The Sad, sad, state of MMORPG in this brave new era...
- Thread starter Ukerric
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Kuro
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Little late replying to it, but Anarchy Online was amazing. And terrible. Amazingly terrible. The twinking in that game was unreal. PVP was a clusterfuck of everyone doing broken shit and it was great. Targeting loot-rewards in missions while leveling, alongside dungeons that dropped great gear you'd wear for dozens of levels, made for a really enjoyable main leveling experience. But then came Shadowlands, and the SK grind. First character through the grind was fine, but grinding a Keeper through SK levels eventually broke me. The mind-numbingness.
No rails. You could do the stupidest shit in that game, both positively and negatively. Twink your way into shit 4x your level... then accidentally unequip something and need to spend the next 2 hours swapping gear and getting buffs to slip back into it. Class design was "how do we make this class weird as fuck compared to the other classes?" and I loved it. One of the few MMOs to actually understand what tanks really want in their heart of hearts, and make Tank Cooldowns turn you into a physically massive invincible meat shield. Gimme dat +%Size mod, devs.
Parts of the Community were pretty great, mostly because the game itself was buggered in half, so the community had to make up for it. Lots of community-run initiatives for raiding/leveling/gearing/helping new players. The information databases for the game were on a completely different level compared to Allakhazam. The base mission-running game was basically unplayable garbage without the mission-rolling addons players made. Other parts of the community had the company create dance halls for them to grind on each other with their bikini-wearing Atroxs. So uh, those parts not so great.
No rails. You could do the stupidest shit in that game, both positively and negatively. Twink your way into shit 4x your level... then accidentally unequip something and need to spend the next 2 hours swapping gear and getting buffs to slip back into it. Class design was "how do we make this class weird as fuck compared to the other classes?" and I loved it. One of the few MMOs to actually understand what tanks really want in their heart of hearts, and make Tank Cooldowns turn you into a physically massive invincible meat shield. Gimme dat +%Size mod, devs.
Parts of the Community were pretty great, mostly because the game itself was buggered in half, so the community had to make up for it. Lots of community-run initiatives for raiding/leveling/gearing/helping new players. The information databases for the game were on a completely different level compared to Allakhazam. The base mission-running game was basically unplayable garbage without the mission-rolling addons players made. Other parts of the community had the company create dance halls for them to grind on each other with their bikini-wearing Atroxs. So uh, those parts not so great.
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cabbitcabbit
NeoGaf Donator
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Honestly one of my favorite aspects of eq was the twinking. Getting loot I didn’t need and throwing it on a level 1 or selling it and being able to fully deck out a character was fun. That’s how I moved over to my monk main that I played from Kunark onward after I was able to get him a fungi, traq staff and rbb.
Pulling out heirloom gear from thin air didn’t have the same feeling.
Pulling out heirloom gear from thin air didn’t have the same feeling.
iannis
Musty Nester
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lots of people moved to monks during kunark, I remember. That class, when twinked out, was legit fun. Bards too. Necro's were losing their status by the end of kunark, and rogs were easy but boring. I even made a twink monk.
I also remember it caused twinkloot fights in raids. Which was super, super, super gay. Eq was like that I guess. lootwhores, lootwhores everywhere. Can't blame people, loot was the game. Too many people didn't understand that you could lose by winning though. I quit EQ with the most DKP in my guild. And I wasn't unique. Nobody at the top really gave a shit about loot outside of a very few select bits.
I also remember it caused twinkloot fights in raids. Which was super, super, super gay. Eq was like that I guess. lootwhores, lootwhores everywhere. Can't blame people, loot was the game. Too many people didn't understand that you could lose by winning though. I quit EQ with the most DKP in my guild. And I wasn't unique. Nobody at the top really gave a shit about loot outside of a very few select bits.
Swagdaddy
There is a war going on over control of your mind
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I had to quit MMOs because I simply don't have the time, plus every douchebag that remains fans of the genre love to bot and multi-client making the entire social aspect of the games dead as heck. Fighting games are where it's at you just pick and play.
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Ravishing
Uninspiring Title
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This is where I'm at... EQ was fun as hell but there's noway in hell Ill ever play like that again and I really don't see the younger/college gen doing it these days either. A big appeal to EQ was the large open world. I think you basically accomplish this these days with the BR games. But take it to the next level and put a fighter game in a huge MMO world. Like Destiny I guess.
