same here.... just take a break (like 3 months)  

Originally posted by rensta

same here.... just take a break (like 3 months)  

Yeah I've been playing alot of Madden NFL and Street Fighter IV on my 360 with my brother (Great games to play with friends and a couple cases of beer lol).

Just some simple fun until I find something that can hold me.

Originally posted by Waterlily

Same here,

MMO right now offer nothing I haven't already done in EQ. The leveling, classes, high-fantasy, solo -> group -> raid, holy trinity (tank/healer/dps) is all copied from EQ. I don't get how reviewers even tolerate this garbage anymore. Stuff like Aion getting good reviews seriously bothers me, how many time can you copy the same games and how long can the same old companies hold the strangehold on MMO games.

I do play Street Gears though, it's a roller blade MMO and pretty fun. MMO do not need to be the same thing over and over, but as long as the same companies (SoE, Blizzard, NCsoft) have the biggest budgets, they don't care and will keep making the same crap and the same people will keep buying it.

I agree so much it actually hurts. IMO, I doubt we see much progress until game AI gets much better than what we see today. Too bad that AI seems to be the last thing on developers must-improve list.

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Originally posted by JGMIII

Yeah I've been playing alot of Madden NFL and Street Fighter IV on my 360 with my brother (Great games to play with friends and a couple cases of beer lol).
Just some simple fun until I find something that can hold me.

---

I remember some of your early posts about WAR. You were one of the most excited people I've ever read about it. It sounded like you found your long lost soulmate, lol.

A few weeks later, your posts went down in enthusiasm until you finally posted you quit. I remember you saying you were disappointed at that because of its potential. I see plenty of people post that way. After Vanguard same thing happened. And AoC. And Tabula Rasa. And Shadowbane. Etc, etc, etc.

I think that may have had something to do with why you are sour on MMOs. It's like breaking up with a girl you were dating for a bit that broke your heart. You really don't want to date much after that and look at things critically.

Just give it a little time. AION will be better than WAR guaranteed and there are a few others coming out different enough that you would want to try them. Fallen Earth, Champions Online, maybe Mortal Online.

I just think WAR kicked you in the nuts and now you whince everytime you see a boot.

Originally posted by JGMIII

I can't really explain it.

I've been playing MMOs since UO, From sandbox to themepark. I've played near everything and enjoyed Most in some way or another.

I used to look forward to having a bit of free time in the evening to jump on a good old MMO and Adventure and chat it up with my guild. I had all this motivation to level skills or farm Items or rep.

I don't know where it all went wrong to be honest.

I thought it was the attraction of single player games being so high tech now but thats not it.

I log into a MMO now and it seems like i'm just wasting my time by playing a game that promises fun later on, wading through grind or repetitive actions only designed to keep me paying and playing but not delivering anything close to an enjoyable experience.

12 years of MMOs and now I can't even stand being logged into one of these games more than 10 minutes...... I don't get it.

 

I feel the same as the TS. Every new MMO release something dies inside of me. The genre de-evolved is the reason I found.

What I do about it is to make more and more people understand and feel the same, so we might become legion and developers start caring about us again.

...

We all should have a group hug!

...

ok ok

Im in the same boat. I jump back and forth between MMO's like im looking for something that isnt there. As someone put it the "magic" just isnt there anymore.  Its single player console games for me for awhile, in fact just started playing Ratchet and Clank. Hopefully something will surface for us all down the road.  Good luck to all.

Originally posted by popinjay

 

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Originally posted by JGMIII

 

Yeah I've been playing alot of Madden NFL and Street Fighter IV on my 360 with my brother (Great games to play with friends and a couple cases of beer lol).
Just some simple fun until I find something that can hold me.

---

 

I remember some of your early posts about WAR. You were one of the most excited people I've ever read about it. It sounded like you found your long lost soulmate, lol.

 

A few weeks later, your posts went down in enthusiasm until you finally posted you quit. I remember you saying you were disappointed at that because of its potential. I see plenty of people post that way. After Vanguard same thing happened. And AoC. And Tabula Rasa. And Shadowbane. Etc, etc, etc.

 

 

I think that may have had something to do with why you are sour on MMOs. It's like breaking up with a girl you were dating for a bit that broke your heart. You really don't want to date much after that and look at things critically.

 

 

Just give it a little time. AION will be better than WAR guaranteed and there are a few others coming out different enough that you would want to try them. Fallen Earth, Champions Online, maybe Mortal Online.

