Im reading this more and more when people talk about Diablo 3.

How has gaming evolved from Diablo 2 to when ever Diablo 3 comes out.

MMO's are still the same thing.  The new ones are only re-skined with little different variation of what other MMOs prior to them had.

Darkfall a supposive sandbox that is so revolutionary is nothing new.  PlanetSide had the same type of combat.  Other Sandbox's exist.  Look at EvE and Ryzom, they are sandboxs.

FPS games are still FPS games, nothing changes in them to much of an extent.  Maybe the way you play it slightly as in if you click your left mouse button or you hold it down, or if you click it in bursts.  There might also be a little character development put into as well shown well be BioShock.

RTS, RTS are still the same build and destroy.  Have resources and use those resources to build and destroy the enemies.  Still same concept, just a little twist is added to some.

So why are people saying this?  Why are people claiming that games have evolved.  No game in I would say the past 5 years have really had anything revolutionary.  Maybe they added on awesome features but there has been no real evolution to games.

Hack N Slash are still Hack N Slash. 

All generas of video games are fleshed out.  There has not been a new genera in for ever.  Yes some blend two or three together but there is really no new generas.

So how have games Evolved?

Yes there is more and more stuff to do in games.  Yes they have better graphics and better details.  But in response to a style of a game why would it be said that said genera of a game is worse than another simple because "Gaming has Evolved."

Can you really say it has?  It has added a lot of nice new features to games and allowed gernas to be mixed a little.  But have games really Evolved?

(sorry for spelling in a rush got work)

Edit: Sorry was ment to say recently, yes obviously gaming has changed from when it started.

I agree.

I have so many features thought out from ten years ago that i havent seen yet. They just keep doing the same thing over and over again.

Graphically the games have evolved...but other than that, it is the same ol same ol. They run a bit smoother, and come on one disk rather than 4 floppy disks...=P

MMOs have managed to de-evolve tho. They have become simpler, solo, and in easy mode.

We have been saying in this forum for years how MMOs are going down the drain, so we are perfectly aware that at least MMOs haven't evolved, rather the contrary.

It has evolved. Unfortuneately it has evolved into big business.

Yeah i agree when talking about MMOs, that they are in fact becoming easier, and more mind numbingly simple. But wow..that's just absurd to say that the FPS genere has'nt evolved. You go from walking around a 1 story map shooting monsters in a game like doom, to playing on massivly complex maps like in Kill Zone 2 with tons of differnt ways to go about every situation. Doing more than just killing, but actually accomplishing tasks like blowing things up, saving peoples lives, etc. Also many FPSs are adding other elements, like being able to drive vehicles and stuff. People are trying new things with the FPS industry constantly. And some games that mix fps and third person elements like Dark Sector, you're not just using guns, you actually have a death disk thingy that goes flying off your arm decapitating your enimies. The game industry in general is evolving , just some parts of it arnt. Like the MMO part. If that's not considered evolving than i don't know what is.

Video games have not evoled.  Smear all the graphics and usless UI and features but you still have the same old video game.  Wonder why some of the greatest RPG games of all time are still the greatest?  Because there built around originality.  Story line, main mission, side mission, dynamic characters, plots, freedom, and so forth  Original content is no longer original.

 I've been playing console video games since Pong and computer games since Zork and have seen every innovation in gaming since it's been around.

You know, I'm not so much interested in whether a game innovates anything as much as I'm interested in whether or not it's *fun* to play.

Sadly, those three little letters, F U N, seem to be totally lost on the current crop of game developers (mmo at least). They seem to never even ask themselves "Would this be fun for the players?" when putting something in game.  They ask themselves, "would this be a good timesink or gold sink?" instead.  Or, "would this be imbalanced?" occassionally.  But dammit.  If you're going to put something, a feature into your game, don't even bother unless it's fun next time.  Games remember?  Games.

