exceeded my hyped expectations!
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life." -------------------------------
Dont know, dont care. I have enjoyed myself more than in a MMO the last 10 years these 2 last days. A lot more.
If you guys bought it and decides it wasnt enough for you too bad for you.
But there is one huge difference between GW2 and TOR: You can actually feel how much work ANET put into their world and engine. In TORs case it is the VO you can feel.
Even as a TOR fan I agree with this statement. I just can't think of any part of the game so far that feels like an afterthought.
It may again turn out to be another game where I play for a few months and move on. I honestly don't know at this point. Even Skyrim was a game I put down after a while.
But I keep having to pick my jaw up from off the floor every time I find things like the weapon system, thecrafting inventory system, and the NPC's that thank you for helping then, actually walk off to do ACTUAL business which then starts a new event...
Sooner or later all that may wear off, and the world may eventually be familiar enough to me that QG's may as well just stand there with a ? over their head. But that day isn't today, and if that day happens, I'll not have spent a dime in subs to get to that point.
I dont think its going to fall below TORtanic levels of let down but this isnt a sustainable model of game for the MMO sphere. Its an interesting single player experience but it feels a little to similar to GW 1 when it omes to the "MMO" aspects needed to sustain a community.
This game is already not living up to the hype.
I haven't seen a game yet that has lived up to the hype, depending on the person. Your statement is true for those who were let down, and untrue for the others. Not really saying much in this thread.
WoW mostly owned the show because it was the only blockbuster game at the time, and so people just stuck with it.
WoW owned the show because nothing released after it was particularly good. LOTRO was the closest, but its clunky combat really hurt it bg time. Vanguard? worst launch ever. WAR? Developers had no clue, major balance issues, Good PvE content that never was supported further. AoC? I personally couldnt get into it at all, so cant comment much on it. Rift? Generic, soulless, cramped and tiny. If you want to see what I mean by soulless explore meridian or sanctum, and talk to the npcs and just look around. Then go to any of the GW2 cities and do the same. SWToR? Awful, awful world design, less than thrilling combat. TERA? Fun combat, absolutely hideous in any other game play aspect. Its been a giant stream of turds, with LOTRO and Rift being the only games even worth spending yor free month in. On top of that the classic games got old, and EQ2 has declined sharply the last few years.
As opposed to when you had EQ, DAoC, AC, UO, and SWG. There are more titles now, but the compeition isnt nearly as good.
I won't debate with you on the merit of all those games, mostly because it will be your opnion versus my opinion, but I suggest that you might be viewing the old games with rose tinted glasses. I have done this a lot too, because I long for my EQ days again, but frankly EQ was a mess of a game compared to what came after it. It had some great points, but most of it was terrible. I play on and off on Project 1999 for my nostalgia fix, but overall the game is mostly about sitting around for long hours doing almost nothing. That kind of design doesn't work anymore for players.
Frankly, and it burns me to say this, but every single one of the new games you listed is a better and more exciting game than my all time favorite mmo (which is as I said, EQ1). However, I couldn't pull myself to play any of them for very long, but it was because I am a different gamer with different expectations than I used to have, and mmo's just don't feel like they used to because the mmo genre has changed.
Frankly, if EQ1 was released today, it would probably struggle worse than Vanguard does. I realized this when I convinced some of my mmo friends that had never tried EQ1 to play on Project 1999 with me, explaining to them that EQ1 was the best mmo ever... way better than anything else released they have played. They gave it a real effort, played it with me every night, did dungeons with me as we leveled, did corpse runs, fought for our lives against trains, experienced the best it had to offer... for like a month until every one of them left saying how boring and lame of a game it was compared to what they could be playing. I was sad, because it had been really fun for me. I took my rose tinted glasses off that day.
Originally posted by teakbois Originally posted by SethiusX WoW mostly owned the show because it was the only blockbuster game at the time, and so people just stuck with it.
