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Originally posted by Sovrath

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Originally posted by Foomerang @Sovrath The problem I have is that this genre "grows" (if thats what you want to call it), it loses what made it a genre in the first place. MMOs are just glomming onto other genres now its pathetic. We have an mmo version of every other genre now. Action adventure, horror, fps, rts, platformer, tcg, you name it. But the virtual world is gone. And thats what truly made an MMORPG what it is. What defines an mmorpg. Is it literally the meaning of each letter? I think a lot of people say yes to that. They have a checklist: is it online with a lot of people and has character progression? Boom! MMORPG. This forum is an mmorpg by that definition. It has lots of people, is online, and i get little gold stars when I play nice. No. An mmorpg is a virtual world. Lazy developers. Greedy developers from other genres saw an opportunity to cash in and missed the entire point of the genre by a mile. But who cares, right? They are making high quality online versions of other genres... its bs. Its not a virtual world. And when you ask them to make one, they go as far as to say "its too hard". Thats why this genre is dead.

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I would say (and keep in mind that my mmo proclivities are far more hardcore and old school in preference) that developers looked at the mmo worlds, saw what players were complaining about and then streamlined that stuff or removed it. I mean, isn't taht what early WoW did? And then "Blammo" more subs.

So they realized that there was a larger market out there for online entertainment, marketed the whole thing up and drew even more people in. They then made the games more casual, more "fun and quirky" which seemed to work and took the stigma out of it a bit. Essentially made it more mainstream. And then more people.

When WoW launched, what was the big western mmo at the time? My answer would be Everquest. Not my first mmo as mine was Lineage 2 but I dont' think ultima or shadowbane were really contenders there. Ryzom? didn't do it.

Everquest didnt' keep growing along with WoW. And all those Everquest 2 peeps either went back to everquest or went to WoW.

It was WoW that grew and then grew more when they started hacking the world bits off and making things more strealined.

I would say the genre has evolved in a way that the early adopters probably dont' like but that made these games far more palatable to players who would never be interested in a virtual world. That's not about lazy develpers. That's about developers adopting whatever the current market trend was/is.

 

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I think we may have streamlined ourselves out of a genre TBH. People complained because mmos were crazy broken while devs tried to figure all this stuff out. Its the only genre i can think of where gamers tell developers how to make their game. Its because they caved into people wanted things what worked in other genres. So instead of trying to make those concepts work in a virtual world, they just cut out the hassle and adopted the originating genre. MMOs lost their soul when that happened.

Originally posted by 3-4thElf

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by Clerigo

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Dead?

The market is huge and may still be expanding. Going into a direction you do not like != dead.

In fact, i think it is becoming MORE ALIVE, solving all the old problems (like camping & finding groups with instances & LFD/LFR), while giving a large part of the games to the players for FREE.

It is getting BETTER.

Did you really put some time into that response or you did it by heart in the heat of the hour?

I honestly cant say i agree 100% with the OP, but i sure can say you are 100% wrong. How can the last years of mmorpg life make it better in any model or conception? Do you really believe in what you are saying?

If i close my eyes to GW2, a tittle that many gamers are following and expecting to bring some freash air to a genre in a decline path, what other new mmorpg launches you can name that actually brought some solid concept? rift? swtor? what...2..3..4 names? Name them plz...after you name them, open the mmorpg list in this site....start counting them, start reading community feedback....and ask yourself....

"what the heck am i talking about??"

Sorry Clerigo but he's right.

Let's take your examples, rift, swtor, etc.

More people play those games NOW after the initial excitement has worn off than any of the early games. didn't EQ have 200 or 250k? did ultima have more? How much? I can't imagine it was hundreds of thousands more. What you seem to be asserting is that the small group of people who started in the mmo genre were right and the many more who are now playing and enjoying these games are wrong.

This is not to say that your opinion of today's games is "wrong" because you like what you like. But the mmo genre has grown and it seems that the majority of people playing are into today's games.

you might rebut with "they never stay in them for more than a few months if that". And I would say "that's because today's mmo gamers are probably not looking for anything with a greater commitment.

You can't take the template of the early adopters and apply that to everyone who has become a current mmo player.

Truth of the matter is that most of these games gather way more people at launch than they rightfully should have. Some of these people are looking for something different from WoW and then start crying because the games are not WoW; some of them are just looking for something to play for a small bit and then they can hop onto the next game that comes out.

When you cut away the players who really would never be interested in some of these games you do find that they still have players.

