General Discussion

I have to point out that its in my opinion that the modern MMO has sadly fallen into a cycle of copying eachother. Now what I mean by this is, every MMO that has come out in the last few years (since around the time of WoW) general feels the same.

Let me give some examples of this, back in the mid to late 90s when MMOs were getting off the ground you had some extreamly inovative games. UO for instance didn't just build a "game" but rather it built a "world". The point of UO wasn't to be the lev 50 uber mob-killing-raid-camping-spawn-smashing-equpiment-horidng beast on the server, but rather to "live" in this "fake" world, that held adventure as well as day to day life elements.

UO being a strong, and well played example allowed the player to prasue the Noble Lord, or the dreaded Bandit King, to be the worlds best and biggest shop holder, or to do a bit of everything, heck every town needed a drunk at the bar begging for coins... whats that begging was a skill? You bet'cha! The vast scope of the game was more than your modern MMO which focuses on mobs and instances and other such "new" methods of creating mindless repetative gameplay (not that that isnt fun from time to time).

Another strong example of this (and many of you may have never played it) was Dark Ages (not of Camelot... just Dark Ages). The game was a bit of a grind fest, I'm not going to say it wasn't... due ot the fact that it was developed before the "quest" age. What the game lacked in gameplay it made up with social aspects. A person could join a religon (or rather worship one of the games gods) and by doing so could actualy go to a mass that was being held by another player and recive a fair ammount of EXP. Players could make up a religous gathering (mass) based on a nomber of topics focused around their chosen deity. To further draw out the example all Guards in the game were actual players, who were elected into office (even mayors and judges were players).

The last major attempt at building a "World" and not a "Game" was in my mind the most ambitious of them all, SWG. Now before anyone boos or gets upset tat the mention of SWG you have to remember that when the game was released it gave the player a massive ammount of potential. Players could devote themselves to crafting, building a name for themselves and running massive and popular shops. Other players chose to dance or play music, and made a living out of it. SWG in the begining gave players a ton of freedome to develope who they wanted to be in the Star Wars universe, and its sad that the game was beaten so badly by its own development team. In all honest the game often resembled a mix of UO and the Star Wars franchise, and it worked for quite some time, I know a ton of people who liked SWG before they started to change it.

Whats funny is the modern MMO sees adventuring as the "only" fun thing to do, when you play games like WoW crafting is an after thought attached to a players character, this is also seen in LoTRO as well as TR. It seems that since the time of WoW, developers have moved away from world building and instead see MMOs as literaly only being "games". Its sad realy, games like UO (which still have small communities) haven't had the glory of being fully updated into the modern era, but rather have been left behind.

So I ask, where have all the worlds gone?

Absolutely agree.  I think the most recent was Ryzom, and that's in trouble now.  UO, SWG, Horizons, DAoC, AO, EVE and Ryzom were all non-linear "sandbox" style MMOs.  EVE is still going strong.  Horizons and Ryzom were both severely handicapped by their corporations.  We all know SWG's horror story.  DAoC is aging, though WAR (same company) might be an updated DAoC...we can only hope so.  AO keeps on ticking in spite of its age.  And UO is trying to hang on and make a comeback.  We're due for a new major sandbox, but I don't think we're seeing one in sight.

Personally, I find linear games tiring.  I liked Auto Assault (I guess I was one of the few), but that game moved at such a fast pace that I didn't really notice the linearity as much.  And it had a decent, if slightly odd, crafting system to keep me busy when I wanted a little downtime.  The storylines of the 3 factions were unbalanced.  Mutant was a fine story, Biomek was OK, and Human was virtually non-existant.  But that was fine, because the pace was fast and you got to blow up LOTS of stuf.  With a PvP/RvR style endgame, it was a lot of fun (to me).  But I find LotRO very slow and TR tires me out very quickly.

I admit to never having played WoW or the EQs.

world building games have ran off to the indy game market.

