Where are all the MMORPG games? lol

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Where are all the MMORPGs, A+++ titles?

  • Well, the lizard gods have decided since about 2004 they don't want us playing video games

    Votes: 16 25.8%

  • This is a simulation and the simulation lacks in fun

    Votes: 3 4.8%

  • Enter bullshit here about how A+++ titles cost a lot or some random shit that isn't believable

    Votes: 16 25.8%

  • There are plenty of A+++ MMORPGS! Look at all 8 of them.

    Votes: 5 8.1%

  • Other... but really a combination of A and B

    Votes: 22 35.5%
  • Total voters
    62
Haus

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Mist said:
The only IRL people I know that still admit to playing a lot of Retail WoW are three biological women all in their 30s who work in IT middle management and are also very active TikTok users. 2 are very high rated M+ healers, and all of them have like a bajillion pets and mounts. Like an unhealthy amount of mounts.
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You literally just described my wife... She watches MMO Champion just enough to know what mounts are coming in what patches and what she'll need to do to get them. The Traders Post in WoW essentially now guarantees her a reason to keep subbed and play some each month, which is Blizzard's holy grail of profitability. Users staying subscribed, and only logging in enough to do regularly scheduled content (so a lighter load on servers)

Mist said:
There's just a lot of different games that scratch different parts of the MMO itch but at different intervals.

Want a game where you loot a bunch of shit and if you get lucky you pwn a bunch of newbs for free? Play Fortnight or any other BR with colorcoded loot levels.
Want a cooperative/competitive pvp game about cumulative advantage? Play any MOBA.
Just wanna grind shit? Well, every fucking FPS game has Experience Points now.
Destiny 2 has a bajillion armor pieces and guns to collect, etc.

It's much harder to build "The One Game To Rule Them All" than it was a while ago. But people said there would never be a bigger pop star than Michael Jackson again, due to the breadth of the music scene, and then along came Taylor...

So yeah, I believe someone will eventually utilize AI combined with good design and other next-gen tech to produce something outstanding at some point that will command all of the industry's attention in the same way WoW did for a while. What exact form it'll take, I have no idea.
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This is part of where I think the next "mmo" will be. But it won't be a traditional MMO like we have, it will be the joined/combined persistent world "lobby". It's pretty literally, as someone mentioned, Ready Player One. But I think the hinderance to this is not technology, but rather company/developer greed. They all want to be the ONLY one making the money off the sheep, rather than realizing that supporting a large ecosystem of gaming they could capture the full soul of the gamer. A Ready Player One "virtual environment" where you then jump into various games will probably be the way of the future. The biggest hurdle would be gaming companies finding a way to play nice with one another on topics like "How do you translate a players items between games, especially when they might be radically different genres, and how to monetize it while ensuring consistency and control of items in this universe. I'm pretty sure we already have the technology for that underpinning of assets between publishers/etc, but that's another topic.

The traditional "one big world" MMO is probably dead at this point. But one big game environment that is persistent in an ecosystem of interconnected games, I think that has more viability eventually.
 
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Tide27

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There is still truckloads of cash to be made with mmos. They just need to stop releasing shit in such a broken state that 2 months into a game, no one wants to play anymore.

There are 20+ years of mmos to look and see what worked well, and what didn't. Even a simple.reskin of wow with updated graphics would pull in millions of players.
 
mkopec

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Tide27 said:
There is still truckloads of cash to be made with mmos. They just need to stop releasing shit in such a broken state that 2 months into a game, no one wants to play anymore.

There are 20+ years of mmos to look and see what worked well, and what didn't. Even a simple.reskin of wow with updated graphics would pull in millions of players.
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Simply too cost prohibitive to do so these days. Back when wow released was what? 80 million or some shit? Thats about $135 million in todays dollars. Probaaly even more since todays AAA games are made by idiots. Plus the game was made by gamers FOR gamers, something that does not exist in todays gaming industry anymore aside some indie shit. Shit, it does not even exist in Blizzard anymore. Just too much of a risk these days to plop down $200 million plus 6-8 yrs of dev timee on a CHANCE it will make some money?

