General Discussion

The next great game will probably come from blizzard, for better or worse. They may be the only people who will come out with a polished game, Im hoping for a wow like game w/ better pvp and engame, i will never faction grind! And i have to agree that wow probably ruined the mmo matket, they made so much money it changed everything, dont think anyone will try anything drasticlly diff from this point onward. Id love to see a game w/ quest and sandbox elements, w/o classes or the class/grp mechanic w/ scaleable instances that dont make up the entire game. How about a game with a difficulty slider?so hardcore and casuals can enjoy it???

Originally posted by tvalentine

i agree that it is only going to get better. Imagine, one day there will be an MMO like the anime series .hack. Would be amazing to play a virtual reality sandbox mmorpg. But im guessing this has to be 20-40 years away.

Hopefully ill be alive if it ever releases.

Originally posted by SignusM

Originally posted by Joliust

 

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Originally posted by SignusM

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Originally posted by duffalpha

 

Just like anything with a massive market potential MMOs will eventually be perfected. Just like coca-cola, the big mac, and cigarettes. Its only gunna get better, and im pumped. America.

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If by perfected... you mean watered down and simplified to its most basic levels, void of all challenge or uniquness just to make a buck... then yes, we'll get there.

There is a chance for one or two great MMOs to come out, but the golden age ended the day WoW released.
EverQuest
Dark Age of Camelot
Ultima Online
Asheron's Call
Even SWG to an extent.
They were the greats, but merely memories now.

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So to you the golden age has lasted nearly the entire extend that MMO's have existed?

 

Haha, not quite. It depends on how you look at the games. DAoC was released in 2001. SWG in 2003, you could consider that the end, or you could say that people continued playing past then, so its not technically the end.

For the purposes of my post, I'll go by launch, so that puts it ending around 2002/2003. Starting in 1999 with Ultima. It's been a steady, and then a steep decline since then. Nice exageration though.

"Don't assume that because you and a few other people don't like WoW that it's a bad game.  WoW IS a great game and they have the consistent population over an extending period of years to back that up.  And it will grow its population even further when WotLK is released.  I have a feeling they'll get it right just as they have been over the past few years."

 

As for that... they're getting it right, from a business sense, because the people just keep taking it. I don't know how you can classify any game as good when this is their strategy. Replace griding with mindless tasks of collecting body parts and call them quests, destroy communities and socialization, then force everyone back together into tight, angry clicks for raiding. The raiding itself is a joke... My friends raid 3-4 times a week, every week, just to get some kind of armor. And they keep doing it, over and over and over, the same exact instance. This gear doesn't help with PvP, that's another grind completely. Then when you finally have all your stuff, they release an expansion and mroe levels, making a new grind that's exactly the same. And people keep playing it, cause there hasn't been a good MMO since then. Its a sad sad system.

 

You know, you make a lot of baseless assertions, and that's all they are. 

"they're getting it right, from a business sense, because the people just keep taking it."   Again, you assume that since you don't like the game or it's features, that it's a bad game.  You also assume that most of those playing don't actually enjoy playing the game.

"Replace griding with mindless tasks of collecting body parts and call them quests," WoW has the same fare of quests as every other MMORPG out there.  And in fact, have quite a few innovative twists on many of their quests.  Your criticism is one you can level on just about every MMORPG in the market.

"destroy communities and socialization"  Well, not sure what you're referring to, but WoW doesn't do anything particularly different from other games in terms in game socialization.

"The raiding itself is a joke... My friends raid 3-4 times a week, every week, just to get some kind of armor. And they keep doing it, over and over and over, the same exact instance. This gear doesn't help with PvP, that's another grind completely. Then when you finally have all your stuff, they release an expansion and mroe levels, making a new grind that's exactly the same. And people keep playing it, cause there hasn't been a good MMO since then. Its a sad sad system"  Again, you assume because you don't like a feature, it must be a bad game.  Further, this isn't even a feature you have to participate in.  I did very little raiding when I played but had a great time playing the other elements of the game. 

If this is the best you can do for why WoW sucks, you've failed.  If you don't like the game, fine, but don't try and sell that it's a bad game.  It's a great game and will be for some time to come.

Originally posted by Pale_Fire

Originally posted by SignusM

Originally posted by Joliust

 

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Originally posted by SignusM

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Originally posted by duffalpha

 

Just like anything with a massive market potential MMOs will eventually be perfected. Just like coca-cola, the big mac, and cigarettes. Its only gunna get better, and im pumped. America.

---

If by perfected... you mean watered down and simplified to its most basic levels, void of all challenge or uniquness just to make a buck... then yes, we'll get there.

There is a chance for one or two great MMOs to come out, but the golden age ended the day WoW released.
EverQuest
Dark Age of Camelot
Ultima Online
Asheron's Call
Even SWG to an extent.
They were the greats, but merely memories now.

---

 

So to you the golden age has lasted nearly the entire extend that MMO's have existed?

 

Haha, not quite. It depends on how you look at the games. DAoC was released in 2001. SWG in 2003, you could consider that the end, or you could say that people continued playing past then, so its not technically the end.