WoW owned the show because nothing released after it was particularly good. LOTRO was the closest, but its clunky combat really hurt it bg time. Vanguard? worst launch ever. WAR? Developers had no clue, major balance issues, Good PvE content that never was supported further. AoC? I personally couldnt get into it at all, so cant comment much on it. Rift? Generic, soulless, cramped and tiny. If you want to see what I mean by soulless explore meridian or sanctum, and talk to the npcs and just look around. Then go to any of the GW2 cities and do the same. SWToR? Awful, awful world design, less than thrilling combat. TERA? Fun combat, absolutely hideous in any other game play aspect. Its been a giant stream of turds, with LOTRO and Rift being the only games even worth spending yor free month in. On top of that the classic games got old, and EQ2 has declined sharply the last few years.
As opposed to when you had EQ, DAoC, AC, UO, and SWG. There are more titles now, but the compeition isnt nearly as good.
I do have to agree with this for the most part, it's pretty dead on.
The early games had a fine balance of getting the players to do what they wanted to do vs getting them to keep doing what they didn't want to do. (That part was necessary to extend the longevity of the game)
Traditional MMOs became a balance of playing the game you didn't want to play in order to get to the game you did. So the payoff had to be a big enough to compensate for the grind.
Blizzard's early creativity found the perfect balance of this. But somewhere along the way, they just started giving in to handing out the payoff without the equivalent amount of "grind" and while this initially sounds good, look where it went.
Instant gratification cost players the feeling of accomplishment in exchange for (as teak said) the "soulless" rat race geargrindfest that killed the genre.
I think that ANET has taken a new approach to the problem and I'm glad they did. Will it ultimately succeed? I don't know. I have hopes, but I also have concerns.
Otherwise, the only option is to go back to a point in time where the creativity was lost and start over from there. And too many people have mixed feelings about that.
Who want's to risk making another WoW clone but replicating it to Vanilla/TBC instead of WotLK/Cata?
Would that work? Maybe, but probably not. So In the end, ANET is out to prove something (at least they are trying) and no matter what, the next offering that takes what works and removes what doesn't will be even that much more successful.
WoW mostly owned the show because it was the only blockbuster game at the time, and so people just stuck with it.
WoW owned the show because nothing released after it was particularly good. LOTRO was the closest, but its clunky combat really hurt it bg time. Vanguard? worst launch ever. WAR? Developers had no clue, major balance issues, Good PvE content that never was supported further. AoC? I personally couldnt get into it at all, so cant comment much on it. Rift? Generic, soulless, cramped and tiny. If you want to see what I mean by soulless explore meridian or sanctum, and talk to the npcs and just look around. Then go to any of the GW2 cities and do the same. SWToR? Awful, awful world design, less than thrilling combat. TERA? Fun combat, absolutely hideous in any other game play aspect. Its been a giant stream of turds, with LOTRO and Rift being the only games even worth spending yor free month in. On top of that the classic games got old, and EQ2 has declined sharply the last few years.
As opposed to when you had EQ, DAoC, AC, UO, and SWG. There are more titles now, but the compeition isnt nearly as good.
I won't debate with you on the merit of all those games, mostly because it will be your opnion versus my opinion, but I suggest that you might be viewing the old games with rose tinted glasses. I have done this a lot too, because I long for my EQ days again, but frankly EQ was a mess of a game compared to what came after it. It had some great points, but most of it was terrible. I play on and off on Project 1999 for my nostalgia fix, but overall the game is mostly about sitting around for long hours doing almost nothing. That kind of design doesn't work anymore for players.
Frankly, and it burns me to say this, but every single one of the new games you listed is a better and more exciting game than my all time favorite mmo (which is as I said, EQ1). However, I couldn't pull myself to play any of them for very long, but it was because I am a different gamer with different expectations than I used to have, and mmo's just don't feel like they used to because the mmo genre has changed.
Frankly, if EQ1 was released today, it would probably struggle worse than Vanguard does. I realized this when I convinced some of my mmo friends that had never tried EQ1 to play on Project 1999 with me, explaining to them that EQ1 was the best mmo ever... way better than anything else released they have played. They gave it a real effort, played it with me every night, did dungeons with me as we leveled, did corpse runs, fought for our lives against trains, experienced the best it had to offer... for like a month until every one of them left saying how boring and lame of a game it was compared to what they could be playing. I was sad, because it had been really fun for me. I took my rose tinted glasses off that day.
