Originally posted by JGMIII

I don't know.

Do you really have any idea how small the group of players are that would rather a open ended sandbox game?

The sandboxy type mmos are coming out now and imo its not really a good thing we have a small community and to streach us across too many games is bad imo.

UO is still going, Eve, Ryzom, Wurm, DF and now with games like MO, ER and FE how many more could we really ask for.

These open endged games are awesome to us but we are a very small minority, to blame investors and devs houses because they actually want to make money instead of catering to a extremely small niche isn't fair imo.

MMOs are a business and our tiny playerbase in the next year or so will have more then enough games to mess with we don;t need WAR to be a sandbox.

 

 

You are wrong. More and more MMORPG players are getting fed up with themepark type WoW clone MMORPGs. That is why crappy games like Darkfall draws so much attention and why Mortal Online is so hyped on this site.

The peak of themepark MMORPGs seem to have been reached and people are now looking more and more for depth and freedom. As MMORPGs originally were envisioned to be.

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by JGMIII

I don't know.

Do you really have any idea how small the group of players are that would rather a open ended sandbox game?

The sandboxy type mmos are coming out now and imo its not really a good thing we have a small community and to streach us across too many games is bad imo.

UO is still going, Eve, Ryzom, Wurm, DF and now with games like MO, ER and FE how many more could we really ask for.

These open endged games are awesome to us but we are a very small minority, to blame investors and devs houses because they actually want to make money instead of catering to a extremely small niche isn't fair imo.

MMOs are a business and our tiny playerbase in the next year or so will have more then enough games to mess with we don;t need WAR to be a sandbox.

 

 

You are wrong. More and more MMORPG players are getting fed up with themepark type WoW clone MMORPGs. That is why crappy games like Darkfall draws so much attention and why Mortal Online is so hyped on this site.

The peak of themepark MMORPGs seem to have been reached and people are now looking more and more for depth and freedom. As MMORPGs originally were envisioned to be.

Noone cares about darkfall, only this site actually gives a shit.

The people that are tired of themeparks are so few it doesnt matter.

Noone is looking for anything other than WoW or something like WoW. You're kidding yourself if you think some massive playerbase is hiding waiting for a big sandbox/pvp game to release.

Just because you and I are tired of themeparks means shit to investors and Devs, they will keep pumping out themeparks because 95% of the market plays them and enjoys them.

The rest of us get indy devs that make half assed games with a couple that really turn out good (eve).

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by JGMIII

I don't know.

Do you really have any idea how small the group of players are that would rather a open ended sandbox game?

The sandboxy type mmos are coming out now and imo its not really a good thing we have a small community and to streach us across too many games is bad imo.

UO is still going, Eve, Ryzom, Wurm, DF and now with games like MO, ER and FE how many more could we really ask for.

These open endged games are awesome to us but we are a very small minority, to blame investors and devs houses because they actually want to make money instead of catering to a extremely small niche isn't fair imo.

MMOs are a business and our tiny playerbase in the next year or so will have more then enough games to mess with we don;t need WAR to be a sandbox.

 

 

You are wrong. More and more MMORPG players are getting fed up with themepark type WoW clone MMORPGs. That is why crappy games like Darkfall draws so much attention and why Mortal Online is so hyped on this site.

The peak of themepark MMORPGs seem to have been reached and people are now looking more and more for depth and freedom. As MMORPGs originally were envisioned to be.

This site is a terrible indication if something is "drawing a lot of attention" overall. All my friends play WoW right now that play MMOs... not one of them heard of DF or MO. I have some other friends that been playing MMOs since UO like me - again, only I have heard of DF and MO.

MO will fail, so will FE... so will every game to most people on THIS site. Most of the disgruntled fans on this site want an old feeling of playing their first MMO again. All the thrills and adventure and newness... But just like your very first kiss, it only happens once. Games like WAR do tend to get boring after awhile but to say they failed in every way and it's a terrible game... that's a HUGE exaggeration.

