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We Need a Hero - General News
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
We Need a Hero - General News
During the heady days of post-Azeroth consumer boom and investor interest, the MMORPG was booming. So many new games… and so many that didn’t meet expectations of consumers or investors. Now, 11 years after the launch of World of Warcraft, it’s clearer now than ever before: we need a hero to save us from extinction.
Comments
And where are all the Gods?
Where's the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and I turn
And I dream of what I need
I need a hero, I'm holding out for a hero
'Til the end of the night
He's gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero, I'm holding out for a hero
'Til the morning light
He's gotta be sure
And it's gotta be soon
And he's gotta be larger than life
Here's to hoping history repeats itself.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Crowfall has a good idea in the online creation of worlds, but they seem to lack the understanding of creating the game around it. All classes are fighting-centric and not solution-centric, which is necessary to create a lasting game. Camelot seems to understand that there needs to be content in the game as well as great classes. I havent seen all thier classes, so there is still hope that they can think out of the box.
Classes can be designed with combat in mind, or crafting, but what i miss are role based. What does a paladin actually do besides fighting, they must have a purpose of some kind?
....Being Banned from MMORPG's forums since 2010, for Trolling the Trolls!!!
Good game = $60
Crappy game = $10 x 1000
Now you know why the games aren't getting any better... they have no incentive to change so long as people keep throwing money at them.
The number one reason why games don't get better? People who pay sight unseen for a game that is barely an itch in someone's pants because they have zero life outside of video games.
The best thing that can happen to this genre is for it to actually die... then it can be reborn in another 10 years as something new and exciting again. Right now, you've seen one MMO, you've seen them all. And that is about the attention span everyone has for them.
"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
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
I tried GW2 a few times without even trying dungeons or exploring the rich world. People call it a themepark but the variety available is astounding in terms of gameplay. Mainly it was my obsession with advancement that blinded me to other available options.
There are games out now that we would have played over many of the older options if they were contemporaries. Many of which still offer rewarding team play but don't force it. In gw2 you can team up to get massive loot without loosing exp or said bounty. We just choose to run solo for much less.
Driving point: we inflict many of our woes on ourselves. Don't expect there to ever be the perfect game and you will find great joy in one of the current offerings.
I look around and see a massive amount of MMOs, each having its own audience, even if small and niche. But they have a crowd, and they're making enough money to continue development, and their creators continue to support them. For me, as a MMORPG player, that's all that really matters. I have a game I like to play, and I have others to play it with.
If people are finding games they can play and be happy with, shouldn't that be sufficient?
Do we really *need* a new blockbuster WoW-like success to "shake things up" and give companies a new template to copy for the next decade 'til it, too, gets old and fizzles out, because people have become sick of it? I don't think so.
WoW may have done a great job of bringing more people to the genre, but more isn't necessarily better.
Looking at the big picture, and the sweeping changes it brought not only to the genre, but to what people expect from it, I think ultimately WoW's done more harm to the genre than good. Someone who came around post-WoW and never played (or enjoyed) MMOs before then might not be able to see what I mean by that. But, I think people who played and enjoyed them for what they were back then will know what I'm getting at.
To use an analogy... MMORPGs (for me anyway) could once be likened to enjoying a good meal at a smallish but well-run restaurant or diner. There weren't as many tables, and the clientele wasn't huge, but you recognized the regulars, were on good terms with the owners and staff, and it was always an enjoyable experience to just *be* there.
Nowadays, MMORPGs are more like sitting in a crowded stadium of screaming and yelling sports fans, getting a hot dog and soda from an apathetic stadium employee whose bosses couldn't care less who you are, or even that you're there. All they care about is how much money they can get from you before you leave.
As I see it, when MMORPGs were a smaller demographic, and not every other company was trying to get their piece of the pie, we saw more originality between titles (Anarchy Online was nothing like Dark Age of Camelot was nothing like Ultima Online was nothing like Lineage 1 or 2, was nothing like FFXI, etc. etc). MMORPGs back then tended to be detailed, fully realized worlds first with the gameplay designed into them, rather than games with a world serving as nothing but a pretty backdrop as they are now (with few exceptions).
The sense of team-play, socializing and cooperation was the norm - there was far, far, *far* less of the "me me me first" mentality that's overtaken the genre. People embraced, encouraged and enjoyed grouping. They didn't try to avoid it and continuously demand more and more soloable content.
Overall, MMORPGs used to be a genre that fit the "we want to make a great game, so we need money to do so" mindset. In the last 10 years, they've become the standard, corporate example of "we want to make money, so we make passable games, and then find ways to monetize the fuck out of them".
MMOs have reached the point where they're basically designed for people who don't like MMOs. Everything that made MMORPGs appealing to people in the first place has been either eliminated, streamlined into oblivion, or monetized to the point of absurdity.
I think that, if the MMO genre - as it exists right now - is to be crushed under its own weight, that might very well be a good thing. Perhaps it's what we need for the genre to get back, or at least closer to what drew people to it in the first place. Maybe it's what we need to see developers get back to coming up with new, creative ideas that distinguish them from everything else again, rather than trying to "fit in".
And if that means the MMO genre has to shrink way back down again, then so what? Is that really a bad thing? The people who were here only because they wanted to be part of the "latest big thing", will move on to whatever becomes the new "latest big thing". And those who truly enjoy the MMORPG experience will still be around. There might not be any more "blockbusters", but there doesn't have to be. A MMORPG only needs enough people to allow the developers to continue supporting and developing it, and that number does not have to be "millions of people".
The sooner we can stop comparing everything to "WoW", and stop thinking a MMO needs "millions of players" to be good, or needs to be the WoW killer to be worth playing, or whatever, the sooner we can maybe see MMORPGs get back to what they used to be and, in my personal opinion, should have always remained.
I think MMO's as we know them today will merge with the sandbox genre, but with the twist being some linear or developer induced events occurring over time, like an upcoming game called ECO (http://goo.gl/4hp55m). Here's another example off the top of my head:
An MMO sandbox game where a world-wide story or event is occurring and players have to cooperate (or not) to create a dynamic impact. So say hypothetically in that world a demon god is awakening in three months, and as time progresses, its spawn/worshipers are causing various havoc around the world, and a few key events occur (either in one spot, or diffused around the world) where the players' actions will determine the variables of the demon god's awakening (its strength, various abilities, etc). Things like exploration, pvp, construction, and other overlapping or smaller world events would fill any gaps.
The general formula would consist of:
*A fully destructible, sandbox world
*Horizontal progression
*A general event(s) that impacts everyone
*Constraints decided by players
*Tools to prevent or punish negative player behavior
*Elements that encourage deep player cooperation
*A low to medium learning curve for the game's basic mechanics
*Rewards for participation that increase depending of level of participation
*Fluid combat and action oriented controls (no tab targeting, or anything of the like)
That's just a rough outline, so one can probably poke holes in it. TBH I would love to see a game like this happen.