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[Column] General: 6 Enduring MMOG Beliefs I Just Don't Get
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The MMOG space has never lacked for differences of opinion. This isn't a problem; it would be pretty dull without them. What's more, we generally recognize that it's normal for at least some other people's views to diverge from our own. However, this is an expression of my rational side. At the gut feeling level, certain things with which I disagree are considerably harder for me to “get” than others.
Read more of Richard Aihoshi's The List: 6 Enduring MMOG Beliefs I Just Don't Get.
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Comments
Every modern MMO suffers from feature creep.
It's why nobody sticks with one game anymore. Either the features are generic and not worth doing or they're good but too short because of developement time being spent on other generic features.
1) immersion- if it does not have it you cannot add it,if it has it you can ignore it.THAT is your choice,but if it is not there you have NO CHOICE.so yes immersion IS better.
2) the same goes with features,it is easy to ignore what is there ,but not to create what is not.
3) that is purely subjective.
4) again subjective,i have played some good asian one and band ones
5) it is hard to overcome a bad launch. frankly i never understood wow,i played it for a few months,than quit it,i tried the f2p,lvl 20 and it still sucks. the log in issue was more likley people trying to get in ie is had to good of a launch.
6) sub in the end are better,as you can spend far more money in 'free' to get the same quality of game as a sub. which is my biggest problem with eso,if i pay a sub i want access to ALL,not have to buy as well.
Re#5, I agree it's hard to overcome a bad launch
WOW had rocky issues with network congestion but it wasnt a poor launch
FF14 has been the only mmo i know of
to recover from a poor (read: ill received) launch
EQ2 fan sites
Rift is another one, sold around a million copies at launch and dropped most of the sub in the first month. Has climbed back up since.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
1. What the hell is an MMOG?
2. regardless, crafting and immersion are important for getting my dollars. Peroid. Its why I play, little to no other reason.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
supposedly, RIFT did not sell 1 million at launch
RIFT had total sales of 1 million 3+ months post launch
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/125248/Interview_Trions_Debut_Rift_Closes_In_On_1M_SellThrough.php
EQ2 fan sites
The one I hate the most is "All Asian games are the same/or grinders." South Korea and China have recently been creating MMOs that are looking a whole lot better than the crap that the West has been making.
Go look at information for Tree of Savior and Peria Chronicles and you'll know exactly what I mean. Two games that are striving to do different things. Also Tree of Savior has the best class variety going for it that I've seen in a long time! Classes that I've never even thought of are being implemented for it and the trailers for some of the classes have me quite excited!
Smile
I have to disagree with a couple of your points. Asian MMO's are all the same. Show me one that is different? Bet you can't!
Secondly, if you have only spent less than $100 on f2p games, you have not spent much time in any one of them, nor leveled a character very high. Many of these f2p games let you play to mid level with little cost then it escalates rapidly.
Why are people taking what Suzie said as fact? She clearly stated it was her "Opinion".
That being said, highly disagree with point #1 and the last point.
F2P has shown across the board to:
-Decrease overall production quality of a product being made from the ground up as 'F2P'.
-Ends up nickle & diming players over time.
-Entire scope of the core-gameplay planned around how to do point #2 more often.
-Ruins the integrity of the game by everything becomes one slow treadmill for money making.
-Eventually becomes "Pay To Win"
-Customer Service ends up being nonexistent as it cannot be monitarily supported by the fluctuating "F2P" business model.
B2P suffers from similar aspects of F2P, but most notably suffers from a large influx of cash in the beginning and then essentially becomes a F2P-garbage-pile over time.
It's all out there for people to see and experience. Unfortunately however, it seems as though Suzie never got the chance to actually play what a "Good" MMO was before everything exploded into "How can we mainstream this into a pile of garbage for the sake of money?!".
It gets frustrating, it really really does.
It basically boils down to this. Publishers want to make MMOs for everyone and their brother. When you have someone like me who has been playing MMOs since 1998 with UO we look at MMOs as a Hobby over a GAME. When you make the game nothing more than candy crush to make major profits because every 30 minute a week player must feel like they are something special you water down what MMOs are truly about.
They are about making friendships that last years. Being a Hobby people are involved in for a year or more. When you play you want to feel your apart of something because you look at an MMO as a Hobby.
When I say Hobby I say it like someone who loves Golf. They spent time and money buying clubs that they want to use on the course. They study the course and how best to win. They create a social circle around playing Golf.
The problem is this, MMOs have been trying to get everyone and their brother into MMOs to generate more money. Yes they are a business. However we have a fundamental issue with our businesses today. Their first and most overriding belief is Money is the most important thing and at all cost you must make as much as you can. This is why GM is in trouble with having so many unsafe cars on the road. Making money was more important than Safety. The same can be said about Companies that ship manufacturing over to China. Yes they were making profits while the jobs were here however they make more profit when labor is cheap. However it hurt their overall product, and other issues that come with shipping jobs to China. Guess what MMOs are suffering from this mentality, try to get as many people into the game as possible at the cost of quality and the genera because MORE EQUALS BETTER. Which is not always true.
