FIrst off, most  of today's players want to play the latest and greatest, even though I think some of our older MMORPGs are a lot better. Plus, they want instant gratification, fatst levels, etc, etc.

Secondly, the games must continue  to add enhancements to  keep their current subs. This is less of a problem in PVE than PVP, cause in PVP, unless you can play non stop, you will never be able to catch up with the vetreans. DAOC is a great game, but most people will never be able to compete in RvR, if they can even get a group.

Finally, game economics. If you start an older game, you will most likely never be able to afford the good upgrades as their prices, due to vetran alts, are beyond your reach. Addtionally, your opportunity to acquire good gear at lower levels will be significatlyey reduced, since the lower level player base is most likely very small. This is especially true for games who give bonus XP for those who have top level toons.

I wish I had a solution, but I dont. On one hand, the PVPers who spent a lot of time getting to uber status should be rewarded. On the other hand, if the main thrust of the game is PvP, their  power is actually keeping other from even trying. 

LOC

Well, the only answer is the death of two things;

The concept of 'End Game'- mmorpgs don't have to HAVE an end game that forces everyone into raids and whatever once they release a specific level. There are other options. For instance, multi classing or character 'reincarination' havent been fully explored as ways of keeping people cycling through the game world and being part of the overall play experience. Lazy devs just havent started to properly look at them yet.

Player driven economies- Why does every game need to have a free market? Even RL economies can't exist in this way... The very concept tends to break games very quickly, acts as an entry barrier to newbies, and encourages gold farming. It's really time to call a day on this as an accepted convention in mmorpgs imo. Game controlled merchants to buy/ resell from is just fine.

Both bring more damage to the table then good and both are just both lazy cliched conventions that need to go for this genre to start moving forward imo.

How does a free market do any of that? Non-free markets are what make it impossible to catch up.

To get a perfect set of gear in UO (free market) you simply need to buy one from someone using gold. In a closed economy like WoW, I'd have to grind things for years because items are bind on pickup and crap like that.

Free markets encourage catchup if anything

Originally posted by Netzoko

How does a free market do any of that? Non-free markets are what make it impossible to catch up.

To get a perfect set of gear in UO (free market) you simply need to buy one from someone using gold. In a closed economy like WoW, I'd have to grind things for years because items are bind on pickup and crap like that.

Free markets encourage catchup if anything

Your low level self is competing against low level alts that can feed off "high level rewards" of their main.

As we all know high level rewards are magnitudes of levels more valueable than anything your newbie self can get.

___

of course not everygame is like that but all have it to some extent or another.

Originally posted by locford

FIrst off, most  of today's players want to play the latest and greatest, even though I think some of our older MMORPGs are a lot better. Plus, they want instant gratification, fatst levels, etc, etc.

Secondly, the games must continue  to add enhancements to  keep their current subs. This is less of a problem in PVE than PVP, cause in PVP, unless you can play non stop, you will never be able to catch up with the vetreans. DAOC is a great game, but most people will never be able to compete in RvR, if they can even get a group.

Finally, game economics. If you start an older game, you will most likely never be able to afford the good upgrades as their prices, due to vetran alts, are beyond your reach. Addtionally, your opportunity to acquire good gear at lower levels will be significatlyey reduced, since the lower level player base is most likely very small. This is especially true for games who give bonus XP for those who have top level toons.

I wish I had a solution, but I dont. On one hand, the PVPers who spent a lot of time getting to uber status should be rewarded. On the other hand, if the main thrust of the game is PvP, their  power is actually keeping other from even trying. 

 

LOC

Well, wow is mainly responsible imo for the turnaround for harsh death penalties and long term complicated gameplay, to simplified games with 0 death penalty.

As for DAOC... RR means something for sure, but not as much as you would think. My group last rolled in 2006, we started fresh on TOA server at RR0 and we were fighting RR13's. Beating them was a challenge, but it was doable, you just have to know the game. Thats what always cracked me up about folks that were against the RA system in DAOC. Yes there were things that gave you an advantage, but very few things that made it impossible to counter.

