now ive played UO too ,and yes ive seen and played  pre trammel also . But UO had its flaws too and im not talking bout the bugs and lags the game had in its early stages . Ever asked yourself what brought Trammel ?  Now i wonder what t your answer to that will be ... im 100% sure the word carebear will fall .

UO was damn good no question , but it isnt , never was the holy grail

I totally agree with the point the OP is trying to make.
Sad but true, the genre is turning to shit in my opinion. I just wish that companies would stop calling all these crappy games, Warhammer, APB etc MMOs.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Interesting

The virtual world simulation,  "live the game", the persistent world, although dinamic, ever changing, ever evolving world is the most decried, capperclawed, despised, ignored core element of an MMO these days.

Its hard to explain how such core idea slowly and misteriously disintegrated to give place to the empty shells of games advertised nowadays.

 

 

 

Because that should never be the core in the first place. People want entertaining content, NOT games. Here is a polll essentially speak to it. MMORP GAMES are moving towards what people want and what they find fun.

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001630.php

The problem with your theory is:

1) There is a constantly growing number of people who are sick and tired of game play as defined by the Theme Park design of today's games.  There are new people on this board daily who came from WoW, are sick of WoW, and are looking for something new or more challenging.  This does not include LOTRO, Aion, Conan, etc.

2) Many people who are stuck in Theme Park games now have never played a good sandbox game since there hasn't been one out since UO or pre-cu SWG. No one knows how many of these people would gravitate towards a sandbox MMO because there isn't a decent one out for them to try.

3) Many of these AAA theme park games that have been coming out for the past several years have TANKED big time.  It's not just because of their state at release, it's also because they have nothing to offer the genre but more of the same.  If people want more of the same, they just end up going back to WoW where the game is polished.

4)  I HATE where the mainstream games are going now.  I'm not the only one, and that number will continue to grow as the Theme-park concept grows more and more stale at a cost of $15 per month.

Originally posted by CoffeeGrunt

now ive played UO too ,and yes ive seen and played  pre trammel also . But UO had its flaws too and im not talking bout the bugs and lags the game had in its early stages . Ever asked yourself what brought Trammel ?  Now i wonder what t your answer to that will be ... im 100% sure the word carebear will fall .

 

UO was damn good no question , but it isnt , never was the holy grail

Nobody said it was.  It was used an an example of an open world game where the user forges his/her own adventure without having to strap into the shallow, scripted theme-park ride of today's games.  SWG was a mess too as far as games go, but it gave everyone so much freedom to create their own content and adventure in the Star Wars universe that the player base didn't care.  Sure it didn't appeal to everyone, but you also cannot compare it by today's WoW influenced numbers. There weren't that many MMO gamers when SWG was in it's 'prime'.

What does MMORPG mean today?  Ok, I'll give it a try.

Let's see....

Min Maxers On Rails Pay Good

Do I win?

never played SWG but ive played UO  and from that  example i can say (stated that before ) it wasnt all that shiny .

Originally posted by MindTrigger

The problem with your theory is:

1) There is a constantly growing number of people who are sick and tired of game play as defined by the Theme Park design of today's games.  There are new people on this board daily who came from WoW, are sick of WoW, and are looking for something new or more challenging. 

...then when asked if they actually accomplished anything difficult in the game, they say they soloed to 70 and expected it to be hard when it was never designed to be, ignored every dungeon, never bothered trying to rank high in the arenas, and never did any of the difficult acheivements.  I'm not saying ALL people, but the common excuse to WOW being easy is because these people played the easy way.  They avoided everything difficult because it wasn't rammed down their throat.  As if they'll every be happy with anything;)

These same people will just complain about the next MMO, and the next and the next.  Darkfall is hard and tedious, everything peopel "loved", hehe.  You don't see millions knowcking down those doors.  Millions weren't knocking down SWG's doors either.  They didn't care for Pirates, Dark&Light, Ryzome or Eve(300k+ unique account my foot)  Almost everyone playing the game is 2 boxing by now.  Thats where all the new subs are coming from.

Theres always a market for sandboxes but its no bigger than it ever was.

