Originally posted by Sevenstar61

Originally posted by dave6660

Because I'm a narcissistic, evil, vindictive bastard. 

Actually I believe that really is a case. No sane, respectfull person who cares about others would wish MMO or any other thing to do badly... for people to loose jobs etc.

Only people who care about themselves and think that their opinion is "The Truth" can wish something like that.

You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fingers and say, "That's the bad guy."

... So say good night to the bad guy!

Originally posted by MMOExposed

For the same reason that critics of pre release MMO hype train like to rube it in on fanboys that been attacking the critics. its sort of a major "I told you so" kind of thing.

 

"I told you developers and fanboys that you were doing things all wrong. Now your MMO is dying just like I speculated and predicted it would. Told you so. Next time dont be so blind fanboi and listen to what the critics who can see reality of the product has to say about your game so it can actually do great."

Exactly, if I were to do a piss poor job with something in my career, I'd like to know. I learn nothing from bum kissing, it's those small critiques that help to improve anything, imo. The problem with devs is they're egos are so big, they think they're above everyone else's opinion. Devs ignore concerns from the few testers that dare point out the flaws in the game, and when their game comes out it flops for the very reasons that were brought up in beta by testers.

Originally posted by dave6660

Originally posted by Sevenstar61

Originally posted by dave6660

Because I'm a narcissistic, evil, vindictive bastard. 

Actually I believe that really is a case. No sane, respectfull person who cares about others would wish MMO or any other thing to do badly... for people to loose jobs etc.

Only people who care about themselves and think that their opinion is "The Truth" can wish something like that.

You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fingers and say, "That's the bad guy."

... So say good night to the bad guy!

LOL I thought your comment was right on though .... nothing personal:)

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by Paradigm68

There are valid reasons.

If you're a big fan of the MMO genre and you think that genre is being ruined by certain dynamics (I.E. instancing, de-emphasizing communitiy) then big money games that use those dynamics need to fail or they'll become an adopted norm.

If you're a big fan of a given IP and an MMO has come out based on that IP but the MMO in your opinion has handled it terribly (I.E. LoTRO, SWTOR, ESO), then your only hope to play an MMO based on your favorite IP is to hope the current version fails and a new better one is made.

Again, your assumption that the fail would = a game made in the way you want is wishful thinking at its worst.  It's more likely they won't create MMOs ever again, or try to do the the same style "better."  A more productive path is to talk positively to the devs that are engaging their user bases and push for features you like.

Not at all. Its not an assumption that a new game would be better than the current, its the hope that the new game will be better than the current. What is for sure is if you don't like the the current iteration of MMO of your beloved IP, your only hope is that it will fail and maybe something better will replace it. 'Talking positively with the developers' just insn't a reasonable option for individuals in that situation. For example, if you wanted a sandbox SW MMORPG, talking positively with the devs of SWTOR isn't going to make them redesign the game for you.

Originally posted by jpnz

Originally posted by Paradigm68

There are valid reasons.

If you're a big fan of the MMO genre and you think that genre is being ruined by certain dynamics (I.E. instancing, de-emphasizing communitiy) then big money games that use those dynamics need to fail or they'll become an adopted norm.

If you're a big fan of a given IP and an MMO has come out based on that IP but the MMO in your opinion has handled it terribly (I.E. LoTRO, SWTOR, ESO), then your only hope to play an MMO based on your favorite IP is to hope the current version fails and a new better one is made.

This shows a fundamentally flawed logic that is pretty common amongst people that doesn't know how the real world works.

The logic of 'Failure = breeds innovation / better version' is flawed and history has proven time and again that it is false.

Why people still think this way I have no idea.

I'm not surprised you  have no idea, you're failing to understand what I'm saying.

I'm not talking about objectively better, improved games. I'm talking about the preferences of an individual. Someone who doesn't like themeparks, seeing themeparks fail financially is essentially their only hope that themeparks will be abandoned by developers. Or someone who doesn't like the current iteration of a given IP's MMO, they are not hoping failure leads to innovation, they are hoping failure leads to the abandonment of the thing they don't like. What is illogical about that?

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by jpnz

Originally posted by Paradigm68

There are valid reasons.

If you're a big fan of the MMO genre and you think that genre is being ruined by certain dynamics (I.E. instancing, de-emphasizing communitiy) then big money games that use those dynamics need to fail or they'll become an adopted norm.

If you're a big fan of a given IP and an MMO has come out based on that IP but the MMO in your opinion has handled it terribly (I.E. LoTRO, SWTOR, ESO), then your only hope to play an MMO based on your favorite IP is to hope the current version fails and a new better one is made.

This shows a fundamentally flawed logic that is pretty common amongst people that doesn't know how the real world works.

The logic of 'Failure = breeds innovation / better version' is flawed and history has proven time and again that it is false.