WOW itself was an anomaly in the gaming industry. It hit just at the right time when PC were geting cheap, and infiltrated over 50% of homes. Plus WOW did not take to much to run either, chep ass dell would run it well enough. It was also at a time that dial up was dying and people were getting better internet as well. Not to mention the chat platforms like ventrillo and others which made communicating easier. The perfect storm and a good game brought in millions to play it.
 
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your_mum

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i think the "AI" that will take the genre somewhere is whenever 3d image and animation can be created dynamically that "shapes the world around you based on your actions".

until then, the "AI" stuff out today (LLMs) for code, image generation, some dialog/lore - is basically not worth anything in production for a game company; none of the "AI" out today is making any meaningful impact in those departments.
 
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Kharzette

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Palum

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your_mum said:
i think the "AI" that will take the genre somewhere is whenever 3d image and animation can be created dynamically that "shapes the world around you based on your actions".

until then, the "AI" stuff out today (LLMs) for code, image generation, some dialog/lore - is basically not worth anything in production for a game company; none of the "AI" out today is making any meaningful impact in those departments.
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The current AI craze is no different than the 7 times VR was going to change the world since the 80s or when all movies were going to be 3D after Avatar.
 
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Kirun

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Control said:
From launch, WoW taught players that "mmo content" was running from one quest-giver icon to another. You needed to go kill 10 boars over here, then run to this other spot where you can find more quest givers. That was easier than what EQ asked people to do, so it was more popular. Almost magically so.
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This just reads like the ramblings of a boomer, mad that "kids these days!" just don't get it.

Most of the questing in OG WoW was inefficient as shit. You were far better off grinding mobs and/or dungeon runs over and over to exp up. There were a few loops here and there, but most of that early quest design was pretty inefficient and involved tons of fetch bullshit for little reward. Sounds like a certain game I know...
Control said:
Just enough diku, just enough social, just enough 'I don't really need anybody else'. It was so much more popular that EQ's design basically doesn't even matter except to the extent that it shaped WoW's designers. WoW players literally aren't EQ players. There's what, maybe single digit % overlap?
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Again, more rambling..

No overlap? Just about every "EQ" player here played WoW. Sure, maybe some didn't last until the end of Wrath or what have you, but the EQ to WoW overlap was HUGE. Why do you think EQ "died" in the first place? Because everybody migrated over to WoW.
Control said:
I think there's still a market for that, but it's definitely niche, maybe in the 10's of thousands of people.
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You're correct. There is a market for that and it's pure nostalgia fuel. You've seen it with EQ and TLPs and WoW Classic. There's a pretty decent slice of "nostalgia" pie out there in the gaming community. That's exactly why I said Evercraft and M&M have a big opportunity to hit it big with the "nostalgia" community. They may even convert a few "youngins" too, if they design it well enough. But they have to make it a fun GAME, first. Rather than building backwards, whereby devs of MMOs follow a formula of, "MMO must have X, Y, and Z features". Worry about the game first, then build the "MMO" part around that.

But like you said, it's very "niche". This original post seemed to be bemoaning the "MMO Golden Age" of like 1998-2008ish. That period is over and dead.
 
Control

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Kirun said:
This just reads like the ramblings of a boomer, mad that "kids these days!" just don't get it.

No overlap? Just about every "EQ" player here played WoW.
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Most people take the path of least resistance. Offer someone an easier way, and they'll take it, even if it degrades their experience in the long term. I don't even see how that's possibly in question. And yes, basically all EQ players played WoW, but they were almost a rounding error in WoW's playerbase.
 
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Tuco

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Kirun said:
This just reads like the ramblings of a boomer, mad that "kids these days!" just don't get it.

Most of the questing in OG WoW was inefficient as shit. You were far better off grinding mobs and/or dungeon runs over and over to exp up. There were a few loops here and there, but most of that early quest design was pretty inefficient and involved tons of fetch bullshit for little reward. Sounds like a certain game I know...
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Huh? Pretty sure from beta to now (in SoD) the optimal leveling is questing with decent paths and some opportunistic grinding inbetween.
 
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Tuco

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Mist said:
Because you don't need "AI" to do that. Tons of games already generate procedural quests. Hell, Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall did it forever ago.

But you'd need a very, very good model to dynamically learn what makes a good quest and to use that info to generate better quests in the future.
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Yep, the industry really hasn't evolved from Daggerfall giving you a combinatoric quest. A big reason for that is that handcrafted quests with careful writing work so much better. The first generation of this type of AI that generates content will be terrible, but that capability is definitely coming.