EQ in 1999 was just a good foundation, but you are right its not a particularly good game. EQ got better and better with each expansion, and was in peak form somewhere around LDoN, or maybe OoW when there was a better balance of things. I think an EQ style game would still do well today. Not 3 million subs, but it could repeat the long term success with 300k+ subs which is something only WoW and EvE can claim to have in the NA/Eu market (SWToR too, but well see after its a year old).
You use the phrase 'more exciting', but excitement =/= better. The new Total Recall may be more exciting than Prometheus, but its certainly in no way shape or form better. The newer generation doesn't have the patience for an EQ type game, but thats where WoW comes along which has some of the EQ good qualities (like a focus on the game world itself, especially in Vanilla). The later WoW clones (and sadly, WoW itself to a degree) have lost the positive quaities of EQ that WoW initially kept. The game world has lost its importance. Group mechanics have taken an enormous leap backwards. Gear means nothing because its replaced so fast. When WoW launched, there was no real overarcing story, you wer eput in Azeroth and you had choices of what to do where to go, what to see and werent hand held every step of the way. GW2 is the first game since Vanilla WoW to do do this.
I dont think its going to fall below TORtanic levels of let down but this isnt a sustainable model of game for the MMO sphere. Its an interesting single player experience but it feels a little to similar to GW 1 when it omes to the "MMO" aspects needed to sustain a community.
This game is already not living up to the hype.
Normally I'd agree with this sentament for games like TSW, SWTOR, and Rift... but GW2 has RvR. And if DAoC proved anything, it's that RvR keeps people playing for a long long time. And besides, this game is less singleplayer than most modern MMOs.
Originally posted by nilden It sounds more like personal expectations were not met than hype in general.
Well I think most of us here that have been around for more than one MMO launch can tell that this game is getting way way WAY more hype than the gameplay is actually worth. I think the main reason for this is
a) how transparent Anet has been with their ideas, processes, and development videos
and
b) how long its been since we've seen an MMO that goes back and borrows game design elements from Golen Age era MMOs instead of WoW.
I guess it depends on what you as an individual are looking for. I personally think its a good mass appeal game. Although if you are looking for something 'deep' that takes a while to figure out the different systems then this is not the game.
I bought into the hype and pre-purchased. Upon testing it, I knew it was all hype. Cancelled my pre-purchase and don't regret it. I've become jaded with MMORPG's lately as I think they're all stagnant, rehashed, crap. The MMORPG market has become like the music industry... all the same old shit, in a new wrapping... no actual talent or substance.
I'm trying to keep entertained with CS:GO, Firefall and/or Planetside 2. Already getting the feeling FF will not be great, and I've heard PS2 isn't living up to the hype. Welp, since I never played CS to begin with, CS:GO might have to do!
Reborn by 2GD is my last bastion of hope for the FPS genre.
WoW mostly owned the show because it was the only blockbuster game at the time, and so people just stuck with it.
WoW owned the show because nothing released after it was particularly good. LOTRO was the closest, but its clunky combat really hurt it bg time. Vanguard? worst launch ever. WAR? Developers had no clue, major balance issues, Good PvE content that never was supported further. AoC? I personally couldnt get into it at all, so cant comment much on it. Rift? Generic, soulless, cramped and tiny. If you want to see what I mean by soulless explore meridian or sanctum, and talk to the npcs and just look around. Then go to any of the GW2 cities and do the same. SWToR? Awful, awful world design, less than thrilling combat. TERA? Fun combat, absolutely hideous in any other game play aspect. Its been a giant stream of turds, with LOTRO and Rift being the only games even worth spending yor free month in. On top of that the classic games got old, and EQ2 has declined sharply the last few years.
As opposed to when you had EQ, DAoC, AC, UO, and SWG. There are more titles now, but the compeition isnt nearly as good.
