We have had serveral years now of companies trying to release the new WoW. It is small wonder we don't feel that MMORPG's are going anywhere gameplay wise.

Originally posted by blakavar

I remember the UO end of beta, it was a mess.

The one and only exception being Richard Garrot started this boring pompous speech as Lord British when someone in the crowd fireballed him. Insta kill. The BEST MMO moment ever.

The GM's morphed into Demons and killed everyone in the crowd, while Rich Garret kept saying "what just happened? Whats going on?"

Hahaha awesome, you made my day with this one

*points towards his signature*

 When it comes down to it, gaming is like basically any other relatively-underground trend or movement that got mainstream as soon as it became profitable.

I hear folks who used to frequent goth clubs in DC kvetching about scene kids and vampire wannabes clogging up their dance floors now.  I hear people who build hot rods and classic cars kvetching about the kiddies who put big stupid spoilers and nitrous oxide systems on their Dodge Neons.  Old-guard leather folks get involuntary twitches when people wielding stuff they bought at Spencer's come into their kink clubs.  When it comes down to it, adding population to a subculture which had previous to that point been small and relatively enclosed is always, always bad for that subculture.  Gaming is no different.

VGCats ran a comic about it a while back, with what gamers were and what they weren't.  When I was five and six years old, I was going from Ultima IV to Ultima V and porting my party from Pool of Radiance over to Curse of the Azure Bonds.  I was enchanted by the depth and sadism of Ultima Online and enjoyed the Hell out of Asheron's Call; I was never big on Everquest, but I spent some time with it.  All these things seemed to take steps in interesting directions and have mechanics which differed wildly from one another, and each had a very particular flavor that set it apart from all the other games of the MMO or RPG variety.

That's no longer the case.

MMOs, like every other type of game there is, have a few key mechanics.  Most RPGs do.  You usually have sneaky guys, magicy guys, rangers, and tanky or fighty guys.  You usually fight monsters that require your group to work together in some kind of strategic fashion, and those monsters often drop loot and money which you use to upgrade your character.  All these things we can basically take for granted.  What changed then that doesn't change now is mechanics and gameplay.  Now, when you enter an MMORPG, you have a bar with a skill or two, and you right-click monsters, then click on skills to use them at a cost of some variety of mana.  In modern times, skills are restricted by level and most folks get the same skills, plus or minus some talent skills, as they go along.

EVERY MMO is like this these days.  Many MMOs have big spec differences; WoW and Warhammer have specs that wildly change the way a character of the same class acts, but none of them have ever really come close to the need for efficiency and understanding that Asheron's Call's systems did.  The offshoot of that is that it's nearly impossible to gimp a character in a modern game, which is nice, but it also severely restricts the way people level.

Honestly, we just need more difference, more to set us apart.  It seems to me that it shouldn't be substantially more difficult to make a game with less-restrictive class systems.  It seems like a good, accessible sandbox with some real depth for those who care to dig would be just what this industry needs; I like Fallen Earth okay, but I find its skill system reins me in in places I'd rather it didn't, and as much as I love action games, it only handles decently, not well.

Personally, I think that something free of overarching Epic Story would be nice.  I like the feeling that only those who really make a difference get to be Save The World Epic Heroes Go.  I don't like being handheld through quests.  I do like scouring the landscape for the best kinds of reactive gases and polymer bases to make the best CDEF Pistols on the server.  I really like to find my own fun, which is, in the age of weakening imagination, very difficult to monetize.

Frankly, the sorts of games that challenge people to be different and to make strides in strange directions and discover new things just aren't interesting to the millions upon millions of people who play World of Warcraft.  What WoW did to the industry is painful for folks like me, burgeoning game designers who want to make a world to -live- in, not just to play in.    Ninety percent of folks would be totally uninterested in a game like Ultima Online, even if it had wonderful graphics, a smooth launch, ran great on most systems and was accessible and easy to get into.  The other folks play EVE, which is one of few games that supports inventive thinking and wheeling and dealing on a major level.

You can't make money on a game that doesn't appeal to folks who can while away hours playing Bejeweled.  The age of writing our own stories in a world structured to allow us the freedom to do and be what we wish to has more or less come to an end.  Dilettantes and dabblers have entered our subculture, and like car modding, kink and the goth-club scene, the age for depth and creativity is over.  We're in it for the money now, folks.  Here's hoping the few who dare to deviate from the cash cow method get enough of a following to start some kind of renaissance.

Call me a bitter oldfag or an unrealistic idealist, but I'm looking for the kind of game where I can feel like I really am doing my own thing.

