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Last known good in the mmorpg industry
Amathe
Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
For those who think the mmorpg landscape sucks, when, in your opinion, was the last time it didn't suck? What was going on in what (for you) was the golden age of mmorpg gaming just before the sun set?
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Comments
I think the last good one is Black Desert although I didn't get into it. Personal last favorite is FFXIV.
I think MMOs stopped trying to create a virtual world after WoW. And that's not WoW's fault. People are not interested in a virtual world that much unless every aspect of it is gamified, then all those aspects got simplified for marketing reasons, then monetized for financial reasons. So ironically what pushed the genre forward also killed it. For me, of course.
SciFi - EVE, until Nov 2016 F2P Expansion
Could have been a contender- ArcheAge in Alpha, then...."Trionized" into darkness.
Best Themepark - trick question, there is none. (OK, WOW, until BC launched, ending the dream for some)
Perhaps if only I had waited - ESO, refusal to refund 3 weeks post launch while others were getting them swore me off game forever. Might have been different had I started a year or so later.
"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
- Whenever F2P became the norm is when I lost all interest.
- 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
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
We are North and South.
Cheers!
"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
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Case in Point: GW2, was a good game, really could have been a market trend setter, and then with HoT they put in raids, and role based class like situations, and all in all had undone many of the things that made their game 'good' to start with.
Another example would have been DDO, they really had a good DnD feel to that game, and then they went all "generic mmo" and made the game feel more like a DnD Skin (like Neverwinter) then the really attentive creation of a 3rd edition DnD game into MMO format that it was originally.
So there are a lot of good MMO's out there, but, a lot of what makes an MMO good is also what makes it unique from other MMO's.. after all, if it was not unique in some way, it would be generic.
Nothing has improved what FFXI started so for me,nothing looks playable.
Should be easy but the approach has to have quite a bit of testing,not something al these budget strapped devs want to afford.Instead they want to give us more WOW/EQ2 clones with 1-2 cheapo gimmicks.
The industry has been stagnant since,i had really hoped FFXI woudl evolve into a great FFXIV but soem realy bad decisions to copy dumb ideas from Blizzard ruined everything.Besides that ,FFXIV/Square Enix did not put enough thought effort into the class combat system the way they did with FFXI.
Instead of IMPROVING immersion and game play,we got....
Automation
auto grouping in instances
Item levels
gear scores instead of player/character skills and abilities
questing that gave xp for no reason than to give xp...sigh
Eq2 way back then and now Wow>>>SCALING,terrible idea,immersion ruining.
probably many more bad ideas to ruin a MMO and ruin immersion but this is enough to turn me off.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
After that the game play started to feel repetitive and bored me for the most part. I had some fun with ESO, SWTOR, Archeage but for the most part never dived into them.
Keyword>>HANDCUFFED combat
explanation or i will try and explain.Most every mmorpg uses ideas like bars,mama bars,energy bars, etc etc and they slowly replenish over time.What MOST players do is just SPAM away,when the bar refreshes they spam again and again,it is mindless and dumb combat.They are handcuffed by those bars,they do literally nothing waiting for that bar to replenish enough to get off some special attack.
Pet classes??Almost every single game does pet classes like crap.The developer tries to turn you and your pet into essentially ONE character or as good as one other better class character.FFXI pet classes ,especially the Beastmaster is extremely potent,you are as good as at least 2 characters or MORE.
The Ranger?? Arrows,bolts,bullets,guns,bows,xbows,boomerangs.There is NO energy bar,you can fire away till your hearts content,you know why no handcuffing?
Answer at 11 folks>>>AGGRESSION,hate meters,only certain classes can draw hate and survive because you fight mobs 5-10 levels higher.So you have to THINK about when to use powerful attacks,timing,team work etc etc.
This is just a skim coat of how to and not to do combat design.Then there is mob ai,resistances,class structure like FFXI's sub class systems etc etc.
A lot or MOST devs do it half assed,sloppy lazy and crappy designs and until i see a dev that has a clue,we won't be seeing any good mmorpg's for awhile.Know why,well because most new upstart developers are hiring from the very studios that do it crappy,so guess what they are going to be doing>>>crappy designs.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
"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
"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
Archeage being one of those started out decent but the RNG gear upgrade combinbed with pay to win ruined that one.
Darkfall was another one but there development speed was absolutly abyssmal that eventually killed the game.
Tree of life was another good in beta but in one patch they lost 95% of there pop when they basicly made it impossible to PvP and screwed crafting up
My memorable games has been Everquest 1, Runescape, Classic WoW, Darkfall Archeage, GW2 (Although got repetative quickly with no open world PVP.
There the only games ive been able to play for a decent period of time
They simplify MMO to much these days imo or make them way to convient with quick travels, maps and instances and so on (I absolutely hate instances with a passion myself)
For me the high water mark was Warhammer Online, i feel that was peak mmorpg golden era. It wasn't bad but it failed because it wasn't all that special vs every other game. Games that came after it that were good and are still going are GW2/ESO/FFXiV
GW2 capitalized on the fact many hated standard RPG centric mmorpgs and just wanted to mindlessly kill stuff quickly hit endgame and enjoy shallow pvp, none of that is a negative.
FFXIV focused on raids
ESO had a singleplayer esque storyline and sieges
Now its utterly pointless to have a big budget western mmorpg. PVPers would rather play a MOBA and that makes 100% sense why they would. RPG fans have single player games that just do it better. There are L4D style co-ops and ARPG games to fill the gaps. All do their focus far better than any do it all mmorpg could ever do.
Sadly, for as much hate as it got, i wish i had just started, loved, and stuck with WOW, Went through too many mmorpgs that never made it, we all need breaks from games and it sucks getting the urge and going back to see a game dead, or on its 3rd publisher since i last played, or unable to even download and play due to it being shut down.
Only good ones left are the ones that were late stage development once the MMORPG golden era peaked, GW2/ESO/FFXIV. No one with a brain would create a new mmropg these days...too expensive not enough interested.
I think WAR was the last great game of the golden era, and to see how quickly it declined, and how EA kept it in necro-mode so long was so sad.
At the peak there were just too many competing games, people didn't stick around, and developers stuck hard to their plans regardless of reality in front of them. Everyone was determined to have their WOW-Killer or die trying and they all died.
Now its budget indy games that will probably be in development until they die, or private server sandbox survivals in their place, able to sustain on low budgets and low playerbase.
I hope one day someone will put a big budget modern mmorpg that isn't trying to be everquest/wow on the market....though its still "too soon" the mmorpg burn out still exists. No one wants to spend months helping lazy farmers clearing boars from their field eternally, deal with moody guild leaders trying to run over complicated raids, or shallow battleground pvp...and if they do, they play wow or the 3 surviving late stage mmorpgs and would most likely go back due to communities with in a few months.
Just my over worded rant and 2 cents.
Yet, when confronted all is good.
I'm often puzzled