CLarifying one point. WAR was killed by WoW players. The design of WAR was intended to have players RvR in the lakes on every map all the way up as they leveled. Instead, players only PvP'd on the instanced 'games' which were only intended as training maps. Unfortunately, since everyone had been so used to WoW's battlegrounds, they didnt flood the RvR lakes and each map'd zone became empty and useless. The devs made a fatal error by encouraging the instanced PvP games by releasing more content in them in response to the player bases' requests on the forums. This basically killed the game. WAR did recover a little over a year after it died when the old DAoC players took over and started playing the RvR like it was meant to be played. It was then that it became a good game.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
I dont think its going to fall below TORtanic levels of let down but this isnt a sustainable model of game for the MMO sphere. Its an interesting single player experience but it feels a little to similar to GW 1 when it omes to the "MMO" aspects needed to sustain a community.
This game is already not living up to the hype.
I am sorry for you, but I didnt do the same misstake. You know why?
Because I knew from the first moment they announced the name Guild Wars 2. I mean... come on its facts and simple to realise if you are a realist. Guild wars 1, how was that game? Who made it? you get the idea.
Will be fun to read these forums in a couple of days, it will turn from "nice" complaints with constructive critism to rage and voting panels side by side with SWTOR.
They will take in the little cash they can take in, then run away. Funny how some people compared it to WoW. Feels so good to say this... god...
Comments
Those days arent necessarily over, its just developers havent put out a product good enough. Lots of people have had little problem playing WoW for 7 years
True, some people can do that, but there will always be players who can play something forever. I played WoW for years and years myself. Just quit in 2011.
But the mmo market is so big now, and developers sink more money and time than ever to try to get a piece of it. Maybe it will revert to one big name owning the show again, but I doubt it. WoW mostly owned the show because it was the only blockbuster game at the time, and so people just stuck with it.
Besides there are plenty games that I feel are better than WoW in many ways (of course GW2 is the latest of this list, and possibly the best), but WoW has always been old familiar ya know. Old familiar is starting to become old primitive though...
Before anyone jumps on you, I think it is very fair for you to say you don't like the game and for you it is below hype. For others, it will live up to hype. Personal taste is just that. For me, I frankly wasn't hyped for it because I didn't play GW1 and I didn't buy the game till a couple days ago and haven't been following it closely, so for me it exceeded my expectations greatly, which essentially were non-existant.
Well, ya I should say for me. My guild of 45, I would say half said they ll play it here and there, but definately not a main MMO. I personally think thats what this game is built for. I don t know, some people will live in it, some won t, I just don t get that lure to log in like I did, bcak in my DAOC, or FFXI days.
WoW owned the show because nothing released after it was particularly good. LOTRO was the closest, but its clunky combat really hurt it bg time. Vanguard? worst launch ever. WAR? Developers had no clue, major balance issues, Good PvE content that never was supported further. AoC? I personally couldnt get into it at all, so cant comment much on it. Rift? Generic, soulless, cramped and tiny. If you want to see what I mean by soulless explore meridian or sanctum, and talk to the npcs and just look around. Then go to any of the GW2 cities and do the same. SWToR? Awful, awful world design, less than thrilling combat. TERA? Fun combat, absolutely hideous in any other game play aspect. Its been a giant stream of turds, with LOTRO and Rift being the only games even worth spending yor free month in. On top of that the classic games got old, and EQ2 has declined sharply the last few years.
As opposed to when you had EQ, DAoC, AC, UO, and SWG. There are more titles now, but the compeition isnt nearly as good.
Funny I heard most people find it extremely fun...
Guess we can all pull stuff out our asses.
Actually, they already talked about endgame, with Orr, but i will admit they're avoiding it alot, since tehy never even released an official blog or video about it. However, nobody as reached Orr yet. Noone's done the 3 level 80 dungeons yet. We don't know how interesting a cosmetic gear treadmill's will be for the majority (i know i don't care mysel, but still).
We don't even know how fast their content updates will be. Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending the game, but just like it doesn't mean much how the game is 1 month in, making predictions of doom and fail and titanic are pointless aswell.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
And somewhere in the middle, there are those of us who may not have initially been hyped. We were burned a few too many times and didn't feel the need to be disappointed yet again.
So, we approached GW2 with healthy skepticism., and in many cases caught hell here on these boards for it too.
Well. I'm here to admit. The game is fun. I want to play it more.
Is there any other sentiment that sums it up?
"I want to play it more."