I've been lurking alot of forums, especially these, regarding MMO's .  I've been trying every demo and trial out there almost since friends at work "suckered" me into playing WOW with them.  I even upgraded my PC for that purpose.  What I thought I was going to get into was going to remind me of days when I used to play RPG's back in the day, (Dungeons and Dragons, Star Wars, Marvel Super Heroes, etc.) I realize that PC versions of pen and paper games will NEVER top those experiences.  And as far as PC MMOs go, I missed the bus with EQ and UO, although I do remember playing an Ultima title on NES or something like that, and it was a good game. 

I guess what's lacking MMO's today that may have been in the earlier games is immersion.  The feeling of playing with friends in a living world.  I'm not getting that with WOW.  Too much pressure.  Yeah, I've played the trials and demos of other games, but only a select few appeal, and well, these games are not doing well so I'm told. (I'm withholding title names, LOL)

One MMO I played (if it can be called that) was really immersive. The now defunct Myst Online: Uru Live.  There was no leveling, no grinding, no classes, no skills...just you and the environment with your friends solving a great backstory filled world full of challenging puzzles.  I'm not saying all games need to take that approach, but the immersion was there.

Maybe, just maybe 2010 will bring something to the table.  Like Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Originally posted by blakavar

I remember the UO end of beta, it was a mess.

The one and only exception being Richard Garrot started this boring pompous speech as Lord British when someone in the crowd fireballed him. Insta kill. The BEST MMO moment ever.

The GM's morphed into Demons and killed everyone in the crowd, while Rich Garret kept saying "what just happened? Whats going on?"

Thats some funny stuff man. God Im still laughing. Never heard that story before.

Seen a few things almost as good, had forgotten till now. Good times man, thanks for the smile.

You are not seeing a lack of good games you are seeing a lack of what YOU want. You are not better than any other mmo gamers so what YOU want is in no way a more righteous choice than what other people want. The market stopped catering to your wants for whatever reason and you are unhappy that does not mean that the games are bad it simply means that what YOU want is no longer out there. Thats like saying football is a bad game because Soccer is no longer a sport. There are pleanty of areas where new games can be considered "better" than older games. The newer games have just left out the parts that you liked the most. There are certainly shitty new games not everyone is gonna be a smash but they aren't all bad and they certainly aren't worse to the people who like them and play them. Being insulting and calling the game play dumb will never get what you want it will just make you look like bad.

This is a message to the general populace of MMORPG.com as it is literally a black hole of fun that once you are swallowed up by, it is very hard to escape and makes everything in gaming a little less fun. Best thing you can do is do your own research and stop reading these boards because nothing will ever be good enough and everything will suck always forever if it makes its way into a discussion here. The people who defend the game will be called terms like "bad" or "dumb" no matter what the game is.

Originally posted by Gameloading

Originally posted by nanoviper

It's been 10 years since the release of Ultima: Online, back in good old 2009 we would have thought that by now games would be on such a level classics like Ultima, Asherons Call, and Everquest, would pale in comparison. However it is now 2009, and most gamers who have played MMO's for any period of time would agree that nothing on the market today can even live up to these original releases.

       Nostalgia aside, when critically examining these games, it appears as though with each new release the games are being dumbed down; It reminds me alot of the Mike Judge movie: Idiocracy where overtime people became dumber and dumber as technology allowed them more and more luxeries. 

       What I have been wondering is why no games with depth and challenge have been introduced to the market since 2003; The closest we have come is darkfall (don't get me started on that tangent) and in many ways I don't even feel as though, it has lived up to it's potential.

     Am I the only one who feels like this? Is that why there are no more deep challenging games on the market? What do you guys think?

Actually I think most players will agree that not only do mmorpgs released after those games lived up to those games: They exceeded them.

It's not that games are getting dumbed down, it's that needlessly complications that arised in those games have been removed. The vast majority of gamers do not find having your entire inventory looted by a playerkiller of which you had no chance against the in first place an entertaining, nor is losing many hours of progress trying to get to your body in Everquest. That's not depth, thats punishing gameplay that doesn't add anything to the entertain value of the game whatsoever.

Also it's silly to point towards Aion and call it a grind after you called Everquest a classic. Everquest defined grinding.

If you like SAFE entertainment watch a movie. I like mobs that can kill me.
 

Originally posted by LordDmaster

Originally posted by Gameloading

Originally posted by nanoviper

It's been 10 years since the release of Ultima: Online, back in good old 2009 we would have thought that by now games would be on such a level classics like Ultima, Asherons Call, and Everquest, would pale in comparison. However it is now 2009, and most gamers who have played MMO's for any period of time would agree that nothing on the market today can even live up to these original releases.

