OP is right, no game can match WoWs ten years of content.

People who expect as much will get perpetually disappointed.

It is hard to invest yourself long-term in a game *hoping* it'll "get there" with content, however...

My answer to people facing this dillema is to quit MMOs. At least for a couple of years (if not forever).

Originally posted by ShakyMo

Let's face it wow has bad pvp, so there's room for a themepark with strong pvp

It's so weird still reading comments like that.

WoW's PVP hasn't been matched yet. I know it's hard to swallow, but there you go. It just hasn't.

Originally posted by dimnikar

OP is right, no game can match WoWs ten years of content.

People who expect as much will get perpetually disappointed.

It is hard to invest yourself long-term in a game *hoping* it'll "get there" with content, however...

My answer to people facing this dillema is to quit MMOs. At least for a couple of years (if not forever).

What a ludicrous comment.

The fact is, it doesn't matter if a game like WoW has ten years of depth built into it.  It still gets old and stale, and people aren't going to play WoW forever.

Also, WoW had a long discovery and R&D process because they were doing a lot of new things.  It only takes new game developers a fraction of the time to implement the same features WoW took ten years to build in.

The issue now is, everyone is sick and tired of WoW gameplay and carbon copy games.  Devs are going to have to start coming up with original ideas, and yes, they will take time to develop. Still, three plus years of development should be plenty to allow for a nice and robust initial game, including some thing that took WoW a very long time to implement.

This is what is known as "standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before us".  We are learning from the lessons learned by our predecessors.  Tech in general is on an exponential growth curve because of this.  Games are no different.  In fact, more time is likely being spent on art assets, story and voice acting than on programming these MMOs.

Originally posted by Enigmatus

Originally posted by Quirhid

And they love to use buzz-words like "dynamic", "deep", "complex", "emergent content" and "meaningful" like they have any specific meaning at all. Without going into details, which they never give, those words mean very little.

While I'm not sure what I make of the rest of your comment, I kinda have to agree with this little tidbit. I've always constantly wondered what the hell people mean when they use these words, and because they never bother to give a definition, or just ignore my question or give REALLY vague answers, I'm completely left in the dark.

Newsflash: If you don't tell me what the hell something means to you based on your definition, I'm not going to have a clue about what you are talking about.

Quirhid's post seems pretty jaded and heavily opinionated as he trounces on the opinions and dreams of others, probably because he's just sick of hearing all the wishful thinking going on from players who are realizing how shitty all these games really are. Anyways do you really need to be told what these words mean and how they relate to mmos? Come on. People want dynamic content so that they don't end up with the same outcome everytime they do something. They want those something's to be deep and complex and seriously what gamer wouldn't?! And emergent content is content created on the fly through players actions in game. Neverwinters foundry is a good example but better would probably be Planetside 2. Players choose when and where and how to fight so every situation is different. And you're kidding yourself if you don't want what you do with your character in game to be meaningful to the world and people around you.

Originally posted by Mike-McQueen

Originally posted by Enigmatus

Originally posted by Quirhid

And they love to use buzz-words like "dynamic", "deep", "complex", "emergent content" and "meaningful" like they have any specific meaning at all. Without going into details, which they never give, those words mean very little.

While I'm not sure what I make of the rest of your comment, I kinda have to agree with this little tidbit. I've always constantly wondered what the hell people mean when they use these words, and because they never bother to give a definition, or just ignore my question or give REALLY vague answers, I'm completely left in the dark.

Newsflash: If you don't tell me what the hell something means to you based on your definition, I'm not going to have a clue about what you are talking about.

Quirhid's post seems pretty jaded and heavily opinionated as he trounces on the opinions and dreams of others, probably because he's just sick of hearing all the wishful thinking going on from players who are realizing how shitty all these games really are. Anyways do you really need to be told what these words mean and how they relate to mmos? Come on. People want dynamic content so that they don't end up with the same outcome everytime they do something. They want those something's to be deep and complex and seriously what gamer wouldn't?! And emergent content is content created on the fly through players actions in game. Neverwinters foundry is a good example but better would probably be Planetside 2. Players choose when and where and how to fight so every situation is different. And you're kidding yourself if you don't want what you do with your character in game to be meaningful to the world and people around you.

I think it's worth mentioning that if you ask someone or challenge ;) someone to describe those buzzwords they will do so quite easily. I think a problem sometimes arises when companies will take the easiest way to be able to describe their game as one of these buzzwords so they can sucker people into buying them. In the companies defence on the other hand people won't always  give the same answer as to what these buzzwords mean, sandbox is a great example of that. Now my post is “heavily opinionated and jaded” too but I don't think that is grounds for dismissal well atleast not entirely.