As for your market issues... I agree in most of the MMO's today they dont have good economies. The reason why is very simple. In wow if I make a weapon for you, you will never need another weapon of the same kind from me ever again. The sword is permanent. So for every sword that I or another person makes, we remove a customer from the market. Even worse, the sword can be resold to another person, thuse removing even more people from the pool of possible customers. Eventually there are enough items in game that its rather hard to even sell something as a crafter unless your are at the cutting edge of new content, and even then the profit you make is going to be small.

However, take games like old school UO and EvE online, and you will see economies that are rather good. Items are constantly being destroyed and moved out of the market, and are constantly demanded. This leads to suppliers constantly creating items keeping prices low, and buyers purchasing items to insure the suppliers make a profit.

I still blame wow for the state of current mmo's, to often in games I see the run and die then have someone fd and rez us as an option cause of the nill penalty death. It's an amaturish move that promotes bad playing, I miss the old days when players were players.

I think level based games should stick to their original level cap or, if they do extend it, compartmentalize the game so you go from 1-50 (or whatever the original cap was) and then the expansion is somehow through a one way portal where you level up more and get the new loot but nothing filters back to the original game.

In a PvP game this would mean newbies wouldn't have such a mountain to climb to reach max level (in the compartment they're in) and in PvE games you won't get the inflation that happens when every expansion brings in new and better loot.

Originally posted by Pyrostasis 

As for your market issues... I agree in most of the MMO's today they dont have good economies. The reason why is very simple. In wow if I make a weapon for you, you will never need another weapon of the same kind from me ever again. The sword is permanent. So for every sword that I or another person makes, we remove a customer from the market. Even worse, the sword can be resold to another person, thuse removing even more people from the pool of possible customers. Eventually there are enough items in game that its rather hard to even sell something as a crafter unless your are at the cutting edge of new content, and even then the profit you make is going to be small.

Huh?  What you are describing is the opposite of what happens in WoW.    There is no reselling of items in WoW to other players.

Originally posted by Ragnaven

I still blame wow for the state of current mmo's, to often in games I see the run and die then have someone fd and rez us as an option cause of the nill penalty death. It's an amaturish move that promotes bad playing, I miss the old days when players were players.

Where are you getting that?  That kind of strategy is completely unviable in WoW.

One fact that is already proven is just because its a new title doesn't make it better then games that have came before. The falicy is once great games being dumbed down to the likes of World of Warcraft as an example. You mentioned DAOC. I played on a TOA server with no buffbot and managed to be in the top 10 of my class. 

I was proud of that achievment considering i had only a few artifacts and low ML's. I keep searching for the latest and greatest but end up going back and playing THE greatest games still on the market regardless of population. I used to remember a day when several cool MMO's a year came out. Now i can go to the local PC software store and find nothing worth buying regretfully.

Ultimately it comes down to choice. Waste your money on a dumb downed copy/clone of something that came before or go play the tried and true veterans games you once played and relive those great experiences all over again. The biggest problem with older games is not being able to get a foot in the door but having to face a dumbed down version of a once stellar game

Originally posted by Ragnaven

I still blame wow for the state of current mmo's, to often in games I see the run and die then have someone fd and rez us as an option cause of the nill penalty death. It's an amaturish move that promotes bad playing, I miss the old days when players were players.

Wow is very much like the original Everquest except that they removed a lot of restrictions and consequences.  To me its very much like old EQ on some kind of antidepressant meds until you get to the point where you need to compete for end game and then its ultra frustrating due to limited class balancing for raids.  Don't even get me started on the  mosh pit PVP wow is so famous for.

A lot of sacred cows in mmorpg gaming are things that have never been tested to be true.  The theory of must have end game, the theory of nobody will play without tricked out open PVP, the theory of necessity of open, uncontrolled markets [even though they are a  part of the methodology of modern gold farmers], the theory of necessary tweakism, and of course the theory of relevant game tension brought about by players annoying the hell out of other players [how to accelerate emotion in a game with out actually adding new content]. 

