Hello all,

You know we all come and go from games, we make friends and we make enemies - but in the end it is our love of MMO's that brings us together, and of course it is also that which brings us here. Now, I'm not an active poster on this site because quite frankly I just don't have the time (or sometimes patience to reply) anymore, especially with being active on other community based websites and of course playing my MMO's. But I would like to talk about where it all started and where it has gone, and more specifially why a lot of us are finding it hard to enjoy anything post World of Warcraft.

A lot of people state that the MMO was at it's finest in it's conception, post mud pre WoW - ideally back in the days of Ultima Online and EQ (just a little note before I go on; I haven't played UO and very little EQ so apologies if any of my notions seem off-kilter. Feel free to correct me in such instances). Where was I, oh yes the begining. So here we have a new genre in the late 90's that appears to have started oddly enough at it's peak and in many peoples eyes slowly crept down that ever so slippery slope into mediocrity. How bizzare.

Surely we can't point the finger at nostalgia in every case, because there must be some level of truth in this assumption. The ideas and core ambitions of what the MMO was seem to be slowly fading away to accomodate certain demographics and design philosophies. A lot of people are under the impression that when WoW came along and stream-lined the MMO that it became it's own achilles heal if you will. Because here we are now, with a direction in which only Blizzard can alter - only Blizzard can shift the balance becauase lets be frank no one else has the influence or money at this point. So is it up to Blizzard to listen to some of the older MMO players out there, or perhaps they should browse through the years to see what the original vision of what an MMO should be, ie: a World were people grow and evolve, creating their own path. 

There seems to be a slow decline in how MMO's are affecting our ability to just relax and just for a while, pretend we're in another world. Our ability to indulge in the other-wordly aspects of Massivley Multi-player Online games has been greatly diminished by key features and certain design routes that have come about in the next generation of MMO's.

Would anyone care to muse over the following points with me?

1) MMO's have in the last few years focused too heavily on 'end-game'. It's almost as if the middle of the game doesn't exist. You have people running around in a blood-craze starved at the thought that they must get to level cap as soon as possible to compete in 'end-game' content. Surely this isn't the point or purpose of an MMO?

2) Rapid succesion: MMO developers seem to be almost obssesed with what Blizzard have accomplished and aim only to imitate and milk as the former have. Do these people not play MMO's?

I won't waffle on for much longer because we all know how much walls of text can crit for so ultimatley I suppose my question is Should developers be looking backwards instead of forwards, as clearly the current direction of the MMO is leading anywhere but interesting. I think it's time to re-evaluate what an MMO is - to us and to the developers. Because clearly some of us are under the impression they are supposed to be wonderful, exciting, creative, massive, evolving and magical worlds in which we live with in sync with our every day lives. Contrary to this, some people are under the impression they are level 70 Dungeon grind-fests for purple pants.

Cheerio,

Speed

Apologies for any typo's - Have a pretty heft hang-over.

I'll agree with you for the most part.  Games now aim for end game content and the race to get there, then full time job of getting the gear you need to survive.  Whether it is PvP or PvE gear, players find they put in almost as much time in game as they do at their jobs.  This turns the game into a second job where you work like made to get what you need just to have fun and raid or PvP those few hours per week that is actual play time, not farm time.  Then of course is the raid guilds where you have to hurry and farm to make raids each night, then spend 5-7 nights per week raiding.  I left WoW for this as it was not really addictive, you just found yourself doing it inorder to have end game content.  Other choice was to develope twinks and re-explore the "middle" content of the game via PvP (worked for others but not for me).  Last option was to develope new characters and grind them out and try different end game content via them, which led back to raids or arena pvp.

Guess I would have to label myself as a sandbox type player and no real games offer the sandbox I relish so I do not play any games atm, just post here in the forums and await the day a new sandbox comes out.

I agree. Been mmoing since UO and EQ. Those two really got mmo's moving and the early days of both games were memorable. Sadly, since then things really haven't changed much and both of those mmo's changed for the worse. UO is still unique enough to spend some time in but it's a shadow of it's former self and a monument to what could of been.

Origin's failure though with it led to EQ taking a different path and succeeding  quite well and setting the standard for most mmo's to clone ever since. Players are so used to the eq method they can't really function without it. And while the early days were great fun they led to the eventual end game scenarios many of us now dislike.

Level-based games seem to need and end game and players expect it. It seems to satisfy the average players need for status amongst peers in their game in the endless accumulation of rare items which tend to make them better than everyone else. In essence, we have a skill-less existance replaced with an item based one. Anyone can be a legend by just investing time.

To me, that's where we are now. Game companies are making money and people are happily (and mindlessly) chasing the carrot.