Originally posted by Mike-McQueen

Anyways do you really need to be told what these words mean and how they relate to mmos? Come on. People want dynamic content so that they don't end up with the same outcome everytime they do something. They want those something's to be deep and complex and seriously what gamer wouldn't?! And emergent content is content created on the fly through players actions in game. Neverwinters foundry is a good example but better would probably be Planetside 2. Players choose when and where and how to fight so every situation is different. And you're kidding yourself if you don't want what you do with your character in game to be meaningful to the world and people around you.

Considering that each individual person on this forum alone has a slightly different -> very different interpretation of the same word, I'd say yes. Also I never said anything about the last sentence.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Old MMOs were not that popular when comparing to the traditional games of the time - never as popular as they are now.

The "why MMOs became popular" was because they started to be half decent games. There is really no excuse for bug, poor UI graphics and gameplay. No excuse. Modern MMOs, even if you don't like them, have raised the bar up to the level of rest of video games. Unlike in the past, players have raised standards, and because there are so many titles out there, they don't have to settle with less.

The moment to moment fun simply wasn't there until it was streamlined, and the actual fun bits were identified and pronounced. The features you se now on the background, such as housing and crafting, are not game makers in the same scale as simple well-designed and well-made combat is. Adventuring is a lot more popular than medieval fantasy make-believe.

Well, the burden is one again on you to prove, that mmos are nowaday vastly more popular in comparison with traditional games, just because they are in our face with ads and almost everyone knows what wow is does not mean that more people play mmos as a percentage of the gaming population.

Meanwhile the niche audience thinks they are entitled to have an AAA MMORPG made just for them. Even more sad is that they can't agree on what should be in that game. What they list as a "must have features" I couldn't care less about. And they love to use buzz-words like "dynamic", "deep", "complex", "emergent content" and "meaningful" like they have any specific meaning at all. Without going into details, which they never give, those words mean very little.

It is like while those features are veiled behind those magic words, they can't be ripped apart. Which I and many others would do admittedly if they would publish their ideas. But hell, I've thrown my ideas to the wolves and see what survives. That should be the process, shouldn't it? I have no rose-tinted goggles when I look back to my favorite games. Conversely some people here think their game should be handled with silk gloves or else they will break.

The good then can be shit now. These games don't exist in a vacuum. All this talk of remakes and bringing back arcaic features makes me sad. Like Icewhite hinted, there's no profit in going back. It is very unlikely those titles and features in them would be accepted in the market today.

The only direction has always been forward; make new games, invent new features - don't bring back the old.

 

What is the alternative then ? Having a deity-like impression of having it all figured out and revel in the successess and achievments of modern AAA mmos while all the numbers around are just going down and down and hailing the return to arcade gameplay as progress and forward direction while badmouthing other people that they look back too much? :)

Flame on!

:)

Originally posted by Magiknight
The OP assumes that a themepark can only succeed if it has as much endgame as WoW. Why does an MMO have to be focused on the endgame? If it was an MMO it would have content during the journey also.

Guild Wars 2 has tons of gameplay during the journey. People are mass leaving due to lack of endgame content and things to do. And outside of WoW, has the most content I've seen from a themepark MMO...that has been released after WoW. And that is still not enough, as people end up going to WoW (half the guild of 200 or so, went back to WoW) or game x y or z.

But like said earlier in the thread. Content just goes by so fast...so that is a problem with the game design. So it is partly lack of content (in this case), but also because content goes far too fast. I think SWTOR ran into this problem big time...but SWTOR just ended up forgetting the story at endgame and became another raid MMO...so that was also a problem.

Originally posted by TheScavenger

Originally posted by Magiknight
The OP assumes that a themepark can only succeed if it has as much endgame as WoW. Why does an MMO have to be focused on the endgame? If it was an MMO it would have content during the journey also.

Guild Wars 2 has tons of gameplay during the journey. People are mass leaving due to lack of endgame content and things to do. And outside of WoW, has the most content I've seen from a themepark MMO...that has been released after WoW. And that is still not enough, as people end up going to WoW (half the guild of 200 or so, went back to WoW) or game x y or z.

 

But like said earlier in the thread. Content just goes by so fast...so that is a problem with the game design. So it is partly lack of content (in this case), but also because content goes far too fast. I think SWTOR ran into this problem big time...but SWTOR just ended up forgetting the story at endgame and became another raid MMO...so that was also a problem.

