I cancelled my Warhammer preorder today.  Not because of the cuts or in respone to anything over the last few months, but because everything about Warhammer feels stale to me.  No, it's not fair to just talk about Warhammer.  I am talking about 90% of the MMO's that have come out or are coming out.  I guess i'm burnt out on the typical MMO fair that doesn't seem to change at all in any way except for getting easier and more accessible to unintelligent people.  Sorry that was rude.  I don't mean unintelligent people, but unexperienced people. 

I'm not an elitist, but it is so close that it's easy to blur.  It's like if you spent years learning the ins and outs of something difficult, but rewarding.  Something like programming.  Then all of a sudden everything coming out is geared towards people who are new to whatever that thing is that you spent years and years learning and it bores the crap out of you.  Everything is all about instant gratification, and getting more for less.  It's almost like your favorite underground music selling out and putting stuff out that sounds like all the other crap out there.  Only it's the entire musical World that's selling out because Indy musicians can't afford and don't have an outlet to put out their creativity(Still a metaphor).  All we get is creativity controlled, monitored, fabricated, and manufactured by people who aren't creative, who look at what is selling and try to copy it and expand on it. 

I hope people have fun with Warhammer, but honestly I hope they either provide an experience that doesn't feel like every other MMO in a different skin, or they fail horribly and give future companies a reason to break the mold.  Sorry that was rude.  I really hope for their success because I want every entry in the genre to be successful for more variety.  Deep down though it's driving me crazy...  The waiting for years and years for something revolutionary to come along only to find the only things coming out are going in the oppsosite direction of everything great about the old games. 

I know money talks.  I am just full of sadness and despair that our entire genre is selling itself out. 

The genre has always been this way.

Grinding, pointless quests, stale combat, repetitive raiding - these are the very definition of "MMORPG" as a genre.

99.9% of MMOs out there will have at least 3 of those factors.

Originally posted by TheGrid

The genre has always been this way.

Grinding, pointless quests, stale combat, repetitive raiding - these are the very definition of "MMORPG" as a genre.

99.9% of MMOs out there will have at least 3 of those factors.

At least with older games it used to be rewarding, difficult, and had a deep social sense.  Now all there is are people who want to solo to end game.  Get there fast and screw enjoying it.  That's just crazy talk.  Group?  No thanks we only have 4 quests in common and i'd rather do my 4 than help you with the one or two you still need to do.  Over half the groups you get invited to the people don't talk.. they just mindlessly get the quest done and leave.  It was a huge hassle for them to even have to invite you because they couldn't do it themselves.  Role playing?  No that doesn't happen anymore.  Not only does it not exist... It's been completely exterminated.

Games are designed for soloing.  They are designed to be easy, accessible, and mindnumbingly balanced.  Skill?  No that's an unfair advantage.  What we focus on here is time invested.  It's like if in real life two people spent 200 hours boxing, but one only hit a punching bag while the other boxed real people in real fights.  Only after those 200 hours they are 100% equally balanced. 

With the new games, its all about instant gratification and "give me something for opening that door"; especially with the new generation flooding into the games.

Find yourself a RP server and an guild of older folks (25+ at least) and you'll find the people that want to enjoy the game and explor everythign there is to do (usually).

Originally posted by ProfRed

Originally posted by TheGrid

The genre has always been this way.

Grinding, pointless quests, stale combat, repetitive raiding - these are the very definition of "MMORPG" as a genre.

99.9% of MMOs out there will have at least 3 of those factors.

 

At least with older games it used to be rewarding, difficult, and had a deep social sense.  Now all there is are people who want to solo to end game.  Get there fast and screw enjoying it.  That's just crazy talk.  Group?  No thanks we only have 4 quests in common and i'd rather do my 4 than help you with the one or two you still need to do.  Over half the groups you get invited to the people don't talk.. they just mindlessly get the quest done and leave.  It was a huge hassle for them to even have to invite you because they couldn't do it themselves.  Role playing?  No that doesn't happen anymore.  Not only does it not exist... It's been completely exterminated.