Rift has players. SWToR has players. AoC has players. Star Trek online has playres. And who do I listen to? The jaded and unhappy mmo gamres who decry the current set of games; where everything is shit, or the guy at work who isn't an mmo gamer but he tried Star Trek online and then says to me "I don't know why some people dont' like this game, it's really fun".

Do I listen to post after post of angry, angry forum goers or the father who plays SWToR with his daughter and I see them going on about how much they enjoy it and how much fun they are having?

Have you ever heard the expression "water finds its own level"? Many of these games had/have issues, true, but they still have an audience playing them. They still have fans.

Heck, I remember one woman at work who, to my surprise, was in a WoW raiding guild and she was applauding the changes that were being made to WoW because it meant that she would have more time to play. Essentially she liked the more casual aspect that was being added.

The mmo genre is growing and like any media, it has gathered greater fans but fans who are not as hardcore or who do not have the desire to play games that are "virtual worlds". Heck, even another guy at work, who I would say is a "gamer" told me last month that he preferred his games to be more like games and less like "worlds".

And the current mmos' are just up his alley.

The only growth the MMORPG market has seen is in Asia.

Compare new growth in the MMORPG market vs new growth in other gaming markets like mobile and console gaming I'd safely bet it's been dismal in comparison.

I mean 10-12 million users of something isn't a number to sneeze at, but that's the MMORPG market. You draw from there.

There's been nothing worthwhile (game world or virtual world) to come along in 8 years to really expand on that idea. I mean 2006-2008 sure it was an exciting time to talk about growth.

If anything I think since 2010 the market has fallen. 

With multiplayer games mostly being led by games like League of Legends or Call of Duty online titles.

MMOs are on their way to something, probably not death, but looking at the genre and what it has to offer it's on a short bus.

Your way of base here. Number of subers in the market is over 21m and thats not counting the players that play ftp which has seen an increased rise.

MMORPGS are not as small demographic as some of you think.

It used to be about immersing in a virtual world.  Now it's about metrics.

The genre isn't dead.  It's hibernating.  It'll wake up eventually, but we could be in for an ice age worth of slumber.

Originally posted by silvermember

Originally posted by Whyhate

Originally posted by austriacus

While they have been some failures the vast majority of themeparks are bringing loads of money to developers, even the worst ones. And have big populations.

You are the only one living on a bubble.

Most themeparks end up being F2P because not even a monkey can play one for more than a couple of months without getting bored.

 

Care to show some links where it says that FTP games generate more revenue than EvE?

 

Really, show me one.

 

The fact still remains, EvE has more subs than pretty much every themepark MMO except WOW.

 

And we are talking about a FFA PVP with full loot niche game where you are a ship, not a character.

 

Oh and nobody cares about F2P games, they are all shit anyway,

 

It's just funny when people say that the market for sandbox games is small when EvE, a sandbox MMO, has more subs than almost every half assed wow clone in the market.

 

Most MMORPG end up as f2p because they are so many MMORPG that are not worth paying for. A bad game is still just a bad game, it doesn't matter whether its a themepark or sandbox.

Also a lot of the sandbox games made after EvE have failed, so your whole point is not really make sense.  then again, it does make sense if you know that a lot of people on this site like to conveniently forget about all current sandbox games and like to make up abitrary reasons why all the current sandbox games don't fit their abitrary definition of a sandbox game.

You mean all those low budget obscure gankfests with no advertising?

Originally posted by silvermember

Originally posted by Whyhate

Originally posted by austriacus

While they have been some failures the vast majority of themeparks are bringing loads of money to developers, even the worst ones. And have big populations.

You are the only one living on a bubble.

Most themeparks end up being F2P because not even a monkey can play one for more than a couple of months without getting bored.

 

Care to show some links where it says that FTP games generate more revenue than EvE?

 

Really, show me one.

 

The fact still remains, EvE has more subs than pretty much every themepark MMO except WOW.

 

And we are talking about a FFA PVP with full loot niche game where you are a ship, not a character.

 

Oh and nobody cares about F2P games, they are all shit anyway,

 

It's just funny when people say that the market for sandbox games is small when EvE, a sandbox MMO, has more subs than almost every half assed wow clone in the market.

 

Most MMORPG end up as f2p because they are so many MMORPG that are not worth paying for. A bad game is still just a bad game, it doesn't matter whether its a themepark or sandbox.

Also a lot of the sandbox games made after EvE have failed, so your whole point is not really make sense.  then again, it does make sense if you know that a lot of people on this site like to conveniently forget about all current sandbox games and like to make up abitrary reasons why all the current sandbox games don't fit their abitrary definition of a sandbox game.

