2 years later... the almost sad state of MMOs in the new era

Kaines · Feb 9, 2020

Ravishing said:
There's no way in hell I would have played eq for the 5 years I did if not for the social

And what most people clamoring for the next EQ don’t get is that social connection is now offered by non-mmo products. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, even Tinder for the Loot-sluts all now exist and have taken the place of the EQ social connections. The next MMO won’t be a social experiment like EQ. It will be more game focused, more random match making and more achievements oriented.

You can see that just by where CONSUMERS are taking the gaming industry in general.

uniqueuser · Feb 9, 2020

Blind leading the blind.

At least no one will damage their eyes gazing upon the brilliant future that awaits.

khorum · Feb 9, 2020

Lambourne said:
I think there's a market for EQ type MMOs. There was one 20 years ago, why wouldn't there be one now? I don't subscribe to the "kids these days only play X" reasoning, people have all sorts of interests and it's easier than ever for niche games to find their audience.

Of course, it's not as big a market as there is for more accessible games like Fortnite, but there is one. Just because Toyota sells 5 times more cars than BMW does, doesn't mean there isn't a market for both.

The demographics of gaming has totally transformed from what it was 20 years ago.

20 years ago, young male poopsockers WAS the gaming market.

a_skeleton_05 · Feb 9, 2020

And 20 years ago guys like us were blown away by being able to be immersed in an interactive world that matched the books we read. That experience is a dime a dozen now.

Noodleface · Feb 9, 2020

khorum said:
The demographics of gaming has totally transformed from what it was 20 years ago.

20 years ago, young male poopsockers WAS the gaming market.

Just login to wow and talk to people. Almost everyone is 30+ now. I raided with a guild that had some mid 20 year olds

Kids aren't playing MMOs. They're playing competitive games. LoL, fortnite, etc

Mr. K · Feb 9, 2020

Noodleface said:
Just login to wow and talk to people. Almost everyone is 30+ now. I raided with a guild that had some mid 20 year olds

Kids aren't playing MMOs. They're playing competitive games. LoL, fortnite, etc

Is that because they don't want to play MMOs or is it that it's been 15 years since a good MMO has been released. I mean it's been trash money grabs since WoW basically.

I still think Blizzard screwed themselves by not doing a polished Diablo MMO 5 or so years ago before they blew away all of their built up cache with fans.

Ravishing · Feb 9, 2020

My struggle is figuring out what MMORPG means to people here.

Does it really mean grinding mobs in dungeons for hours on end?

"MMO" is any game out there these days.

"RPG" is being able to escape into another world and become something else.

EQ checked those 2 boxes. Nowadays there are a ton of games that also check those boxes.

Dungeon grinding is a shit gaming experience. Dungeon crawling was the holy grail and is what everyone wanted out of EQ, but it was never done properly.

Then we get instances dungeons and forced crawling which lost the social aspect.

I think the next MMO needs to stress social mechanics and the PVE will be secondary.
Cooperative gameplay, build a village/ kingdom, all contribute resources... or build an "enterprise" and explore the galaxy with 100 or 1000 of your closest friends.

Incorporate things that require small tasks to accomplish a bigger thing, so people can all login at their own time and do their thing, and feel like they are contributing.

TJT · Feb 9, 2020

Well MMORPG isn't mean to be played for a week and forgotten about. The perpetual world aspect is what defines MMORPG to me. That and of course the traditional RPG progression appeal.

Base management stuff is okay and all but I prefer just to be an adventurer in a big, mysterious and dangerous world.

Deeone · Feb 9, 2020

Maybe give it another 20 years when the EQ generation retires and has time on their hands. Then you may have again a consumer who can sit down LFG for 3 hours waiting for a group.

Lambourne · Feb 9, 2020

Ravishing said:
My struggle is figuring out what MMORPG means to people here.

Does it really mean grinding mobs in dungeons for hours on end?

"MMO" is any game out there these days.

"RPG" is being able to escape into another world and become something else.

EQ checked those 2 boxes. Nowadays there are a ton of games that also check those boxes.