It's either that, or the other answer is a lot of the fans here are BURNED OUT of MMOs and blame companies for them not having fun. When you have logged 1000+ hours into 3-4 MMOs and you've played 25 MMOs so far and nothing seems to taste right, put down the fork and quit eating for awhile. These are games people, don't forget that. If you honestly are angry at the world because the game isn't hardcore and realistic enough, or you can't build a house and plant flowers and go fishing, or if it isn't enough like UO, AC, EQ, DAoC, or X game... go outside for a few months. Come back and MMOs will probably be more fun if you remember they are games, not your real life.

They are just games...

Originally posted by Cereo

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by JGMIII

I don't know.

Do you really have any idea how small the group of players are that would rather a open ended sandbox game?

The sandboxy type mmos are coming out now and imo its not really a good thing we have a small community and to streach us across too many games is bad imo.

UO is still going, Eve, Ryzom, Wurm, DF and now with games like MO, ER and FE how many more could we really ask for.

These open endged games are awesome to us but we are a very small minority, to blame investors and devs houses because they actually want to make money instead of catering to a extremely small niche isn't fair imo.

MMOs are a business and our tiny playerbase in the next year or so will have more then enough games to mess with we don;t need WAR to be a sandbox.

 

 

You are wrong. More and more MMORPG players are getting fed up with themepark type WoW clone MMORPGs. That is why crappy games like Darkfall draws so much attention and why Mortal Online is so hyped on this site.

The peak of themepark MMORPGs seem to have been reached and people are now looking more and more for depth and freedom. As MMORPGs originally were envisioned to be.

This site is a terrible indication if something is "drawing a lot of attention" overall. All my friends play WoW right now that play MMOs... not one of them heard of DF or MO. I have some other friends that been playing MMOs since UO like me - again, only I have heard of DF and MO.

MO will fail, so will FE... so will every game to most people on THIS site. Most of the disgruntled fans on this site want an old feeling of playing their first MMO again. All the thrills and adventure and newness... But just like your very first kiss, it only happens once. Games like WAR do tend to get boring after awhile but to say they failed in every way and it's a terrible game... that's a HUGE exaggeration.

It's either that, or the other answer is a lot of the fans here are BURNED OUT of MMOs and blame companies for them not having fun. When you have logged 1000+ hours into 3-4 MMOs and you've played 25 MMOs so far and nothing seems to taste right, put down the fork and quit eating for awhile. These are games people, don't forget that. If you honestly are angry at the world because the game isn't hardcore and realistic enough, or you can't build a house and plant flowers and go fishing, or if it isn't enough like UO, AC, EQ, DAoC, or X game... go outside for a few months. Come back and MMOs will probably be more fun if you remember they are games, not your real life.

They are just games...

Very well said. Like most things, after the "magic" is gone its never quite the same.

Originally posted by sacdeep

I'm not so sure it was the nature of sandbox games that led to their decline in popularity, but rather how well developers like Blizzard have done with their theme park-like (for lack of a more illustrative phrase) games coupled with the fact that sandbox MMOs of the past came out during a period of rapid technological progression - they found themselves rather obsolete in comparison quickly. It must be tough to retain customers when the New Shiny Stuff is hitting the market every year.

I'm still holding out hope that a developer with adequate funding and man power brings a game to the market that has many sandbox elements while still offering the solid "on rails" experience of WoW. I think it can be done, it doesn't sound difficult when the layman (me) brainstorms on the subject, but we'll see.

I mean just imagine if WoW had a true, massive, frontier zone akin to old-school UO. Not just mini-games set within a zone that resets itself every several hours (Wintergrasp) and doesn't allow long term development by the community. That would be pretty amazing.

You are spot on my friend and I'm hoping that CCP WoD and 38Studios "Copernicus" will bring the best of both worlds.Both studios have what I consider to be the best team on the market,the funding and the know how to bring us an evolved MMO.

Originally posted by JGMIII

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by JGMIII

I don't know.

Do you really have any idea how small the group of players are that would rather a open ended sandbox game?

The sandboxy type mmos are coming out now and imo its not really a good thing we have a small community and to streach us across too many games is bad imo.

UO is still going, Eve, Ryzom, Wurm, DF and now with games like MO, ER and FE how many more could we really ask for.

