I still remember the first day WoW went live w/ LFG and everyone had their world turned upside down. It was addicting as hell... at first =/

meh... I'd be against it in games w/ open world pvp/siege-type objectives. Otherwise, why the hell would I want to walk all the way over there XD ...And no SoW buff either ;P

Originally posted by Hycoo

I can't talk for these other guys here (I didnt play EQ, UO etc.), but the reason why i don't like dungeon finders, is that it teleports you right into an instance, making the game a lobby game, and that destroys immersion. And when i play mmorpgs immersion is important to me. I enjoy lobby games (I have way too many hours in Dota 2 for example), but they are different games.

Yes an mmorpg should be like a secondary world, thats the reason they should be made in the first place. Call it whatever you want, but this is how a mmorpg should work IMO. Lobby games are a different genre. Too bad these two different genres keep on merging with every new mmorpg that launches. Not surprised tho with the success of games like LoL.

That is your issue. You have this strange idea that this label of games have to be different.

To me, games are just games. Some SP games have open world, and many MMOs have lobbies. So what if lobby games should be another genre. Just relabel all the MMOs that have lobbies.

They don't magically becomes better games with a re-labeling, nor they becomes worse games. They are the same. It is funny to see people choose their entertainment based on labels, rather than whether they like the product.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

That is your issue. You have this strange idea that this label of games have to be different.

To me, games are just games. Some SP games have open world, and many MMOs have lobbies. So what if lobby games should be another genre. Just relabel all the MMOs that have lobbies.

They don't magically becomes better games with a re-labeling, nor they becomes worse games. They are the same. It is funny to see people choose their entertainment based on labels, rather than whether they like the product.

As i said i enjoy both real mmorpgs and lobby games.

I don't enjoy them because i call them seperate things tho, but because they offer different experiences. They fullfill different needs. I would like to enjoy those different experiences in the future aswell.  I don't want mmorpgs to become lobby games, because there are other games that offer that fast in fast out experience already (and imo do it much better).

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by DavisFlight

And what's so good about long term? GEE I DON'T KNOW, why the hell would a company want a stable increasing income over time?

What is so bad if they can make the same amount of money by making many short term games?

And from a player perspective, isn't more games, more variety better?

Except we don't have more variety. There's been less variety than ever in the last 8 years of the MMO genre. We had variety in 2002, we don't have variety now.

And a growing company with a strong core is much better as a business plan than one that just shits out a quick game and then implodes on itself.

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

Originally posted by DavisFlight

DAoC is revered for its entire game, as it was very well developed. It had some of the hardest, and best raids, in MMO history. Its day to day PvE was average/slightly above average (mostly just copy paste from EQ PvE, with better combat feel) but the raids were unmatched.

Don't go assuming you knew what all the several dozen pre WoW MMOs were like because you peeked over a buddy's shoulder while he was playing EQ, which we've already agreed was flawed in design and in need of instances.

But thanks for helping me prove my point that WoW fans will ignore facts to help defend their point.

 

Well made MMOs do not need instances. Good developers compensate with good game design: see DAoC.

Bad developers compensate with instancing, sacrifice the Massively Multiplayer for a bit more convenience, because it takes a lot more talent and understanding to make an instanceless MMO, something the companies churning out WOW clones do not have.

Games like Asherons Call and DAoC are revered by a small group of people.  There's a reason why no successful game has cropped up by using them as a foundation like EQ was.

Er, that's because no game has TRIED to. The closest anyone has come is Planetside 2 and GW2, both copied their RvR from DAoC, and both are doing better than most other games.

Games that have used EQ as a base? Implode almost right after launch, or are forced to use instances.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by ShakyMo


Eve beat swtor because its made a profit. Swtor still hasn't broke even, and likely never will.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02/01/ea-reveals-swtor-subscription-and-sales-numbers-beats-financial/

According to MMOData, it is also still above one million subscribers

http://mmodata.net/

They've easily made profit. Only, not as much as they hoped.

People are still delusional... if they were making a profit they wouldn't have fired so many devs.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by ShakyMo


Eve beat swtor because its made a profit. Swtor still hasn't broke even, and likely never will.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02/01/ea-reveals-swtor-subscription-and-sales-numbers-beats-financial/

According to MMOData, it is also still above one million subscribers

http://mmodata.net/

They've easily made profit. Only, not as much as they hoped.

People are still delusional... if they were making a profit they wouldn't have fired so many devs.

