Well, now what?

I think the problem is us and our attitudes towards games. We expect every game to be just as amazing as our first one, and when we don't get that warm glow of nostalgia for month after month, and when people start to play less, which is only a natural progression, we assume that something is 'wrong,' and wait for the next game to do it right, instead of adjusting our attitude and expectations.

Up until GW2 I thought the same, I thought the problem was that the industry sucked and that if the right game came along I'd be able to bury myself in it for years without a second thought like I did DAoC and early WoW, and love it the entire time. And it's true that since 2004 we've seen a remarkable output of terrible games from various studios, but GW2 is what convinced me that evenly with a perfectly good game, one as well done or better than early WoW or DAoC, that feeling couldn't be captured, and that the problem was our expectations, and not the genre. Sure, GW2 is buggy as hell and lacks a lot, but no more so than WoW and certainly no more so than early EQ or DAoC or UO. Then you combine that with the fact that new games are coming out and competing against current ones with years of development time and feedback.

In short, it isn't realistic to expect an MMO to come out which will keep you blissfully occupied for several hours a day indefinitely. We need to adjust our expectations and realize that it's perfectly normal to play these games for a few months, get bored, then stop playing until they've added new stuff or the burnout has worn off. MMO's are best played cyclically, not as a lifestyle.

Wrathcaster_sl said:

Planetside 2 is about the most fun I've had in years, but if story is your thing then you're going to be disappointed, unless your version of story is PUSH PUSH FUCKING PUSH CAPTURE POINT A FUCKING GET THAT GODDAMN ARMOR COLUMN FORMED GET TO THE WAYPOINT YOU FUCKERS YOU CAN FARM EXP LATER WE GOTTA CAPP THISSS SHITTT AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Which, at this point, is more than enough for me.

Point is, it definitely has that novel "cherry popping" feel to it. The first time you see 200 people fighting at once with aircraft laying down whoopass and tanks exploding and charging in with 50 infantry... Yeah, that's a new one for me in an MMO.

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Bridge combat in the original Planetside was pretty fun, too. The beta for the original Planetside really was excellent. The release and game after turned out to be fun, but didn't have a lot of lasting appeal. I think the combat back then was too spread out.

I've played a few hours of PS2, but need to delve deeper. I really hope the big battles that were so prevalent in PS1 beta but disappeared after release are there.

What mmo is worth playing?

Really. The trolls will all jump up and down and make fun of people for playing AoC, SWTOR or GW2 for a couple months but they never mention what mmos are good. SWTOR sucked but it was fun for a few short weeks until you hit the endgame. The same can be said of all the recent mmo's - AoC, Rift, GW2, the list goes on and on. WoW didn't do it for me either, too much like EQ and the graphics are ass.

If you are a WoW fanboy and that is your end all be all then say so. That is what most of the trolls seem to be.

Personnally, I've pretty much given up on mmo's. None of them float my boat anymore. Been there, done that etc, etc, etc. Would love to get that feeling back again but the genre needs a reboot first.

Your problem is twice as rough for people who want their MMO PvP. We've been reduced to trying red99 for Christ's sake. The levelling up parts of Warhammer was pretty fun though. That was like the last sweet taste.

Pick up The Secret World (http://www.rerolled.org/showthread.p...e-Secret-World) . It's got story, atmosphere, the people are generally alright, and it's buy to play with no sub. On the broader subject though, every MMO is built to be a one month hitter quitter now, that's why they don't stick.

I was in The Secret World closed beta. Another game that was fun for all of 6 weeks..

They at least tried to be different though. Have to give them props for that.

kitsune_sl said:

I think many of you hit the head on the nail with the "cherry popping" metaphor. I consider my first MMO to be Graal, but more properly I guess you could say WoW as I got into the beta of it really early. I think the concept of endgame exists today because the games are designed in such a way. The levels are treated as something you have to do before the 'real game' begins, which I think is bad design to start off with. I never played Anachry online, but my friends did and that game had an absurd amount of leveling content, something which I would like to have, a real sense of constant progression rather than hitting level X and then equipping various colored loot to make you arbitrarily stronger.

I mean, for those who played such MUDS as Aardwolf, I'd love the ability to simply remort at max level, start over and multi-class or w/e. Everything just follows the wow model and it's making me go ZZzZzz...

