Op is 100% right! 

Ultima , Daoc , Anarchy Online , Everquest blah blah .. none of today games can beat those old bastards =D

Hoping Planetside 2 invigorates the genre in general, I would love to see a true Borderlands MMO or anyone trying anything that isn't the same old thing and claiming that it is something new and revolutionary.

Originally posted by mrguderian

Hoping Planetside 2 invigorates the genre in general, I would love to see a true Borderlands MMO or anyone trying anything that isn't the same old thing and claiming that it is something new and revolutionary.

That's like saying LoL would invigorate the genre.  Neither LoL nor Planetside 2 are MMORPGs, so expecting them to invigorate a genre they're not a part of is odd.

Originally posted by Foomerang

 

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Originally posted by austriacus
Im not gona shot down your idea, like everything on paper it sounds great.

 

But i really gota ask you, and im sorry that this may sound rude but do you go out a lot?

All the things you are mentioning happen in real life and there are people doing it everyday. And you know what? it takes A LOT OF TIME.

The reality is people no longer want to invest all their time or even a substantial ammount of it on games.

People have jobs, families, college, etc. The community that once played MMOs in the beggining nowdays is too busy in real life to be part of a virtual world.

The features you mention all sound great but who is gona have the time to do them?

Im not saying people wouldnt want a virtual world, its just people are too busy to take care of it.

 

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Yes I go out a lot lol.
People play guitar hero, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Gran Tourismo, The Sims, Dance Dance Revolution, Farmville, tons of non player killing/player combat games. A video game is a device that challenges a person's cognitive skills, hand eye coordination, reflexes, pattern recognition and memorization. These mechanics can be expressed in a multitude of ways. MMORPGS used to do that, or at least they were trying. That is all Im getting at here. And as far as who is gonna have the time? Its a game. Its done at your leisure. If you dont have the time, its ok. Also, in a virtual world with a ton of different things to do and ways to play, the point doesnt become "how am I gonna do all of this" but more of, "i'm going to find a handful of things that I really enjoy and become a part of the whole thing".

 

I remember playing SWG for about 6 months and was talking to this guy one night in a cantina. He had been places and done things that I didnt know existed yet and vice versa. It was an eye opening experience that two people could cross paths in the same game and have completely different experiences. And I'm not talking about "oh you killed that boar with a fireball? I used a sword." or "you killed centaurs at the farm? I helped put out fires when I was there." Im talking about "I spend my time mixing songs for stage performances, he owns a restaurant on the other side of the world, she owns a mining operation, and yes, he goes out and kills centuars"

Yes im aware of all of those and i play most of them.

But you seem to be asking for activities that gota be learned and mastered through time and the games you mention are if implemented to mmorpgs just minigames.

And i know you feel that people should concentrate in virtual worlds on some parts of the game and not all of them but in general people wana do everything and when they feel they arent performing as well as others they feel that the game is screwing with them.

And im sorry but in a game of opportunities where mines are atacked sometimes and only for that period of time theres the material that mine produces, then people need to pay attention all the time to the game otherwise you lose oportunities.

12.7.26
subscriptions

genre

clarify what you mean by "this genre is dead" because the #s (as of March 2012) show that OPINION is nonsense ref

Originally posted by Foomerang

100% combat oriented online games. Cash shops come standard. Purely developer driven content. Esport is the name of the game for pvp. Socialization has become automatized.

If you were to tell me ten years ago that this is what MMORPGS would be like, I would have never even bothered to get involved.

MMO versions of old console games from a decade ago. Thats what we have right now. The irony is that console games today are actually more open and diverse than these so called mmorpgs.

Its a shame. I have faith in indie devs, as always. But the AAA mmo devs have really led the genre astray as of late. I wonder if it will ever get back on track.

Please don't tell me you are one of those people who thought of the original SWG as having "player driven content".....

I've played a few of the games with player driven content like COH and STO and neither really impressed me though neither does the notion that having an empty game world somehow equates to player driven content especially when there is no reason why people can't get a group together and decide to go farm whatever they want in any game the only difference is you dont have the entire rest of the playerbase at your beck and call simply because the game is so boring and lacking in developer created content.

Your assertion that if you knew mmorpg's would be what they are now you would have not even gotten into it is also a strange one maybe mmorpgs aren't and never were for you I hate SquareEnix games have since the merger but no way would I forgoe the awesome games I played before that merger which grounds me in the fact that I am in fact a true rpg fan so I say again maybe MMORPGS just aren't your thing.

