They want to play something like Guild Wars or Diablo where you have social hubs and instanced questing areas. They want an experience that is quick to get into and rewards them constantly for doing nothing like all the ribbons you get in BF3. They don't want to explore vast worlds, have a challenge or do any world content. They certainlly are not interested in the idea of a virtual seamless world like what MMOs tried to offer in the past.

For me an MMO has to have a persistent world that can have a MASSIVE amount of players in any one area. That is the basis of the gameplay because if Planetside 2 only offered 64 player fights and then a social hub to visit it wouldn't be an MMO. Yet we have games these days calling themselves MMOs and they lack any of this. 

Every MMO I've ever loved playing has been ruined by all the whiners on the forums. The problem is the developers listen to them, give them what they want and patch by patch we slowly lose the MMO and are just left with a multiplayer game. 

It's happening and happened to SWTOR already...

People are already asking for fast travel every, the ability to just warp to any planet from your location. They're already asking for faster vehicles because they hate the travel times which in SWTOR are so small as it is. In beta they added the fleets which basically took everyone out of the worlds and put them in a social hub where they just stay there. Most people now just sit there get groups for flashpoints and battlegrounds and level up on that stuff like what happened to WoW. The worlds have no one in them because these people playing do not want to play an MMO, they just want to play Guild Wars. 

We have these amazing cities in SWTOR with no one in them because of that fleet station and it has ruined the MMO in that game. I at least want people to be in those cities and not the fleet station which shouldn't even be in the game in the first place.  

What is happening to world PVP now? Well it barely exists outside of the PVP planets and oh look the population cap on them is getting shrunk already. There is even talk about just turning them into bigger battlegrounds like AV. The players on Ilum don't want a world PVP experience, they just want to exploit and farm the game until they ruin it and the developers take out world PVP altogether like what happened in WoW.

Every MMO this has happened to and the last one I truely loved to play (SWG) it happened to that too. Forums whiners slowly got that game dumbed down over time to the point it was ruined well before the CU or the NGE. The CU was the straw and the NGE was just he final Nail, but the truth is that game was well and truely going down the shitter by early 2004. 

SWTOR has made me realise that no one wants to play MMOs anymore and I have no interest in carrying on with the genre that clearly died out many years ago. What it has turned into today is all thanx to the casual crowd that WoW brought it and they moaned until they killed that game off too. Mythic had the right idea in not having any forums and the only dveeloper that has managed to keep their MMO true to their vision is CCP, so credit to them for that. I'd watch out though it probably wont be too long before it becomes class and loot based lol.

I agree, unfortunately.

It is sad but true.

I feel no matter how brilliant a game is made, how "perfect" a new MMO is

I feel that the game will be ruined by the majority of players.

(and I'm not saying TOR is perfect by any means)

The instant gratification generation really has completely ruined just about everything.

Gaming, society, politics, the economy, fast food....

But it's also their yuppy parents that raised them to be "special and unique snow flakes" and turned them into the self centered little shits they are today.

They couldn't handle the fact that OH MY GOD LITTLE KIDS HAVE ENERGY AND ARE BOUNCY so they put them on ADD drugs and look what we've got now!

Parenting failed an entire generation, which is now failing at life.

All for the sake of political correctness.

/rant off

I live in an expansive non-virtual world. I cut firewood weekly through the spring and fall (winter sometimes too). I build fences and barns. I raise goats and horses (and a llama even). I have a garden larger than the typical suburban housing lot. I also have a 40hr job in a factory.

I don't want to do these things in a virtual world. I want to play games. Sometimes, I want to play them with other people.

I understand why some people want sandbox games because I enjoy all of the items I listed above and I'm sure some people can't experience them in the real world. But to say that only sandboxes are true MMOs and everyone else is destroying your sandcastle with their desire for fun gameplay that isn't what you call fun? Grow up.

SWTOR is a bad example of what you're looking for. It's not being ruined by any player base. It was hampered from the start by what i consider poor MMO decisions. I don't recall anyone asking for 50 loading screens to get anywhere or overuse of phasing which makes the worlds feel empty.

If it was another MMO, then i'd agree with you.

Couple things.

Themeparks. Old and over played.

Sandboxes. Older but forgotten and underplayed.