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While I agree to a minor extent that playing your first MMO is indeed eye opening, I think it is more than that. The huge difference between MMO's today and yesteryear is the difficulty of the game. EQ was pretty much the last MMO where a character dying actually meant something. All dying means now is a lack of progression. With EQ it also meant actual regression. Players really had to learn thier character and the environment or they were doomed to have a long day of making up for it. Since everyone was in this boat, players would come together because it was safer. Players would explore together more often, because it was easier. You did not "Have" to do it, but if one day you wanted an opportunity to go into the best dungeons and kill the dragons, you had to learn the game. This element in MMO's is gone now because a business is about making money, not about challenging a player.

The irony of the modern day MMO is that by making everything accessible to every player, they have removed the need to know a player. The online game is multiplayer, but it is not a community. One thing that perhaps needs to change is the actual term used for these games. MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer Online. We need to take Games like Everquest, Asheron's Call, DAoC and even EvE and perhaps add one more letter. MMOC would be a better designation for these games as the C would stand for "Community". This is what has not been released in a very long time. I am hoping that the new Everquest will indeed be the next MMOC.

kitsune_sl said:

I was one of those who were very hyped for Age of Conan. Absorbed all the information I could and longed for the day I could heal faces with my Priest of Mithra. Then came release and even though I trodded on for 80 levels, the game lost its appeal rapidly. Friends began to whisper about Warhammer Online, but I was skeptical. I warmed up to the thought though, and a friend convinced me to buy it. Played for a week, didn't even get to max level.

This made me cynical, even jaded. I no longer felt eager to purchase a new MMO and devote my time to it. Rift came, didn't bother with it until I was handed a free trial (made it to level 5 or so). TERA came. Never even tried it.

Then it appeared. The one beacon of light on the horizon, the one game that would be the saviour of all previous MMO failures: Star Wars. Being a ridiculous fan since a huge age (read maybe 70 different books, comics, extended universe lore etc), I was so unbeliavably stoked. Bioware's previous incarnations we're really amazing and I couldn't wait to see what KOTOR Online would bring. Was invited to a beta weekend and it just made my blood pump harder. This was FINALLY going to be a game to surpass WoW.

Then we had release and we had a huge list of members who wanted to play! Everyone that quit the guild long ago came back and we had a blast leveling, playing warzones and whatnot. Yet something was amiss. People started logging in less and less. After reaching max level on my character I made a new one, and then when my third character was almost 50 I was thinking, what is the point, really?

So I quit. Starwars lasted about 2 months for me, and now I'm back to being a cynical bastard. I am playing pandaria and I do enjoy it quite a bit. I still feel like the WoW raid game is the best that has been offered, but it is growing old.

I really, really would like to feel the experience of discovering a new world again, as I'm sure a lot of you might as well. That's why we have 50 different topics of different games, some released, some in pre-production and some hardly even announced.

SO. What is the point of this rambling thread? Won't this idiot shut up already?
Well, I wanted to ask all of you, what are you looking forward to now in the MMO world and why? Is there anything on the horizon that might make a positive impact on the MMO world or is there just more games that will go to a Pay to Win bandaid model within a month due to game longevity being that of the titanic?

Really, I'd love to know. I don't think I'll obsess as much about a game like I did when I was younger, but it would be cool to see if the industry hasn't completely given up on us

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all new mmos are just a disappointment waiting to happen. stick with the classics. right now im playing vanilla wow on Emerald Dream and havin a pretty good time. if eq is your thing i suggest eqamc. /cheers

It would be really interesting to see what a new MMO player (Lets say their first MMO was WoW TBC) would think. Do they feel jaded the same way a lot of the veterans here do?

Then there's this odd expectation that a game will come out that you want to play all the time for months on end is something that will happen frequently.

Or you can just buy an mmo, play it for a month or two until you've done all the content you are interested in, then stop and move on to another game just like NEARLY EVERY OTHER GENRE THAT EXISTS.

I know man. It's that extra $15 they make you pay should you play longer than one month. When you are already a few hundred hours in - enough time to play even a final fantasy game five times over, paying extra just seems like a massive commitment. A marriage contract, really.

The psychological effect of paying a subscription fee somehow elevates MMO into the realm of "It has to be completely perfect and so engrossing that I dedicate every minute of my free time to it." When really what you pay is simply proportional to the amount of content you are getting.

Most people who buy Call of Duty do not play multiplayer. They pay $60 for a five hour game. The initial cost for one month (potentially hundreds of hours) of a MMO is similar. Yet for some reason, that sub makes people think they have to give up their house and kids should they cancel their subscription.