For the purposes of my post, I'll go by launch, so that puts it ending around 2002/2003. Starting in 1999 with Ultima. It's been a steady, and then a steep decline since then. Nice exageration though.

"Don't assume that because you and a few other people don't like WoW that it's a bad game.  WoW IS a great game and they have the consistent population over an extending period of years to back that up.  And it will grow its population even further when WotLK is released.  I have a feeling they'll get it right just as they have been over the past few years."

 

As for that... they're getting it right, from a business sense, because the people just keep taking it. I don't know how you can classify any game as good when this is their strategy. Replace griding with mindless tasks of collecting body parts and call them quests, destroy communities and socialization, then force everyone back together into tight, angry clicks for raiding. The raiding itself is a joke... My friends raid 3-4 times a week, every week, just to get some kind of armor. And they keep doing it, over and over and over, the same exact instance. This gear doesn't help with PvP, that's another grind completely. Then when you finally have all your stuff, they release an expansion and mroe levels, making a new grind that's exactly the same. And people keep playing it, cause there hasn't been a good MMO since then. Its a sad sad system.

 

 

You know, you make a lot of baseless assertions, and that's all they are. 

"they're getting it right, from a business sense, because the people just keep taking it."   Again, you assume that since you don't like the game or it's features, that it's a bad game.  You also assume that most of those playing don't actually enjoy playing the game.

"Replace griding with mindless tasks of collecting body parts and call them quests," WoW has the same fare of quests as every other MMORPG out there.  And in fact, have quite a few innovative twists on many of their quests.  Your criticism is one you can level on just about every MMORPG in the market.

"destroy communities and socialization"  Well, not sure what you're referring to, but WoW doesn't do anything particularly different from other games in terms in game socialization.

"The raiding itself is a joke... My friends raid 3-4 times a week, every week, just to get some kind of armor. And they keep doing it, over and over and over, the same exact instance. This gear doesn't help with PvP, that's another grind completely. Then when you finally have all your stuff, they release an expansion and mroe levels, making a new grind that's exactly the same. And people keep playing it, cause there hasn't been a good MMO since then. Its a sad sad system"  Again, you assume because you don't like a feature, it must be a bad game.  Further, this isn't even a feature you have to participate in.  I did very little raiding when I played but had a great time playing the other elements of the game. 

If this is the best you can do for why WoW sucks, you've failed.  If you don't like the game, fine, but don't try and sell that it's a bad game.  It's a great game and will be for some time to come.

I never said that WoW sucked. It's a very well made, polished game. The gameplay on the other hand, I don't give it any credit for at all, because it didn't do anything new.

As for the quests... NOW quests are the way they are, because of WoW. In the good MMOs, quests weren' the main way to level, they took a slight effort to find (talk to NPCs), and gave you something worthwhile, along with a decent story.

The raiding is also a pretty bad system. Maybe if you had to do the raid once or twice, that'd be fine, but 4 times a week, for months? How do people not hate it? In DAoC raids were rare, fun, and difficult to pull off. I guess the reason is because they weren't the ONLY thing to do.

Also, I think the only people really satisfied by WOW are the noobs to the MMO scene who's first MMO was WoW and all its subsequent clones. They are unaware of what was before, and I don't really blame them. But there are plenty of people waiting for a new good MMO, and keep saying things like "well I guess its back to WoW... again, until something comes out, nothing better to play"

I think this is a great thing.....

Out goes old style rpgs, in come action!

Im tired of games like wow aoc war, I want games like apd stargate worlds huxley.

To me the good old days were when we had 10six neocron motorcity,  just because they were all different back then....

Originally posted by SignusM

Originally posted by shrapnel20

two words:

mortal online.

 

 

 

Or Darkfall... they look almost exactly the same anyway. Not wanting to derail this thread... but out of the two, Darkfall actually looks more real than Mortal.

Mortal came out of nowhere, has an extremely immature dev team, only one movie on their site, all pre rendered with a handful a screenshots, claiming all the features of Darkfall with THAT graphics engine, and its set to release... next year? Next spring/summer even? Give me a break.

At least Darkfall has a publisher and its history can be tracked, even if the quality of the game is in question.

 

We're about to hit an all time low in MMOs, it will take something big to bring it out. Or at least, it'll take the death of big name companies trying to pump out MMOs. Once MMOs fall off the radar again, some great company can come along and revive it, hopefully with new ideas, and not more EQ/WoW clones.

My money would be on Mortal before Dark and Li...I mean Darkfall, and for all the reasons you stated. I would play either game 2 months after launch if they live up though.

Originally posted by duffalpha

Just like anything with a massive market potential MMOs will eventually be perfected. Just like coca-cola, the big mac, and cigarettes. Its only gunna get better, and im pumped. America.

I agree with him.  Of course wetting myself over an MMO like Star Trek Online is out of the question. 

Look, you can never say never because never is a very long time and nobody can know what will happen.

I am hoping games like Darkfall, CoS and Mortal online will re invite the MMO wheel and bring the large companies back out of the WoW clone to make billions mindset they have right now.