The difference is, themepark MMOs that have gone free to play have had millions spent on them, SWTOR might be going ftp and it cost somewhere in the 100s of millions.  Soo many people were interested in MO or Darkfall just because they were Sandbox, the production quality was terrible, but they generated quite a bit of interest.  Much more than a themepark with a similar budget.  

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Originally posted by jdlamson75
The genre isn't dead.  It's hibernating.  It'll wake up eventually, but we could be in for an ice age worth of slumber.

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I hope you're right. I miss this genre.

Originally posted by Mannish

All of these games that you people think failed are still here and people play them. I do agree that the genre is more alive today but the problem is that its a themepark genre today and the old school mmo players are more of the sandbox type. What we need are real sandbox games being made by AAA companys.

Nobody can make a saleable sandbox because nobody can describe one.

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Originally posted by OldManFunk

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Originally posted by Mannish All of these games that you people think failed are still here and people play them. I do agree that the genre is more alive today but the problem is that its a themepark genre today and the old school mmo players are more of the sandbox type. What we need are real sandbox games being made by AAA companys.

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Nobody can make a saleable sandbox because nobody can describe one.

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Its not a giant mystery. Just make make a game that lets you interact with the world in multiple ways. Not just killing. And no, mini games and after thought crafting does not count.

Sadly, and I don't want to point fingers here, but Vanguards failure at launch was a crushing blow to the genre. This was a game that almost promised too much- A way to appeal to both themepark and sandbox mmo'ers. I think they had the right vision of where the genre should have gone at the time, but it was such an epic fail on so many levels that no developer wants to go near that type of game now.

This is not to knock the people who still enjoy vanguard. I really enjoyed my limited time there. The world was huge and when you explored places and dungeons it didnt feel like you HAD to be anywhere. You could build houses and "live" in that world, you could "grind xp" or quest your ass off.

But its impossible to recover from a terrible launch like that. Shoddy/laggy graphics, buggy interface, slow/awkward combat no content after 35 etc etc..the list of problems at launch are legendary and made the game unplayable.

But if someone did that game right with todays graphics, I think people would flock.

Originally posted by Foomerang

 

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Originally posted by OldManFunk

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Originally posted by Mannish All of these games that you people think failed are still here and people play them. I do agree that the genre is more alive today but the problem is that its a themepark genre today and the old school mmo players are more of the sandbox type. What we need are real sandbox games being made by AAA companys.

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Nobody can make a saleable sandbox because nobody can describe one.

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Its not a giant mystery. Just make make a game that lets you interact with the world in multiple ways. Not just killing. And no, mini games and after thought crafting does not count.

Ask 10 different people what would be the perfect sandbox game, you'd get 11 ideas with only 1 matching. If I was a dev, I'd shoot up the deuces to that too...

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Originally posted by darker70

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Originally posted by azmundai  

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Originally posted by Foomerang

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Originally posted by nariusseldon Dead?   The market is huge and may still be expanding. Going into a direction you do not like != dead. In fact, i think it is becoming MORE ALIVE, solving all the old problems (like camping & finding groups with instances & LFD/LFR), while giving a large part of the games to the players for FREE. It is getting BETTER.

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  the genre is dead. not the market. the business of taking old console game concepts into the mmo space is huge. the genre that attempted to make virtual worlds is dead.

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  the killer for me is that indie games are more often than not sci fi or survival .. while I love star wars, I generally prefer to play fantasy / magic based games. repop does look awesome tho .. I really hope it does well. I just wish it had wizards and clerics and such :) overall though you do a good job of summing up how I feel. AAA virtual worlds is a dead concept.

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Regarding  Repop this game really will light those older gamers sandbox fires and it does not need wizards and clerics I have GW2  for that gubbins  

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yea no, I realize that and wouldn't want them to cater to the wizards crowd.

i really do hope repop ends up as good as their ideas sound. though there in may lie a part of the problem. hype is essentially un-acheivable. words, concepts on paper shared with the masses ... are too easily mis-interpreted. still looks like a large step in the right direction!

Originally posted by bossalinie

Originally posted by Foomerang

 

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Originally posted by OldManFunk

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Originally posted by Mannish All of these games that you people think failed are still here and people play them. I do agree that the genre is more alive today but the problem is that its a themepark genre today and the old school mmo players are more of the sandbox type. What we need are real sandbox games being made by AAA companys.

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Nobody can make a saleable sandbox because nobody can describe one.