And people who want to play old content forever are another special kind of crazy. After playing Legend of Zelda 250 times you might want to give the SNES one a try.

kitsune_sl said:

SO. What is the point of this rambling thread? Won't this idiot shut up already?
Well, I wanted to ask all of you, what are you looking forward to now in the MMO world and why? Is there anything on the horizon that might make a positive impact on the MMO world or is there just more games that will go to a Pay to Win bandaid model within a month due to game longevity being that of the titanic?

Really, I'd love to know. I don't think I'll obsess as much about a game like I did when I was younger, but it would be cool to see if the industry hasn't completely given up on us

Click to expand...

Well I guess that answers the state of mmos when you ask what you are looking forward too and people either criticize you for playing swtor, talk about jaded players and mmo cherry popping, and reminiscence about games already out lol.

Personally I have not looked into up and coming mmos as yet, GW2 was suppose to be my last mmo to look forward to, but those bastards at anet are taking their sweet time giving any love to wvw, I just don't give a shit to anything else they're doing to the game, which to me looks like they're destroying the game one piece at a time. I haven't seen anything interesting yet in the upcoming year.

I think my last hope might behttp://www.greedmonger.comas my Sandbox MMO and if this fails I just don't know anymore TBH.

Or a quality product that sticks to a proven formula without shitting it up with crappy gimmick "innovations" that hurt more than they help. Like the button smash combat they tried in AOC, or the manual targeting shit tired in various games that was totally pointless, or the group play from GW2 that removes the trinity and replaces it with nothing at all.

Innovation, not always a good idea. Especially when you know it is bad, but push it anyway for the sake of trying to look different.

Eve Online is the only game I've managed to play for more than 3 months since my burnout on WoW during the Burning Crusade era. Your actions having actual meaning and the ability to really lose shit makes stuff a lot more fun and interesting. It isn't for everyone, but is worth trying if you haven't already.

My main hope for the future is a game where:

You can actually lose stuff ala Eve
Content is player designed, with true power (scripted encounters and such) given to the players. Aka a lot more is doable than the canned build your own dungeon experience that some games have played with.
There is strong motivation for the people creating the content to make it hard.

I think of this as basically competitive PvE. You design content you don't want people to beat, then others try to beat it. I've seen it work great in MUDs, places people play for years rather than months.

As for current games on the horizon, I can't think of any MMOs that appeal to me. I have hopes for Pathfinder Online and might player around with FFIV when it is rereleased. I guess I'll continue to putz around in Eve, although even that is starting to get old (although it has entertained me for 3+ years as opposed to the typical 3 months).

Azrayne_sl said:

I think the problem is us and our attitudes towards games. We expect every game to be just as amazing as our first one, and when we don't get that warm glow of nostalgia for month after month, and when people start to play less, which is only a natural progression, we assume that something is 'wrong,' and wait for the next game to do it right, instead of adjusting our attitude and expectations.

Click to expand...

The nostalgia argument is horse shit perpetuated by shitty idiot devs with their heads up their ass that think games back in the day were somehow not as good as the fetid piles of shit they're trying to fling at us now, when nothing could be further from the truth. WoW sucks now because the people behind it had all their dicks simultaneously shrivel up and turn into rough manginas and thus became super afraid to make anything that might even remotely resemble something you might consider an actual game. They come up with these idiot systems like fucking badges and LFR and e-z mode LFD and other stupid horse shit that turns the game into little more than a social fucking experiment, and it's no surprise that the masses start to falter and sway, that their subs start dropping with no end in sight. The sad part is that the rest of the gaming industry can't figure it out, because they've all been listening to these other idiot devs who say things like "PEOPLE QUIT YOUR GAME WHEN THEY DIE THUS MAKING THEM NOT ABLE TO DIE CREATES A BETTER GAMING EXPERIENCE OVERALL!!!!!" (seriously), so the games trying to "improve" upon WoW do so in the completely wrong areas in completely the wrong ways.

Nostalgia? Fuck that shit. Devs are just straight up retarded now is what it is, nothing more. Get pissed that you aren't raiding anymore, I know I am. I raided for over a goddamn decade, and just because some group of FUCKING RETARDS decides that badge gear and skipping instances is more fun for little fuck idiot wonders who want their gear to be PURPLE, it's now no longer worth it at all. Yeah, they'd like you to think you're only remembering things fondly because of Nostalgia(tm), I'm sure.