       Nostalgia aside, when critically examining these games, it appears as though with each new release the games are being dumbed down; It reminds me alot of the Mike Judge movie: Idiocracy where overtime people became dumber and dumber as technology allowed them more and more luxeries. 

       What I have been wondering is why no games with depth and challenge have been introduced to the market since 2003; The closest we have come is darkfall (don't get me started on that tangent) and in many ways I don't even feel as though, it has lived up to it's potential.

     Am I the only one who feels like this? Is that why there are no more deep challenging games on the market? What do you guys think?

Actually I think most players will agree that not only do mmorpgs released after those games lived up to those games: They exceeded them.

It's not that games are getting dumbed down, it's that needlessly complications that arised in those games have been removed. The vast majority of gamers do not find having your entire inventory looted by a playerkiller of which you had no chance against the in first place an entertaining, nor is losing many hours of progress trying to get to your body in Everquest. That's not depth, thats punishing gameplay that doesn't add anything to the entertain value of the game whatsoever.

Also it's silly to point towards Aion and call it a grind after you called Everquest a classic. Everquest defined grinding.

If you like SAFE entertainment watch a movie. I like mobs that can kill me.
 

Agreed.
 

What do corpse runs and full loot PvP have to do with being "safe" or having mobs kill you?

All you need to make a challenge in any game is play outside of the game's own rule set. If you are level 1 and level 1 mobs are too easy go kill level 3 mobs. Solo a dungeon. Make it to a certain level without dying, etc, etc.

Originally posted by blakavar

I remember the UO end of beta, it was a mess.

The one and only exception being Richard Garrot started this boring pompous speech as Lord British when someone in the crowd fireballed him. Insta kill. The BEST MMO moment ever.

The GM's morphed into Demons and killed everyone in the crowd, while Rich Garret kept saying "what just happened? Whats going on?"

Yeah and he got banned haha.  I'm sure people will argue that fact (banned one) but everyone died at least.  Great fun.

I loved it, and would have stayed had it not been for trammel, but i wont open that can up... I think the reason us ol schoolers classify games today as inferior to the wow factor the earlier games had is because of the paradigm shift in hardware, pc's, GPUs and what can be done now with bandwidth etc.  Not to mention the influx of MMOs in past years.  So everyone wants more more more for their buck, while we were all happy back THEN with isometric open world pvp.  Where is the love for the reds? :P

 op can you believe this if  you played eq1 and loved it for a while

then say played wow for a bunch of years your more likely to have fun 

in eq1 or eq2 ,uo etc then most new game out there

the best possible game i say possible because none have seen end game 

yet is aion.and most gamer go in backward on this game because its asian

but aside from aion most would rater play f2p game or older p2p game then most new p2p  game

its sad to see most game maker dont get a clue lol

I agree with the OP.  Things should have progressed way further than this by now.  There are tonnes of games to play for people that want instant gratification, but I used to think that mmos were more like a fantasy life simulator - true virtual worlds.  Now they're mostly just the same repeated junk.  I've been playing Aion and it's getting very grindy now, more-so than fun.

I remember eagerly awaiting Ultima Online 2 and was bitterly disappointed when it was cancelled, but I thought someone would come up with something similar soon enough.  They haven't.

Originally posted by 4Renziks

People need to realize mmo is an addiction.  The reason you guys are not finding any fun in any of the new game is because the high is never as high as your 1st MMO....most people are now trying to reach that high that they got from their 1st MMO but its something that will never be reached...most of these games are not bad games...its just not what you want them to be.   MMORPG's are the hardest games to develop because they are so massive that there can be on thing that turns people away.  I use to be like the people that bash all new games, but when i realized that iam never going to feel the way i did about FFIX in any other game.....even 14! This has help me to enjoy MMO's more than i use to instead of being so emo. 

There is some truth to your MMO addiction observation but that fails to explain why so many older MMO players wish for the deeper content and challenge they experienced with their 2nd, 3rd of 4th MMOs.  My 3rd MMO is actually my favorite not the first I ever played.

   There is a definited line in the sand that WOW crossed that brought the MMO market into the mainstream,  they took the good parts of all previous MMOs and polished them and reworked them to make them easy to use and understand.  The problem with mainstream MMOs is everything is like McDonalds, it is a taste that appeals to the largest segment of the population.  The food is greasy, sugary, and served up in a minute. 

   McDonalds may be the single most success restaurant in the world but it is rarely confused as having the best food and certainly doesn't offer anything for people with a more adult palette.  

What we need is for some Devs to create a Gourmet MMO that specializes in slow cooked food with rich and complex tastes.  I'd rather spend hours playing an MMO for the chance to have a full turkey dinner  than being guaranteed to have Instanced McNuggets and fries.

