Blizzard cornered the market when they released World of Warcraft, and they were able to do this because of expert timing, and for the first time someone created an MMORPG for non-MMORPG gamers. They took what was perceived to be the best parts of single-player experiences and likewise from the previous generation of MMORPGs and melded them together. And while the older generation of MMO gamers avoided it like the plague, it attracted a huge audience of new gamers - non-MMORPG gamers. However, what they failed to realize is that just like single-player experiences, these games have finite longevity. Eventually (8 years later) players will grow tired of continuously repeating the same content. The slow loss of subscribers that World of Warcraft is experiencing is proof of this.

Originally posted by Royalkin

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While some specific things in your premise I disagree with, that is besides the point.  I agree with your overall statement.  The market probably is over-saturated and a great many people are confused and something drastically new and different is needed.  I dont' think a return to old style, nor a new I'll say WoWish style will really work very well anymore.

That is why I am looking forward to The Secret World!  As it will trully be something different.

No levels, but grinding out abilities YOU want like how it was in old SWG pre-NGE, to build your character.

At least it gets away from all the Linear spoonfeeding Themepark trash that has been released the last years.

Originally posted by Royalkin

 

I'm not suggesting we will see a return of sandbox virtual worlds, but players can only tolerate so much of the same thing before they clamor for something that is genuinely different, and I think we are beginning to see that. I make no predictions and do not claim to know where that will lead.

 

I suggest more sandbox games. But with a storyline for the ones needing someone elses content.

I personaly feel sandbox games are a better way to go. Player content can be made up on the go, weekly thing, monthly, whatever. In many sandbox games i have played, there was more content and fun than any themepark i have played.

No with that said i will also add reasons to my reasoning. I have played many MMO's my favorite always seem to be sandbox or more open themeparks. In a themepark you are led around and told what to do and when to do it. Fine for some people. But in most cases you rush or even take your time to a certain max level. Once you reasch that level you normaly are out of things to do and have to resort to dailies, warzones, and/or raids and do these over and over and over. And in some games grind the heck out of pvp to get pvp gear. BTW people thats just a form of lazy developers giving you lame content to keep you busy. And then an expansion or something comes out and you rush to max out again. Where do you go from here????? Dailes, warzones, and raids. Its a never ending cycle and gets boring fast.

Sandbox games with open exploration, guild and personal features, event features for players to make their own, and so much more just seem to offer more to keep me busy and not get bored. Even games like SWG had ways to allow you the player to hold events, races, big get togethers, and a good bit more than your normal themepark. I just feel players need to be more creative, not let their creativity be placed on the back burner. Our mmos have become dumbed down, to easy, relaxed, and content seems to take forever to be patched in or sold as expansions.

There are some smart people here by reading these forums. But they dont act on it, try, or even want to. We need that back, we need to lead our mmos and content, not have them lead us.

Plus who doesnt like large open worlds/lands to explore and find cool interesting things in the oddest palces? :) Stop letting yourselves be limited, explode with your knowledge and smarts, take control, and start becoming a community once again. Soloing can stick to consoles, we need creativity to allow a better range of mmo's to be made and the game companies just arent cutting it.

Market isnt over saturated, quite the opposite really, every mayor launch shows that people are interested in a new title, AoC and onwards all had over 1 million boxsales from start. so the market is there for the taking just no one have managed yet to keep a big amount of subs.

On your note of market confusion I will argue that this is true of all games, not just MMOs.

The reason is simple, development cycles.  It takes on average 5 years to make a AAA title.  When they announce a title it is done based on the demands of the time.  So the core concepts of the game are going to be similar to what is popular at that time.  After 5 years it might not remain true and they're forced to make ad hoc adjustments.

Skyrim in its first month sold over 10M copies.  SWTOR in its first month is looking to sell over 2M copies.  This is the fastest selling MMO of all time and yet it is 1/5 as much as the fastest selling RPG of all time.

hit the nail on the head there.

the mmo as a genre has become wow as a genre.

but, i feel there's a slow awakening to this fact and you can see in some upcoming games the attempt to step out of this shadow and return to the roots of what makes a good game - the confidance to innovate and the determination to stand alone rather than in the shadow of another game.

i truly feel in the next few years we'll see a few games released which will make us all salivate. i, for one, have my eyes on three or four good looking games and am excited for them all.

the problem is it's been easy up until this last year to just remake wow. you can tell by the massive slap in the face poor bioware got that their game is a year too late. rift opened the floodgates and gw2 made high promises. skyrim then opened a few more minds. there's just one too many innovate ideas out right now that need a truly cohesive surge but i feel we're on the edge of something good.

i don't see this as the end of the mmo. the mmo is the perfect internet game. i feel it's just the end of the wow mmo.

and that's a good thing.

time to evolve.