 

I just think WAR kicked you in the nuts and now you whince everytime you see a boot.

To this day I still recommend WAR to anyone I meet that is looking to break into the genre.

WAR was an amazing experience for me, It was one of the only games that actually gave me a choice in the way I wanted to level.

I could quest, instance pvp, Orvr or group up for PQs it gave me variety and I truely enjoyed that game.

My problem was with the lack of people to play with, WAR has all these really fun features but they require actual players to enjoy them.

After a week of solo questing and grinding stage 1 PQs with a healing spec Shaman I gave it up.

It's a shame really.

So no the game didn't kick me in the nuts it was the lack of players that drove me from the game.

Originally posted by nobodycool

In the beginning your cup is very small and it takes little to fill it. As you grow your cup gets bigger and the same amount will not fill it anymore. I think a lot of us are waiting for something to come along and fill our cups again. (For those confused by my analogy, the cup is your expectation.)

good post, I kinda agree.

Obviously my oldschool mmo self would be dissapointed with todays mmos but i've become bored with mmo basic mechanics along with whatever hook devs toss at me.

I no longer have my high expectations, I would settle for a fun game tbh.

Originally posted by JGMIII

Originally posted by Zorgo

Simple solution. Find a new hobby.

I used to collect star wars figures. Then I stopped having fun playing with them. So I stopped buying them. But I didn't get mad at Kenner because I grew up.

 

I sometimes have trouble expressing myself through text, did my post come off as me being mad at MMO developers?

That wasn't my intention tbh.

Point taken ) More my assumption than your text.

Originally posted by Waterlily

Same here,

MMO right now offer nothing I haven't already done in EQ. The leveling, classes, high-fantasy, solo -> group -> raid, holy trinity (tank/healer/dps) is all copied from EQ. I don't get how reviewers even tolerate this garbage anymore. Stuff like Aion getting good reviews seriously bothers me, how many time can you copy the same games and how long can the same old companies hold the strangehold on MMO games.

I do play Street Gears though, it's a roller blade MMO and pretty fun. MMO do not need to be the same thing over and over, but as long as the same companies (SoE, Blizzard, NCsoft) have the biggest budgets, they don't care and will keep making the same crap and the same people will keep buying it.

What gets me is that you seem to imply that these games (such as Aion) don't deserve good reviews... that the market which buys these games is ruining the market for you... (which implies they are wrong about something).  The simple fact could be there is a large segment of people who actually enjoy these games... and will think Aion is great (and deserves great reviews).  So how are you (or I) to say they are wrong or that these games don't deserve *insert random thing* because "we" don't like them...  *edited for some clarity*

I've dealt with this for a long time.. because EQ was crap (my opinon).  Ultima Online had the better set of "core systems" and could have taken the "learn from mistakes made and improve" course...

But the masses didn't want that or never knew it... didn't agree with me whatever.  When you look at the money (not claimed player base) that Blizzard is raking in... financials released every quarter to back it up... Its not hard to figure out why games are not really evolving.

70 to 100 million to create a game... investors don't want to take a risk on "different" because if it doesn't hit the mark.... they might as well have instested in a Ponzi scheme.

That's just market reality....

I miss my C64... back when multiple games I wanted to buy came out every month... every kind of game you could think of.  Now I'm lucky if there is 1 or more games a year I want to buy.

I mean I guess I share your feelings to a great extent.. but there is a reality that they aren't going to make a game for me and 200,000 friends.... if they think they can get 500,000 or 1,000,000 building the clone.

Its really not about selling it to consumers... you'd have to convince the investors to build this game you think you want... you won't do that here...  I'm not even sure how you'd get the attention of that crowd.

I am the same way.  I am back to playing EQ1 again. 

None of the new MMOs can keep me longer then a month.  I get bored or realize it will not get better at higher levels.  I was thinking that maybe it was me and maybe my MMO days are over but then I see post like this and realize its the genre not me.  The Genre has gotten stale.  Its the same game with different skins.  

Like many others have said, some developer needs to step up and smell the roses and make something new. 
I am watching Citadel of Sorcery very closely even though it is still early in development the Developer seems to be heading in the right direction.   I hope they can accomplish their goals as I think that it will be game that many players have been waiting for.

Only a few games look good enough to check out. 