I played UO and EQ and quite a few MMOs and I can honestly say none of them were great whatsoever compared to todays games. That is nostalgia speaking. It isnt just todays crowd that hated crap like open world, non consensual PvP. I hated that in UO and I think the thousands or more players who left that game because of it hated it too. I disagree that some of the MMOs out there today are not challenging. Its a logical fallacy to say "I don't find this game challenging, therefore it is not challenging at all." Wrong. It's just not challenging to you. Some of the challenges have changed too and are now things like trying to find 25 people who wont all kill each other and will follow directions well. :-p I suspect that "oldschool" mmo's weren't really any more challengeing than MMOs of today at all. Nostalgia has blinded many people.

People Today are far from starved mmo players if anything they are overgorged.  People are simply getting burnt out on mmo's in general

Too many people reflect on the "good ole days".  The genre has evolved and is where it is today because it's where the majority of the community want it to be.

For those who miss the old days and aren't happy with the current games in the genre, they really need to evaluate if MMO's are for them or if they should move on to another genre completely.

This rehashing of what's wrong with current MMO's and how it's nothing like the old days, is getting....

OLD.

I've played many MMOs since Meridian 59 (don't laugh at me) and I have to say that they have evolved, for the most part. UO could be funny, but it was mostly frustrating. EQ was a terrible and punishing game that was never, ever fun to play. I didn't play Asheron's Call much... it didn't grip me, but it didn't strike me as terrible.

I didn't start having fun until DAOC. Epic battles, PVP for a reason, and a good community brought that game together. I also liked SWG pre-NGE, I liked Guild Wars, I liked EVE Online, and I currently play a little indie MMO called Wurm Online, and that game is hard as hell. You guys want challenge? Go play Wurm. Trust me, Wurm is better than the old school titles, but most of you will be too blinded by nostalgia to see it. Oh, and once you leave the trial area, go to the Wild server. Almost 100% open pvp, build your own towns, TONS of tradeskills, etc. If you like Old School MMOs, PLAY WURM ONLINE. Get past the learning curve. You will not regret it.

But the game I loved most was actually Planetside. Go figure. I played from open beta to Core Combat. The game blew my mind. But when CC came out, the caves, BFRs, and medal system all contributed to the death of teamwork and thus, the game itself. Without the epic teamwork and strategy Planetside had... there was nothing.

Currently awaiting the next great MMOFPS.

Planetside was awesome...  I'm going to check out Wurm Online.

I do often ask myself if I've just outgrown mmos in general.  I think I have to a certain extent, but there is also a lot more childish behavior around in mmos nowadays than there was and that's simply a fact.  It's one of the biggest turn-offs for me.  At least in UO you could murder annoying people!

I don't think the problem is so much that new games are better (they are, I would never go back to playing EQ or UO ever again) is that the new games coming out just aren't making any strides towards innovation.  They are just making the genre more and more casual and while this isn't a bad thing (MMOs are still plenty challenging, there are just as much challenges in WoW as there are in EQ - don't confuse harsh penalties and timesinks with challenges) it's not doing anything to making the game more unique.  They all just feel like different versions of WoW with a few exceptions of games try to be more like a sandbox game (I really hate that term) - in which case they are just trying to be more like UO (sorry to say, but these sandbox games are no more innovative than the themepark clones).  The few exceptions to this are games like EVE which are niche.

I started playing MMOs since the MUD days and played UO a few months after it's release as well as started on EQ since it's beta.  I played EQ for almost 5 years.  When WoW came out I enjoyed it and played it off and on for about 2 years.

Lately I just can't get into MMOs anymore.  I could play a new MMO for 3-4 months without getting bored, but now I can't even play a new MMO for a month without canceling my subscription.  I've gone back to playing console games.

What it boils down for me is this.  I can pick up a console game and get an experience that generally feels fresh and innovative (I'm not a big fan of some games that feel generic to me like Halo).  If I play a new MMO on the market it's going to feel exactly like the last one.  You just wind up going through the motions (level up, hit max level, farm epic loot).  Combat still works the same as it did 10 years ago, I'm hitting hotkeys and watching castbars while my character auto-attacks.

Another big thing is the lack of quality in certain MMOs.  It's considered perfectly acceptable to RELEASE a MMO with major gameplay bugs because they can be fixed with patches.  If you did this with a console games your sales would suffer considerably, yet it's considered acceptable for MMOs to be released in this state.  The few MMOs with a decent amount of polish are going to do well (EQ for it's time when MMO gaming was still niche, WoW, and now Aion).  Now I just can't play a new MMO release without running into completely broken quests (as in not being able to complete them at all), exploits that all people to kill raid content solo, and massive game breaking glitches.  Half of these could have been fixed if the developers just looked at how their competitors (Blizzard) handled the issue.