These open endged games are awesome to us but we are a very small minority, to blame investors and devs houses because they actually want to make money instead of catering to a extremely small niche isn't fair imo.

MMOs are a business and our tiny playerbase in the next year or so will have more then enough games to mess with we don;t need WAR to be a sandbox.

 

 

You are wrong. More and more MMORPG players are getting fed up with themepark type WoW clone MMORPGs. That is why crappy games like Darkfall draws so much attention and why Mortal Online is so hyped on this site.

The peak of themepark MMORPGs seem to have been reached and people are now looking more and more for depth and freedom. As MMORPGs originally were envisioned to be.

Noone cares about darkfall, only this site actually gives a shit.

The people that are tired of themeparks are so few it doesnt matter.

Noone is looking for anything other than WoW or something like WoW. You're kidding yourself if you think some massive playerbase is hiding waiting for a big sandbox/pvp game to release.

Just because you and I are tired of themeparks means shit to investors and Devs, they will keep pumping out themeparks because 95% of the market plays them and enjoys them.

The rest of us get indy devs that make half assed games with a couple that really turn out good (eve).

 

85% of the market plays WoW, which happens to be a themepark. The rest are divided between WoW knockoffs, which sadly WAR is, and s pretty succesful sandbox game called EvE which I heard have more subscribers than WAR.

AoC is a failure and so is basically all other themepark games except WAR and LoTRO. I think the days of themepark MMORPGs will soon be over when dev teams realise that they can't get anywhere near WoW numbers by copying their concept.

Originally posted by sacdeep

I'm not so sure it was the nature of sandbox games that led to their decline in popularity, but rather how well developers like Blizzard have done with their theme park-like (for lack of a more illustrative phrase) games coupled with the fact that sandbox MMOs of the past came out during a period of rapid technological progression - they found themselves rather obsolete in comparison quickly. It must be tough to retain customers when the New Shiny Stuff is hitting the market every year.

I'm still holding out hope that a developer with adequate funding and man power brings a game to the market that has many sandbox elements while still offering the solid "on rails" experience of WoW. I think it can be done, it doesn't sound difficult when the layman (me) brainstorms on the subject, but we'll see.

I mean just imagine if WoW had a true, massive, frontier zone akin to old-school UO. Not just mini-games set within a zone that resets itself every several hours (Wintergrasp) and doesn't allow long term development by the community. That would be pretty amazing.

My view of it goes something like this...

The vast majority of the market has played the EQ Clone core game.  EQ may have cloned M59 or NwN (aol version) I'm not sure on that.. but just in case (plausible denaibility).  WoW took the elements of EQ and other games (which came out after EQ and used somewhat modified versions of the core) and refined them.

People are used to playing the Class, Level game with Shiney Uber Loot.

The core of the sandbox concept is the exact opposite...

No classes... No levels... No shiney Uber loot.  Your items will decay... they can be lost...   Yet crafters can make them easy enough to sell at "sane" prices and make a profit... aka the virtual world simulator.

I think its very hard to take a market that has been cemented into a certain concept... and shift it to a different point of view.

I can honestly say I recently logged into an EMU version of a certain "sand box" game and was like "this wasn't that hard..." then I started to remember how things worked.

I never even realized how I had been changed into the "on demand" instant gratification customer...  I think it would be harder to shift the market.. than most think.  Altho I think the current design will eventually lead to this same market... not being much of a market.

Originally posted by Yamota

 I think the days of themepark MMORPGs will soon be over when dev teams realise that they can't get anywhere near WoW numbers by copying their concept.

The day that happens I will be as happy as a pig in shit!

If it wasn't for games like Eve and Ryzom I would have been long gone with all of this themepark stuff.

I mean how many god damn MMOs do we need that are basically single player games with a chat box and a bad storyline?

I really hope those guys snap out of it, I'm not holding my breath though.

Originally posted by Antarious

My view of it goes something like this...

 

The vast majority of the market has played the EQ Clone core game.  EQ may have cloned M59 or NwN (aol version) I'm not sure on that.. but just in case (plausible denaibility).  WoW took the elements of EQ and other games (which came out after EQ and used somewhat modified versions of the core) and refined them.