I totally agree with the OP. But EQ was never mentioned in your post as being an excellent example of what you are talking about. For that you should be slapped. But i do agree whole heartely.

This is isnt anything new its been this way for a long while people willing to pay for crap keep the line of moronic game lines going....not much you can do about that.

For every game out now there was orginal game they copied so its just rehash after bad rehash...Im uncertain how there going to fix it not sure if it even really is now because they have kids brainwashed on stuff that isnt well written or fully thought out...so they do the we offer tons of quests lots of grinding yeah like thats going to keep me playing it..

In the past year and half i gave up on paying for games all together theres just no reason to put 15 bucks a month for nothing because most of the games out there now dont offer anything for it everyone would do better just to go back to the story board and do offline gaming again because multiplayer games are just not fun most of the time you join a guild just to end up on the side line and soloing....

Oh how i wish for the days of ultima 3,4 and 5 again, fallout 1,2  bard tale or even wizardry everyone craves graphics not realizing that those games it wasnt graphics that made them so good it was well written stories that captured all of us old gamers...the bonus was being caught up in a good story line that held you for months now days your lucky if a game holds your attention for 12hours...

We used to pay 50 bucks for a game back then that lasted at least 4 to 6 months now you pay that for a game that last week just because most of the dam thing is graphics with no damn storyline...ugh anyway back to my fallout thats my story and im sticking to it.....

Well, eventually, someone has to develop a solid, polished sandbox MMO...right...er, hopefully?

Sounds weird, but Metaplace might be our best hope for this right now, as long as you can handle a 2D game.  Raph's new MMO is being built with Metaplace, and I know there's a group of sandbox fans out there some where who are willing and able to build one themselves.  We'll just have to wait and see...

  I completely agree with the OP here as well.  It seems strange because most of the gamers I know are doing the same thing I am, jumping around looking for something to keep me occupied for more than a month.  Every one of them screaming for a sandbox to play in.  Well, except those select few that are still quite WOWified.

  I do still have faith that a game is coming that will slap me in the face like SWG did when it first came out.  Ahhhh......the good ol' days.  Neglecting every responsibility I had.  Skipping sleep to play.  Eating meals with mouse in hand........Work? PFFFT!  I am working..  Wait a minute .....perhaps I don't need that.

~Hairysun~

Dark days indeed...WoW was the major turning point of the mmorpg genre. The market has been in a downward spiral ever since with all the lost souls(myself included) hopping mindlessly from mmorpg to mmorpg(all copycats of each other), staying briefly, only to realize how confined and boring the game is, before moving on to the next copycat.

When game companies saw how much money blizzard is making by creating just a simplified and linear game, all creative thoughts and ideas were replaced by $$. Unfortunately those developers do not realize WoW has the word "warcraft" and "blizzard" in it and that' their games do not.  They are left scratching heads after players left their mmorpg after mere months. Here's a summary of the "world building" mmorpgs and what's to come:

UO - died slowly  after each expansion took away a chunk of its soul - features that defined the game.

SWG - the game was buggy, but god damnit! it was a dream come true, the amount of freedom, scale, and immersion offered.  Completely destroyed by SOE in 1 instant death.

Shadowbane - so far ahead of its time....if ONLY they fixed the bugs and server crashes before everyone left /sigh

Everquest - What EQ lacked in world building and open-ended gaming from the above mentioned games, it made up by OVERWHELMING, MASSIVE content. This is one game that actually became better as time went by, and is currently the undisputed king of content. No mmorpg on market even come close in term of sheer content.  Unfortuantely the server population is too low now to be enjoyable. There maybe 100 unique well designed dungeons, but if only  3 people in your level range online, it became rather pointless.

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Hero's journey - this is the only game i have ANY hope of becoming the next UO or original SWG. It is been developed by the same company that created gemstone/dragonrealms worlds, a company with over 20 years of world building experience and truely understood what it means to build a realistic, long lasting, and open-ended world online.