Give me a sandbox.

Here for hoping Archeage does it right.

Originally posted by BadSpock

I agree, unfortunately.

It is sad but true.

 

I feel no matter how brilliant a game is made, how "perfect" a new MMO is

I feel that the game will be ruined by the majority of players.

(and I'm not saying TOR is perfect by any means)

 

The instant gratification generation really has completely ruined just about everything.

Gaming, society, politics, the economy, fast food....

But it's also their yuppy parents that raised them to be "special and unique snow flakes" and turned them into the self centered little shits they are today.

They couldn't handle the fact that OH MY GOD LITTLE KIDS HAVE ENERGY AND ARE BOUNCY so they put them on ADD drugs and look what we've got now!

Parenting failed an entire generation, which is now failing at life.

All for the sake of political correctness.

/rant off

Agreed. I remember when the only ADD parents worried about was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. That was our adderall in the 80's. It occupied our minds and time without numbing our creative energies and making us zombies.

Social Hubs is one of the most important and overlooked aspects to any MMO.

People are pissed because they are tired of the same old crap:

World of Warcraft - Vanguard, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Aion, Star Trek Online, RIFT, SWTOR, etc

The days without the Social Hub, depth, and complexity, are over.

Tottaly agree with OP.

I dont play SWTOR, but your description fits in alot of "mmorpgs" around.

the game doesnt need to be a "sandbox" to have a immersive world, devs are just doing "little things" wrong, like auto-travel.

We dont need auto-travel, just give us, right from beggening, something to travel faster then walking/running but controled by us (mount, skill, whatever), and this is applyed to any game around.

Originally posted by BadSpock

I agree, unfortunately.

It is sad but true.

 

I feel no matter how brilliant a game is made, how "perfect" a new MMO is

I feel that the game will be ruined by the majority of players.

(and I'm not saying TOR is perfect by any means)

 

The instant gratification generation really has completely ruined just about everything.

Gaming, society, politics, the economy, fast food....

But it's also their yuppy parents that raised them to be "special and unique snow flakes" and turned them into the self centered little shits they are today.

They couldn't handle the fact that OH MY GOD LITTLE KIDS HAVE ENERGY AND ARE BOUNCY so they put them on ADD drugs and look what we've got now!

Parenting failed an entire generation, which is now failing at life.

All for the sake of political correctness.

/rant off

1000% agree.

I think this is why I have lost interest in MMO's. It's not that I am "older" now and have a 40 hour a week job, a daughter, bills, etc. I can still make time for leisure activities...which use to be MMO's to escape the drudgery of my everyday life. But anymore I just can't lose myself in them because they are no longer MMO's, but rather glorified CMPG's (Console Multi-player Games) with chat channels full of selfishness and idiocy. Just felt like I was paying $15 a month to be enrolled in virtual daycare.

Casual gaming is what console games were made for...not MMORPG's.

Originally posted by tixylix

They want to play something like Guild Wars or Diablo where you have social hubs and instanced questing areas.

Perhaps they don't want to play either they just want to play GW2?

They don't want to explore vast worlds, have a challenge or do any world content. They certainlly are not interested in the idea of a virtual seamless world like what MMOs tried to offer in the past.

Show me a game that came out in 2010,2011 that has these features and i'll play it because i can tell you now, there aren't any and blaming the playerbase isn't really factual.

For me an MMO has to have a persistent world that can have a MASSIVE amount of players in any one area. That is the basis of the gameplay because if Planetside 2 only offered 64 player fights and then a social hub to visit it wouldn't be an MMO. Yet we have games these days calling themselves MMOs and they lack any of this. 

Yep i know what you mean yet some of them actually are so conceited about their IP they actually charge a monthly fee when they haven't even put all of the features a standard mmo should have into their game in the first place, "oh we'll put those in later over a series of 6 patches".

Every MMO I've ever loved playing has been ruined by all the whiners on the forums. The problem is the developers listen to them, give them what they want and patch by patch we slowly lose the MMO and are just left with a multiplayer game. 

It's happening and happened to SWTOR already...

