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MMOs: From Small Town, to Big City
WellzyC
Member UncommonPosts: 599
Think back when you played in the hay day of mmos, uo, eq, ac, daoc, Vwow
Pick a game you played back then,
- Can you name 5 guilds besides your own? I bet you can.
- Can you name 5 players you liked not in your guild, 5 you hated? I bet you can.
---
Now think of a game that you have played after the Mainstreaming of mmos. Games like Gw2, TSW, SWTOR, Neverwinter.
- Can you name 5 guilds besides your own? I bet you Can't.
- Can you name 5 players you like not in your guild, 5 you hated? I bet you can't.
--
What's changed?
Population.
MMos went from the small town to the Big city.
Hear me out. When you were leveling back in the day, there was a good chance you would see that same bunch of players. Some new faces, especially at lower levels, but mid to high range it was a good bet that the players you saw in a dungeon, or hubs, were players that you would interact with every time you logged in. This creates player reputation. It was important to know people in a small town. You need them to like you; you cant get much accomplished when your hated in a small town. Same goes with older mmos.
Now look, bloated servers, queuing, layering and now mega servers. It's like waiting at the subway in new york. Why get to know anyone beyond going through the motions. You will most likely never see that person again in the mass crowd of faces. No one cares to know each other in that environment, because it is inconsequential.
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MMos of yesterday were like small towns, the population relied on each other, you interacted with players everyday and that created those exciting ties. The top 3-5 guilds were like royalty. The bad players were talked about like it was gossip hour in the lunch room. That created drama and community.
Today they are just a massive city of faces, names and guilds, some games not even the full name (cough gw2).
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They are also deprived of mystery and intrigue. MMOs are not only an over population of faces players, but the content is forced in a systematic and artificial way. Because the population has been so bloated the game can no longer rely on the natural interaction a small town games provides with community, so you are spoon fed a story line. They have to fill that lost aspect with dev created garbage.
Story will never be as exciting as player conflict. And i'm not talking about pvp.
Small town mentality, mystery, and intrigue was that magical recipe that hooked us years ago. Because of mainstreaming the genre and turning it into a metropolis, the genre has lost what made it so appealing back then. A community of players, in a mysterious world filled with player conflict and contested resources, where players were the story, not a script.
The way mmo's were: Community, Exploration, Character Development, Conquest.
The way mmo's are now : Cut-Scenes,Cut-Scenes, solo Questing, Cut-Scenes...
www.CeaselessGuild.com
Comments
what is the big deal about naming names.
I can name may be one person from my EQ days .. but so what. I don't play games to name names or guilds, or to know people. I play them for fun.
I think you missed the point. Allow me to map my argument.
Community is fun.
Mainstream mmos lack community.
------------------
MMOs are no longer fun.
-
That help?
The way mmo's were: Community, Exploration, Character Development, Conquest.
The way mmo's are now : Cut-Scenes,Cut-Scenes, solo Questing, Cut-Scenes...
www.CeaselessGuild.com
Community is fun upto a point: when your realm suffers from bleeding of accounts to the larger servers, content that requires people to do (like raiding) isn't possible. The effect has been happening for almost 5 years now in WoW, because more people = faster groups = getting more gear.
My realm merged into another realm in WoW lately, as whole Battlegroups have been eliminated in the process (over 30 realms being merged into other still existing Battlegroups), and even though we have had CRZ and x-realm for 2 years now, the effects of even virtually merging servers -- because we lost our server identity/community -- isn't pleasant).
Yes, it's nice having a quaint server, but in WoW due to x-realming, it wasn't really only our server anymore. I hate CRZ and x-realming but it's necessary to do group content, when your realm is but about leveling/socializing (and god my realm is godawful at group content, and my former Battlegroup had the worst overall rankings in PvE and PvP -- all because the "top ten" realm effect).
MMO = bigger the better. Content is designed around group participation. Small groups working only at prime time in a world that 24/7 will not work anymore. It's not 1998 anymore. Heck, not even 2004 anymore. Tech has to change as society has changed.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
Perfect explanation of how and why WoW has it's community reputation.
Other MMOs handled it "nicer" by simply blacklisting the ninjas and bottomfeeders. EQII went a step further with it's "wall of shame" at EQ2Flames.
But they still existed, and still got into groups and still caused drama in trade/chat. Because a $10 name change is all that's needed to be "new" again (EQII they could check, which says something about account security there, but in WoW that $10 name change is untraceable, especially if they don't use RealID or Battletags).
And do any of that today in WoW, the harassers will be taking WoW vacations accounting to penalty volcano level. Guess the death threats to Ghostcrawler put all the hate/retaliation ingame in perspective now.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
It's all developers and everyone involved with making an mmo fault now days. It's all about marketing and thinking they are innovative.