If you're going to add something like fishing into your title, don't just make it some goddamned bar you watch and click when you see a splash and that's the entire sum of your experience!  Hell no.  I would rather clean my garbage disposal than do that thousands of times for a bit of entertainment.  What, the, fuck, is wrong with these developers? 

So my hat's are off to those that do try to make activities in games not so much innovative but fun as it goes along way to mask all the other crap they try to force feed us in this genre.  Speaking of fishing I thought the fishing system in Rohan was well done.  The rest of the game...no thanks, but damn, they nailed "fun times" when it came to fishing.  I would call it innovative in that sense.

You don't have to reinvent the genre everytime you make a game, that's unrealistic to ask for, but it helps if you focus on at least making the little innovations here and there that are FUN improvements to what already exists.  And sadly, so sadly, it seems people are moving away from that idea in gaming in this genre, taking the direct opposite approach in many cases.  If it's fun or people are having fun doing it? nerf it to the fucking ground the moment someone cries about it.   Asses.

What is there that a company could make today that they could not have made five years ago?  Hardware is what makes new things possible, and computer hardware today is really just bigger, faster versions of computer hardware five years ago.  That makes better graphics possible, but not new types of gameplay.  The only exception that comes to mind is having an accelerometer in a controller (principally in a Wii), but that's nowhere near as revolutionary as, say, being able to incorporate the Internet was.  If a type of game could just as easily have been made five years ago as today, then whatever prevented it from being made then (e.g., a perceived lack of interest) will probably still prevent it from being made today.

Getting faster processors, more memory, and more storage space used to make a huge difference.  Now they're big enough that for most gameplay purposes (as opposed to graphical purposes), they might as well be infinite.  The difference between what you can do with 10 KB of hard drive space and 1 MB is immense.  The difference between 1 MB and 100 MB is still quite considerable.  The difference between 100 MB and 10 GB isn't much in terms of game mechanics.  Mostly it just gives you fancier graphics and audio.

I think its silly to believe that MMOs or any video game hasnt evolved. If I were to jump from EQ1 to AoC, I wager people would believe things had changed. Were I to go from Atari2600 to Halo Wars, I wager people would say the same thing. Everything evolves.

Sometimes people forget that changes are always upwards and  forwards. Its more like a jagged upward trend (2 steps forward, half step back, etc)

Originally posted by Czzarre

I think its silly to believe that MMOs or any video game hasnt evolved. If I were to jump from EQ1 to AoC, I wager people would believe things had changed. Were I to go from Atari2600 to Halo Wars, I wager people would say the same thing. Everything evolves.

Sometimes people forget that changes are always upwards and  forwards. Its more like a jagged upward trend (2 steps forward, half step back, etc)

Exactly. It might not seem like things have evolved if you're new to the genre, but, to take the RTS example, look at Dawn of War 2. Would you look at that and think it's an RTS? I see no resource gathering/base building and destroying. No, I see tactical squad-focused and squad-based combat...in an RTS. Different? Yes. Evolved? Depends on your point of view. Things always change, whether it's evolution or devolution is based on opinion. The general concensus is that we are moving forward, however, if only by adding different things or shifting focus with certain games in the same genre as each other.

Originally posted by Czzarre

I think its silly to believe that MMOs or any video game hasnt evolved. If I were to jump from EQ1 to AoC, I wager people would believe things had changed. Were I to go from Atari2600 to Halo Wars, I wager people would say the same thing. Everything evolves.

Sometimes people forget that changes are always upwards and  forwards. Its more like a jagged upward trend (2 steps forward, half step back, etc)

Lets jump from EQ to AoC n what do we get.

AoC surely has better graphics. Maybe smoother gameplay...but is it all that evolved? What a week or two to max level in AoC...n how long did it take an average player in EQ? AoC is fun for a month...how many will be playing it ten years from now? I am guessing there is still some who play EQ still now n have been since the beginning.