Oh sure, I have issues with it. I think the DEs get repetitive, I don't like that we can't trade between players, the launch has been riddled with minor glitchyness. Lion Post was broken. Servers were down Sat morning. A lot of things to point a finger at but after all that is said and done..........
I want to play it more.
And I will continue to do so for as long as I feel this way. Then when I don't I'll stop and still feel like the game was a success.
what is a sustainable model then?
I've been a GW1 player for years and it doesn't feel anywhere near GW1... Feels very fresh, new and challanging... For me, it already exceeded my hyped expectations!
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
-------------------------------
Even as a TOR fan I agree with this statement. I just can't think of any part of the game so far that feels like an afterthought.
It may again turn out to be another game where I play for a few months and move on. I honestly don't know at this point. Even Skyrim was a game I put down after a while.
But I keep having to pick my jaw up from off the floor every time I find things like the weapon system, thecrafting inventory system, and the NPC's that thank you for helping then, actually walk off to do ACTUAL business which then starts a new event...
Sooner or later all that may wear off, and the world may eventually be familiar enough to me that QG's may as well just stand there with a ? over their head. But that day isn't today, and if that day happens, I'll not have spent a dime in subs to get to that point.
This. No game ever lives upto the hype.
Bite Me
I won't debate with you on the merit of all those games, mostly because it will be your opnion versus my opinion, but I suggest that you might be viewing the old games with rose tinted glasses. I have done this a lot too, because I long for my EQ days again, but frankly EQ was a mess of a game compared to what came after it. It had some great points, but most of it was terrible. I play on and off on Project 1999 for my nostalgia fix, but overall the game is mostly about sitting around for long hours doing almost nothing. That kind of design doesn't work anymore for players.
Frankly, and it burns me to say this, but every single one of the new games you listed is a better and more exciting game than my all time favorite mmo (which is as I said, EQ1). However, I couldn't pull myself to play any of them for very long, but it was because I am a different gamer with different expectations than I used to have, and mmo's just don't feel like they used to because the mmo genre has changed.
Frankly, if EQ1 was released today, it would probably struggle worse than Vanguard does. I realized this when I convinced some of my mmo friends that had never tried EQ1 to play on Project 1999 with me, explaining to them that EQ1 was the best mmo ever... way better than anything else released they have played. They gave it a real effort, played it with me every night, did dungeons with me as we leveled, did corpse runs, fought for our lives against trains, experienced the best it had to offer... for like a month until every one of them left saying how boring and lame of a game it was compared to what they could be playing. I was sad, because it had been really fun for me. I took my rose tinted glasses off that day.
LOL... I dont know why but this really tickeled me.
2 thumbs up for making me chuckle in a meeting.
WoW owned the show because nothing released after it was particularly good. LOTRO was the closest, but its clunky combat really hurt it bg time. Vanguard? worst launch ever. WAR? Developers had no clue, major balance issues, Good PvE content that never was supported further. AoC? I personally couldnt get into it at all, so cant comment much on it. Rift? Generic, soulless, cramped and tiny. If you want to see what I mean by soulless explore meridian or sanctum, and talk to the npcs and just look around. Then go to any of the GW2 cities and do the same. SWToR? Awful, awful world design, less than thrilling combat. TERA? Fun combat, absolutely hideous in any other game play aspect. Its been a giant stream of turds, with LOTRO and Rift being the only games even worth spending yor free month in. On top of that the classic games got old, and EQ2 has declined sharply the last few years.
As opposed to when you had EQ, DAoC, AC, UO, and SWG. There are more titles now, but the compeition isnt nearly as good.
I do have to agree with this for the most part, it's pretty dead on.
The early games had a fine balance of getting the players to do what they wanted to do vs getting them to keep doing what they didn't want to do. (That part was necessary to extend the longevity of the game)
Traditional MMOs became a balance of playing the game you didn't want to play in order to get to the game you did. So the payoff had to be a big enough to compensate for the grind.
Blizzard's early creativity found the perfect balance of this. But somewhere along the way, they just started giving in to handing out the payoff without the equivalent amount of "grind" and while this initially sounds good, look where it went.
Instant gratification cost players the feeling of accomplishment in exchange for (as teak said) the "soulless" rat race geargrindfest that killed the genre.