Originally posted by Onomas

Originally posted by Royalkin

 

I'm not suggesting we will see a return of sandbox virtual worlds, but players can only tolerate so much of the same thing before they clamor for something that is genuinely different, and I think we are beginning to see that. I make no predictions and do not claim to know where that will lead.

 

I suggest more sandbox games. But with a storyline for the ones needing someone elses content.

 

I personaly feel sandbox games are a better way to go. Plus who doesnt like large open worlds/lands to explore and find cool interesting things in the oddest palces? :) Stop letting yourselves be limited, explode with your knowledge and smarts, take control, and start becoming a community once again.

Well I think its obvious to anyone reading my posts on these forums, I prefer virtual worlds, or as much as possible. But I didn't state that in my original post, both for objectivity, and to allow people to express their own views.

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Originally posted by Leucrotta

Market isnt over saturated, quite the opposite really, every mayor launch shows that people are interested in a new title, AoC and onwards all had over 1 million boxsales from start. so the market is there for the taking just no one have managed yet to keep a big amount of subs.

While your assesment of box sales and the intial flocking to a new title is accurate, it doesn't address subscriptions or their retention. I think my comments are accurate in that while there might be an initial rush, that enthusiasm almost never lasts.

I pretty much agree with the OP and ONOMAS.  I think the next company to realease something truly ground breaking will be the next big corner stone of the genre.  SWTOR has huge numbers right now, but I won't be suprised to see them start bleeding people soon.

There is nothing very engaging with the game.  There is nohing really engaging with any of the games out right now, sad but true. This whole hobby needs to be flipped on its head.  I doubt it ever will be though, triple A game manufactureres don't really care about anything other than their financial bottom line and that, is where it all falls down.

Anyway.

All in all, I agree.

A few years back, Blizzard themselves came out and said that they were really surprised other developers were trying to walk in their footsteps rather than come out and try something new, at least genre-wise (this was back when the MMO landscape was still a strictly dwarves-and-elves deal). 

Though at the same time, they seemed to think the reason for the 'failures' (or at least no big sucesses) was not about the choice of genre or even features, but about implementation itself. This I agree with as well. To me, all gaming is mostly about implementation. Features garner interest, but they mean next to nothing when they're not implemented well. 

So while I do think it's time MMOs step away from the popular template, it's not going to do any good as long as we're not seeing something close to Blizzard-level of quality in implementation.

And then of course, there's a flip side to that coin: I'd also not be surprised if a developer came out with an MMO that's not too different, but with exceptional implemantiton of familiar concepts, and did really really well.

I don't agree with multiple points of your analysis.

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And while the older generation of MMO gamers avoided it like the plague, it attracted a huge audience of new gamers - non-MMORPG gamers.

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Eventually (8 years later) players will grow tired of continuously repeating the same content. The slow loss of subscribers that World of Warcraft is experiencing is proof of this.

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I find this particularly ironic considering the average life of MMO's and even Single player games is far, far less than this. The fact that WoW is still millions of subscribers strong and almost a decade old, with what people term as an outdated sub model, is testament to the contrary. While it may be true that WoW has added content every couple of years, it was essentially the same game - as you state, "repeating the same content".

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Developers are not sure what the market demand actually is; they are confused. It was assumed for quite some time that the market wanted Warcraft style themeparks. However this cannot be the case since every attempt has failed to reach World of Warcraft’s subscription levels. It is therefore seen as a failure in the eyes of the industry, investors, and other developers.

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While some look at the RIFT release as small and their subscriber base as small, it's still in the hundreds of thousands which the largest sub'd game which alot of people would contest as a sandbox game would be Eve Online which only has what, 230k subs? (I could be off on that but I thought it was somewhere around there) RIFT was released at a bad time and just after WoW release Cataclysm - which was touted as the expansion to fix alot of issues with PvP and other aspects of the game, so it was highly anticipated. Essentially, WoW smothered the RIFT release due to timing.

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In reality, the Wacraft style themepark does not hold market dominance, World of Warcraft itself, alone holds market dominance. It is an anomaly in the history of the MMORPG, and no future MMORPG will ever garner the subscription numbers that it had even at its worst point. Developers falsly think they can achive this, and thus continue to follow the same false design philosophy.