MMOs have evolved graphically and interface is more user friendly. But they still lack the longivity that kept people playing the old MMOs for yearsand still never complete the game. Most todays MMOs are made to last a few months and then you have done all n seen all.

I agree if you tossed someone from EQ to AoC, they would think...'AoC is amazing.' But after a few months n max level with nothing to do...they would miss the old EQ that kept them busy for years.

I disagree.  There have been many changes, many of them incremental, but in total they represent massive changes.

Some of the changes include:

• mouseover tooltips. Games are far easier to learn and with the ingame help there is less need to window out for help from the many online game guides.   Many older games have also added mouseover tooltips to keep their games current.
• 'bind on equip" is a useful tool for many game worlds.  Previously "bind on pick up" was the only tool.
• improved graphics.  Old games with old graphics eventually look just plain ugly on new systems unless the game companies update.
• improved internet and server performance.  Things that were previously impractical are now possible
• more people have access to the internet than ever before, so the potential market is much larger
• electronic distribution has allowed the emergence of niche games that would never have been released previously because they did not have a big enough market share for conventional dstribution through retail outlets to be cost effective or profitable.  A small percentage of the world market is often a large enough number of sales to make a game profitable.
• the emergence of alterrnate retail business models such as item shops
• the release of Vista and the resulting necessity to update old games to make them Vista compliant.
• all the different things that game companies have tried that may or may not have improved gameplay. For example, EQ2's use of shared group experience penalties that was dropped as in practice is discouraged grouping. Another example is EQ2's  creation of duplicate zones to match the player population.  Previously "permanent" zones were duplicated once on every server, regardless of whether the population in each duplicated zone was overcrowded or underpopulated.
• the improvements as a result of further extending the potential of instances
•  there are so many games to chose from now.
• the emergence of the many "free to play" games such as Flyff and Sword of the New World. 
• voice communication between players.
• the extension of solo play, group play, raiding, PvE and PvP.  A lot of things have been tried with mixed success to improve player experience in these areas.
• improvements in quest logs and quest tracking
• improvements of ingame maps.

The irony is that I think it is the lack of evolution, or incremental and breakthrough innovation, that hurts this industry.

To me, mmos have still evolved, but they evolved into niche games.  There's your pvp mmo, there's your pve mmo, there's your crafting mmo.  Each gameplay style now has its own game to play.  To me, that's a negative.  I like lots of things to do.  I don't want to just pvp, just like I don't want to just kill mobs or particpate in the economy.  I'm gonna stop the rant right here because anyone who knows me knows that I rant ad naseum about the hybrid mmo.  Suffice it to say that I think the next truly top class AAA hybrid mmo will take the genre by storm.  People are mainly happy with their games right now, but give it a few years and I think the demand will be there.  That being said, the mindless masses could prove me quite wrong.

How big the changes are depends on how far you're willing to go back.  Surely computer games today are vastly different from what they were 40 years ago, in part because now they actually exist.  Are games so different from what they were eight years ago, though?  You can point to some small things here and there, but there are a lot of games that came out years ago that if you were to rip out of time and mark them as a 2010 release, would still contain comparable innovations to today's new releases.  Revolutionary changes will only happen when hardware makes major new things possible that couldn't be done before.

Originally posted by zaxxon23

To me, mmos have still evolved, but they evolved into niche games.  There's your pvp mmo, there's your pve mmo, there's your crafting mmo.  Each gameplay style now has its own game to play.  To me, that's a negative.  I like lots of things to do.  I don't want to just pvp, just like I don't want to just kill mobs or particpate in the economy.  I'm gonna stop the rant right here because anyone who knows me knows that I rant ad naseum about the hybrid mmo.  Suffice it to say that I think the next truly top class AAA hybrid mmo will take the genre by storm.  People are mainly happy with their games right now, but give it a few years and I think the demand will be there.  That being said, the mindless masses could prove me quite wrong.