 

People are used to playing the Class, Level game with Shiney Uber Loot.

 

The core of the sandbox concept is the exact opposite...

 

No classes... No levels... No shiney Uber loot.  Your items will decay... they can be lost...   Yet crafters can make them easy enough to sell at "sane" prices and make a profit... aka the virtual world simulator.

Ok I don't know where you got your definition of sand box but it is certainly not what you described. Sandbox games simply means that the advancing of your character is not linear and mobs are'nt put in a strict order of "zones" where you need to go through to advance but rather you live in a world with a, somewhat, natural fauna and there is no strict direction on where you can or cannot go or do.

Item decay, classes, uber loot etc has absolutely nothing to do with sandbox concept. All those elements could exist in a sandbox game and they do, in some. Asherons Call was a classic sandbox game and there you had uber loot, no item decay and there existed classes in the sense that if you had mastery in archery you would, in essence, become an archer class. It was not a hardcoded class as in other more strict MMORPGs but even so.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that sandbox game are not linear where as themepark games are. Any other aspects could be same or different as long as that aspect is what it is.

Games like ultima online were succesful because of a numbers of things.

For one, they were amongst the very first MMO, when this type of game was still new and refreshing for many.

Secondly, they catered to many playstyles, because they had the content to support it all. You could be a crafter and spend your whole day forging swords or repairing them, and you were never without a chat or a laugh, or cash to show for all your services. Or you would get a group together and kill dragons etc. Or you could decorate your house or fool around with the furniture. Or kill billybob in pvp. Or mine ore, or chop wood, or check your own merchants. Or wait 24 hours for the neighbours house to fall killing every other camper in the meantime.

Will new games like MO survive? In my opinion only if they develop their game for not 1 but many audiences. crafters, PVP, PVE, carebears and hardcore dungeon crawlers. WOW could have at least 1 million more players if they introduced parts of the content that UO had, like housing. Personally i quit because after levelling and doing raids, there was not much else to do.
And there are many good examples of existing games where one playstyle needs the other to do good (DAOC comes to mind, people that did nothing else than become grandmaster craftsmen crafted equipment  that 99% of the time beat any ingame drop for the pvp folks to use, and there were not many ingame drops to make crafters obsolete).

I am not sure how is this cinematic related to the thread.

But i feel realy sad too. WAR should be shadowbane 2.0, not wow 2.0

Too me it lacked 3 things:

Many independent races instead of artificial factions.

Hardcore pvp with death penalty (not necessarily full looting)

Pretty graphics instead of wowish one.

Originally posted by Devour

You know what the saddest thing about Warhammer Online is?

The original game that got shut down because Games Workshop thought it wasn't "economically viable" was going to be akin to a sandbox game, as it was based off the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game. Thing SWGs system in a fantasy setting and you're pretty damn close.

So, yeah...

It's pretty much GW's fault that we don't have a very nice sandbox game sitting on the market right now.

( Well, other than Wish, which also got shut down due to the fact it cost too much. I'm seeing a pattern, here. )

Video of original Warhammer Online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkQvPQJ1_

shuda,cuda,wuda who cares !!!!

I think WAR is an OK game - who cares what they may have made it years ago--- GTFO

I like the way people talk as if sandbox and scripted are mutually exclusive,  for all its faults Star Wars Galaxies was scripted and sandbox, I found the Krayt graveyard long before I was told to go there and the same with the Tusken compund. 

SP games like Stalker and Fallout both have heavy duty distractions from main plot focus points.  In fact its rather easy to spend 3 hours in Stalker just carrying crap for one place to the next. 

The issue which few kiddies want to address is levelling implicitly denies freeform play.  Take for example WOW, if wow had no levels everyone was level 20 say and every mob, it would be an open sprawling world of exploration.  As it satnds its a pointless grind forwards from A to B.  How is that adventorous and heroic ?  Of course theyd have to prgramme better AI and mmore involved depth filled combat other than the current you lose 6 HP out of 1200.   Given we have respawning in all these games why isnt death common ?  Why are we constantly kept alive, shouldnt combat be a frantic fast paced life or death, first to make a mistake, dies affair?