It all started when Blizzard made cross server queuing, and all others branched out from there. When this happened 25% of the player base hated the idea before it even started. Shortly after 50% hated it and now its accepted and the normal, even expected.....Yes, now we have mega servers, but it all started with cross server queuing.
Important :
People here say this is what the new player base is asking for. This and ridicules easy game play. WRONG, this is what developers are feeding up regardless.
Every mmo has a search option, I use it, no one else does..........Developers simply needed to stress the importance of it, make it easy to use, spend time developing a good search option, not just a minor after thought.
This is why we have mmos that last 30 days......No community !!!!
WoW had mega servers before CRZ and x-realming: the top 10 was there even before WotLK ushered in 30+ new realms.
Those realms are a problem, and Blizzard has to think of a solution of linking/delinking realms to and from them, because just virtually merging realms (which is happening now) won't stop the steady bleed from lower progression realms to higher progression realms. x-Realming doesn't stop the bleed (it's been in effect for almost 2 years now, but people still transfer permanently to the "big 10" for the ease to do group content).
But games always had a problem about "community", as the "community" is so fluid. Once the "community" found a server that had whatever they liked and transferred there, the other server "communities" suffered. Seen it in EQII, where AB is like the top WoW server now, but unlike WoW it remains the only top server for years (WoW top 10 changes via expansion, Proudmore was #1 in WotLK, it's a top 10, but not top anymore, for example).
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
While I can agree that there has been a shift here. I am not convinced this is a bad thing (or rather that it must be a negative...if we just tweak things a bit). It is obvious that we cannot rewind on this. So, we have to adapt. I do think the way it is being handled could stand for improvement. Specifically...A lot of the challenge that MMORPG once had -which has decidedly vanished in most, being replaced with mere difficulty- stemed from the lack of people playing.
With less people:
- It was harder to find a reliable party.
- Guilds were fewer, had higher prestige, and were harder to get into (a good one anyway).
- Economies were smaller. So, your money did not go as far (with less supply there was higher demand and thus higher cost for goods and materials).
- There were less help sites (and for the earlier years actual wikia's had not been invented yet); that of which did exist were often sparsely populated with information and often incorrect. Most of your good information came from other players and experience as a teacher.
But, as population grew there was no replacement or adjustment to the natural loss of aspects like these. For the most part these days:
- Party invites are practically spammed at you from the moment of your first steps into a game world.
- Guild invites are spammed at you often before you leave the newb zone. And getting together the people and money required to form a guild is not even that hard. As the requirements have likely not changed since day one and gaining access to both of these things is not a lot easier.
- Things cost a lot less, and the newb gear one used to struggle is easily obtained. And with the easy obtainment of required items, doing required tasks and thus, leveling up quicker is easier as well (especially with seemingly no end of people to get aid from).
- Information only needs to be googled/wikia'ed. And, you will probably get more solid information that way then had you asked someone in-game.
Really the only thing that had changed is scale. And, therein lies the issue. The basic idea of how these games work never changed to fit a growing population. Forinstance, world chat was an amazing luxury that let you find lost friends, and talk to people when in a lonely grind. Now it's a way to spam LFG/LFP requests and sales, to where there is little need to use the built in systems for such as much.
But this is all just a bunch of complaining on all of our parts if we don't put forward possible solutions. So, here is mine for the guild sub-issue to this larger problem (this is off the top of my head and probably riddled with issues of it's own):
1) Guilds should cost 10x what they currently do to found fee wise. And, should require 2x the number of founding members. They must be founded with all of the founders in person at a single location through a guild founding NPC.
2) Invitations to a Guild for a new prospective member have to go through the same system that founding a guild does (in person at a specific location through the guild founding NPC). The guild should have to post a fee for registering the new member.
3) Changing a members rank should also have to be done in person and through the guild founding NPC.
4) Removing a member from the guild roster should also cost the guild money (unless the player leaving the guild is the one initiating the action in which case the fee for removing them from the roster is on them).
5) After having left a guild there should be an amount of time that must pass before a player is able to join another guild.
When I played EverQuest I, I knew only a smattering of other players. Those in my guild being the majority of them.
When I played City of Heroes, because that community was much better on my server, I can name a lot of other players, not in my guild.
Any other MMO, old or new, I hardly knew anyone else.
PS: I am a mainly a solo-er until I find other like-minded players who enjoy games like I do, ie: Non-raid/progress minded players.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I think it's not just a matter of the size of gameworlds and servers.
It's also that most modern MMORPG's have changed in such a way that there is less (need for) interaction.
Such as instances, instant teleport, more content for solo play and npc that you can hire as a party member. All things that make interaction more scarse and not really needed.