Someone obviously has no idea how the industry works.  They dump devs to increase the profit margin plus you don't need anywhere near the same number of employees to fix bugs and make expansions as you do to create a game from scratch.

Originally posted by Latronus

Originally posted by DavisFlight

 

People are still delusional... if they were making a profit they wouldn't have fired so many devs.

Someone obviously has no idea how the industry works.  They dump devs to increase the profit margin plus you don't need anywhere near the same number of employees to fix bugs and make expansions as you do to create a game from scratch.

Originally posted by Rydeson

Originally posted by Scot
I would never call casuals lazy, but they are casual and that has led us to this point.

So.. What would you call a character in EQ that wanted to get from Halas to Freeport, but didn't want to spend the 20-30 minutes running it, or paying someone to port them there?  I'm just curious..  Oh.. is this a good time for me to say how much I hated the installment of PoP books?  LOL

Semi-casual. :)

I have to agree on the concept that devs going does not mean that much for a game comments, but it is a industry news item every time it happens like it is a surprise to all concerned. "MMO X is the 8th MMO this year to loose devs after launch, what a shock!" It is not a surprise at all.

Auto-magic 'group finders' (more like: 'group creators') fill me with so much hate. But I will attempt to avoid a pure rant, and instead discuss the LFG system as a whole.

I don't have anything against a good player-driven LFG system. My favorite out of the games I have played is the LFG system in Dungeons & Dragons Online, as it was a very good system for you to post yourself & what you were looking for, or to have your group post what it was planning and what it was looking for. I wish other games would look towards DDO's LFG system. I haven't played DDO in years, but I have yet to find a game that is its equal in LFG systems. DDO's was the closest to the AutoMagic Creator as possible, while still leaving the final decision up to the players... which allowed the players to find exactly what they were looking for, and not having to simply hope the AI picked well.

Simple LFG systems that do nothing more than flag a player LFG just aren't enough, so I can understand the cry for a better LFG system in that circumstance, but I (obviously) dislike the opposite end where you flag yourself LFG and the AI Group Creator crams everyone looking for the same thing into a group. There's so many situations that can lead to Group Creator Fail (sticking a first-timer into a group of pros that wants nothing more than to speedrun an instance, for example, or sticking someone who doesn't identify themselves as a healer into a group AS the healer because their class has the ability to heal).

I don't want an AI to decide the particulars of my group, I prefer some interaction and thought by the players for that. Player interaction in creating a group tends to also lead to more player interaction while IN a group, and I'd rather have that interaction than have a group full of people who never say a word besides acronyms and terse terms like 'rdy?' 'r' 'k' 'go', if you even get that much chatter. Situations like that make the game feel like a lobby system waiting for the AI to match you up with others who might as well be little more than AIs themselves... and I prefer to feel as if I am playing in a world filled with other players. Something about the Group Creator system nullifies that feeling for me.

100% agree about group finder.

And anyone saying its a good thing, well... never played a good mmorpg. And is probably not that old.

NO offense ofcourse!

To be honest, there will never come a mmorpg again, which i will enjoy, sad as it is, cause i used to love the genre, all the way back to Ultima Online.

Instant travel is also a bad bad thing...

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

Originally posted by Hycoo

Im pretty sure Lord Of The Rings would be just as epic if they just had Gandalf teleport Frodo into Mordor in the start of the first movie so they could destroy the ring right away.

I'm sure LOTR would be just as epic if Gandalf went to hit the Balrog but discovered that Radagast had tagged him first and so Gandalf hat to wait 5 hours in hopes of the Balrog respawning.

Or or or! they could have worked together, you know, like real people do.

Real people bickers. Why do you think solo-ing is so popular in MMOs. Do you realy think people want to work together all the time when they relax in a entertainment product?

Its not an MMO anymore though if they never want to work with other people. They are playing a single player RPG at that point with a chat lobby. Now don't get me wrong, single player RPGs have been trending this way for a while with limited comunity interaction for games like D3 or Dark Souls and the like. D3 specifically tried to add all of the good things a comunity brings while getting rid of all the bad things (More people selling stuff on ah, yet you do not need to meet them. Can group to join others on a dungeon but its clearable by yourself). There are facebook games that would be single player games except to include a social media aspect, most of which you don't really need to know who anyone is, rather you just need a large friends list or to click a popup for you to progress in your solo RPG.

But that is the single player RPGs doing that. MMOs SHOULD be about interacting with people. You should want to play with other people. Raid and dungeon finders are some of the things used by these single player rpgs to give the illusion of community when there is none.  I get why these features are popular, I just don't understand why EVERY genre has to trend to it.

