EQ Never
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Vitality
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Atleast get T-Ray in there and give us the low-down on hairmagheddon. Keep Luperza out of this one. No one wants her in on this.
The problem is with us, dear friend. We're getting old.
The reason that's a problem is because our demo is shrinking, not growing. Our mmos when we were younger never had any real flash, substance or pop to them. Most were basic. Remember when we saw our first staff that actually had...*gasp*... a fire animation on it?!?!?
The primary demo MMO player now has grown up with WoW or inspired, an mmo where this kind of stuff is so commonplace, that's unless it's EQN epic Blindness, it doesn't register. I think that's why they have it so tuned up right now... for shock value.
Our primary mode of play was: get some buddies, go find a good camp, and then kill the same mobs for 6-8hours... somewhat happily just fucking around in /chat. Not a lot of content in your game? No problem. Just start running in any direction and see what kind of fun you can make for yourself by jumping off cliffs, and seeing who can run through super tough mobs without armor and live (except when you had a death penalty and deleveled). WoW put so much activity in games that new players can't go back to sandboxes, even though they think they do. They'd be lost without the !'s, or guides/videos on how to make the best build, because even though back then it was about the most fun build, today it's about the 'best' build so you can smash everyone or the most efficient way to play the AH or farm crops or level to 50 in a week.
The fire you ask for to cleanse the genre won't come, because there isn't any need from a developer standpoint. If most of your customers want flashy, glowing, sexy armor and weapons you'll give it to them. If most want quests and to be given a cruise ship itinerary of what dailies they need to do everyday, you'll give it to them. If most can't fight their way out of a paper bag with epics, you'll lower the dungeon difficulty for them until they can get the ultimate epics and then they can now sometimes clear it. When they can't do that, you'll just sell them lockboxes straight up.
The change you want has to come from an indy gamemaker. Ragging on the industry for adjusting to it's now new cash-laden playerbase is kind of crazy. That's where the money is so they'll make the games to suit them, not anyone here because us... we got kids, we got a job (sometime two), and we got hemmoroids at our age if we sit too long so pfft.
Vitality
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You're probably right Jack, well... back to Path of Exile with the rest of my receding hairline demographic for now, I suppose.
GGG needs to make an MMO for the genre to get purged probably. They purged the ARPG market already. (mostly: D3 is catching on with PoE assimilations)
I mean who else is going to do it... Darkfall bros fked it up bad. Trion is out, EA is out, Blizz is out. NCsoft is out.
Maybe Camelot Unchained? I doubt it though.
GGG needs to make an MMO for the genre to get purged probably. They purged the ARPG market already. (mostly: D3 is catching on with PoE assimilations)
I mean who else is going to do it... Darkfall bros fked it up bad. Trion is out, EA is out, Blizz is out. NCsoft is out.
Maybe Camelot Unchained? I doubt it though.
Before TESO, a lot of people thought that would be Zenimax but... guffaw. If Smed can't pull Next off, then it's going to have to be someone fromoutsidethe MMO scape because that means most everyone in the MMO field is too tainted to be counted on. Tainted by the money (cash shops) or tainted by stagnation of ideas (devs seem to only hang out with other devs so..).
I honestly think the next 'big' thing isn't even going to be in traditional MMOs anymore. It's going to have to come from the places like Bungie is trying to do (but won't) with Destiny or Ubisoft is trying to do with The Division. Games that aren't really mmos, but still try to incorporate a lot of "MMO like" features and play but on a wider scale (console audience far bigger than MMO audience).
Someone will make a smash hit (not perfect but one most people will play/stick with), then that industry will follow it, ruining that as well. Then MMOs will make a resurgence due to the only real creative people still left in the industry are there because they want to be there, not because they couldn't get a job making console games and cash out.
So the real question is: can you wait another 15-20 years until the purge is complete?
Vitality
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MMO's will be good again when someone in the industry realizes that there needs to again be some kind of risk vs. reward built into the game itself. Take two people: give one of them anything they ask for whenever they ask for it and make the other person work hard for it. Which one do you think will appreciate his possessions more? The problem with modern MMO's is they've become way too much of the former, and not near enough of the latter.
Melvin
Blackwing Lair Raider
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Just gonna pull some numbers out of my ass real quick, they're close enough. If you ask 100 people, 5 want to "work hard" for it, 20 want it delivered on a silver platter, and 75 want football. Sure, those 5 are going to be a pretty loyal group, but I can't imagine a challenging game attracting the kind of numbers a AAA studio needs to see.
Rogosh
Lord Nagafen Raider
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EQ when it launched was a rock star. There was little competition in the genre overall compared to what competition is out today (at least according to this, cause my memory is hazy)Category:MMORPGs by year
The actual amount of people playing MMOs then weren't anywhere near as large as the potential pie that is out now, especially the casuals. There were no casuals back then. If you weren't White and Male with plenty of time on your hands, you probably weren't playing an MMO. Hell, access to the internet still wasn't even that common (not even half of the US population had internet access still in 2000).
Tech is now better (Dial Up? 56k modems?) and computers are cheaper (build one for $350 to run a F2P game). There's are too many other factors to mention that will skew any subs numbers short term and long term to count on a game's sub base staying up. (P2P, F2P, B2P?) Back then, only one type.
So, a shitload more games that are specialized with many ways to play and pay (or not) for them compounded by a totally different playerbase... oh and don't forget the babes and Gramma's now.
It's not like that's going to happen ever again in the MMO world but the problem is people keep thinking it will if someone would just make one good MMO. Genre is becoming too diverse now to haveThe Game That Rules Them Allanymore.