Dungeon grinding is a shit gaming experience. Dungeon crawling was the holy grail and is what everyone wanted out of EQ, but it was never done properly.

Then we get instances dungeons and forced crawling which lost the social aspect.

I think the next MMO needs to stress social mechanics and the PVE will be secondary.
Cooperative gameplay, build a village/ kingdom, all contribute resources... or build an "enterprise" and explore the galaxy with 100 or 1000 of your closest friends.

Incorporate things that require small tasks to accomplish a bigger thing, so people can all login at their own time and do their thing, and feel like they are contributing.

I'd say a persistent and overarching world is one of the key elements that the original MMORPGs had and the more recent ones lacked. By that, I mean that the early games like early WoW, EQ or EVE were setup as online worlds which the player was, by necessity, only a small part of. Compare the more recent WoW expansions where the world is (through storyline quests, phasing, easy access to throwaway groups etc) tailored to the player as with a single player game. It's entirely centered around the player, so it feeds and rewards self-centered behaviour. The early games rewarded social and cooperative behaviour instead.

There's a thousand design choices that can nudge a game one way or the other. I don't think a classic mmorpg requires dungeon grinding, but making everything instanced is probably too much.

khorum · Feb 9, 2020

It's just an evolution of the games themselves tbh. It's not MMOs that are dying off, most of the new genres have the "massively multiplayer" communities inherited from the MMO's. If anything the twitch communities and voice gaming has expanded on that. All the social integration and "deep investment" of new games derived from MMOs. On the other hand MMOs themselves have become more instanced and less "massive", delivering content portioned for five to a few dozen players at a time.

I think what's actually dying is the RPG part of MMORPGs... and of that I think it's really just the deep investment people felt back in UO and EQ. That's definitely gone and I dunno how you'd grow an audience for that today with so many competitors.

mkopec · Feb 9, 2020

Borzak said:
Long string of shitty MMO's that everyone rushed to publish to cash in on what WoW brought. Been so long since a lot of people have seen or played a good MMO. Not counting those too young.

I agree. Its wow that fucked the entire genre. And not only this, it was actually decent when it first came out, then they started gutting it piece by piece over the following years until it became a lobby dungeon crawler for the plebs that wanted everything ez mode. Wow is not a mmorpg anymore.

But yeah, others started to take note on how Blizzard was printing money with this shit so we saw pretty much an entire decade of wow clones, and nothing but, hit the market. There was no progression, no innovation, it was just clone after clone set in a different universe. And all those except a few which are on life support because of F2P were a big colossal fail. $100 million fails.

Noodleface · Feb 9, 2020

Mr. K said:
Is that because they don't want to play MMOs or is it that it's been 15 years since a good MMO has been released. I mean it's been trash money grabs since WoW basically.

I still think Blizzard screwed themselves by not doing a polished Diablo MMO 5 or so years ago before they blew away all of their built up cache with fans.

WoW killed the genre. Well, technically they didn't the other companies did. Every single goddamn company made wow clones and they a crashed and burned.

A lot of people say wow killed the genre but they didn't. If anything wow brought way more millions of players into the genre. No one improved on what wow did and that's where we are.

mkopec · Feb 9, 2020

Noodleface said:
WoW killed the genre. Well, technically they didn't the other companies did. Every single goddamn company made wow clones and they a crashed and burned.

A lot of people say wow killed the genre but they didn't. If anything wow brought way more millions of players into the genre. No one improved on what wow did and that's where we are.

Blizzard itself killed it too. Like I said they themselves gutted their own game as to not resemble an open, persistent world mmorpg. They turned it into nothing more than a lobby dungeon crawler. You stood your ass in Org and mashed dungeon finder, or raid finder.

Noodleface · Feb 9, 2020

mkopec said:
Blizzard itself killed it too. Like I said they themselves gutted their own game as to not resemble an open, persistent world mmorpg. They turned it into nothing more than a lobby dungeon crawler. You stood your ass in Org and mashed dungeon finder, or raid finder.