Social media based RPGs, Single Player RPGs and MMOs are becoming blended more and more because of features like this.

And this is why people complain about old school MMOs not really existing now, because emphisis on living world and community are being replaced by other things more important to the average gamer.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by DavisFlight

And what's so good about long term? GEE I DON'T KNOW, why the hell would a company want a stable increasing income over time?

What is so bad if they can make the same amount of money by making many short term games?

And from a player perspective, isn't more games, more variety better?

Except we don't have more variety. There's been less variety than ever in the last 8 years of the MMO genre. We had variety in 2002, we don't have variety now.

And a growing company with a strong core is much better as a business plan than one that just shits out a quick game and then implodes on itself.

We don't have more variety? How many more MMOs in different settings aer released in the last 10 years? Or you define "variety" only as those games you like?

Originally posted by zekeofev

Originally posted by nariusseldon

 

Real people bickers. Why do you think solo-ing is so popular in MMOs. Do you realy think people want to work together all the time when they relax in a entertainment product?

 

Its not an MMO anymore though if they never want to work with other people. They are playing a single player RPG at that point with a chat lobby. Now don't get me wrong, single player RPGs have been trending this way for a while with limited comunity interaction for games like D3 or Dark Souls and the like. D3 specifically tried to add all of the good things a comunity brings while getting rid of all the bad things (More people selling stuff on ah, yet you do not need to meet them. Can group to join others on a dungeon but its clearable by yourself). There are facebook games that would be single player games except to include a social media aspect, most of which you don't really need to know who anyone is, rather you just need a large friends list or to click a popup for you to progress in your solo RPG.

 

But that is the single player RPGs doing that. MMOs SHOULD be about interacting with people. You should want to play with other people. Raid and dungeon finders are some of the things used by these single player rpgs to give the illusion of community when there is none.  I get why these features are popular, I just don't understand why EVERY genre has to trend to it.

 

Social media based RPGs, Single Player RPGs and MMOs are becoming blended more and more because of features like this.

 

And this is why people complain about old school MMOs not really existing now, because emphisis on living world and community are being replaced by other things more important to the average gamer.

Not a MMO anymore? So? ... who gets to decide what a MMO is? It is just a label anyway.

By your definition, WOW is not a MMO .. and more a Diablo clone since most play it as a lobby game. If you really want to change the name .. well .. you have to convince a lot of people to change the usage.

The "MMOs" are moving in that direction because that is what people want. A lot of them are already changing to be more like online co-op RPG instead of virtual world game. I don't see that as a bad thing. If i find it fun, i will play it, and i don't play games to socialize.

Raid/group finders may have ruined MMOPRG's (whatever those are - I'm no expert in that acronym), but MMORPGs seem to be going strong even with these tools.

Maybe they ruined MMORPGs for a select group of people.  That would be a more accurate / less sensationalist thread title.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

By your definition, WOW is not a MMO .. and more a Diablo clone since most play it as a lobby game.

Honestly that little piece of fiction is yet another sign of how divorced most of those arguing endlessly around here are from actual games and gameplay.

The notion that everyone just logs in and stands around Org/Stormwind (or Dal/Shat/Whatever) queueing is, and always has been, pure BS. People don't run dailies from Org. They don't farm crafting mats from Org. They don't capture new mini-pets from Org. They don't do a hundred different things that most of the playerbase engages in on a regular basis from Org.

Honestly, most of what gets said here is such BS that it's hard to imagine anyone taking these arguments seriously.

Originally posted by Ban_Khaeros

Raid/group finders may have ruined MMOPRG's (whatever those are - I'm no expert in that acronym), but MMORPGs seem to be going strong even with these tools.

 

Maybe they ruined MMORPGs for a select group of people.  That would be a more accurate / less sensationalist thread title.

 I agree. And luckily i do not belong to that small group of people. In fact, i won't play a game without raid/group finder. I went back to WOW precisely because it put in a LFR.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by DavisFlight

And what's so good about long term? GEE I DON'T KNOW, why the hell would a company want a stable increasing income over time?

What is so bad if they can make the same amount of money by making many short term games?

And from a player perspective, isn't more games, more variety better?

Except we don't have more variety. There's been less variety than ever in the last 8 years of the MMO genre. We had variety in 2002, we don't have variety now.

And a growing company with a strong core is much better as a business plan than one that just shits out a quick game and then implodes on itself.