 

I think the problem with GW2, in relation to this topic, is that the content is just as repetative as any other MMO.  Plus, your character progression more or less tops out after about 30, which means the majority of your gameplay has very little change at all.  Ideally, you want to give players some new tools throughout the entire leveling process, to build them up for whatever endgame you have designed.  GW2 seems to have just added 50 levels for no reason other than to add 50 levels.  

Originally posted by asmkm22

Originally posted by TheScavenger

Originally posted by Magiknight
The OP assumes that a themepark can only succeed if it has as much endgame as WoW. Why does an MMO have to be focused on the endgame? If it was an MMO it would have content during the journey also.

Guild Wars 2 has tons of gameplay during the journey. People are mass leaving due to lack of endgame content and things to do. And outside of WoW, has the most content I've seen from a themepark MMO...that has been released after WoW. And that is still not enough, as people end up going to WoW (half the guild of 200 or so, went back to WoW) or game x y or z.

 

But like said earlier in the thread. Content just goes by so fast...so that is a problem with the game design. So it is partly lack of content (in this case), but also because content goes far too fast. I think SWTOR ran into this problem big time...but SWTOR just ended up forgetting the story at endgame and became another raid MMO...so that was also a problem.

 

I think the problem with GW2, in relation to this topic, is that the content is just as repetative as any other MMO.  Plus, your character progression more or less tops out after about 30, which means the majority of your gameplay has very little change at all.  Ideally, you want to give players some new tools throughout the entire leveling process, to build them up for whatever endgame you have designed.  GW2 seems to have just added 50 levels for no reason other than to add 50 levels.  

Don't you think the traits vary the gameplay?  I do.  Don't get me wrong though, as I know what you are saying and could definitely use additional elements.  I find myself only utilizing the same weapons all the time so I could probably switch that up.

Originally posted by dimnikar

Originally posted by ShakyMo

Let's face it wow has bad pvp, so there's room for a themepark with strong pvp

It's so weird still reading comments like that.

WoW's PVP hasn't been matched yet. I know it's hard to swallow, but there you go. It just hasn't.

games ive played with worse pvp than wow - swtor, rift, coh, co, eq

games ive played with equally bad pvp as wow - tsw, aoc (as now), dcuo, lotro

games ive played with better pvp than wow - gw, gw2, war, aion, perpetuum, aoc at launch

games ive played that rip off wows scabby pvp arm then beat it absoloutley senseless with it - eve, daoc, planetside

Originally posted by Prenho

Originally posted by Onomas

God i miss the older days when you actualy had to earn something and it felt so damn good. Now everything is thrown at you and the hardest thing in a mmo is waiting til level 20 to ride a mount ;) These new aged gamers ruined the mmo genre then whine about all the console style rpgs............. errr themeparks all suck and no content lol. Funny they havent figures out that player generated content owns everything. THey lost their creativity and it has hurt our community.

It's sad to see what western players have become.

Whiny complainers pining for the nostalgia of youth?

Originally posted by Kyleran
Put the time(sinks) back into MMOs and you'll begin to retain players again. Those who don't like this set of design won't stick around no matter what you try to do. Nothing will ever entertain them over the long term. MMORPGs used to be designed for the patient and persiverent. They could be once again.

Well said and fully agree with it. But today we have a new louder majority. Then again we also had them back then, just look at the NGE with SWG anyone who was active with the game and it's forums could already see that many wanted SWG to be different, yet those of us who actually played wanted pure fixes.

I do believe if pre-cu SWG was hard on fixing issue's/bugs that the game eventually might have walked the same route as CCP did with Eve in my mind SWG might even have done better. But just like the majority of people into these games we also have impatient investors/company's...and yes WoW happend, which made every company re-think the things they where developing.

As another poster mentioned SWG was already dripping subs well before the CU and the NGE, but I have noticed that many ex-swg players are completely ignoring those facts. The NGE was indeed the last drop for many players who played till the NGE.

And to the OP: I have played WoW but have played other MMORPG that I felt where much better. Eve I only have tried a couple of times but just couldn't get the right fibe from it due to me being a spaceship. I don't mind being some sort of vehicle in regular games, but I just want a character when I play a MMORPG.

So eventually to me the reason why most MMORPG don't succeed to capture me playing them has to do with being spoiled with SWG, there isn't one MMORPG that even comes close, and I do know there are a few MMORPG's that do come close to a certain extend of feature's I loved in SWG most of the time they seem visually not appealing to me.

And I am sure there plenty of gamers around that also are not spoiled by WoW or EVE but perhaps by other MMORPG's.