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Sandboxes (a.k.a Virtual World Simulations) started to fall out of favour 10 years ago when EQ launched.

The majority wants a game to play, not a new world to live in.

With the return of the story-driven immersive gameplay promised by TOR, I'm very happy with the direction the genre is heading in. I understand that not everyone feels the same, and that opinions don't get changed on forum posts but meh; your negative viewpoint demanded a positive rebuttal.

I'm not happy yet. TOR SOUNDS like it will be fun. Just like many other games. I thought Vanguard was going to be fun till I did the beta.

Then I didn't even want to be in the beta for WAR becasue the beta sometimes spoils the game when it releases IMO, and wow I was really disappointed by that one. Sounded great. RvR AND cool quests taht all players can participate in without even being ina group? That's going to be really fun!

Not so much, cause everyones dont' PvP in instances, which are fun, for about a month and then you're bored to death with them.

Will the multiplayer dialog and being able to hire NPCs result in really fun grouping, or will it be a solo fest sort of like playing a Single player RPG where you can chat with other players and see them run by now and then? I don't know.

Originally posted by Josher

Originally posted by MindTrigger

The problem with your theory is:

1) There is a constantly growing number of people who are sick and tired of game play as defined by the Theme Park design of today's games.  There are new people on this board daily who came from WoW, are sick of WoW, and are looking for something new or more challenging. 

...then when asked if they actually accomplished anything difficult in the game, they say they soloed to 70 and expected it to be hard when it was never designed to be, ignored every dungeon, never bothered trying to rank high in the arenas, and never did any of the difficult acheivements.  I'm not saying ALL people, but the common excuse to WOW being easy is because these people played the easy way.  They avoided everything difficult because it wasn't rammed down their throat.  As if they'll every be happy with anything;)

These same people will just complain about the next MMO, and the next and the next.  Darkfall is hard and tedious, everything peopel "loved", hehe.  You don't see millions knowcking down those doors.  Millions weren't knocking down SWG's doors either.  They didn't care for Pirates, Dark&Light, Ryzome or Eve(300k+ unique account my foot)  Almost everyone playing the game is 2 boxing by now.  Thats where all the new subs are coming from.

Theres always a market for sandboxes but its no bigger than it ever was.

I don't know if you are aware of this, but only something like 1-5% get into the endgame content to any serious degree.  As you people here love to point out when we talk about sandbox games; people have better things to do than waste their times with the requirements for raiding.

Choosing a half-ass game like Darkfall as your argument against sandbox games is retarded. Also, there weren't millions of available players back when SWG was out.  MMO's were fairly new 6 years ago, and the vast majority of today's gamers were not online gaming then.  Also, SWG required a fairly decent gaming computer to play (because it was never optimized and the engine sucks).  WoW requires the specs of a $5 calculator, which is one of the main reasons for its success.  You cannot compare SWG's sub numbers to today's numbers.  It was a completely different point in the evolution of the internet, computers, and online video games.

Read my other points in the post you quoted above if you want to have a valid argument about this.  It would also help if you learned more about the state of gaming 5+ years ago.  As I stated, most of the people who are playing MMO's now were not around then, and their VERY FIRST MMORPG was WoW.  All they know is WoW and the other wow clones at this point, because they haven't played a decent, modern sandbox. For you to say that none of those people would enjoy a sandbox game is ludicrous. Sure, the majority will prefer mouth-breather games, but that number will decline as people get sick and tired of the same old scripted gameplay in every MMO they try. This is clearly already starting to happen.

Originally posted by Josher

Originally posted by MindTrigger

The problem with your theory is:

1) There is a constantly growing number of people who are sick and tired of game play as defined by the Theme Park design of today's games.  There are new people on this board daily who came from WoW, are sick of WoW, and are looking for something new or more challenging. 