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Its not a giant mystery. Just make make a game that lets you interact with the world in multiple ways. Not just killing. And no, mini games and after thought crafting does not count.

Ask 10 different people what would be the perfect sandbox game, you'd get 11 ideas with only 1 matching. If I was a dev, I'd shoot up the deuces to that too...

Doesn't that apply to anything ever?  Or are you implying that themepark lovers (which I am also, to an extent) are just mindless drones.

Originally posted by Foomerang

 

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Originally posted by OldManFunk

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Originally posted by Mannish All of these games that you people think failed are still here and people play them. I do agree that the genre is more alive today but the problem is that its a themepark genre today and the old school mmo players are more of the sandbox type. What we need are real sandbox games being made by AAA companys.

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Nobody can make a saleable sandbox because nobody can describe one.

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Its not a giant mystery. Just make make a game that lets you interact with the world in multiple ways. Not just killing. And no, mini games and after thought crafting does not count.

That's an incredibly vague description. I think the more you try to add detail to the systems that you imagine the more you'll find that you either end up with features that already exist in several games, features that are easily abused and end up ruining the game or a game that simply can't be made.

How about deforestation, the ability to dig holes, and the ability to plant things for starter features? Sounds like pretty good kind of sandboxy things. For simplicity, let's take Minecraft as an example of where to start with our system. Now fill the world with people and let them do their thing. What happens? Someone builds something beuatiful, someone builds something awful, and someone goes around chopping everything down and digging holes because it's fun to destroy things. We could allow open PvP so that players could kill the offenders, but then what's stopping the assholes from also killing the people who they are harassing by destroying everything they try to build? So players form groups to hunt the assholes and assholes form groups to harass the rest. Eventually the assholes being outnumbered resort to going around destroying the world while everyone else is logged out and the builders eventually give up on trying to build anything lasting in a world filled with assholes. So now that we're bleeding players we're faced with adding coded limitations to prevent assholes from ruining everything for everyone else which breaks our design doc stating that the game needs to be a sandbox and not placed on rails.

How would you rather want an mmo to be like? The cash shops support the server costs/maintainance. That or there has to be a monthly fee.

I started as Mr. Themepark but the newer  MMO's aren't even allowing anywhere the amount of freedom that earlier games did.   MMO's are going into exactly what OP is talking about and it's not a bright future (should say a very console like future).

  While I don't think the genre is totally dead, I'm starting to understand more and more where Sandbox fanatics are coming from.  I do think there will be a developer with money that wants to make a game that actually lasts more than a few months...at some point.

Cash shops don't bother me quite as much as the esport PvP, developer driven content and 4 months max per game.

op is right but there are 10:1 newbs who prefer the new games over the old ones.  Obviously.  MMO developers are not failing at their goal which is to make money.  Do you think any of them give a rat's ass about imersion or true sandbox?

They are looking for the ape that will click on the button in the item shop everything else is just sheep's clothing.  The original game makers had profit in mind but they hadn't refined it to a science.

All the modern games have MASS APPEAL which means for every 1 of us old timers who know what we're talking about from the old days there are 10 newbs who simply LOVE the way things are unfolding.

The problem is not with the games I'm afraid.  1 you got too old, 2 society frankly, is too stupid on the whole.

Originally posted by OldManFunk

Originally posted by Foomerang

 

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Originally posted by OldManFunk

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Originally posted by Mannish All of these games that you people think failed are still here and people play them. I do agree that the genre is more alive today but the problem is that its a themepark genre today and the old school mmo players are more of the sandbox type. What we need are real sandbox games being made by AAA companys.

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Nobody can make a saleable sandbox because nobody can describe one.

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Its not a giant mystery. Just make make a game that lets you interact with the world in multiple ways. Not just killing. And no, mini games and after thought crafting does not count.

That's an incredibly vague description. I think the more you try to add detail to the systems that you imagine the more you'll find that you either end up with features that already exist in several games, features that are easily abused and end up ruining the game or a game that simply can't be made.

 

How about deforestation, the ability to dig holes, and the ability to plant things for starter features? Sounds like pretty good kind of sandboxy things. For simplicity, let's take Minecraft as an example of where to start with our system. Now fill the world with people and let them do their thing. What happens? Someone builds something beuatiful, someone builds something awful, and someone goes around chopping everything down and digging holes because it's fun to destroy things. We could allow open PvP so that players could kill the offenders, but then what's stopping the assholes from also killing the people who they are harassing by destroying everything they try to build? So players form groups to hunt the assholes and assholes form groups to harass the rest. Eventually the assholes being outnumbered resort to going around destroying the world while everyone else is logged out and the builders eventually give up on trying to build anything lasting in a world filled with assholes. So now that we're bleeding players we're faced with adding coded limitations to prevent assholes from ruining everything for everyone else which breaks our design doc stating that the game needs to be a sandbox and not placed on rails.

this is an amazing analogy that can be applied to anything.. even our economy :D thanks for the great read.