It's better to do a few things well than to do a lot of things badly and nothing well.  A game that tries to do too much will inevitably do most of it badly.

Of course Gameing has evolved. Better graphics, Game options, Mods you name it. Now has it Evolved in some aspects? In my honest  Opinion no. I mean have you seen some of the MMO's? I swear that the game play is watered down and made for the mainstream. Thats good for buisness, But not good for a good chunk us. There is an old saying on WOW about Warlocks that come to mind and i had been in a raiding guild i heard it alot, "so do  you warlocks click your skill buttons or do you just roll your head across the keys?". For those that think iam hateing on WOW, I am not. Just takeing what i heard when i played and relateing it to this Fourm. Now i give this saying for a reason, To me and it may be only me i dont know but it seems like MMO's are geting more and more easy. An most playing styles come down to button mashing.  Mabey its becase of the lack of patientce many of my generation hold, Who knows. But untill a company says "lets make a game for the more Determined player". We will keep seeing the same old watered down MMO's. Hell who knows what the future brings.

Here's a different take:

The word 'evolution' should immediately conotate 'slow change' to someone. Meaning, yes, games have evolved albeit more slowly than some  would like.

I believe this is simply due to standard business 101. To get a risky, expensive venture such as an mmo created, you have to convince a lot of rich people that they are gaurenteed a return on the investment. Think about the adage 'he isn't a millionaire because he likes to write big checks'.

So how do you make an expensive, risky venture seem like a sure bet? Show them history. EQ saw UO's success model and therefore chose to maintain the features that made the game profitable. Then Blizzard saw EQ's success and built off of that. There is a fairly straight line between the evolution of those games. Common features we can see immediately while seeing only small changes at each incarnation. Therefore, and yes I know I'm oversimplifying, but UO compared to WoW looks a lot different then UO comparedto EQ or EQ compared to WoW.

So, while it may be frustrating, it will take perhaps decades to see vast differences.

Another example:

Compare TV from the late 50s and early 60s - pretty alike. Then compare late sixties with early 70s, still similar. But compare late 70s with early 50s and what do you see? Real distinct differences.

And mmo's are, for the most part, after work/school entertainment, just as TV was when introduced. If we say that our mmo media emerged in the late 90s then it is as if we are comparing TV from 1955 to 1965. Not much difference.

Last example:

Think scientific evolution and how slow it is.

The Dolphin evolved from a land roaming mammal, 10 million years ago. This same mammal became pigs and horses as it evolved. Compared to its ancestor, the dolphin has almost no resemblence, as it has very little resemblence to its extraordinarily distant pig cousins. But that's 10 MILLION YEARS. Almost too long a time span to really comprehend.

But is UO to AoC like that? Nope. More like Wooly Mammoth compared to Asian elephant. Yeah, elephants have certainly evolved but no one in their right mind would think that it wasn't extremely similar to a mammoth. You know they are related, just as you know WoW is related to EQ. And how long? 10,000 years. That was yesterday in geologic terms. And this is where we are in mmo history.

Gaming has evolved. yes. the most obvious one is the graphics (DUH!)

but you can see an evolution

in the Adventure games that now games give you choices. and those choices will impact the environment and other aspects of the game depending on the choices you took, therefore a game can be played more than once. this is an evolution from past games. some examples of this (FABLE, FABLE II, Bioshock, Fallout 3, KOTOR, KOTOR II Oblivion...just to name a few) this was not seen back in prince of persia I or the diablo series etc...

FPS games have also evolved, from the unreal tournament where you shoot and kill in a static level design to a dynamic level design. you dont have the key to open this door? blast it. this car is in your way? remove it, drive it, explode it. dynamic environment is an evolution you can find in FPS games.

in RTS. the only one that i see that has made a significant evolution is End War... voice command. you can play all the game just using your voice.