...then when asked if they actually accomplished anything difficult in the game, they say they soloed to 70 and expected it to be hard when it was never designed to be, ignored every dungeon, never bothered trying to rank high in the arenas, and never did any of the difficult acheivements.  I'm not saying ALL people, but the common excuse to WOW being easy is because these people played the easy way.  They avoided everything difficult because it wasn't rammed down their throat.  As if they'll every be happy with anything;)

These same people will just complain about the next MMO, and the next and the next.  Darkfall is hard and tedious, everything peopel "loved", hehe.  You don't see millions knowcking down those doors.  Millions weren't knocking down SWG's doors either.  They didn't care for Pirates, Dark&Light, Ryzome or Eve(300k+ unique account my foot)  Almost everyone playing the game is 2 boxing by now.  Thats where all the new subs are coming from.

Theres always a market for sandboxes but its no bigger than it ever was.

If there is an easy way, then the game is easy.

It's only hard, if there is no easy way, duh.

Otherwise, the game isn't hard, you're just making crap up on your own to make the game seem hard. I could play a FPS shooter with one eye closed to make it harder but I wouldn't do taht eitehr.

I suspect that console gaming will murder MMO if they continue down this road.  OP, you are absolutely correct.  And in a FPS, console will always dominate!

Originally posted by AllNewMMOSuk

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Indeed. Interesting post.

But let me quote Paul Barnett , at this year E3.

This is what he said to question about where he sees MMO's heading in next years:

"We are not going to see MMOs as we know them today. Instead it will just be games with multiplayer connectivity.
in fact term MMO will become thing of the past."

 

He is on to something.

 

Most of upcomming MMOs are in fact this.

RPG games, or Shooters. Where developers said:

"We know MMO games sell more , and earn more. Let just create internet server structure in our games!"

 

Basically , they are Multiplayer Enabled games - not Massively Multiplayer games

 

 

And I am just waiting for SWTOR to be a final example of this trend. And flagbearer of this sad trend

 

Anyone that quotes Paul Barnett (an utter fool and idiot) is just losing credibility for anything else they type. That guy knows nothing about games and there is a reason why WAR has been on a constant downslide from the moment it was released.

You'll get no argument from me about what you stated about PB. The issue, as I see it, is that all the key players in these bigger name companies making MMOs think pretty much on exactly the same lines. It's evident in the types of MMOs being released. That and shareholders are the driving force behind development, not polish and out of the box thinking. There've been a scribble or two here outside of the box, but only enough to entice the blinded by hope crowd into thinking a new title is truly something new and different. The indy company...a few of them had designs on making a triangle or circle, but they don't have the money the box companies do. Thus, production value is such that it drives people away.

Vicious, vicious seemingly never-ending cycle we are in.

Originally posted by Josher

Originally posted by MindTrigger

The problem with your theory is:

1) There is a constantly growing number of people who are sick and tired of game play as defined by the Theme Park design of today's games.  There are new people on this board daily who came from WoW, are sick of WoW, and are looking for something new or more challenging. 

...then when asked if they actually accomplished anything difficult in the game, they say they soloed to 70 and expected it to be hard when it was never designed to be, ignored every dungeon, never bothered trying to rank high in the arenas, and never did any of the difficult acheivements.  I'm not saying ALL people, but the common excuse to WOW being easy is because these people played the easy way.  They avoided everything difficult because it wasn't rammed down their throat.  As if they'll every be happy with anything;)

These same people will just complain about the next MMO, and the next and the next.  Darkfall is hard and tedious, everything peopel "loved", hehe.  You don't see millions knowcking down those doors.  Millions weren't knocking down SWG's doors either.  They didn't care for Pirates, Dark&Light, Ryzome or Eve(300k+ unique account my foot)  Almost everyone playing the game is 2 boxing by now.  Thats where all the new subs are coming from.

Theres always a market for sandboxes but its no bigger than it ever was.

I'd wonder if it had the production value and funding that all these themepark games get if it wouldn't be experiencing a different fate. Not one of the games in that paragraph that you list was done by a AAA, big name company. SWG doesn't count as SOE has proven they can run any effort into the ground. Would be interesting to see what a top-line company could do.

Few good point here so far:

1. Releasing MMO with sameish game mechanic as WOW will always fail. Since once player realise its all same he will return to WOW that is more polished and has more content and bigger community.

This was proven many times so far.