So we bring more people into MMOs for money. What happens? People want things in game like 15 minute instances because well their personal life does not revolve around MMOs. Which is understandable to some extent. The problem is when you water content down for these people you take content away from people like myself who basically enjoy my 4 to 10 hours a week of MMO time and getting involved in a virtual world and having friends out of it. Now instead of having a 2 hour Heroic Shattered halls run like I did in BC with my friends on friday night. We run 4 to 5 instances with an hour and are bored out of our dam mines because the content is built for that 15 minute sporadic gamer. Yes having more people in your MMO means more money often however at some point the population of your MMO becomes just as sporadic as the gamers you are trying to attract meaning you loose more money as a sub game but you need to make up with F2P. This is good that you make up the money but you spend more time making pay for content vs in game subscription content. The 2 extremes are some months you make a lot of money and others you make little, vs most months you make the same amount with subscriptions. W
What has all this done to the genera? Its made MMO publishers try to out due each other by spending Hundreds of Millions of dollars in development and Marketing of their new game. Well investors are having a hard time return so fewer are investing in making new MMOs, the MMOs that are being talked about coming out over the next few years are Kickstarter MMOs which maybe a few might be good maybe not who knows.
All the while more and more MMO gamers like myself are leaving MMO games completely behind. I have played with a few hundred players since my days in UO, many of them I keep in contact with. Only a half dozen of us still play MMOs. Many have went on to other hobbies like buying a motorcycle, or Golf in several friends cases, Bowling in others, a few went into cooking. All of them spend hours a week involved with their hobbies and spending big money on these hobbies. Some of them can go on and on and on about their new hobbies. However when you ask players like myself who are left in MMOs we cannot talk about our chosen Hobby we feel its watered down and their is little to nothing to talk about expect the next game.
Why is that, that we just talk about the next game? Well because its new and because MMOs today are being made to be thrown away after a few months. Yes they get a few content releases here and there. However we are not seeing 10 to 15 instances in an expansion where if you dont work well in a group you will fail so you need to work together to complete these instances. No in about 2 months into the expansion they are nothing more than speed runs for gear. In old school SandBox MMOs we use to get involved in some PVP, some PVE, some crafting there was a lot to do, they were designed to take hours for you to level, for you to complete making weapons or armor, or in a game like UO it would take you a few hours of making different sets of armor. It was not push a button and walk away.
Now Just like everyone else I have about 75% less time than I had before. However that does not mean we need 15 min instances that take no effort to complete. Crafting that is mind numbing. Queues just to run instances because we are not capable to converse with other people to see if they want to run X instances with us. We dont even need the level grind that MMOs once had. However trying to make an MMO so every person that has 15 minutes a week can play is foolish. Its made the experience cheap and something you enjoy for a few months then go back to an old mmo, wait for the new MMO to come out or quit MMOs all together. Instead of Publishers stop making MMOs and making MOs or Co-Op games they try to make an MMO and get every person possible into it because games like candy crush are popular. Why are they popular? Simple because they are simple games made up for people who just like playing games on the crapper. Not for someone who wants an MMO that they will play for, for years.
People want to say MMOs are just a game. Well so is Golf. Should we cut Golf down from 18 holes to 6 so we have more people that play Golf? I think current Golfers would hate it and would be so against it because it waters down the game. Should we cut a down 1 game of bowling from 10 frames to 4 so we get more players just to play. I think Bowlers who enjoy this hobby would be just like the Golfers, pissed off and want you to just go play midnight bowling and play 4 frames and go home.
Why cant we make games for everyone. Well just like the battle that is going on now in the WOD beta. Blizzard is making Normals for everyone where they want the instances snooze easy. Well there are people who want heroes snooze easy too so they do not get bothered with running the content again and again if its setup for pre-made groups. These players either A want to raid and thats all they want to do in game. Or B want to do the content as fast as possible on both modes because they paid their $15 for the month and nothing should be kept from them. They both say that hard content should just be in challenge modes but challenge modes are nothing but a speed run anyway. So anyone who wants content that will last a few hours and can be involving does not matter. Though these are the gamers who will stick around with active subs for years. Vs people who want fast and easy to cancel their sub when all the content is down until the next major patch.
So for people like myself we will never change period. We look at things we do in life as a hobby. Not just a throw away 15 minute activity just so we can go onto the next when ever we feel like it. That is why these things endure, because we are the type that do not want cheap replaceable content or watered down games were the masses do. Because MMOs were meant to be a Hobby over a throw away Game like Dragon Age.
Razeekster already pointed out 2, Peria Chronicles is a sandbox style mmo. You create your own quests, content and towns. No idea where the game is at in sense of dev, but seems the type of game so many people have been screaming for on here. Tree of Savior has a mad char customization, being a kind of 2d game it's kind of 3d as well, the combat it in some way like tera, but 2d/3d i don't know lol and offer alot more.
The only thing similar is the anime/cartoon style, but that's their thing.
+100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
What are your other Hobbies?
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
What you said +1
I agree with this. It seems she missed the halcyon days of MMO's.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
I second this, and add an extra exclamation point (!).
Please Note: I'm done arguing with unreasonable people with an agenda and/or those that fail to see logic.
Argue if you must, discount my post with anti-logic and/or Hyperbole. I won't be responding any longer.
This is such a well stated post that today's gamers just don't get... I too am an old school gamer and really take all my hobbies seriously because I am passionate about how I spend my time outside of the daily grind.
Today's gamer's want the "fast food gaming" experience and really don't give a crap about anyone else but themselves. Why do we need a community when there are auction houses, LFG/R tools, everything is easily soloable, dailies, and all the other nonsense as desacribed so eloquently by the aformentioned poster.
Thanks again for a great lunch time read!
What are your other Hobbies?
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
I saw it and it made me laugh
and your's could easily be on that list as well.
This was a Richard Aihoshi article:)
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
QFEx2