I don't think we can just blame it on the MMORPG companies though. I think the players themself have a changed mindset as well. And simply going back to smaller servers and worlds without all these new convienences would probably just annoy most players.
Unique indie mmorpg that would like your support:http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jeffleigh/antilia-a-majestic-3d-mmo
The "less people" argument doesn't pan out, as seen in the reason why WoW consolidated it's realms.
If smaller communities were so great for a MMO, there wouldn't be a need for people to transfer from the tighter knit community to progress ingame.
If smaller communities were so great for a MMO, trade houses would consist of reasonably priced goods, as friends knew friends and could strike deals better.
None of that panned out even in EQII with >78k players. In larger MMOs like WoW, one look at a low population server you'd see them on the bottom of the progression meters, and their auction house prices beyond reasonable (when my realm merged into the other realm, I thought our prices were high. Trade chat has become a fight to establish more sane prices for goods! 3000g for a bag? 300g to 600g more expensive, that's price gouging...and no the market couldn't support it. May the undercutters bring sense to that madness!).
Larger realms not only do they progress faster, they have the cheapest prices due to all the competition driving the prices down to earth. So it's just another reason why "small" isn't necessary better.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
I said absolutely nothing about population consolidation. Once a population has exploded in an MMORPG there is no undo button, the changes that having a lot more people affect; Effectively would create entirely new issues, were you to simply try and scale back....That's like putting a teenager in diapers because he misses the toilet or won't set the seat down. You only making a new issue. I said the grown up MMORPG's need to recalibrate some of their older content to provide actual challenge to a larger audience.
Less people on a server in a MMO = less people to group = less progression = less competition to drive down market inflation = people leave for greener pastures.
The outcome is realm consolidation.
The only good point in less in a MMO is a semblance of a smaller community, but functionally it doesn't work well with group content, especially when the community moves out to the bigger city to find more or any "work".
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
I don't care who you or your friends are or who you have beef with. I'm not in it for that. My friends in Eve need to constantly remind me who the guys we are fighting and why they are "the baddies". I couldn't care less.
Player drama is so juvenile and petty, I can't stand it. Put me in a team, let me fight and try to win. Just leave me out of the politics cause I couldn't care less.
If people PK each other in the game it is probably because it is the only worthwhile thing to do in it. I can't blame people for that and it doesn't need to get personal.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Okay...are you just piggy backing what you have to say on what I said? Because, so far it has nothing to do with what I said. Usually when you start out quoting someone you make it relevant to something they said. The only way I can take it is that your are arguing against something that I am not even arguing for. Are you even reading what I am writing...For that matter, are you reading what you are writing?
I can definitely see how going from a smaller group to a larger group would change things. Way back in the day, I had an internet service provider called Net Pipe or something similar. They had a web based forum and I clicked with the people in that forum. I built an FAQ for the service provider, ways to make sure Windows 3.1 would always connect to the internet, how to make Netscape work right with their weird internet pipe thing, etc. Later, they merged the internet group I was in with their New York group, and a LOT more people showed up on the forums. It completely destroyed the vibe we had going on the forums. The forums were no longer "ours".
At the same time, before or after the Pipe Net or whatever they were called, I was messing around on AOL, which had an order of magnitude more people online, even then. However, there were many communities within AOL's systems and finding a place that people could call home was entirely possible.
I don't think games have lost that sense of community just because there are more people playing, though that is part of it. Part of it is also the systems at work within the games themselves. In "modern" games, players are all ushered into one area on the map, or down one path on the map. There's probably some of this in newer sandbox games as well. Even in games like Eve. It's not enough for players to know that they are in a game world with thousands of other players, they must see a lot of them as well. Maybe a developer will tell us why. :-)
If developers built many, smaller hubs in their game worlds, or even allowed for the dynamic development of player hubs that sense of community could return, even in games with huge populations. In WoW, before Cataclysm, many players would hang around the Crossroads, mostly doing a bunch of PvP. A community of Crossroads players existed within the context of the much larger WoW game. So it's not impossible, and it's not dependent solely upon the number of people on a server. Developers just don't want, or aren't sufficiently rewarded for creating smaller communities within the larger context of their games.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Could it be that the people complaining about the lack of community simply because they don't feel like they belong in a community themselves?
I'm in three gaming communities right now and I have to balance my time to play in/with each group. We play lots of games together.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Usually forums have a better software that allows editing the quotes to a small and reasonable sized quote, not a thesis level cascade of text otherwise (I try to edit it but formatting gets so screwed up in the process). When your orange text taints my white text, more so on any "". -_-
And what are you talking about piggy-backing? I posted a comment about what you posted and how smallness in a MMO doesn't work but for community identity. Defensive much? Sheesh!
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.