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Furthermore, people don't give enough vocal credit to Blizzard and WoW. WoW was the Einstein of themepark MMO's and still continues to innovate far beyond what we are seeing out of even the newest AAA themeparks. Evidence of that can be seen in the questing. BioWare may have all the voice overs but WoW has more interactive and fun quests such as Gnomerageddon and such. Where the quests are still quests to do tasks but those tasks aren't just a rehash of the tasks you've completed the last 50 levels. That's the type of stuff that draws the long term subs and you just don't see that type of questing innovation in games like RIFT and SWTOR. WoW also is very fluid. Their animations look top-notch and seem to flow better during combat actions. It may be an old game but it's still pumping out some of the best MMO innovation in the industry. So you may feel that it's because it's World of Warcraft due to Market Confusion and Stagnation but it's because Blizzard put out a superior product and continues to prove that their development staff still knows how to hang onto the ball in a clutch situation - despite Kyle Williams.

Good read, im just confused that you take "8 years" as some point where wow magically went old, and even a proof of something, one would think that aging in general would manifest itself as a (slow) decline with no outside influences, not a single point when "coincidentally" some game changes happened.

Just saying.

Originally posted by Banaghran

 

Good read, im just confused that you take "8 years" as some point where wow magically went old, and even a proof of something, one would think that aging in general would manifest itself as a (slow) decline with no outside influences, not a single point when "coincidentally" some game changes happened.

Just saying.

"8 Years" was not referenced as a specific time frame for being old, but rather to provide context, being that Warcraft is 8 years old. I didn't mean to claim that something 'magical' happend at that specific time.

I too am waiting for the rise of the Secret World. I have a feeling its gonna be awesome! Three factions, a promised good combat system and gameplay and kick ass graphics too boot, its no brainer!

Originally posted by Quesa

I don't agree with multiple points of your analysis...

Well, I will reluctantly concede to your point referencing older generation gamers. My reference for that point was both, the multiple friends who I have which do no care for Warcraft in the slightest degree, and the great multitude of things I have read regarding the older generation of gamers' opinions regarding Warcraft in a general sense. I will admit though, that is a relative and subjective viewpoint.

As for the rest, we will just have to agree to disagree.

People dont realize that the other option to these investors instead of not trying to gain the returns that WoW did, is to not invest in MMORPGs. 

People seem to think that people investing in these games are somehow misguiding their investment, but the truth is, they are doing it cause there is a potential to make money out of the non-MMORPG crowd and that is it.

Sandbox games never had a massive investment return and there is nothing suggesting that a sandbox game would have the potential to attract 10 million players and making 1bil of profits. Just look at EVE its not a billion dollar profit making IP, because sandbox games do not attract enough players.

When games like SWTOR fail investors are not going to want more investment in MMORPGs simple, I wouldnt hold my breath over any real investment in any sandbox games in the near future.

These are pointless discussions and I would suggest that if you want to see this game ( sandbox game ) so badly you round up a group of investors try and convince them that sandbox is the right way and gamble with your own money and reputation to make it happen otherwise it will never happen, these investors are worth billions of dollars making money is their living, I doubt anyone here knows how to better invest their money.

I would say that the genre doesn't need specifically something unique, but something next-gen. The first sign of next-gen and the aspect people pay most attention to are the visuals first and foremost. So developers should get out of 2005 and start creating games with visuals that vastly outperform their competition. The next important thing is to improve on what's already there, like the cross-server structure, allowing for much larger universes to emerge.

It is particularly difficult for this genre to outclass the competition because when you have a game like WoW that keeps improving itself over-time, while having the foundation already in place, you need to be able to hit its weak points to be distinguishable. Right now WoW's weak point is that it looks like ass, and that it hasn't taken the cross-server concept as far as it perhaps could. It's weak point is also the lack of ways for the mini-communities to distinguish themselves from each other, and the community aspect as a whole could use some improvement.

Uniqueness is important but it has to be built on a foundation that rivals and outperforms that of the competition first and foremost. Lastly, uniqueness doesn't have to come from going from black to white but something as simple as not using those damned talent trees every single time while not even bothering to make the system look like it's made with your own game in mind and not just copy-pasted from you-know-what. It can keep the fundamentals of the system intact while not being a goddamn talent tree.

I think it's amazing how the companies making these games don't understand the actual market at all... after all, don't they always tell us they are all 'masssive gamers' and are making games they themelves 'want to play'?

It's confusing.

Maybe it's down to the fact that whatever game is released is always 5 years out of step with the market... when the design docs are laid out it is for a game thats popular THEN, rather then what will be popular in 5 years in the future.

Take SWTOR... 3-5 years ago it was probably seen as what the market wanted. It was all about, from a dev point of view, themeparks. Since then, especially in the last year or two, we have seen a big part of the market burn out on themeparks and change the type of game they want to see.

The trouble is you cannot change your core system design at that point and change your themepark in to a hybrid sandpark... you have to just keep going.

Maybe thats why a game like SWTOR seems so out of time... maybe thats why it feels like it should have launch at least 5 years ago?