Riiiiight because SWTOR wasn't an mmo it was a solo game with multiplayer aspects ALREADY at launch which had nothing to do with the players my friend. If you want to get mad at anyone get mad at how badly this game was and is being managed but please blame to correct people, the people in charge. Your statement above shows just how out of touch people can be in todays time about who really is in charge. What you said above is equivolent to someone blaming Obama the President for the revolt in Egypt, it's just not possible. Not to mention that the reason this game is like it is now (not considering any future updates just talking about launch day) is due to this company NOT listening to it's playerbase in the first place.

People are already asking for fast travel every, the ability to just warp to any planet from your location. They're already asking for faster vehicles because they hate the travel times which in SWTOR are so small as it is. In beta they added the fleets which basically took everyone out of the worlds and put them in a social hub where they just stay there. Most people now just sit there get groups for flashpoints and battlegrounds and level up on that stuff like what happened to WoW. The worlds have no one in them because these people playing do not want to play an MMO, they just want to play Guild Wars. 

Okay, number one they needed the fast travel in a LFG tool because it was a poor designed game, they are using things like the trinity system for dungeons which severely limits dungeon control so what would happen without it, they'd run to a dungeon door and stand there waiting instead to get into a group to run a dungeon. No difference to me you'd see a bazillion people outside a dungeon entrance instead of a town if you took out the fast travel times because of how the grouping works. Trinity is limiting it's a very old concept they could have done alot better but were afraid to try anything new. Because people decided they don't want to wait for the travel time to get to a dungeon and then have to wait a second time just to get into a group i don't blame them. I wouldn't want to wait either in a game I'm paying $15 a month for.

We have these amazing cities in SWTOR with no one in them because of that fleet station and it has ruined the MMO in that game. I at least want people to be in those cities and not the fleet station which shouldn't even be in the game in the first place.  

Everything I've seen so far has been NPC's that don't talk to you or say a single thing when you click on them. Placeholders that do nonsensical things like talk to the air, no critters, hardly any ambience to speak of it's no wonder people don't want to hang out in these places. I know i wouldnt. And there's no persistant world, why wasn't there the occasional battle sequence where the opposite side was trying to get into the city to cause strife? they could have had an instant win in event handling with rewards but nothing. I just don't get it. Even if it weren't dynamic and it were timed it would have been better then just a place to stand around in.

What is happening to world PVP now? Well it barely exists outside of the PVP planets and oh look the population cap on them is getting shrunk already. There is even talk about just turning them into bigger battlegrounds like AV. The players on Ilum don't want a world PVP experience, they just want to exploit and farm the game until they ruin it and the developers take out world PVP altogether like what happened in WoW.

No as an long time WoW player, I can tell you they put a cap on it due to the two faction problems they have always had in WoW. One side dominates the other because it's considered the cooler faction to be in. It's just like the sociology of school kids. No one can control that not even Bioware. (i can't believe i just defended them)

SWTOR has made me realise that no one wants to play MMOs anymore 

If anything SWTOR should have tought you that companies don't want to put out real content anymore and that throwing some piece of garbage out to the masses with an IP on the box just won't cut it. And if i'm wrong so be it but for the majority of us it's just not enough to have a title and an IP in a game. I've been down this road before, it's called STO (altho recent events has renewed my faith in this one). All in all, don't blame the community because SWTOR definitely did not listen to it's playerbase. There are pleanty of people out there that warned them in the forums to not make it instanced, to make it persistant and dynamic, and to make exploration a major part of this game from the beginning, did BW listen to those people? no. And here we are.

Originally posted by tixylix

 ...What it has turned into today is all thanx to the casual crowd ...

you're welcome.

Never stops amazing me that some people feel the need to blame the market, not the Dev's :)

The Dev's make the games, and then change them:) Why blame the customer? They can ask for what they want, but they can change nothing in a game. Just move on to the next. Which they will do anyhow soon enough.

Who sounds like the spoiled ones really? The ones that want what they want and if they do not get it that call others names, or blame others parents?: :)

As someone above said, look at CCP. They had a vision of what they wanted. They kept that vision through the slow growth, and pretty much made a game just the way they had envisioned it. Not much caving in to anyone at all along the way.

They could of very well changed that game into a PVE game at any time they wanted and most likely made much more money. But that would not be the game they wanted to make and believed in.