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Originally posted by austriacus
Yes im aware of all of those and i play most of them.

But you seem to be asking for activities that gota be learned and mastered through time and the games you mention are if implemented to mmorpgs just minigames.

And i know you feel that people should concentrate in virtual worlds on some parts of the game and not all of them but in general people wana do everything and when they feel they arent performing as well as others they feel that the game is screwing with them.

And im sorry but in a game of opportunities where mines are atacked sometimes and only for that period of time theres the material that mine produces, then people need to pay attention all the time to the game otherwise you lose oportunities.

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It can be done and has been done to some extents many years ago in various games. Console games are branching out more this way as well. I think we have a difference of opinion on mmorpg design philosophies and thats fine.

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Originally posted by raistlinm
Please don't tell me you are one of those people who thought of the original SWg as having "player driven content".....

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Hmm. Well if players could make just about everything in the game and place those things just about anywhere in the world, do you think that opens the door for player made content? Or how about later when they implemented the storyteller mechanic where you could make scripted events with boss fights and customized loot drops placed anywhere in the world? I guess you and I have differing opinions on what player made content is.

Originally posted by Foomerang

 

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Originally posted by Gurpslord

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Originally posted by madazz

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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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It is getting worse IMO. Instances (cutting the world into many little pieces), cash shops, getting a small portion of the game for FREE and then finding out you are crippled if you don't pay (not true in a few instances). How about everything being on rails? What happened to exploration? Why are people not as social now that we have all these things to assist us into grouping? Why is everything just handed to us now with a low difficulty rating? I understand the grind sucks, but difficulty and grinding don't have to mean the same thing.   Why is it normal to repeat the same damn thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over again to unlock stuff, and that is your "end game content". Then, when an update comes out, your new end game content is just doing the new thing that came out over and over and over and over and over again to unluck slightly more powerful stuff. Which then just leaves many new players left behind drastically as not as many people want to group up to unlock TIER 1 armour/weps, because all the other players are too busy doing TIER 3 over and over and over and over again.   Its no wonder most people are only in a game a few months at a time as opposed to years. Oh well. Things will turn around eventually.

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The problem is back in the days of people playing for years at a time in giant virtual worlds there were very few options.  People didn't really have a choice.  If you wanted to play a game online with friends it was take it or leave it.  Things evolved from meridian, to UO, to EQ etc etc etc.  The industry isn't dead, nor is the genre.  It simply changed to suit the people playing it.  Yes, that's right.  The old schoolers are now the minority, they ushered in the genre and made it mainstream, thus a lot more people began paying attention and getting involved and the needs and wants of those consumers eventually out weighed the needs and wants of the die hard originals.

 

So, there it is.  Things won't turn around, they're ever getting more aggressively inclusive to fit more and more people, meaning that the good old days of sandboxy yore are not likely to rear up too often or even too successfully.

 

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What options are you talking about? The option to kill stuff 100 different ways in 1000 different games? I liked the older options better. Yeah there were less actual games to choose from, but at least each of those games had dozens of different ways to play. MMOs today have 2 maybe 3 ways to play, tops. And no, killing something with a fireball instead of a crossbow is not variety.

I missed anything that came before SWG so could you enlighten the uninformed like myself as to some of the dozens of different ways you could play those early mmorpgs?

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Originally posted by bhug
giant graphs and pie charts showing massive profit

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Thanks for that. However, this is about the genre in regards to the games themselves, not the money they generate. There is a difference. There are countless examples of things that have lost their soul and make crap tons of money.

Flame on bro. This is one of the fastest growing genres out there.

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Originally posted by raistlinm
I missed anything that came before SWG so could you enlighten the uninformed like myself as to some of the dozens of different ways you could play those early mmorpgs?

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This thread talks about all the stuff you could do in UO.

Originally posted by Foomerang

 

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Originally posted by raistlinm
Please don't tell me you are one of those people who thought of the original SWg as having "player driven content".....

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Hmm. Well if players could make just about everything in the game and place those things just about anywhere in the world, do you think that opens the door for player made content? Or how about later when they implemented the storyteller mechanic where you could make scripted events with boss fights and customized loot drops placed anywhere in the world? I guess you and I have differing opinions on what player made content is.

The funny thing is everything you mentioned encompanses one form of play and that would be combat, you know the aspect of gaming you are trashing this generation of games for relying to heavily on.