I have tried Eve several times and always get burnt out after a few weeks once I realize i'm going to be stuck doing the same 4 missions 1500 times to be able to buy my new ship (and they are boring as hell to me). I love the concept, players being able to run the world etc but it just doesn't keep me interested while i'm actually playing. As others have said, I have more fun reading about it and reading the stories about big events etc.

I also agree with the virgin comments. EQ and UO were my first two MMOs (UO first then EQ) back when I was a young'n. My dad got me UO for my 12th birthday and so began my addiction to online gaming. I still have so many memories of those two games that it's almost ridiculous. I remember being outside Qeynos on my level 3 human when night hit and it got so dark that I literally couldn't see anything while I was running around and then (I think it was Fippy Darkpaw?) started yelling. I still remember going from 1-12 on a barbarian killing polar bears hoping for the pristine skin to get some money, and running like mad when that gnoll dungeon got trained up from the lower levels while my group struggled to grind out the top levels. I remember seeing mage pets on higher level mages and instantly creating a mage afterwards because I wanted so badly to have an awesome elemental following me around too!

I loved UO because it didn't have levels or tiered loot etc. I loved EQ because leveling up and making it to new zones actually felt like an accomplishment. Levels in games now go by so fast that it almost makes me wonder why they don't just start everyone at level 60-100 whatever they decide to make the cap because it only takes 2 weeks to get there playing casually. Skills and new spells feel worthless because you get new ones every 45 minutes.

I haven't been a fan of crafting in any of them since UO (some crafting is worthless, others it's decent but obsoleted by world drops/quest rewards). UO was awesome because you could put 100% of your skill points into crafting/gathering skills and then run around the world actually playing your blacksmith or your carpenter. Now all it has turned in to is a little bit of bonus exp on your warrior and you better not try to go harvest those nightshade plants in some dangerous area because there are level restrictions placed on even gathering stuff. What if I don't want to spend 40 hours grinding out X mob so that I can play as a tradesman?

As far as raiding and end game content goes, I have never done a raid. The closest I got was farming heroics in Cataclysm which got boring as hell a long time before I had the iLvL to do raids. Now that i'm older too (especially working in a restaurant where my schedule isn't set in stone) I can't join the raiding guilds who say "ok you have to be logged on from 7pm to 2am on Tuesday Thursday Friday, 12pm to 11pm on Saturday and 9am to 10pm Sunday" (yes i'm exaggerating on the hours). I also don't really have the patience to spend 4 hours to kill 2 bosses and some trash mobs whose only requirement to kill is the ability to hit the same 3 buttons and dodge the same 2 attacks without falling asleep.

I also love how many people in this thread have referenced MUDs. Some of the best times i've ever had have been on MUDs and it saddens me that a few of my favorites have died over the last few years (and a couple died a while ago) =(.

In the end I suppose i'm mostly hoping for an MMO that combines so many of the things I loved about older MMOs etc. Crafting actually being a viable character, player controlled everything for the most part (would be hard if not impossible, but imagine players being able to form the Mages Guild and running the whole thing, new members, creating spells/training new members, being the Archmage that knows magic nobody else does etc!), leveling up actually being a game and meaningful instead of a tutorial for the real game that consists of a few dungeons at lvl XX. Eve does a lot of this but like I said before, the combat and travel times just get redundant and boring to me too quickly (3 hours of nothing but watching warp jumps because you have to go a few systems away for something is not enjoyable). To be fair to Eve, I never actually got around to trying out 0.0 and fleet combat because tackling or whatever it is that everyone recommends new players try never sounded too appealing to me (also doesn't help that i'm way more into fantasy settings etc than space warfare)

Edit:

Agree with James too. It's not all nostalgia, devs don't care about anything now except how to maximize profits. Dungeon finders are horrible too IMO. You know how stupid it is to be a healer in a dungeon with 4 premade retards and then you get kicked right before the end boss who can drop a piece of loot that one of them wants after busting ass keeping the noobs alive through the entire dungeon just because that loot would also be good for you? It's like the votekick system in games like HoN too, the only people who actually use it are trollin retarded shits who get giggles from it (nobody ever kicks actual griefers which is what it's supposedly for).

When you have kids make sure you tell them how much better and harder MMOs were back in your day, kids really appreciate old people telling them that kind of stuff