See, Dev's make the choices, the players, and customers do not. Blame the right people:)

Originally posted by eyelolled

Originally posted by tixylix

 ...What it has turned into today is all thanx to the casual crowd ...

you're welcome.

FOR THE LEGION!

Originally posted by rdash

 

Vast majority of players treat MMOs as games, not virtual worlds, but it's not because they're spoiled brats. Quite the opposite - most players are adults with full-time jobs and commitments, and they can't afford to waste their entertainment time spending hours working or running in game. This "instant gratification" is reasonable expectation of players who can devote only so much time to gaming, and want to get something out of it. Your idea of fun may be diferent, but it isn't better than theirs.

I thought regular non-MMO games were for instant gratification.

Originally posted by Calfis

Originally posted by rdash

 

Vast majority of players treat MMOs as games, not virtual worlds, but it's not because they're spoiled brats. Quite the opposite - most players are adults with full-time jobs and commitments, and they can't afford to waste their entertainment time spending hours working or running in game. This "instant gratification" is reasonable expectation of players who can devote only so much time to gaming, and want to get something out of it. Your idea of fun may be diferent, but it isn't better than theirs.

I thought regular non-MMO games were for instant gratification.

You are right...they are. But the self-entitlement, selfish masses want all games to cater to them until there is only one genre left apparently. That being instant gratification gimme shinies now and make me feel like an instant hero and badass types. The rat race has enxtended well beyond RL and into the virtual world as well. Gimme gimme gimme now now now.

Funny part is...that in most cases the same people that want such gameplay are also the ones that sit in city hubs complaining that they have nothing to do and they need more content to blow through in a week.

This is other thread where personal preference is trying to define an MMO.

I personally am ok with the current model. When I was a kid, I could live in games and could keep up with the Jones. Now, with family and employment, getting 3 hours is putting in work. Are MMOs not for me? The past decade of releases says otherwise.

They have allowed us to use a microwive to fix a meal rather than make us preheat the stove, boil waters, and prep dinner to get the same results. Does the latter generally taste better? Of course! If I had time to make it, I'd do it every day. The problem lies that I don't have time, and trying to do would only create other time issues. Since there are other options to obtaining my daily diet, the full dinner would go out the window. Eating out and using  the microwave to obtain similar results is enough to satisfy me and to keep me going.

The industry pretty much went the route of instead of losing gamers, why not create something that caters to their liking. Unfortunately for stove cookers, the microwave/eat-out/hamburger helper idea went viral and others are joining in on the food nuking. People rarely do family full dinners now because preparing the food, cooking each item, and doing dishes is wasted time. Maybe on Saturdays and Sundays... :)

Originally posted by Calfis

Originally posted by rdash

 

Vast majority of players treat MMOs as games, not virtual worlds, but it's not because they're spoiled brats. Quite the opposite - most players are adults with full-time jobs and commitments, and they can't afford to waste their entertainment time spending hours working or running in game. This "instant gratification" is reasonable expectation of players who can devote only so much time to gaming, and want to get something out of it. Your idea of fun may be diferent, but it isn't better than theirs.

I thought regular non-MMO games were for instant gratification.

Regular non MMO games aren't massive. There's no reason to assume that those players don't want massive online  experience, assuming it's approachable, fun and gratifying for their playstyle.

Couldn't have said it better myself OP.  It appears that a large segment of non MMO gamers have flooded the MMO market and want everything and they want it now.

It appears these non MMO'ers (whom constantly bitch about "grinding" anything that takes longer than 5 minutes) are going to have their way with some upcoming games...mainly GW2.  Everyone will have the same gear, there will be no time investment, you just have to hope the actual gameplay is fun enough to keep you around.  I've yet to play a game where the gameplay alone makes me want to play it longer than a month.

I would not necessarily fault the devs for this instant gratification market, these non MMO gamers have done this to our genre.  Unfortunately the super casual outnumber the old school MMO player by a large margin.  I don't expect to ever see my ideal MMO released as the devs are too afraid to anger the uber casual.  I just wish they would go back to their console games and leave MMO's alone.

I don't have the time I used to have ten years ago, but that doesn't mean I want everything dumbed down/sped up due to my current time contraints...what's the rush?  It's not like good MMO's are released very often anyway.