I would like to see a game that hires a full time permanent content dev team so that real new content was added on an evolving basis without playing all the standard complicated head games to give players the idea that a game is dynamic because we are all fighting over something.

Crazy I know ...

This is why Endgame is the devil.

Originally posted by vistakah

The biggest problem with older games is not being able to get a foot in the door but having to face a dumbed down version of a once stellar game

I think the two are often related though. First the games get bloated with expansions and then to compensate they start dumbing them down to reduce the time it takes to get to the cap.

Originally posted by Netzoko

How does a free market do any of that? Non-free markets are what make it impossible to catch up.

To get a perfect set of gear in UO (free market) you simply need to buy one from someone using gold. In a closed economy like WoW, I'd have to grind things for years because items are bind on pickup and crap like that.

Free markets encourage catchup if anything

In what way do you consider WOW a closed economy? Because it has BOP items?

A controlled market, in the way that I mean it, would allow items to be sold to a vendor for a lower set price and then those items stay on that vendor at a higher set price until they are sold.

No fuss, no mess, a limit on the effectiveness of item/gold farming, and a control on inflation to enable new players to get geared up for a affordable price. You also get localised markets, which is great bonus for people that like to play the trade game. It wouldnt even have a negative impact on most players, as most just use an anonomous AH these days and that can't be claimed to be doing much for the community in any game.

The old free market way has been proven to be a big bust, exploitable, and a terrible barrier to entry for the new player. Time for a change I think.

The problem with new mmorpgs is you can't come up with anything original. It's easier to stay the course then stray off and become a laughing stock if you fail.  Who knows what would have happened if persay SWG stayed the way it did.  Might be far surpassing WoW hell people would start using ideas from it.  Then we would get a thread of people bitching about that games functionality.  What you've said has already been repeated a 100 times more so and beatin' to death a million times before that.

Referncing Daikatana Online won't prove any points either. It's just an infested piss ant a-thon filled with pvp obsessive retards.

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Originally posted by nefermor

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Originally posted by Ragnaven

I still blame wow for the state of current mmo's, to often in games I see the run and die then have someone fd and rez us as an option cause of the nill penalty death. It's an amaturish move that promotes bad playing, I miss the old days when players were players.

---

 
Wow is very much like the original Everquest except that they removed a lot of restrictions and consequences.  To me its very much like old EQ on some kind of antidepressant meds until you get to the point where you need to compete for end game and then its ultra frustrating due to limited class balancing for raids.  Don't even get me started on the contained mosh pit PVP wow is so famous for.
A lot of sacred cows in mmorpg gaming are things that have never been tested to be true.  The theory of must have end game, the theory of nobody will play without tricked out open PVP, the theory of necessity of open, uncontrolled markets [even though they are a  part of the methodology of modern gold farmers], the theory of necessary tweakism, and of course the theory of relevant game tension brought about by players annoying the hell out of other players [how to accelerate emotion in a game with out actually adding new content]. 
 
I would like to see a game that hires a full time permanent content dev team so that real new content was added on an evolving basis without playing all the standard complicated head games to give players the idea that a game is dynamic because we are all fighting over something.
Crazy I know ...

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I certainly agree with your outline, however there is probably a lot that goes on that we as gamers have no clue about. Sadly, we aren't included in Game Company meetings to know what metrics, demographics or criteria these companies are basing their decisions on.

We see a lot of great ideas in community forums, however we are left mainly to speculation and pure guess work. I completely agree that there is quite a bit of misinformation and misconceptions. Its amazing how divided the gaming community can be and trying to meet some or all of those expectations is just an impossible task for Devs.

Originally posted by locford

Finally, game economics. If you start an older game, you will most likely never be able to afford the good upgrades as their prices, due to vetran alts, are beyond your reach. Addtionally, your opportunity to acquire good gear at lower levels will be significatlyey reduced, since the lower level player base is most likely very small. This is especially true for games who give bonus XP for those who have top level toons.

 

LOC

Actually, the total opposite is true.  For example, original EverQuest is still up an running.  If you go their now, the gear you get at lower levels is 10 times better, and easier to get than ever.  I actually went back for a while and it was fairly easy to get gear IF you put a little effort into it.  Now the "instant gratification" crowd may have issues with it.