We don't have more variety? How many more MMOs in different settings aer released in the last 10 years? Or you define "variety" only as those games you like?

I define variety as games that are different from one another. You know, how everyone defines variety.

If a shop has 20 colors of paint, but only 40 paint cans, it still has more variety than a giant megaplex that has 3000 cans of paint, but they're all white.

Originally posted by Ban_Khaeros

Raid/group finders may have ruined MMOPRG's (whatever those are - I'm no expert in that acronym), but MMORPGs seem to be going strong even with these tools.

 

Maybe they ruined MMORPGs for a select group of people.  That would be a more accurate / less sensationalist thread title.

After almost the 100% failure rate of the last 8 years of AAA MMOs I wouldn't say "going strong". And no, I'd say they ruined MMOs. The new games are not what most would call MMOs.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by zekeofev

Originally posted by nariusseldon

 

Real people bickers. Why do you think solo-ing is so popular in MMOs. Do you realy think people want to work together all the time when they relax in a entertainment product?

 

Its not an MMO anymore though if they never want to work with other people. They are playing a single player RPG at that point with a chat lobby. Now don't get me wrong, single player RPGs have been trending this way for a while with limited comunity interaction for games like D3 or Dark Souls and the like. D3 specifically tried to add all of the good things a comunity brings while getting rid of all the bad things (More people selling stuff on ah, yet you do not need to meet them. Can group to join others on a dungeon but its clearable by yourself). There are facebook games that would be single player games except to include a social media aspect, most of which you don't really need to know who anyone is, rather you just need a large friends list or to click a popup for you to progress in your solo RPG.

 

But that is the single player RPGs doing that. MMOs SHOULD be about interacting with people. You should want to play with other people. Raid and dungeon finders are some of the things used by these single player rpgs to give the illusion of community when there is none.  I get why these features are popular, I just don't understand why EVERY genre has to trend to it.

 

Social media based RPGs, Single Player RPGs and MMOs are becoming blended more and more because of features like this.

 

And this is why people complain about old school MMOs not really existing now, because emphisis on living world and community are being replaced by other things more important to the average gamer.

Not a MMO anymore? So? ... who gets to decide what a MMO is? It is just a label anyway.

By your definition, WOW is not a MMO .. and more a Diablo clone since most play it as a lobby game. If you really want to change the name .. well .. you have to convince a lot of people to change the usage.

The "MMOs" are moving in that direction because that is what people want. A lot of them are already changing to be more like online co-op RPG instead of virtual world game. I don't see that as a bad thing. If i find it fun, i will play it, and i don't play games to socialize.

I would argue that WoW changed its design philosophy. Vanilla WoW is not like current WoW at all except for the storyline. You agree it is more of a lobby game now with players hanging around the major hubs. It was not like that to start with. So yes I would argue that with every patch WoW has become more like a single player RPG with a chat room and trending farther and farther away from its EQ+AC2 roots. The patch that added group and dungeon finder was definately a landmark point on this journey (to try and get this back on topic).

I understand its popular and I love some single player RPGs from time to time. The problem is that there is no Massive Multiplayer Online World for me to play in with the key word being world. I want reasons to interact that are not just combat and reasons to meet people in a game. Current games do not have the lasting appeal for me because of the focus on the single player type of content and thus I generally do not pick them up.

Originally posted by Arcondo87

My topic is about the exploration/game ruining Group finder! Now we all know what WoW has turned into...a lazy mans click fest! Why leave SW/Org when u can just stand outside the AH and click LFG/LFR till you die to get to max lvl? Where did this worlds sense of exploration and achievment go? The mmo game devs are bending over and kissing ppls you know what making there games for LAZY friendly.

Then ppl say well i dont have time to spamm LFG in a city. OR I only have 1hr a day to play!

To them i say this...MMORPG games arnt for you go play FPS, if you are looking for quick fast gameplay.

I can only PRAY/HOPE/DREAM!!!!! That Elders Scrolls, FF14 Reborn and many more new mmo's do not follow this path and ruin there game, rendering the world a compleat usless waist.

I see your post completely off. I see need for 5mans and raids as ENDGAME entertrainment. So guess world have been explored pretty good at that point (especially for altholics like me having all classes maxed out). The only thing left at some point is endgame, where you do need company. So do not see any problem standing in front of ah if no gathering on that alt. With my gatheres I have been usually out there ... well ... gathering.

LFG is best invention ever for those that want to play end game and at same time do not have real life friends in guild.