Games are designed for soloing.  They are designed to be easy, accessible, and mindnumbingly balanced.  Skill?  No that's an unfair advantage.  What we focus on here is time invested.  It's like if in real life two people spent 200 hours boxing, but one only hit a punching bag while the other boxed real people in real fights.  Only after those 200 hours they are 100% equally balanced. 

I really do share your views and opinions ProfRed, aside from the disturbing profile picture of yours.

Originally posted by mk11232

With the new games, its all about instant gratification and "give me something for opening that door"; especially with the new generation flooding into the games.

Find yourself a RP server and an guild of older folks (25+ at least) and you'll find the people that want to enjoy the game and explor everythign there is to do (usually).

Yeah i've found some nice haunts.  I have had a lot of fun in random games like Ryzom, EVE, and some more mature guilds, but it feels like these devs are doing everything they can to make it harder and harder every year to find experiences like this.  They are a dying breed.  It's like a downward spiral too because people who started with a game like WoW will never know anything different, and they will grow up to be the people who influence the genre as devs, producers, managers and the likes.  No matter how I look at it I am filled with sadness and despair.

Don't get me wrong.  I play EVE still and will continue to play MMO's, but man it's just sad.  The fact that I am not playing WAR at launch is groundbreaking for me.  I have played almost every MMO that's came out since EQ on day one.  Most fun launch ever for me was SWG.  What happened to that game is like a metaphor for the entire damn genre.  They couldn't even leave alone a game that was already out and successful.  They had to force it to be as close to the other games out as possible.

Solo content is a necessity, and I wouldn't play a game without it.

The worlds are growing, and the market is growing too. Thus, it's not just that easy to find a group, and if I'm paying £10 a month to play for 4 hours a day, I won't be spending an hour each day looking for a group.

Roleplay isn't dead. Roleplay is as alive as it has ever been, just find a good RP guild.
Roleplay has always been laughed at as kids playing make believe. It's nothing new. D&D geeks were the guys to pick on until geek became a fashion statement. Now it's online roleplayers.

No MMO will be skill based so long as there are levels.Levelling as been around since before MMOs existed, and sadly will always be around.
Skill IS a factor, afterall the guy who attacks beats the guy who stares confused at his keyboard, however skill-based combat needs a level-free environment such as FPS, or RTS games.

Unfortunately level based gameplay is perfect for keeping people subscribed for years upon years, so there will always be levels in any Pay to play game, while free to play games are generally crap anyway.

You have summed up my feelings almost exactly. I'm so sad for the genre as a whole. It's absolutely pathetic that I haven't been able to find a game that provides even half of the awesome features that Star Wars Galaxies used to offer me all the way back in 2005. The genre as a whole is devolving in attempts to lure more and more people into the genre. We need a well known company to actually be bold, and try to make a niche game. I think they will be amazingly surprised how many people are sitting out there waiting for that so called "niche game" to come out.

On a positive note, I'm really looking forward to Jumpgate Evolution and Earthrise... These two look very different from the dull dribble being vomited at us, and if they can deliver, especially Earthrise if they can provide what they plan, could be an awesome change of pace for this horrible drought in MMO's.

Originally posted by ProfRed

Originally posted by TheGrid

The genre has always been this way.

Grinding, pointless quests, stale combat, repetitive raiding - these are the very definition of "MMORPG" as a genre.

99.9% of MMOs out there will have at least 3 of those factors.

 

At least with older games it used to be rewarding, difficult, and had a deep social sense.  Now all there is are people who want to solo to end game.  Get there fast and screw enjoying it.  That's just crazy talk.  Group?  No thanks we only have 4 quests in common and i'd rather do my 4 than help you with the one or two you still need to do.  Over half the groups you get invited to the people don't talk.. they just mindlessly get the quest done and leave.  It was a huge hassle for them to even have to invite you because they couldn't do it themselves.  Role playing?  No that doesn't happen anymore.  Not only does it not exist... It's been completely exterminated.