Daidraco
Avatar of War Slayer
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For the most part though, those classes were about positioning. Warriors had a basic position, true, but it was also about trying to get a big ass fucking dragon to go where you want it to go without breathing and cleaving the entire fucking raid. By the time Warriors did start to have an arsenal of "fun buttons," paladins and shadow knights had came into their own as well. So no longer was the Warrior the "main" tank.
I have an account from the first version of Darkfall but the last time I tried to play the game - they couldnt find my original account. So I just kind of said f'k it and moved on.
Im really kind of tired of this argument. EverQuest is still alive and doing better than some of the more recent releases of mmos. The P99 server has had a constant flow of people and a good sized population for just one server going on for quite some time. People quit that server all the time for the simple reason that that content model cant support more than a few hundred people at the top per server, max.
Final Fantasy 11 is still doing fairly well, itself. Quite a lot of those people didnt jump ship just because 14 came out. Even now, as most people would agree 14 is doing really fucking good - you still have a good sized user base for 11. Lineage 1 has a strong following too, and a good portion of them didnt follow the crowd into Lineage 2. Lineage 2 became a power house itself though, just like Final Fantasy 14. Those games are just getting old, dont have an advertising budget. How long will we really play World of Warcraft before we're really just fucking sick of it? .. Im not at that point yet, but I also havent played the game all 10 years that its been out.
A game that borrows a lot from older games isnt going to be some massive flop, and people arent full of shit when they say these games wouldnt do bad. The supporting data that these games could do well is literally in the games that already exist. If someone would just treat the game like a blind date, with very low standards, we might all be pleasantly surprised when we finally get to play it. Its not like anyone here can tell the fucking future of games. We've been saying that the future of games is VR since the 80's and it still hasnt hit.
Quaid
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I stand by this. That crowd (us) isn't the main demo anymore. You know that. And I'm not talking about 'borrowing' parts from games because it's practically impossible to take all the good things from each game and then roll it into one product, which people keep asking for.
When you were 10 or 15 years younger, you were the prime demo. Most gaming companies were making console and PC RPGs, not MMOs or even thinking about it. MMOs were still fairly new as a product to even that crowd. MMOs are a dime a dozen nowadays not to mention all the pseudo MMOs out. Remember when people used to debate whether GW1 was even a real MMO? Now those types of games are everywhere.
Sure there is room for a niche MMO; there always is, but back then those sandbox/PvP centered games weren't niche. They were the norm. Now they are niche, just about every last one of them. Even EvE is that way because it's a space game and most people don't view it the same way as 'typical' PvP. FFXI, UO, Lineage, EQ... you don't have people going back to revisit them and you certainly don't have any of thenewMMO players even considering trying them out at all. The people still playing those games never left.
Companies don't want to try and make a new sandbox game that costs 40 million+ to try and pull that niche base away from games those people are already locked into, that's stupid as fuck. They also don't want to spend that money and then try and convince all the newer questborn MMOers that the 'old way' of playing was actually better. That's twice as dumbfuck.
FFXI only did well because it was a huge IP in Japan, but the game was basically a copy of EQ in many ways. Funny thing was, it came out two years before WoW and EQ2 did and guess which way the industry (and the players) went? There wasn't anyone who was in the industry who said"Hey, this FFXI is doing pretty good with thousands of subs for two years and it's basically a fresh take on EQ. Let's copy a sandbox model for our game."Even SE with a successful non-WoW type game didn't want to recreate that EQ model again on their next one.
For reference:
Since gamers are interested in new games that go in a different directions than what came before, that's what companies make for them. It's like television. There's some really good, niche television shows out there... well written, well acted, well received and reviewed. Yet, these same shows get shut down all the time because they are niche and lack wide mass appeal for income. Meanwhile, the major television stations still put out the reality shit of every type, and it sells like hotcakes.
Again, people SAY they want that good shit but honestly you'd see more people playing (or even trying) the bunch of niche sandbox/PvP games already out there now. But Fallen Earth, ATITD, Darkfall, Ryzom, Wurm, Xsyon, MO, etc never had tons of people clamoring for them or even sprung to try them out. Even now the games in beta like The Repopulation, Pathfinder O, have people with little interest in them. The only two I even see any interest in is Star Citizen (because they want an updated EvE) and AAge (because it was hyped in Asia forever and it's new here).
You're a fucking idiot, and your analogy sucks. Here's a much more accurate analogy: one person is a billionaire and can buy a new ferrari once a week for the rest of his life if he so chooses. The other person works hard, saves up his money, and eventually is able to save up enough money to buy a ferrari. Which person appreciates the car more?
Abefroman
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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The Billionare. He can actually afford the car and can appreciate what it is, a luxury. The dumbfuck who spent his life savings on it is gonna be selling that shit once he sees the insurance premiums.
Melvin
Blackwing Lair Raider
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I don't know why I'm letting you troll me like this, but...
1) Those numbers I made up aren't any kind of an analogy at all. They're ballpark numbers indicating how many people are interested in the kind of game you want to see. How did you not understand that? Are you mentally retarded?
2) You're a fucking idiot and your analogy sucks. Ease or difficulty of acquisition doesn't automatically make anyone less or more appreciative of anything. The billionaire could be a spoiled trust fund brat who would rather be driving a Rolls Royce but bought a Ferrari because he's trying to "act his age." The person who saves for years to buy a Ferrari could only drive it a couple times a year because he's afraid of getting it dirty and scratching the paint. Neither of these situations has a goddamn thing to do with MMOs because you're a fucking idiot and your analogy sucks.