Why people still think this way I have no idea.

Yup.  Here's an example: the houses in Haiti were not built well, and certainly not to withstand a great earthquake.  When the earthquake did hit, it did not suddenly result in the rise of excellent buildings in Haiti.  The failure of an MMO will not suddenly result in better MMOs.  There are way too many other conclusions to be drawn from the failure, and 98% of them will not be the ones you wish for.

Granted, but you've misunderstood the dynamic I'm describing. That hope the next version of an IP based mmo or the trends of the genre in general will change given the financial pressure of failure in the marketplace isn't at all unreasonable. The person doesn't assume failure will lead to a specific outcome,they hope failure will lead to a specific outcome, but more practically are willing to settle for the hope that failure will at least lead to the abandonment of things they don't like. And that is entirely reasonable.

As far as your Haiti example, I assure you that if large corporations were building small tropical nations in the theme of 'Haiti' over and over, I assure you, some thought would go into improved design. Outside of that context your example doesn't apply at all to a product in the marketplace.

Originally posted by Normandy7
casuals

I seriously wonder why everyone keeps blaming everything on the "casuals", as if they don't remember ever being a "casual gamer" at one point in their lives.

The only reason I could think that anybody would actually want a game shut down, is to release the IP for a new game that would be more along thier personal preferences.

Originally posted by Entropy14

Originally posted by Deddpool
They want the mmo they are not playing to fail, because its not THEIR mmo..since they are putting money is X mmo, then all others must die to justify spending their money.  Stupid.

That is not even close to true, there is obviously a few people that think this, but seriously, people are sick of 300000000000 mmos reskinned and sold as something new.

 

If you have been reading, most want these shit mmos to die, so they stop making them, if they start losing money on them, then they will stop making crap mmos.

 

So its not stupid, like the one guy said, we ant quality not quantity.

Actually Deddpool is right, it's called the Teardown Mentality and it's been proven across multiple things beyond just games. When people are invested in something they naturally desire the other options to 'fail' in some way as it justifies their choice. You see this with political party supporters all the time. A member of one party will constantly look for ways to undermine all other parties in a discussion, even outside of a campaign, and this is because they need to justify to themselves that the other parties are lesser or inferior choices, making theirs the 'right' choice.

Just think about any situtaion where people choose between different groups... you will ALWAYS see this same effect.

Originally posted by Aeonblades

Because you have to tear down the old building and haul off the garbage before you can build something people will actually enjoy. The more MMO's that fail, the more likely we are to end up getting good games.

The more mmo's that fail, the less companies will be willing to risk developing new ones.

Originally posted by TheScavenger

So again...why do "some" people find enjoyment in a MMO being closed or doing badly?

It makes a TON of sense.

People actually crave MMOs.  Some people actually crave the gameplay, while others crave the ability to exploit the nature of MMOs and the aforementioned participants for egotisitical purposes.

Everytime a developer releases a product that fails to supply what these people crave, it causes feelings of antagonism, because developers are (ironically massively) clueless about the nature of the games they keep designing.

In my case, I think I enjoy being able to use the example of what the developers did wrong to show others why they shouldn't commit the same mistakes.  Note that failing at an MMO doesn't just mean that the majority didn't like your product.  It meant you expended more energy than you developed income.

Note that these developers are failing horrifically with 10 MBPS networking and 120 FPS graphics technology while people were succeeding in large with 9.6 KBPS networking and 16-color low res graphics for almost two decades.

Their incompetence is something to shout from the housetops.

Originally posted by Aeonblades

Because you have to tear down the old building and haul off the garbage before you can build something people will actually enjoy. The more MMO's that fail, the more likely we are to end up getting good games.

I personally don't enjoy watching games fail, but I would guess that would be the reason.

A rising tide raises all boats.

If one MMO is successful and enjoyed chances are more will be made. But when MMO''s start to fail, chances are companies will be wary of making MMO's.

Places like these are generally overwhelmingly dominated by forum warriors who see the world in zero-sum terms.

An MMO they don't like shutting down is the ultimate I Win/You Lose.

No matter how they try and dress it up or justify it to themselves or others, it pretty much comes down to nothing more than desperately wanting to score points, a fairly infantile bumper-sticker view of how the world and markets work, and not caring about anyone else.

This is a good thread, TheScavenger.

This kind of fear and loathing we see is unique to MMOs.  Yes, you have rivalries between Call of Duty fans and Battlefield fans.  You have rivalries between Torchlight fans and Diablo fans.  But these sort of rivalries don't match the kind of cruelty and malice we level against other games and other fans here.

I was really struck at the kind of malice levelled at the CoH fans after their game shut down.  The amazing thing about it was how many people who never played CoH and had no stake in the closure came out defending NCSoft's decision, or trying to justify the decision.