 
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Raes

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Tuco said:
Huh? Pretty sure from beta to now (in SoD) the optimal leveling is questing with decent paths and some opportunistic grinding inbetween.
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He said OG WoW. At launch, and for a while after, grinding was far more efficient for exp, as well as drops and gold. A later update increased quest xp.
 
Pharone

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I think the larger issue with modern MMORPGs is that the quest formula is just fucking boring. The WoW quest model took over the industry, and for a while, it was acceptable if not down right enjoyable. Overtime, we started realizing that the quest system really was just a "do X and come back" model. The story was irrelevant. It all boiled down to doing chores.. and lots of them.

One of the reasons that I actually really enjoy Lord of The Rings Online is because the quests are all based on meaningful stories. When you get right down to it, you're still doing the WoW quest grind, but you don't notice it as much in Lotro because it's all part of stories that intertwine with each other. I find it interesting that if I don't read any of the quest dialogue in Lotro, I find myself hating it just as much as any other WoW-clone. When I take the time to read every quest dialogue, I end up really enjoying the experience.

I tried this with both WoW and EQ after realizing that reading all the quest dialogue in Lotro made the game a million times more fun for me. What I found with WoW and EQ was that the stories fucking suck in both of them. The EQ quest dialogue was pure trash. It literally was the worst writing I have ever read in any game. The WoW dialogue was a little better, but for the most part, every NPC was a story line on it's own island. There was no intertwining of story arcs for the most part which made it feel like it was worthless to actually read the quest dialogue rather than just grabbing the quests and doing them.

I think the way that Lotro is designed lends itself to a much better implementation of the WoW-clone quest system, but only because of the stories being told. The game itself has issues and the server lag is horrible.

If a new MMORPG could pull off the "killing mobs is better than running endless quests" like old school EverQuest and put in meaningful story arcs in the handful of quests (not thousands of quests ala-WoW style) in the game, I think it can bring the MMO genre back to where it should be.
 
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Burns

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Pharone said:
I think the larger issue with modern MMORPGs is that the quest formula is just fucking boring. The WoW quest model took over the industry, and for a while, it was acceptable if not down right enjoyable. Overtime, we started realizing that the quest system really was just a "do X and come back" model. The story was irrelevant. It all boiled down to doing chores.. and lots of them.

One of the reasons that I actually really enjoy Lord of The Rings Online is because the quests are all based on meaningful stories. When you get right down to it, you're still doing the WoW quest grind, but you don't notice it as much in Lotro because it's all part of stories that intertwine with each other. I find it interesting that if I don't read any of the quest dialogue in Lotro, I find myself hating it just as much as any other WoW-clone. When I take the time to read every quest dialogue, I end up really enjoying the experience.

I tried this with both WoW and EQ after realizing that reading all the quest dialogue in Lotro made the game a million times more fun for me. What I found with WoW and EQ was that the stories fucking suck in both of them. The EQ quest dialogue was pure trash. It literally was the worst writing I have ever read in any game. The WoW dialogue was a little better, but for the most part, every NPC was a story line on it's own island. There was no intertwining of story arcs for the most part which made it feel like it was worthless to actually read the quest dialogue rather than just grabbing the quests and doing them.

I think the way that Lotro is designed lends itself to a much better implementation of the WoW-clone quest system, but only because of the stories being told. The game itself has issues and the server lag is horrible.

If a new MMORPG could pull off the "killing mobs is better than running endless quests" like old school EverQuest and put in meaningful story arcs in the handful of quests (not thousands of quests ala-WoW style) in the game, I think it can bring the MMO genre back to where it should be.
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Which WoW quests were you reading? All the way up until WOTLK they had major quest lines for a zone, that usually then lead to the next zone and a dungeon. Sure, each hub had side quests, but at least 50% of those were interesting.

I didn't like Pandaland and WoD was so dumb I stopped caring about the lore a few levels into it.
 