Mortal Online

Citadel of Sorcery

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Maybe in the next couple of years we will get that "magic" back in MMOs.   I have to keep hope alive.  This is my favorite hobby besides hockey.

I think there's still a lot of potential room to get more subscribers by making a different MMO than WoW.. but nobody's trying.

In the best case WoW will have gazillion players and the MMO X too.

Thing is that since I started playing MMOs 10ish years ago, nothing really changed. The graphics got better, in most cases sound did not and that's about it. The underlying core mechanics are almost the same and it is only a matter of time before you realise that whenever you play a new game, you are doing the same things you've already done a million times before, and they are just not neither fun, nor convincing anymore.

Single player RPGs have one huge thing going for them and that is story and your involvement in it. You can create two games with same gfx engine, even same characters within the same world, but if you change the story it will be two entirely different games and both of them would be interesting to you, because in single player RPGs, the whish to uncover "what happens next" is what drives you forward. Sme goes with books or movies.

Imagine if the movie you are watching had the exactly same story, in a differently named world, with different actors, and from the very start you would know the ending because you saw the other movie 5 times. Once your curriosity wears down you would feel utterly bored, and you would have less and less tolerance for the same thing.

Sadly, story and the way MMOs present it have not progressed much. Yes there is this general background about the world for people that are interesting on reading things, but it doesn't mean squat, your actions mean squat and nothing really resolves or godforbid further complicates itself. You find yourself in a state of limbo where nothing really happens and nothing really matters. All that drives you forward is the whish to attain some artificial number that states how much hours you sat infront of the screen killing wolves, bears, rats, skeletons, followed by dangerous wolves, bears, rats and skelletons etc.

Once you do that for a couple of times in a few different games you realise that you are just moving stones from one pile to another, paying for doing it and try convincing yourself that it's fun.

I all but stopped playing MMOs, feeling that playing single player games at this point offer me way more fun and the expirience of playing either Fallout 3, Fable 2 or Mass effect, can not be compared to whatever any MMO has to offer at that time. I'm keeping my eye on games in development and thats about it.

Same thing is happening to me right now. I just no longer care nor are most mmorpgs fun. A few things here and there poke my interest but its no where near what it used to be.

This is a really interesting thread for me.  I've been feeling the same way for a while, but just kinda assumed I was more-or-less alone in that.  Obviously, it's more widespread than I realized.

I'm still in love with this genre.  I've had some amazing times in EQ and EQ2, as well as some shorter stints in games such as Vanguard, WAR, and others, but the mere thought of re-subbing to any of these games makes me bored.  There really aren't many games on the horizon that I have any interest in either, with the possible exception of Mortal Online, yet for some reason I can't stop reading these forums and researching every new game to be announced.

I'm sure it has a lot to do with the nostalgia of the old games I used to play.  I remember the good times and forget the bad, and have perhaps an unfairly high standard set for any new game I play.  Newer games never seem to have the "magic" I remember from the past.

Ahh well, I'm sure something will eventually come along that captures my attention.  In the meantime, single-player games will do just fine.

In a genre populated by largely incompetent developers, it's no surprise that this feeling is very common.

The last big leap was WoW. Nobody seems to have to gall to make the next leap as of yet.

Originally posted by JGMIII

I can't really explain it.

I've been playing MMOs since UO, From sandbox to themepark. I've played near everything and enjoyed Most in some way or another.

I used to look forward to having a bit of free time in the evening to jump on a good old MMO and Adventure and chat it up with my guild. I had all this motivation to level skills or farm Items or rep.

I don't know where it all went wrong to be honest.

I thought it was the attraction of single player games being so high tech now but thats not it.

I log into a MMO now and it seems like i'm just wasting my time by playing a game that promises fun later on, wading through grind or repetitive actions only designed to keep me paying and playing but not delivering anything close to an enjoyable experience.

12 years of MMOs and now I can't even stand being logged into one of these games more than 10 minutes...... I don't get it.

 

Took you long enough.
 

When I get burned out on MMORPGs, I usually find a good single player game like Mass Effect to get the story and immersion. For PvP, I will fire up TF2 for a few hours, and for community, I can just come here and chat about what was, what is, and what may become of one of my favorite genres. But yeah, I can sympathize with players like the OP here. I think it'd be cool to have an Age of Wonders or Civilizations MMO, but with roleplaying elements and twitch combat incorporated somehow.

We need more games that take an approach to grinding similar to Guild Wars; there is none.