A variety of pen n paper methods include selecting a defence and offence every turn and the enemy countering with the same.  No we get weapon does x damage minus y armour every second if hit.  Age of conan looked so promising and look what we got .... a press X to perform special with the complications of lag in the timer and the pointlessness of facing attacks and illusory shield positions.

More realism would go along way to eliminate these problems and while WAR is fun ( Isuppose I better address the OP :D)  its too much like a reskinned WOW it lacks its own character its better than WOW IMHO but the mechanisms are too similar the stats  arent very warhammery the gear isnt very customisible :(.  Again levelly based play.

On the plus side a few of the newer games are focussing less on level difference and more on the play side of the game.  While a lvl 1 cant kill a lvl 40 they do significantly more damage than your WOW equivalents.  As Ive always pointed out if I hit you in the head with a brick it doesnt matter if your Herucles himself or Bill Gates your going down for the count :D

Originally posted by JGMIII

Originally posted by Yamota

 I think the days of themepark MMORPGs will soon be over when dev teams realise that they can't get anywhere near WoW numbers by copying their concept.

 

The day that happens I will be as happy as a pig in shit!

If it wasn't for games like Eve and Ryzom I would have been long gone with all of this themepark stuff.

I mean how many god damn MMOs do we need that are basically single player games with a chat box and a bad storyline?

I really hope those guys snap out of it, I'm not holding my breath though.

Yeah I dont get that either. Themepark MMORPGs are in essence single player games in concept but implemented for more than one person. Everything from the storyline to how you advance your character is so remiscient of single player games that it feels just contradictive to have it as a MMORPG.

The whole point, originally, for MMORPGs was that you hade ONE persistent world where your actions are shared with thousands of others. Not to create houndreds of pararelly identical story lines that have no bearing on each other.

But I guess that didn't cater to most gamers so now they turned it into a milkcow by making endless themepark WoW clones. But I am hopeful this will change as more and more themepark games are not doing particulary well.

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by JGMIII

Originally posted by Yamota

 I think the days of themepark MMORPGs will soon be over when dev teams realise that they can't get anywhere near WoW numbers by copying their concept.

 

The day that happens I will be as happy as a pig in shit!

If it wasn't for games like Eve and Ryzom I would have been long gone with all of this themepark stuff.

I mean how many god damn MMOs do we need that are basically single player games with a chat box and a bad storyline?

I really hope those guys snap out of it, I'm not holding my breath though.

 

Yeah I dont get that either. Themepark MMORPGs are in essence single player games in concept but implemented for more than one person. Everything from the storyline to how you advance your character is so remiscient of single player games that it feels just contradictive to have it as a MMORPG.

The whole point, originally, for MMORPGs was that you hade ONE persistent world where your actions are shared with thousands of others. Not to create houndreds of pararelly identical story lines that have no bearing on each other.

But I guess that didn't cater to most gamers so now they turned it into a milkcow by making endless themepark WoW clones. But I am hopeful this will change as more and more themepark games are not doing particulary well.

Hmm, not too sure of that. Even most of the muds were mostly themebased games where we all ran through the same hoops to increase our levels.

I think the point of MMOrpgs was that you had one persistant world where you had many other people, *period* , the rest we're just making up :)

Originally posted by Pheace

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by JGMIII

Originally posted by Yamota

 I think the days of themepark MMORPGs will soon be over when dev teams realise that they can't get anywhere near WoW numbers by copying their concept.

 

The day that happens I will be as happy as a pig in shit!

If it wasn't for games like Eve and Ryzom I would have been long gone with all of this themepark stuff.

I mean how many god damn MMOs do we need that are basically single player games with a chat box and a bad storyline?

I really hope those guys snap out of it, I'm not holding my breath though.

 

Yeah I dont get that either. Themepark MMORPGs are in essence single player games in concept but implemented for more than one person. Everything from the storyline to how you advance your character is so remiscient of single player games that it feels just contradictive to have it as a MMORPG.