Games are designed for soloing.  They are designed to be easy, accessible, and mindnumbingly balanced.  Skill?  No that's an unfair advantage.  What we focus on here is time invested.  It's like if in real life two people spent 200 hours boxing, but one only hit a punching bag while the other boxed real people in real fights.  Only after those 200 hours they are 100% equally balanced. 

First off, you're not old, commissar.  You might think you're aged or experienced by comparing yourself to the teenagers in your MMORPG guild, but you're not.  You're twenty six.  Even if you started playing games when you were six or seven, you wouldn't have seen the generation of games that were really different.

Second, here is your problem: you are burned out.  You have grinded your fingers away by doing shitty, repetitive stuff you don't like, and because of this, you will probably never enjoy a MMORPG in the same way again.  You have ruined it for yourself.  Congratulations.  Next time have the balls to walk away from a game before you start hating it with a passion, not five to six months after that point like most of the "vets" here do.  You've reached the point where you hate games without even playing them, before they're even released, and that's not a good thing.

Lastly, there are still games left that are like what you think you want.  Do you know what the problem is?  People like you never play them.  You just talk and talk about how you want the return of sandbox games, and how you will sacrifice X, Y, Z, and hypothetical letter &, if it only the game had sandbox features.  Then all the sandbox games that get released die because people like you leave them in droves.  Why?   According to all the bitching I've seen in the past, it's because they have the following problems.

1. Not polished enough.

2. Not enough PvE content.

Yep.  Before NGE, those were the two massive complaints about SWG from its players.  Fix the bugs, add more content.  Every fucking SWG thread had a dozen people calling for that.  Were they willing to tolerate the game as-is?  Nope.  People were jumping ship in massive numbers because of those problems.  On about half of the servers, 95% of the player towns were deserted, most of the major merchants were gone, and almost all of the locations were dead.  The forums were filled completely with bitching about how bad the game was.  This was before CU.  Before CU.  Repeated, before CU.  Because some people will ignore this part, before CU.  Because some people still don't get it, before CU.  Just to make it clear:

BEFORE CU

BEFORE CU

BEFORE CU

B E F O R E   C U

No SWG vet will admit this because of their wonderful selective memory, but you can see it on any SWG forum which has posts going back that far.

It's the same shit that people say about Saga of Ryzom.  Seriously, go to the boards.  I've seen most of the sandbox enthusiasts on MMORPG.com talk about how they couldn't play Ryzom because there was no content after the newbie island.  By content, they mean quests, the exact same shit they claim to hate.  Go look right now.

Oh, and lets talk about UO.  Most of the "veterans" here bitch about how "Trammies" ruined the game.  This is so hilarious disconnected from reality that it's completely absurd.  Trammel doubled UO's then-declining population, essentially breathing life into a game whose FFA nature would have killed it in about two or three years more.  After Trammel saved it, many people later left it because they didn't like _new classes_ because they didn't _fit with the game_.  Oh God, the new classes ruined the sandbox!

In summation, your life will perpetually be despair and sadness.  You think you want a sandbox game at any cost, but you don't.  You want a game which is everything at once.  Sandbox + perfect PvP + WoW's amount of quests + completely polished + hires Spanish swimwear models that come give you BJ's every half-hour.  You will never be satisfied, and every good sandbox game that comes along will not be played by you because it is only good and not perfect.

I hope this has clarified your situation for you, thank you for playing.

Originally posted by TheGrid

Solo content is a necessity, and I wouldn't play a game without it.

The worlds are growing, and the market is growing too. Thus, it's not just that easy to find a group, and if I'm paying £10 a month to play for 4 hours a day, I won't be spending an hour each day looking for a group.

 

Roleplay isn't dead. Roleplay is as alive as it has ever been, just find a good RP guild.
Roleplay has always been laughed at as kids playing make believe. It's nothing new. D&D geeks were the guys to pick on until geek became a fashion statement. Now it's online roleplayers.