The more I read threads like these, the more I am grateful to be playing EvE. I recognise the gameplay & theme isn't to everyone's taste, but still.

Judging by threads like these, if CCP can be as bold and ambitious with their World of Darkness MMO, and include as deep and intricately layered player interaction as occurs in EvE, then the players who prefer avatar-based fantasy games will have a real treat in store. Personally the whole Vampire thing leaves me cold, but I know a lot of people like it, and if nothing else it will make a refreshing change from the endless procession of sub-tolkeinesque massively singleplayer grindathons.

Why QQ over it? I still play UO, when something better comes along I'll switch nothing has yet.

Originally posted by nanoviper

It's been 10 years since the release of Ultima: Online, back in good old 2009 we would have thought that by now games would be on such a level classics like Ultima, Asherons Call, and Everquest, would pale in comparison. However it is now 2009, and most gamers who have played MMO's for any period of time would agree that nothing on the market today can even live up to these original releases.

       Nostalgia aside, when critically examining these games, it appears as though with each new release the games are being dumbed down; It reminds me alot of the Mike Judge movie: Idiocracy where overtime people became dumber and dumber as technology allowed them more and more luxeries. 

       What I have been wondering is why no games with depth and challenge have been introduced to the market since 2003; The closest we have come is darkfall (don't get me started on that tangent) and in many ways I don't even feel as though, it has lived up to it's potential.

     Am I the only one who feels like this? Is that why there are no more deep challenging games on the market? What do you guys think?

They DID introduce a game that had depth and challenge and a harder leveling pace like the old school MMO's- it was called Vanguard:(

It ran so bad on most ppl's machines and was so buggy that it never had a chance to succeed. 

God knows how long it will be before some other company tries to make another hard game. Why should they bother? The 800 lb gorilla  WoW shows them what kind of game the masses want- easy mode and lightning-fast leveling speeds.

My2c

Originally posted by Gameloading

Originally posted by nanoviper

It's been 10 years since the release of Ultima: Online, back in good old 2009 we would have thought that by now games would be on such a level classics like Ultima, Asherons Call, and Everquest, would pale in comparison. However it is now 2009, and most gamers who have played MMO's for any period of time would agree that nothing on the market today can even live up to these original releases.

       Nostalgia aside, when critically examining these games, it appears as though with each new release the games are being dumbed down; It reminds me alot of the Mike Judge movie: Idiocracy where overtime people became dumber and dumber as technology allowed them more and more luxeries. 

       What I have been wondering is why no games with depth and challenge have been introduced to the market since 2003; The closest we have come is darkfall (don't get me started on that tangent) and in many ways I don't even feel as though, it has lived up to it's potential.

     Am I the only one who feels like this? Is that why there are no more deep challenging games on the market? What do you guys think?

Actually I think most players will agree that not only do mmorpgs released after those games lived up to those games: They exceeded them.

It's not that games are getting dumbed down, it's that needlessly complications that arised in those games have been removed. The vast majority of gamers do not find having your entire inventory looted by a playerkiller of which you had no chance against the in first place an entertaining, nor is losing many hours of progress trying to get to your body in Everquest. That's not depth, thats punishing gameplay that doesn't add anything to the entertain value of the game whatsoever.

Also it's silly to point towards Aion and call it a grind after you called Everquest a classic. Everquest defined grinding.

Your 123% wrong.

The current games are dev. for the preteen - sub 18 year old market. To be honest if this trend does not change I doubt there will be any games worth playing.

Complications ? do you mean, having to actually use your brain to get quest completed? or worlds being changed by the community? pvp that depends on skills and not gear?

mmo's are canabalizing themselves, if things continue, players will be better off playing AA or a single player rpg....

AION is a crap game though...

Originally posted by 4Renziks

People need to realize mmo is an addiction.  The reason you guys are not finding any fun in any of the new game is because the high is never as high as your 1st MMO....most people are now trying to reach that high that they got from their 1st MMO but its something that will never be reached...most of these games are not bad games...its just not what you want them to be.   MMORPG's are the hardest games to develop because they are so massive that there can be on thing that turns people away.  I use to be like the people that bash all new games, but when i realized that iam never going to feel the way i did about FFIX in any other game.....even 14! This has help me to enjoy MMO's more than i use to instead of being so emo. 

lol, your a idiot....

maybe mmo's are a addiction to some but for most they are not.

Food,sex, beer ect..

you are mostly speaking about your self bud...