Look I have nothing against players who want to spend months on end gathering mats,even if those mats are gathered without having to fight for them as many could do in SWG but the bottom line is they still boil down to combat unless of course as asked in a later post you can give some examples of these dozens of playstyles that involve no combat.

Originally posted by Foomerang

 

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Originally posted by raistlinm
I missed anything that came before SWG so could you enlighten the uninformed like myself as to some of the dozens of different ways you could play those early mmorpgs?

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This thread talks about all the stuff you could do in UO.

And I should have to read through seven pages of posts just to pick out what you are talking about?!?!?

So far people mentioned SWG and EVE as coming close and I hate to say it but those two games rely heavily on combat regardless of what a player imagines is the reason they are fighting.

If you played them I would think it would be easy to list even three things that you could do in those games advance inthe game and never have to fight which is what your original post seems to imply if not going off the fact that you outright said so in a later post.

Ok finally three pages in someone took the liberty to list some of the features and out of the list I've seen so far only three of the things listed have I not seen anywhere else and honestly many of the features are offered by just about every game on the market just because people don't engross themselves inthe crafting of newer games doesn't mean it isn't there irnoically I hated crafting in SWG but since then I have been an avid crafter in every single mmorpg I have played and whle I can say that most games crafting pales in comparison to that one it doesn't take away from the fact that it's there.

Not to be a party pooper but this entire post is no different than when your parents told you the music you listen to is crap and pales in comparison to the music they listened to just like their parents told them, just like I spend most of my time telling my daughter.

The genre is neither dead nor dying you just don't like where it is going.

Originally posted by Mastermartz

Flame on bro. This is one of the fastest growing genres out there.

Bad timing to post that right after the graph showing the genre's growth slowing.

No clue of the validity of said graph, but still...it basically fits my mental model of how the genre is going.  But I feel the downward trend could be reversed if new game design was applied to the genre (like GW2 is kinda doing, although they didn't quite do it as much as WOW did back in the day; probably because there were so many more dead branches to prune back then.)

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Originally posted by raistlinm

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Originally posted by Foomerang  

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Originally posted by raistlinm Please don't tell me you are one of those people who thought of the original SWg as having "player driven content".....

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  Hmm. Well if players could make just about everything in the game and place those things just about anywhere in the world, do you think that opens the door for player made content? Or how about later when they implemented the storyteller mechanic where you could make scripted events with boss fights and customized loot drops placed anywhere in the world? I guess you and I have differing opinions on what player made content is.

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The funny thing is everything you mentioned encompanses one form of play and that would be combat, you know the aspect of gaming you are trashing this generation of games for relying to heavily on.

Look I have nothing against players who want to spend months on end gathering mats,even if those mats are gathered without having to fight for them as many could do in SWG but the bottom line is they still boil down to combat unless of course as asked in a later post you can give some examples of these dozens of playstyles that involve no combat.

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It was working its way towards that. When you had classes dedicated to home furnishings, or buffing other crafting classes. Professions whos sole purpose was to change the looks of other characters and offer visual emotes. Classes that could train wild animals to become mounts or classes that could craft vehicles. Classes that made houses, or food that helped people make better clothing. A lot of SWG was fueled by the end goal of better performance in combat. I wont deny that. SWG was far from perfect. But it had the ideas that made mmorpgs its own genre.
I'm saying if you take games like tony hawk, or sega gt, or any of the plethora of styles of gameplay that do not involve combat, you can see the potential that was there for making this type of virtual world. Especially with the potential an mmo has where you can have a community of people coming together for various goals. You can see that combat is one part of the big picture. And it is hard as hell to move away from such a strong concept.

We, as a society do not accept death. We fear it, want to avoid it at all costs. So it comes out in our culture. We are death obsessed. We want to conquer it, control and manipulate it. Be the master of it. It gets translated into the concept of a video game. When a video game can be so much more. Especially in a massive community setting.

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Mastermartz

Flame on bro. This is one of the fastest growing genres out there.

Bad timing to post that right after the graph showing the genre's growth slowing.

No clue of the validity of said graph, but still...it basically fits my mental model of how the genre is going.  But I feel the downward trend could be reversed if new game design was applied to the genre (like GW2 is kinda doing, although they didn't quite do it as much as WOW did back in the day; probably because there were so many more dead branches to prune back then.)