I mean sort of but also not.

If your idea of playing wow is raid finder then you're not an mmo player mythic+ dungeons require a hand made group traveling to a dungeon and unable to queue up for it. Real raids require travel. Regular dungeons? Sure they streamlined that. They've also put dailies which kills the game for me, but they make you play in the world still.

Their big problem now is they made it TOO grindy

uniqueuser · Feb 9, 2020

Special-case rules and mechanics at every turn really make for one cohesive, immersive world huh.

Raes · Feb 9, 2020

Noodleface said:
WoW killed the genre. Well, technically they didn't the other companies did. Every single goddamn company made wow clones and they a crashed and burned.

A lot of people say wow killed the genre but they didn't. If anything wow brought way more millions of players into the genre. No one improved on what wow did and that's where we are.

Exactly. I've said this before, companies copied WoW instead of emulating Blizzard. It's like (who doesn't love a good fast good analogy?) if every fast food joint that came after Mcdonalds were all on the same block and all served the exact same shit but the quality of the food varied from slightly worse to terrible. Why would I want your greasy fries, stale buns or watery drinks when I can have better right next door?

mkopec · Feb 9, 2020

Meh, whatever. People think this genre is dead but I think it can be resurrected by the right game. There is plenty of people out there vying for a new mmorpg. You now have these fpsmmos now which are gathering lots of people like Destiny and Warframe, etc... I mean they are not TRUE mmorpg, but more of a mmorpg-lite, but still I would consider them a part of this equation. I would love to see a really good fpsmmo done right with a persistent world and more deeper rpg experience. Im tired of the high fantasy themes myself.

TJT · Feb 9, 2020

Noodleface said:
I mean sort of but also not.

If your idea of playing wow is raid finder then you're not an mmo player mythic+ dungeons require a hand made group traveling to a dungeon and unable to queue up for it. Real raids require travel. Regular dungeons? Sure they streamlined that. They've also put dailies which kills the game for me, but they make you play in the world still.

Their big problem now is they made it TOO grindy

This is one of those philosophical points about MMO design though. Yes the uber players will always be playing a different game than Little Timmy. But at Blizzard HQ you run into the very real question of how much of the end game content should Little Timmy see? How much should we spend on developing end game content if only 5% of players even see it?

Which is again the inherent problem with loading the entire game design to End Game is Where the Game starts then its kind of downhill from there in my opinion. Average Timmy is just going to mash dungeon finder and raid finder maybe find some faggoty guild to join. He won't push his game farther.

How many players see/do Molten Core even now?

mkopec · Feb 9, 2020

TJT said:
This is one of those philosophical points about MMO design though. Yes the uber players will always be playing a different game than Little Timmy. But at Blizzard HQ you run into the very real question of how much of the end game content should Little Timmy see? How much should we spend on developing end game content if only 5% of players even see it?

Which is again the inherent problem with loading the entire game design to End Game is Where the Game starts then its kind of downhill from there in my opinion. Average Timmy is just going to mash dungeon finder and raid finder maybe find some faggoty guild to join. He won't push his game farther.

How many players see/do Molten Core even now?

And that brings up the resetting content every expansion too. Which fucks your end game content even more. Imagine if WOWs content was more like EQs, little Timmys casual guild eventually would maybe make it into BWL a few expansions later. But who gives a shit if all the gear there is replaced by greens in the next expansion.

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2 years later... the almost sad state of MMOs in the new era

Kaines

Potato Supreme

uniqueuser

Ahn'Qiraj Raider

khorum

Murder Apologist

a_skeleton_05

Noodleface

A Mod Real Quick

Mr. K

Molten Core Raider

Ravishing

Uninspiring Title

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole

Deeone

Molten Core Raider

Lambourne

Ahn'Qiraj Raider

khorum

Murder Apologist

mkopec

Noodleface

A Mod Real Quick

mkopec

Noodleface

A Mod Real Quick

uniqueuser

Ahn'Qiraj Raider

Raes

Vyemm Raider

mkopec

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole

mkopec