I had been gone for years and found it quite easy to get back into the game.  IMO it's still the best game out there, but dated graphics keep most people away.  If the population was there, I would still be playing it, but the emptiness can get depressing.

Everything about the games themselves aside, one of the biggest problems with older games is, as has been stated, the vet vs new player situation. On one hand, you've got a group of veteran players, generally making up the majority of the playerbase, who have worked hard over the years to get where they are, and eagerly await new content (which, considering that most of the playerbase is vets from years of work, means the content is going to have to be geared towards those vets or else it'd be a waste). On the other hand, you've got some new players or players interested in trying the game, only to often find themselves in a state of despair when they try to grasp how long it would take them to catch up and be able to enjoy the game with other players, and not just try to get there as quickly as they can on their own since they're the only one at the level/skill range. They're also going to find that prices are generally out of their ability to afford, and are most likely not even going to find items that they can use for sale. And of course, no one is going to be buying the items they have to offer since they're so inferior. To add to that, if it's crafting you're looking at, most of those vets already have mastered every craft between all their alts so they don't even need anything you can make most of the time.

So, when this happens, developers have to look at their game in one of three ways:
1) Keep catering to the bulk of their playerbase, the veterans, by incorporating more high-end content and further alienating the new players.
2) Generating low-end content to try to bring in new players, usually by making it something that gives and incentive to create new characters, which generally doesn't work since it's hard to reach new players at this point and veterans still have their alts/high level friends to rely on.
3) Making it easier for low end players to make it to high end via xp/skill gain boosts or other such things, which usually piss off the veterans that worked hard to get where they are.

Personally, after a game gets "old and stale," I think it's time for the developers to step back and say "mission accomplished." Instead of trying to milk their game that was successful from birth to near-death... Work on a sequel. Take the foundation that has already proven itself in the trial of time, and create something new altogether. Bring everyone back to square 1 on a new journey.

Think about what would happen to, say, the Final Fantasy franchise (<- alliteration), if Squaresoft/enix had taken the MMO approach? We'd see monotonous sequels to FF7 over and over again, instead of brand new games with whole new stories to play through. That said, let's just go ahead and ignore Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core for the sake of this argument.

The only major MMO that I can think of which has attempted this is Everquest. I can't really speak much for it, since I only played EQ2 for the trial month and never played EQ1, but I have heard thta EQ2 is overwhelmingly dissimilar to EQ1 to the point that they can barely even be compared. If that's true, it'd have been interesting to see what the result would have been by simply using the tried-and-true EQ1 mechanics.

Join a guild, get the cast offs and crafted items of those veteran players. Sure its the non bop, but that will help you leapfrog up in terms of items.

Originally posted by paulscott

Your low level self is competing against low level alts that can feed off "high level rewards" of their main.

As we all know high level rewards are magnitudes of levels more valueable than anything your newbie self can get.

That's exactly the case.  As I've said before, I once did a gold transfer for someone who was giving their level 10 alt 200 million credits and a backpack full of uber gear to twink with, things that a level 10 toon could never afford in a million years, but at max level was chicken feed.

Once low-level toons have mondo cash to spend, the free market goes into overdrive and people start charging ridiculous prices because they know they can get it and people who don't have high-level toons funding them have no chance to buy in because they actually have to grind for all of their cash.

I'd love to see a game which severely restricts the amount of gold you can transfer to them, based on a multiple of their level.  It would sure stop gold sellers in their tracks as well.

The only game I can think of that runs contrary to that trend is EvE.  If you're willing to be patient and pay your dues in the beginning then you have no problem getting into the game even if you started late.  I'm currently a 6 month old character and I'm PvPing alongside and against people who've been playing for years.

The starter systems are always crowded and there's a lot of corps looking for new pilots.

The economy is going strong even for tech 1 items.  I think this is mainly due to the stiff death penalty of EvE.  The PvPers keep blowing up the items and the crafters keep making them.