2. Sandbox gaming got hijacked by hardcore PVP game design philosophy. And poorly developed titles.

Simply there is not even a case to prove sandbox gaming would be popular. Last such AAA title was SWG that never had a chance to grow. And on other side there is example of most hardcore PVP game EVE. And such games can not appeal to mainstream. And than you have games like Darkfall that are plainly just under developed.

I never had an idea why Darkfall was supposed to be a good idea in the first place ... no mater how well it would have been developed.

The last thing I heard about it was people running around naked in order to not get robbed in PvP. Well, I guess that makes sense if gear doesnt matter anyway ?

But thats certainly not a game I am eager to play.

Pre-Tram UO, especially in the beginning w/o guildstones, was literally hands down the best mmo design ever. Mmorpgs if they are even going to compete with UO would definately be post-tram, the carebare land of crappy rule systems and the beginning of the end for a true moneys worth experience.

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Sandboxes (a.k.a Virtual World Simulations) started to fall out of favour 10 years ago when EQ launched.

The majority wants a game to play, not a new world to live in.

With the return of the story-driven immersive gameplay promised by TOR, I'm very happy with the direction the genre is heading in. I understand that not everyone feels the same, and that opinions don't get changed on forum posts but meh; your negative viewpoint demanded a positive rebuttal.

My GOD you are naive. How many MMO's have promised to do this or that and have actually delivered? The most you'll get from TOR is some pretty cutscenes with dialogue trees. The same cutscenes and dialogue trees that EVERY OTHER PLAYER will see. 

Amen, OP. Amen.

Originally posted by leshtricity

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Sandboxes (a.k.a Virtual World Simulations) started to fall out of favour 10 years ago when EQ launched.

The majority wants a game to play, not a new world to live in.

With the return of the story-driven immersive gameplay promised by TOR, I'm very happy with the direction the genre is heading in. I understand that not everyone feels the same, and that opinions don't get changed on forum posts but meh; your negative viewpoint demanded a positive rebuttal.

My GOD you are naive. How many MMO's have promised to do this or that and have actually delivered? The most you'll get from TOR is some pretty cutscenes with dialogue trees. The same cutscenes and dialogue trees that EVERY OTHER PLAYER will see. 

Hmm. How many MMOs have promised a properly written story-driven progression? Well, none have.

If there's one thing that Bioware can do properly, it's tell a story. A quote from a recent interview:

James Ohlen: To give you an example, in your standard MMO you have a single person doing the quests. He writes it up, he scripts it, he places it in the world. It’s one guy.

But with us, we have a writing team, we have scripters who script it, we have designers who are very good at doing all the cinematic angles and all the animations… so we basically have three times the size of the team for implementing a quest.

And yes, the quests are a lot more intensive than in other games.

That ain't pie in the sky as far as I'm concerned; Bioware is one of the few delveopers who I trust to do what they say they are going to do. They've a tremendous track record with turning out polished and high-quality story driven RPGs.

As for other players getting the same questlines, I've no problem with that. They're free to make their own choices (the same as mine or different) and I don't play MMOs to feel like a unique snowflake.

Sounds like a battle between FFXIV and TOR then. Pick your sides!

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Originally posted by leshtricity

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Sandboxes (a.k.a Virtual World Simulations) started to fall out of favour 10 years ago when EQ launched.

The majority wants a game to play, not a new world to live in.

With the return of the story-driven immersive gameplay promised by TOR, I'm very happy with the direction the genre is heading in. I understand that not everyone feels the same, and that opinions don't get changed on forum posts but meh; your negative viewpoint demanded a positive rebuttal.

My GOD you are naive. How many MMO's have promised to do this or that and have actually delivered? The most you'll get from TOR is some pretty cutscenes with dialogue trees. The same cutscenes and dialogue trees that EVERY OTHER PLAYER will see. 

Hmm. How many MMOs have promised a properly written story-driven progression? Well, none have.

If there's one thing that Bioware can do properly, it's tell a story. A quote from a recent interview:

James Ohlen: To give you an example, in your standard MMO you have a single person doing the quests. He writes it up, he scripts it, he places it in the world. It’s one guy.

But with us, we have a writing team, we have scripters who script it, we have designers who are very good at doing all the cinematic angles and all the animations… so we basically have three times the size of the team for implementing a quest.