A fighter game in a persistent ever-changing MMO world, with battles over territory, or something. EVE2 or DAOC or GW3 or something. Remove grinding AI and just create that big sandbox world with Fighter characters. Sprinkle in some MMO elements: Gear, Crafting, Quests.... PvE can still exist too, just not as the primary endgame.
Woefully Inept
Karazhan Raider
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They're not perfect by any means, but there are still good mmo experiences to be had out there. GW2 and FF14 are still going strong and improving with new features and Devs that give a shit. Yeah, you won't find eq/vanilla wow in them, but you can get something worthwhile out of them if you just allow yourself to. Gotta take what you can get, and judging them based on first/early impressions keeps that from happening.
Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Both are good games but even they are old at this point. GW2 also broke new ground in terms of QoL advances, etc. Many of which were copied by WoW and other games. But again that was years ago.
Most new games are retreads of old games with the exact same systems and a little bit different graphics. And I'm not just talking about mmos. How many versions of 4x strategy games are there that do basically the exact same thing? Pretty much all of them. How many games have fucking elves in them? Etc, etc. How many Doom / CoD copies are there? It's sickening. Hey look, there is another post apocalyptic game coming out, whoohoo...
Innovation in the games industry is dead atm.
Everything is derivative unfortunately, and we're reaching the 4th decade or so of gaming. There will still be gems to be found but they'll be in fresh takes on established things, and likely low budget indie games which excludes mmo's. Even if a crowdfunded game like pantheon gets off the ground, it will be drowned out by the sheer mass of products available. Many of the games we treasure as classics only found success because there was fuckelse to play.
So, for now we just gotta enjoy what we have and hope that somehow one of those gems can hit the jackpot, or a bigger player feels like enough time has passed and puts some money into an mmo that exploits the frustrations that gamers have towards hand holding theme park games.
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Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Pantheon may or may not be a winner. But even it's systems are retreads of EQ. Granted, a lot of those systems will feel new since only old EQ did them, but it's still a retread.
There is a lot of room to innovate in gaming. Strategy games don't have to follow the same fucking 4x systems. MMO's don't have to be quest hub based fetchit elf garbage. It's very easy to come up with new ways to play.
But gaming has become BIG business now and accountants rule most of the companies. Accountants hate new things.
mewkus
Blackwing Lair Raider
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everything has been done by now, we're at the stage of even fishing and forklift simulators being on their 5th version. we really need VR to take off before new concepts can be explored, we're pretty much constrained by 2d. i love that 3d painting thing you can do with an oculus, a sandbox world utilising that tech would really open up the bounds of possibility and creativity in our gaming.
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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QFT.
The last innovative game was Minecraft. I don't think there's been a new game type or new take on a game type since. Most RPGs are still refined versions of baldur/diablo/etc that compete on new classes & settings. Adventures are still point-n-clicks and push puzzlers. Strategy has barely evolved and the last innovation we saw is base building which is basically Dwarf Fortress era (2006?).
Even Minecraft was ripped off from other games. (Notch has said as much) and BG was very similar to other games around at the time but with a different graphical perspective and control scheme.
Gaming's ingredients have pretty much all been discovered at this point. All that remains is interesting flavours from experimental blends that match the current taste of the consumer at the right time. Things like VR will come along and introduce some new stuff to add to the pool, but not enough to fundamentally change things. It's very similar to movies. Same old ideas, but the right thing at the right time can hit it big (superhero movies etc...) despite not really being anything new if you look at it close enough.
EQ and its like had its time in the sun. The world has moved on. The hipsters of gaming will talk about how great it was and play their emu servers (vinyl) but it will never be what it was because it can't be. Vicariouslivingquest is right around the corner though, and it's ready to capture the next big audience and set the tone for the following decade with its blend of this and that that feels new, despite just being elements from the previous decade smashed together with a deceptively new texture and taste. Those hipsters are going to look at it and say "That's just EQ!" and they'll mostly be right, but nobody else is going to care until they burn through it and yearn for an experience that speaks to the core of their beloved game.
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IT will never be what it was but it can be again. Its been so long ago now that a game that does mmorpg like EQ (with a modern twist of course) will feel fresh again. Especially to those that never played it which most of the wow hordes never did. I dont like what mmorpgs became over the years, namely with wow and all of its wow clones, which is basically a lobby game. Hop on, do a dungeon or two, hop on do a raid, never even leaving the confines of the city or whatever. This is not what mmorpgs were or what they were intended to be. At least I dont think they were intended to be this way. They basically morphed into a CoD game but with magic and big bosses.
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