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Tide27

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Pharone said:
I think the larger issue with modern MMORPGs is that the quest formula is just fucking boring. The WoW quest model took over the industry, and for a while, it was acceptable if not down right enjoyable. Overtime, we started realizing that the quest system really was just a "do X and come back" model. The story was irrelevant. It all boiled down to doing chores.. and lots of them.
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The WoW quest model was far and away better for a majority of the player base. There was very little "questing" in Everquest at the end of the day. If you were not part of some organized raid guild, the majority of the population never really experienced most of what EQ had to offer. Now, its been 20+ years since I played, so I dont remember all the zones exactly. Prior to joining a raid guild, my experience past level 30 or so was sit at a zone line and have a puller keep grabbing the same 4-5 mobs, rinse and repeat for months.

The WoW quest system got you out and about and you got to experience 95% of the content in a solo or small group. I enjoyed WoWs system that got you out in the world, versus spamming LFG at some random zone line. As top guild raider in EQ, I saw a hell of a lot more content simply because my guild held many camps and I could swap in and out whenever needed and got to experience every raid prior to quitting in OoW. Most people did not get that same experience.
 
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Burns said:
Which WoW quests were you reading? All the way up until WOTLK they had major quest lines for a zone, that usually then lead to the next zone and a dungeon. Sure, each hub had side quests, but at least 50% of those were interesting.

I didn't like Pandaland and WoD was so dumb I stopped caring about the lore a few levels into it.
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Tho if you played horde at launch, their story arcs (the zerg shit and thr emerald dream stuff went no where). Technicall6 i guess undeads did too but they had end game dung3ons that associated
 
Burns

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... said:
Tho if you played horde at launch, their story arcs (the zerg shit and thr emerald dream stuff went no where). Technicall6 i guess undeads did too but they had end game dung3ons that associated
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The girls in our group disliked all the ugly horde, so don't think I ever made it through their quest lines before I gave up on the lore. Night Elves had the weakest quest line with one side dead ending in Desolace (I think it was). Kalimdor, in general, seemed less polished than EK, so Ally had that going for it.
 
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Burns said:
The girls in our group disliked all the ugly horde, so don't think I ever made it through their quest lines before I gave up on the lore. Night Elves had the weakest quest line with one side dead ending in Desolace (I think it was). Kalimdor, in general, seemed less polished than EK, so Ally had that going for it.
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Yea all the calimdor quests went to empty or non existant zones. Lots of lead up and early quests to nothing. Im sure they got added eventually but i checked out eighr before anquiraj.

Hillariously i played a troll (no real city) and did the trolly quests (bugs. Not done) played a hunter ( no training points at launch) and everyone thought i was taking crazy pills when i said shit wasnt done. Obviosuly they origionally wanted like 3 end game arcs at launch for each continent and instead got like 2 for the world. Onyxia, blackrockspire (and unfinished also ragnaros)
 
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moonarchia

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Yea all the calimdor quests went to empty or non existant zones. Lots of lead up and early quests to nothing. Im sure they got added eventually but i checked out eighr before anquiraj.

Hillariously i played a troll (no real city) and did the trolly quests (bugs. Not done) played a hunter ( no training points at launch) and everyone thought i was taking crazy pills when i said shit wasnt done. Obviosuly they origionally wanted like 3 end game arcs at launch for each continent and instead got like 2 for the world. Onyxia, blackrockspire (and unfinished also ragnaros)
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I forget what zone Uldum was in in EK, but in vanilla there was a giant fucking buzzard that roamed around the zone that was clearly meant to wipe groups that didn't keep away from it. Apparently that was one of the places that Furor didn't get around to finishing the quests for. As a level 60 hunter I went back and soloed that fucker and got a quest item for a quest that was never finished. Still wish someone would have gone back and fleshed out all those neat dead ends.
 
Siliconemelons

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I am not a fan of PVP in MMO's yet- I played classic wow on a pvp server and I now would not have wanted it any other way - as it /fit/ the entire story and narrative of WoW... at least in the classic and still somewhat normal timeline and story. I am sure now it is just a pain in the butt to be on a PVP server - but then, it actually built community and stuff.

Classic WoW was good and coming from EQ the 40man raid seemed small, now 40 seems insane, let alone 72 +
 
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heh yea. i try to tell modern MMo players about this trash-raid from my server. like 2 dudes from the 'top raid guild' on the server would run public raids, in early planes of power, explicitely to fuck over the up and coming PoP raiders. He'd just get as many dudes as possible to swarm the mobs and we'd wind up with like 200 people. absolutely wild by modern stands.
 
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