The whole point, originally, for MMORPGs was that you hade ONE persistent world where your actions are shared with thousands of others. Not to create houndreds of pararelly identical story lines that have no bearing on each other.

But I guess that didn't cater to most gamers so now they turned it into a milkcow by making endless themepark WoW clones. But I am hopeful this will change as more and more themepark games are not doing particulary well.

 

Hmm, not too sure of that. Even most of the muds were mostly themebased games where we all ran through the same hoops to increase our levels.

 

I think the point of MMOrpgs was that you had one persistant world where you had many other people, *period* , the rest we're just making up :)

Well in a way you are correct since MUDs, the first MMORPGS as far as I know, were a bit theme based. But classic sandbox games like Asherons Call and Ultima Online were certainly not.

However EQ was so it is all dependant on what you define as the first MMORPG which defined the genre. I think it was UO but others might see it differently.

However that being said. The instancing and plethora of quests that does not affect the world as a whole is more a trademark for the later MMORPGs, starting with WoW. And that I think is what gave birth to the themepark MMORPG that I feel is not anything like UO. Or atleast more like a single player game than UO was.

Originally posted by redhands123

Originally posted by sacdeep

I'm not so sure it was the nature of sandbox games that led to their decline in popularity, but rather how well developers like Blizzard have done with their theme park-like (for lack of a more illustrative phrase) games coupled with the fact that sandbox MMOs of the past came out during a period of rapid technological progression - they found themselves rather obsolete in comparison quickly. It must be tough to retain customers when the New Shiny Stuff is hitting the market every year.

I'm still holding out hope that a developer with adequate funding and man power brings a game to the market that has many sandbox elements while still offering the solid "on rails" experience of WoW. I think it can be done, it doesn't sound difficult when the layman (me) brainstorms on the subject, but we'll see.

I mean just imagine if WoW had a true, massive, frontier zone akin to old-school UO. Not just mini-games set within a zone that resets itself every several hours (Wintergrasp) and doesn't allow long term development by the community. That would be pretty amazing.

 

I think the answer to your problems will be MO.

Yeah so I'm waiting for MO and WoDO

Well...I wish you all the best with Morbid Online... But unless they can pull several rabbits out of their hat, its going to be a very narrow niche market game.  The fact that they are rabidly anti "carebear" means they are seriously limiting the demographic they appeal to. But its their investors money...<shrug>

Originally posted by Devour

You know what the saddest thing about Warhammer Online is?

The original game that got shut down because Games Workshop thought it wasn't "economically viable" was going to be akin to a sandbox game, as it was based off the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game. Thing SWGs system in a fantasy setting and you're pretty damn close.

So, yeah...

It's pretty much GW's fault that we don't have a very nice sandbox game sitting on the market right now.

( Well, other than Wish, which also got shut down due to the fact it cost too much. I'm seeing a pattern, here. )

Video of original Warhammer Online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkQvPQJ1_Dk

And I'm so glad WISH didn't make it to the market, it was CRAP with a capital C, what on earth where they thinking with point and click for movement, if I hadn't been in the beta I might have been sucked into buying it.

I would have liked to have seen the original version of WAR before it was scrapped, and tbh I thought the whole project was dead in the water until it was picked up my Mythic/EA.

No the saddest thing is GW letting Mythic make the game.

Originally posted by galliard1981

I am not sure how is this cinematic related to the thread.

But i feel realy sad too. WAR should be shadowbane 2.0, not wow 2.0

Too me it lacked 3 things:

Many independent races instead of artificial factions.

Hardcore pvp with death penalty (not necessarily full looting)

Pretty graphics instead of wowish one.

I agree with this.  Races that actually matter in your choice (with plenty of viability, not "every class X must be race Y or you're gimp), lots of customization (including the possibility of oddball dagger dwarf priest builds, for example), gameworld affecting consequences to your interactions.  The thing launched wonderfully...then everyone found out how little War has to offer in terms of variety, individuality, pvp, etc., and the population slumped.

The only thing I disagree with you about is "wow 2.0".  It's more like "wow 0.2".  I might have been more disappointed in a gaming purchase, but I can't think of when...