And yes, the quests are a lot more intensive than in other games.

That ain't pie in the sky as far as I'm concerned; Bioware is one of the few delveopers who I trust to do what they say they are going to do. They've a tremendous track record with turning out polished and high-quality story driven RPGs.

As for other players getting the same questlines, I've no problem with that. They're free to make their own choices (the same as mine or different) and I don't play MMOs to feel like a unique snowflake.

Sounds good. And I am sure Bioware will do a stellar job

And thats not he point

Point is that SWTOR is not MMORPG

Its nothing more but a good singleplayer RPG , with multiplayer feature

Originally posted by Lobotomist 

Sounds good. And I am sure Bioware will do a stellar job

And thats not he point

Point is that SWTOR is not MMORPG

Its nothing more but a good singleplayer RPG , with multiplayer feature

Much as I hate reposting something, I literaly just replied to this critique in the SWTOR forums and I doubt MMORPG.COM will begrudge me plagiarising my own post just this once:

I really find this whole "It's not going to be an MMO!" argument funny.

Maybe I just have a completely different view of how the game is going to turn out than some of you, but I'm imagining that TOR will be like a traditional themepark MMO like WoW* but with the added benefit that the quests from level 1 to end-game follow a story arc that is unique to your class and can be influenced by your choices.

That's gotta be better than traditional questlines that amount to little more than "kill 10 wolves, ok now kill the boss wolf, ok now deliver the boss wolfs fur to a tanner, ok choose an item reward"

I'm at a loss as to how anyone can see what TOR is proposing to do as a bad thing.

*I used WoW as an example on the basis that it's the most well-known themepark MMO; if the mere glimpse of those three letters enrages you to the point where you can't respond coherently to this post without devolving into a mass of gibbering bilespewing hatred, then mentally substitute it for EQ, LOTRO, AoC or any other themepark MMO that you find less offensive.

TOR is going to have everything that other themepark MMOs has. There will be grouping, raiding, there will be PvP, there will be crafting and an economy, the story arcs aren't single-player, (though they can be done solo if one chooses) and it will be a persistant world populated by other players who are scurrying around doing the aforementioned things.

It is, in every sense, going to be an MMO.

Originally posted by Hyanmen

Sounds like a battle between FFXIV and TOR then. Pick your sides!

I'm planning on playing both! .. I quite like the Final Fantasy universe, but FFXI was way too into the forced grouping for my liking, and from what I'm reading, FFXIV is planning on changing that.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

I can understand what you try to say, but here is a simple thought:

This sounds perhaps odd ... but the endgame of Wow - at least now -  is far less "themepark" than most would believe. I mean there IS a lot of freedom of how you play the end game of it. Take for example the non raiding public (which is HUGE), how do you think they play Wow these days...

I doubt they follow strict lines. Most of the people that play Wow these days gather mounts, titles, achievements.

That was a lot of words to convey a simple thought.

I've snipped it down to what I believe the crux of the matter is; you misunderstand the concept of themeparks.

WoW is still a themepark at endgame; all of the content is scripted, all the dialogue is prewritten and all the encounter mechanics are predetermined; that's the essence of themepark, that the player can only go along with the things that the developer has put into the game and is unable to influence/create content himself.

It's still a themepark, you just get to pick which ride you want to go on. That ain't sandbox.

Originally posted by Zorndorf 

Please read the WHOLE post instead cut and paste 3 lines.

If you would look at the complete post it also says : offer the 10.000 different possible adventures to the people and let them choose the adventures they want to have without giving them strict to follow lines or "scripts". Use the world only as a decoration and nothing more. The avatars create their own adventures within a WELL dressed framework that players simply not can make.

I did read the whole thing; but dismissed the suggestion as untenable wishful-thinking.

There's only two ways that a developer could offer that many choices to the player; either remove meaningful character progression, or scale the content to match the players level of progression.

The former would cut the RPG out of the MMORPG and the latter would destroy any semblance of an open-world and lead to heavy instancing/phasing being put into place to prevent a level 1 character from blundering into an encounter that is scaled to a level 80 character.