If you want more modding opportunities for custom player generated content you normally need a non subscription based game.
I like the idea of being able to replay a custom scenario of a game after the main story has been finished. Some custom scenarios even end up better than the original game. I really enjoyed games from game companies that provided tools for the community to actively mod the game. Those were companies you could tell cared about making people enjoy the game instead of debating which npc's / quests require silver tier item shop access to experience.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Neverwinter for player made content, but that's not really what I had in mind. What I have in mind for an MMO is to provide stuff to do that isn't technically 'content'. For example look at Unreal Tournament, I played that game for at least 3 years and there are no quests, no dialogue, no loots, no dungeon runs, no nothing. It's just the same thing over and over, running around shooting people and capturing cap points or flags or whatever. I think an MMORPG should try to do something like that. Have towns that are valuable to the player like Qeynos and Freeport or whatever, but they sometimes get overrun by orcs or dragons or whatever else. Players will want to log in and fight in a big battle, and whether they win or lose shouldn't even matter, it should be the fun of the battle that counts. And there would be alternatives like crafting or doing dungeons, but this stuff is just on the side, and the motivation of this is that it will aid you in future big battles.
Everquest was similar with the dungeons. Places like Lower Guk, there was a point in 1999/2000 when people spent many months camped in that zone and doing very little else. They would log in, try to get a group, and spend the whole night camped in a zone with someone pulling mobs. Their exp would creep upwards, and there was a chance that the named in their room might spawn and drop an item that they might get. My point is that there is content like this which is low cost yet actually quite enjoyable, if it's done right. It's still enjoyable and the players are still motivated to play it, and they will spend 5 hours every night for months, and yet it doesn't need hundreds of lines of dialogue, cutscenes, voice overs, quest items and mechanics and lots of different disposable locations etc.. It just needs smart design and the game could be fun, and have longevity, while still being relatively cheap to make. It just needs a good design.
Yes, but the manner in which people actually play games has changed.
Yeah but we've been through this before on FoH. You just can't satisfy both sets of gamers, it's just not possible. Someone like me is just never going to fully enjoy a game like WoW. And the average WoW player is just never going to enjoy a game like I want. The two are just not compatible, and the few games we get which try to shoot down the middle, just end up unsatisfying to both types of people. That's why I think devs need to just go all out in one direction. Either get a 100 million dollar budget and make your own version of a WoW clone, and you have a chance of doing ok with it like Rift. Or get a 50 million dollar budget and make a niche game but which is very popular with a particular group of people. The only example I can think of like that, is Eve, but there may be others. But this type of approach just never gets explored by companies, they are all too busy being idiots and chasing the phat WoW pie and failing time and time again.
Your hardcore game will probably maintain sub 100k numbers.
No u
No other MMORPG has really maintained anything north of 500k subs for very long.
So what? No MMORPG ever had anything near 10+ million subscribers before WoW. You make a stupid point.
A low budget will bring you crap graphics and shitty UI with tons of network code including plenty of ways to cheat and hack the game.
EQ had a low budget and is still being played 13 years later. Again, you make shit points because you are a fucking retard.
Essentially you have no idea what you're talking about. Especially when you say:
I mean that's just the height of ignorance and naivite when it comes to the gaming public.
Actually prick, I am THE ONLY one who has an idea of what I'm talking about... because I'm the only one who has already played games like this and seen how they work. You make your shitty points based on zero experience. How many MMO's have you even played? Like 4 or 5? What the fuck makes you think your opinion is even vaguely valid? Get a reality check moron.
You think you're going to get 100k let alone a "niche" 500k to not cheat by promising to not have a browser up in another monitor with a hand drawn map in MS paint.
So what if they do that? They could do that in EQ too back in 1999, just as I could get walkthroughs and cheat codes for all the games I've ever played. If someone wants to do that, that's their own problem. Others will play it how it's supposed to be played and it's those people they should cater the game towards. If some retards like you want to cheat and blast through to max level in no time, then let them do it. They will soon quit and be gone and leave the game to the none retards who are busy playing in a sandbox and actually enjoying the game that they paid for rather than trying to find shortcuts to the end of it like a fucking dumbass.