Originally posted by Whyhate

Originally posted by Gaia_Hunter

Originally posted by Foomerang

 

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Originally posted by Gaia_Hunter

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Originally posted by Foomerang @Sovrath The problem I have is that this genre "grows" (if thats what you want to call it), it loses what made it a genre in the first place. MMOs are just glomming onto other genres now its pathetic. We have an mmo version of every other genre now. Action adventure, horror, fps, rts, platformer, tcg, you name it. But the virtual world is gone. And thats what truly made an MMORPG what it is. What defines an mmorpg. Is it literally the meaning of each letter? I think a lot of people say yes to that. They have a checklist: is it online with a lot of people and has character progression? Boom! MMORPG. This forum is an mmorpg by that definition. It has lots of people, is online, and i get little gold stars when I play nice. No. An mmorpg is a virtual world. Lazy developers. Greedy developers from other genres saw an opportunity to cash in and missed the entire point of the genre by a mile. But who cares, right? They are making high quality online versions of other genres... its bs. Its not a virtual world. And when you ask them to make one, they go as far as to say "its too hard". Thats why this genre is dead.

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And where did the virtual worlds took the genre to in the first place?

 

Nowhere, it was an obscure genre and that genre still exists with more or less the same number fo games.

Additonally I see G for game, and I don't see and VW for Virtual World.

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Ironically, single player console games are picking up the torch and making more and more virtual worlds. Its only a matter of time before they takes these concepts into the mmo space as well. Meanwhile, we get mmo versions of tried and true genres and call it progress. The writing is on the wall. This fad of taking old concepts and making it fresh by putting it online is coming to an end. Single player console games had to adapt or die when internet gaming took off. And they have. Now its internet gaming that is stagnating and they will once again have to take a cue from what the consoles are doing.

The irony is on your side though - GW2 is one of the best virtual worlds, but it is a gaming virtual world created by the developers and so doesn't fit your notion of virtual world.

GW2 is not a virtual world.

It's a quest grinder with a new way to grind quests ( dynamic events)

 

UO is a virtual world, EvE is a virtual world, you know... games where you can do more than just kill things.

The only thing one can use to debate if GW2 is a virtual world or not is object creation if we restrict object creation to structures in the world.

Originally posted by OldManFunk

Originally posted by Foomerang

 

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Originally posted by OldManFunk

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Originally posted by Mannish All of these games that you people think failed are still here and people play them. I do agree that the genre is more alive today but the problem is that its a themepark genre today and the old school mmo players are more of the sandbox type. What we need are real sandbox games being made by AAA companys.

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Nobody can make a saleable sandbox because nobody can describe one.

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Its not a giant mystery. Just make make a game that lets you interact with the world in multiple ways. Not just killing. And no, mini games and after thought crafting does not count.

That's an incredibly vague description. I think the more you try to add detail to the systems that you imagine the more you'll find that you either end up with features that already exist in several games, features that are easily abused and end up ruining the game or a game that simply can't be made.

 

How about deforestation, the ability to dig holes, and the ability to plant things for starter features? Sounds like pretty good kind of sandboxy things. For simplicity, let's take Minecraft as an example of where to start with our system. Now fill the world with people and let them do their thing. What happens? Someone builds something beuatiful, someone builds something awful, and someone goes around chopping everything down and digging holes because it's fun to destroy things. We could allow open PvP so that players could kill the offenders, but then what's stopping the assholes from also killing the people who they are harassing by destroying everything they try to build? So players form groups to hunt the assholes and assholes form groups to harass the rest. Eventually the assholes being outnumbered resort to going around destroying the world while everyone else is logged out and the builders eventually give up on trying to build anything lasting in a world filled with assholes. So now that we're bleeding players we're faced with adding coded limitations to prevent assholes from ruining everything for everyone else which breaks our design doc stating that the game needs to be a sandbox and not placed on rails.

For the reasons you described no game should have completely open PVP.  Eve has it good with certain lawless systems Runescape also had the Wilderness where there was full loot pvp.

Having slight restrictions doesn't make it on rails.