I think that ANET has taken a new approach to the problem and I'm glad they did. Will it ultimately succeed? I don't know. I have hopes, but I also have concerns.
Otherwise, the only option is to go back to a point in time where the creativity was lost and start over from there. And too many people have mixed feelings about that.
Who want's to risk making another WoW clone but replicating it to Vanilla/TBC instead of WotLK/Cata?
Would that work? Maybe, but probably not. So In the end, ANET is out to prove something (at least they are trying) and no matter what, the next offering that takes what works and removes what doesn't will be even that much more successful.
EQ in 1999 was just a good foundation, but you are right its not a particularly good game. EQ got better and better with each expansion, and was in peak form somewhere around LDoN, or maybe OoW when there was a better balance of things. I think an EQ style game would still do well today. Not 3 million subs, but it could repeat the long term success with 300k+ subs which is something only WoW and EvE can claim to have in the NA/Eu market (SWToR too, but well see after its a year old).
You use the phrase 'more exciting', but excitement =/= better. The new Total Recall may be more exciting than Prometheus, but its certainly in no way shape or form better. The newer generation doesn't have the patience for an EQ type game, but thats where WoW comes along which has some of the EQ good qualities (like a focus on the game world itself, especially in Vanilla). The later WoW clones (and sadly, WoW itself to a degree) have lost the positive quaities of EQ that WoW initially kept. The game world has lost its importance. Group mechanics have taken an enormous leap backwards. Gear means nothing because its replaced so fast. When WoW launched, there was no real overarcing story, you wer eput in Azeroth and you had choices of what to do where to go, what to see and werent hand held every step of the way. GW2 is the first game since Vanilla WoW to do do this.
Normally I'd agree with this sentament for games like TSW, SWTOR, and Rift... but GW2 has RvR. And if DAoC proved anything, it's that RvR keeps people playing for a long long time. And besides, this game is less singleplayer than most modern MMOs.
Obvious bait.
Sorry pal, go chum the waters somewhere else.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/Well I think most of us here that have been around for more than one MMO launch can tell that this game is getting way way WAY more hype than the gameplay is actually worth. I think the main reason for this is
a) how transparent Anet has been with their ideas, processes, and development videos
and
b) how long its been since we've seen an MMO that goes back and borrows game design elements from Golen Age era MMOs instead of WoW.
I bought into the hype and pre-purchased. Upon testing it, I knew it was all hype. Cancelled my pre-purchase and don't regret it. I've become jaded with MMORPG's lately as I think they're all stagnant, rehashed, crap. The MMORPG market has become like the music industry... all the same old shit, in a new wrapping... no actual talent or substance.
I'm trying to keep entertained with CS:GO, Firefall and/or Planetside 2. Already getting the feeling FF will not be great, and I've heard PS2 isn't living up to the hype. Welp, since I never played CS to begin with, CS:GO might have to do!
Reborn by 2GD is my last bastion of hope for the FPS genre.
CLarifying one point. WAR was killed by WoW players. The design of WAR was intended to have players RvR in the lakes on every map all the way up as they leveled. Instead, players only PvP'd on the instanced 'games' which were only intended as training maps. Unfortunately, since everyone had been so used to WoW's battlegrounds, they didnt flood the RvR lakes and each map'd zone became empty and useless. The devs made a fatal error by encouraging the instanced PvP games by releasing more content in them in response to the player bases' requests on the forums. This basically killed the game. WAR did recover a little over a year after it died when the old DAoC players took over and started playing the RvR like it was meant to be played. It was then that it became a good game.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
I am sorry for you, but I didnt do the same misstake. You know why?
Because I knew from the first moment they announced the name Guild Wars 2. I mean... come on its facts and simple to realise if you are a realist. Guild wars 1, how was that game? Who made it? you get the idea.
Will be fun to read these forums in a couple of days, it will turn from "nice" complaints with constructive critism to rage and voting panels side by side with SWTOR.
They will take in the little cash they can take in, then run away. Funny how some people compared it to WoW. Feels so good to say this... god...
Happy ending
TROLOLOLOL
edit: I told you so!