MMOs the technology has been increassing the capacity of servers, we would start with 3000 players cap to 10 000 and now eve online has 45k on 1 server at the same time. consequently worlds significantly grow in size and in content (stuff). instead of having 3 sets of armors (light med heavy) you can choose from you have 12 sets per class per race per sex.

another evolution of gaming is the social games, apealing to a population wider than the pewpew regular gamers are used to. the social games, such as free realms, second life, hello kitty online. These games are meant to be social tools rather than war games.

Racing games have also evolved but in a different direction. they have come from being arcade games where you just put 25c and race with your friends to a high tech simulator where the condition of the asphalt has a impact on your driving. the physics engine is more realistic and racing has become more of a technical skills of suiting your car properly rather than a stearing wheel in an arcade chair. (similarly to flight simulators)

but if you look at the basics FPS MMO RTS Adventure Racing, Sport. of course the basics have not evolved. what else would you put in a video game? public transportation? hell they have even made a music games (guitar hero, rock band) now i dont know what you baseyourself on saying that gaming has not evolved.

You are conflating some highly divergent things. First you start by the general argument, manifest in your title, rhetorically stating that gaming has evolved. Then you speak specifically about D3, and then you generalize outside of that box to talk about MMORPGS. You really should try to stay focused on specifics if you are ever actually interested in "facts".

Gaming has evolved, and not always in ways that I have enjoyed. My general feeling has been that gaming has been more about bark than bite, sizzle instead of substance. Most of the innovations have come in the form of: class customization, character customizaion, UI customization, and general interaction between players. I'm of course omiting the incredibly obvious "graphics".

If things evolve radically they become entire new genres. They are consider new genres. You mentioed planetside, which is, of course, an MMOFRPS, which you could say in evolution of both FPS and MMOS, but if arbitrarily categorize one way and than use that categorizing as an argument that the other genre hasn't evolved, you have done little but create yourself a nice little strawman to kick around.

Both are right.  Much of the current games have stagnated, but there are games that do advance the genre.  Strategy example (one that is slightly fringe) was Sword of the Stars.  Was a very well done TBS mixed with Battle RTS.  While not 'new' when this came out, it was uncommon.  The real evolution occured from the radically different ships the 4 races had.  They altered the gamestyle both in macro sense (Each type had different movements in the galaxy) and micro, where the different engines altered how the ships moved in planetary gravity wells.  It had an organic tech tree that was unique to each game (changed how the tree branched, what techs were available to achieve during game, when they could, etc).    Each tree also had unique techs, and had interesting 'salvage' system that could be employed to steal tech from alien dereclits and combat captured enemy ships.

EvE (not as new) was a huge advancement in MMORPGs.  The player interaction and control with the World (Galaxy in this case) was immense, a player driven economy not seen in anyother game, and being a Space based MMO, was rather unique in that limited subgenre.

*shrug* I think MMO's and games in general have evolved alot over the years.  So far I haven't seen one bit of evidence to prove otherwise.  To each his own I guess.

I think what people are confused about is evolution vs improvement.  That is always naturally the case over the long term and what we have with mmorpg gaming is a very short period of observation. Perhaps if we had a few hundred years of mmorpg history to look at we could make a better observation.

We could be in a period of stagnation waiting for something else or this could be a hill or valley in the cycle of it's evolution. Take a look at biological evolution and how some species evolution has them selected out of the population.  That could happen with mmorpgs.  Assuming that you are correct and we are in a bad period who knows what will eventually come out of it.  However, that assumes that you are correct and I don't doubt there are many people would would think you are wrong.

Honest answer games are not evolving they are devolving more than anything, look at todays market of games, look at what all is out there today. Then look at what is out there ten years ago, the types and titles that are out have shrunk by compairison. Instead of seeing many new titles every year, we see more and more sequeals that just add to the same form of cut and paste story that every game has. We see maybe ten really new titles a year that try to break new ground, but for the most part we are bombarded by pretty graphics and no story.