The genre has been growing for what twenty years? And simply because it isn't growing at the rate that it used to that somehow makes you or the op right?!?!?

Trust me if every game developed was made like UO or SWG there would be little to no growth we certainly wouldn't have pop culture hits like WOW most of the people I know who are avid gamers hate the old mmorpg genre as evidenced by all the friends I got to try SWG who went running away from it.

Don't get me wrong I loved SWG for a time but games built like that are basically like making a fine wine in the alcoholic beverage market fine wine is good but I'm certainly not so uptight that it's all I'll drink.

Originally posted by Foomerang

 

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Originally posted by raistlinm

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Originally posted by Foomerang  

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Originally posted by raistlinm Please don't tell me you are one of those people who thought of the original SWg as having "player driven content".....

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  Hmm. Well if players could make just about everything in the game and place those things just about anywhere in the world, do you think that opens the door for player made content? Or how about later when they implemented the storyteller mechanic where you could make scripted events with boss fights and customized loot drops placed anywhere in the world? I guess you and I have differing opinions on what player made content is.

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The funny thing is everything you mentioned encompanses one form of play and that would be combat, you know the aspect of gaming you are trashing this generation of games for relying to heavily on.

 

Look I have nothing against players who want to spend months on end gathering mats,even if those mats are gathered without having to fight for them as many could do in SWG but the bottom line is they still boil down to combat unless of course as asked in a later post you can give some examples of these dozens of playstyles that involve no combat.

 

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It was working its way towards that. When you had classes dedicated to home furnishings, or buffing other crafting classes. Professions whos sole purpose was to change the looks of other characters and offer visual emotes. Classes that could train wild animals to become mounts or classes that could craft vehicles. Classes that made houses, or food that helped people make better clothing. A lot of SWG was fueled by the end goal of better performance in combat. I wont deny that. SWG was far from perfect. But it had the ideas that made mmorpgs its own genre.
I'm saying if you take games like tony hawk, or sega gt, or any of the plethora of styles of gameplay that do not involve combat, you can see the potential that was there for making this type of virtual world. Especially with the potential an mmo has where you can have a community of people coming together for various goals. You can see that combat is one part of the big picture. And it is hard as hell to move away from such a strong concept.

We, as a society do not accept death. We fear it, want to avoid it at all costs. So it comes out in our culture. We are death obsessed. We want to conquer it, control and manipulate it. Be the master of it. It gets translated into the concept of a video game. When a video game can be so much more. Especially in a massive community setting.

This is the post I wish you made as your original post because it avoided the belittling of what todays games offer and as an extension the people who enjoy some of these games. 

Yes like john Lennon said "imagine",  it would be nice to have games like that and what's more we still have some games like that albeit too few but I'm not going to get on a soapbox and bitch and moan because devs aren't willing to risk their investment on games like UO or SWG when the elephant in the room is WOW I think we should certainly be understanding of why games aren't made like this and move on to the products that support the development style we prefer.

Another funny thing about this is that the reason I left SWG wasn't the cu or the NGE it was in fact the crappy ass players who more often than not turned out to be those unconventional players who didn't take part in ccombat like the crafters who often cornered markets and screwed them up as bad or worse than the devs do in games now a days or the ones who thought they could talk to anyone anyway they wanted to simply because they controlled so much of the game anyways.

Hatters gonna hate, whiners gonna whine, MMORPG genre continues to grow

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Originally posted by raistlinm
This is the post I wish you made as your original post because it avoided the belittling of what todays games offer and as an extension the people who enjoy some of these games. 

Yes like john Lennon said "imagine",  it would be nice to have games like that and what's more we still have some games like that albeit too few but I'm not going to get on a soapbox and bitch and moan because devs aren't willing to risk their investment on games like UO or SWG when the elephant in the room is WOW I think we should certainly be understanding of why games aren't made like this and move on to the products that support the development style we prefer.

Another funny thing about this is that the reason I left SWG wasn't the cu or the NGE it was in fact the crappy ass players who more often than not turned out to be those unconventional players who didn't take part in ccombat like the crafters who often cornered markets and screwed them up as bad or worse than the devs do in games now a days or the ones who thought they could talk to anyone anyway they wanted to simply because they controlled so much of the game anyways.

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Ok well thanks for clarifying what you think of me and shared some bad experiences you had in SWG. Probably wasn't the best thread to post in since it seems to have brought up some aggressive behavior but this is a free forum so do as you please.