First of all, why is it important that this publisher's decision needed to be respected?  Secondly, why did they feel obligated to defend a multi-million dollar publishing conglomerate against a bunch of fans?  Fans who just had their fun ripped out from under them?

All the responses here are reasonable ones, but I am of the opinion that our enjoyment of MMO shutdowns is not natural reaction.  I don't feel this is something akin to taunting, or juvenile one-upmanship.  I don't think it can be explained in rational terms, like the desire to see better games, or the desire to see bad games end.  No, I think the posters here give us too much credit.

There is no rational justification for taking pleasure in the closure of a game not played.  There may be a "hope" that the closure will create something better, but certainly no guarantee.  Why do we get so emotionally vested in these games that we feel we have a stake in another game's demise?  What created such strange feelings in such an otherwise agreeable group?

At the heart of this business is extortion: deliver more bodies and wallets to us, or we'll take away all the good things you enjoy.  Your own wallet and your own body isn't enough.  And while the publishers will never tell you how much money they need, or how many bodies must be served, we are held accountable whenever the money and bodies get too low.

Hence, we are always playing in a state of panic: "will all my friends, all my accomplishments, all the costumes I bought in the item store, all my characters whom I loved, will they be taken from me tomorrow?"  You don't know...you can't know.  All you know is that your continued enjoyment is dependent on whether your publisher likes you.

As a result, we do our best to ensure the safety of the things we love.  We know how the business works.  Players only ever invest time and money in one MMO at a time.  The MMO business is a zero-sum game, like Myria said: in order for one MMO to win subscribers, another one has to lose subscribers.   And so, we delight in games when they fail, because it allows us a chance to say "our game is better," giving us hope that some of those players will help float our games.

Even if they don't float our games, it gives us an opportunity to say, "that game shut down because the loser community let it fail.  If there was any love there, it would have succeeded," as if this was a natural law.  We call the former players "yesterday's men" who played "yesterday's game" as a way to say to ourselves "we are tommorrow's men" playing "tomorrow's game."  Because we want to believe that our love, the meaning we get from playing these games regularly, will be enough to keep them going the next day.

But, alas, even that sounds a bit too rational.

Frankly, I think the pleasure we get from is a kind of perverse reaction to abuse, similar to Stockholm syndrome.  I think the very nature of the MMO business itself creates this perverse pleasure.  And the reason it does is because the entire MMO industry exercises a power over us that no other fully legitimate industry really does.

I said "fully" legitimate, because there are several quasi-legitimate and illegitimate industries that illicit this type of perverse reaction.  Prostitution is one.  Drugs are another.  Gambling is a third.  Any industry that has the power to admit or withold pleasure can illicit this reaction.  And because the good things we get from MMOs can be taken away from us without warning or cause, it creates madmen out of all of us, who are desperately looking for meaning when tragedy strikes.

Originally posted by Beatnik59

 What created such strange feelings in such an otherwise agreeable group?

I really couldn't disagree more with your entire post, but I think if I dispell this one particular myth, you have a better chance of getting a glimpse of what is really going on.

We are NOT an agreeable group.  That is why people relish the demise of each other's MMOs.  The RPers love it when MMO X fails because it failed to protect roleplaying.  The powergamers relish it when MMO Y fails because they didn't provide enough endgame raid content and vertical gear and power progression.  The explorers relish it when MMO Z fails because they didn't provide an open world with lots of lore to follow and deep, dark places to delve.  So on and so forth.

It isn't because of addiction, or even lack of perspective.  It's because the perspective is perfectly clear and wafting directly before our eyes.  The developers chose to cater to some other audience at the expense of the one in which we (individually) reside.

And most of the time they are ELIMINATING all audiences, rather than including any.

There is no other industry more worthy of failure.

I am not going to read any of the posts here, so if this has already been said, forgive me.

Schadenfreude + "I told you so"

That is all.

Originally posted by Loktofeit
Remember those kids that seemed happy when another kid's toy broke. They grew up and now type things on the internet.

That, or they are the ones that had their toy broken and now they are exacting revenge! 

  I like to see those that tried to pass off "crap" as a quality product take it square in the keister. There is something very wrong in the industry, some sort of echo chamber effect that cannot be broken until they lose alot of money.  Those who have the money to invest have been duped into misallocating those resources into projects run by con-men; while those with worth while projects have been pushed into internet panhandling for survival.

  Why do people continue to support companies and products that are obviously thinly veiled acts of fraud? How many bait and switches will those people tolerate before they finaly revolt against the industry status quo? The fan base will never get a great leap forward in the genre while the consumer base keeps blindly shoveling money into the industries coffers.

  In other words stop paying top dollar for bargin basement products. Demand a better product and experiance from the industry.  Every crap game that fails means a lesson learned , something not to emulate, a genre evolving into something better.