Developers Corner

Just as the title points out is the fact once a MMORPG is created and then expanded untill it is trash .. which they all end up doing, you can never return. I love going through old single player games again after several years that I enjoyed and enjoying them once again. I would resub to Everquest again if it still existed as it did originally but it doesn't. The game it has become is trash in it's current form.

I think developers should keep a copy of the original game after most of the bugs have been discovered and patched stored away safely for the future. Years later after the game has been destroyed with the expansions, they could rerelease a "classic" experience. I didn't like WoW as much as I did EQ but the original game has already been destroyed as well with it's expansion. It wasn't so great before, now it is complete garbage. These stupid companies always mess with the original game mechanics and vision that brought in all the subs because they listen to the loud minority on message boards in turn ruining what made the game a hit.

You can never go back ... until some devs get smart and save that copy away for the future. I would even say a few servers should always stay up remaining unexpanded upon for folks like me that believe the game will never be better then when it was original created. I would still be on EQ.

I liked WoW better before battlegrounds,

They used to do world PvP and have raids on towns, that was fun,

But there are some games that I think have become better with additions, mainly CoH, by and large has become better off from everything they added.

If you were making a game it would be cool to have an unpatched server, not counting patches to fix bugs. Would be interesting to see how many people play on it.

For all the SWG fans, I never did like it myself, this would mean a Pre-CU server.

BTW is that the Travelocity Gnome in your avatar?

I am not sure where that little gnome came from, it has been a while.  I never played CoH so I could not tell you my opinion on that one.  I have always read that there was no group strategy and it was even easier than WoW. Is it true there is no tank and healer? Anyhow, I think I was also turned off by the whole super hero thing. I like fantasy based games myself.

You could probably set the difficulty on medium for the missions, grab any 8 players, and steamroll though them.  The min/maxing that goes on in CoH is pretty much on par with every other game out there, and the same goes for group make-up in higher difficulty situations where an unbalanced team will fall apart pretty quickly.

I was one of those geeks who waited in the stores till midnight to be one of the first play WoW, and in a way I wish I would have waited awhile.  I honestly like vanilla WoW so much more than the current state of the game.  The play experience now verses when it launched is just night and day, and it lost my interest even though my friends who started playing later on love it to death.  I've quit a number of times, and have gone back each time to find it losing my interest once again.

Eh.. Star Wars Galaxies.. yeah no going back to that.  Wish the old man would have warned me when I unlocked after the second village phase, that piece of crap lol.

But I think you're correct in general; even with all the bugs and missing content of the launch states of most games, they often play better (more fun) in the original state before dozens of balance passes are made.

Interesting idea.  The DAOC classic servers did well (as far as I know), would be an interesting experiment for pretty much any MMO out there and an extremely interesting experiment for a few MMOs in particular... 

It seems like players, in general, ask for two main things:  1) fix the bugs/problems  2) add content/features.  I have no idea why devs always go beyond (or around) this and try to completely re-write the game.  Its like when a band releases a really popular album and then for their next album, instead of just evolving and expanding their sound, they try to do something completely different.  Almost never works. 

The issue most developers overlook when adding more player-demanded content is whether or not it will replace or negatively affect other parts of the game. The idea is to keep the game fresh and interesting, and the only way to do that is to keep pumping in new content... what I don't understand is why they insist on giving the players what they demand. That's not why they play the game.

Players tend to think that they know what will make a game better. They don't. What they want will make a game better... for themselves exclusively.  Ignore the players who think they're developers and just fix the glitches / etc. that need to be fixed to make the game run as intended. The ONLY content that should be added is what the development plans indicate.

Game development is an art and developers are artists; so what kind of artist could possibly be proud of a work that was made using an idiot's suggestion box? That's an engineer's job. What makes a game or any work of art unique and interesting is the creativity behind it. You surrender your style of creativity when you allow others to tell you what to create and how to create it.

An MMORPG with player-influenced content is like Picasso painting realistic and proportional portraits or John Williams writing forgettable techno-pop just because people want them to. Nobody will enjoy the end result.

Developers need to stop thinking like businessmen and just continue to please those who like their style.

The problem with Everquest is that people bitched for change in the game. It was fantastic, but had a lot of problems throughout the first two "classic" expansions. Changes were made, and people were not happy. This was a combination of the fact people were asking Sony Online Entertainment to make positive changes, something which the company has continually proven itself unable to do, and also because a lot of players simply don't know what they want. Designers of an MMO game have to walk the thin line between listening to the fan base and also knowing that they know better what the fans want than the fans themselves.

Originally posted by Tatum

Interesting idea.  The DAOC classic servers did well (as far as I know), would be an interesting experiment for pretty much any MMO out there and an extremely interesting experiment for a few MMOs in particular... 

It seems like players, in general, ask for two main things:  1) fix the bugs/problems  2) add content/features.  I have no idea why devs always go beyond (or around) this and try to completely re-write the game.  Its like when a band releases a really popular album and then for their next album, instead of just evolving and expanding their sound, they try to do something completely different.  Almost never works. 

The answer is, is that in faucet-and-drain economies wealth pours in faster than it can be removed, eventually too many people have too much stuff.  There are two ways to solve the problem, reset the server and send everyone back to the beginning, or introduce a whole new list of items and weapons that were more powerful than before, thus making all the stuff that came before it obsolete.  This has the same effect as making everyone start over, without everyone realizing what it is that's happening.

OR

When they release an expansion, they can create new servers and duplicate all characters on these new servers.  Old servers are unchanged.

Players play where they want.  Old server would be merged.  But there would be no SWG outcry.  They would be playing pre-CU or pre-NGE and everyone would be happied...especially SOE getting the money.

See, when you create a patch, not everyone download it...and this is fine.  MMOs force you to download the patch and join with the new content...forcing = always bad.

If most players remain on old servers, your could always have the newer servers to be added at next expansion be a rollback, as afterall, it is easy, you already have most servers running with these rules.  Of course the new expansion purpose is to have new rules, but it doesn't always have to include each and every past update...if some are unpopular, you can see it, and do what the players seems to enjoys.  Your new fans could stay on the old-new servers or follow up...again, this is all the players choices...and yours as a dev.