 

No MMO will be skill based so long as there are levels.Levelling as been around since before MMOs existed, and sadly will always be around.
Skill IS a factor, afterall the guy who attacks beats the guy who stares confused at his keyboard, however skill-based combat needs a level-free environment such as FPS, or RTS games.

Unfortunately level based gameplay is perfect for keeping people subscribed for years upon years, so there will always be levels in any Pay to play game, while free to play games are generally crap anyway.

I agree that solo content is needed, but it is becoming so much of a focus that these games are losing their social soul.  It just feels empty and soulless when compared to older games.  There has to be a way to find a medium; to allow solo play with a great mix of group play and keep a social environment.

There is some RP but it is not supported in any way outside of some naming conventions and random hangouts.  There are no tools for RP or any focus on it.  There is nothing to RP over as the games are becoming so simple in their mechanics that the Worlds are so restricted.  It would be like playing paintball in your mom's living room.

Level based games are fine, and I agree that in those games players of equal levels should have equal chances but the deepest strategy has ever gone with an MMO is as deep as rock-paper-scissors.  Builds and variety are a joke as there are always 1-2 templates that the game is clearly designed for classes to work towards, and it isn't getting more complex.  That's the problem. 

Also when I talk about skill i'm not just saying PVP class balance, but PVE class balance as well.  The games have become so easy that any tank class can successfully tank easily with little to no skill.  The most difficult recent games have gotten has probably been navigating some plugin interface.  Any player playing a tank is sufficient for any tanking job.  This is sad when you could be a really good tank.  Only the game is too easy to challenge you when doing content at your level, and it is impossible to do content over your level because there is NOTHING you can do to beat whatever you are fighting.  There is no skill, no challenge.

Originally posted by Kurush

Originally posted by ProfRed

Originally posted by TheGrid

The genre has always been this way.

Grinding, pointless quests, stale combat, repetitive raiding - these are the very definition of "MMORPG" as a genre.

99.9% of MMOs out there will have at least 3 of those factors.

 

At least with older games it used to be rewarding, difficult, and had a deep social sense.  Now all there is are people who want to solo to end game.  Get there fast and screw enjoying it.  That's just crazy talk.  Group?  No thanks we only have 4 quests in common and i'd rather do my 4 than help you with the one or two you still need to do.  Over half the groups you get invited to the people don't talk.. they just mindlessly get the quest done and leave.  It was a huge hassle for them to even have to invite you because they couldn't do it themselves.  Role playing?  No that doesn't happen anymore.  Not only does it not exist... It's been completely exterminated.

Games are designed for soloing.  They are designed to be easy, accessible, and mindnumbingly balanced.  Skill?  No that's an unfair advantage.  What we focus on here is time invested.  It's like if in real life two people spent 200 hours boxing, but one only hit a punching bag while the other boxed real people in real fights.  Only after those 200 hours they are 100% equally balanced. 

 

First off, you're not old, commissar.  You might think you're aged or experienced by comparing yourself to the teenagers in your MMORPG guild, but you're not.  You're twenty six.  Even if you started playing games when you were six or seven, you wouldn't have seen the generation of games that were really different.

Second, here is your problem: you are burned out.  You have grinded your fingers away by doing shitty, repetitive stuff you don't like, and because of this, you will probably never enjoy a MMORPG in the same way again.  You have ruined it for yourself.  Congratulations.  Next time have the balls to walk away from a game before you start hating it with a passion, not five to six months after that point like most of the "vets" here do.  You've reached the point where you hate games without even playing them, before they're even released, and that's not a good thing.

Lastly, there are still games left that are like what you think you want.  Do you know what the problem is?  People like you never play them.  You just talk and talk about how you want the return of sandbox games, and how you will sacrifice X, Y, Z, and hypothetical letter &, if it only the game had sandbox features.  Then all the sandbox games that get released die because people like you leave them in droves.  Why?   According to all the bitching I've seen in the past, it's because they have the following problems.

1. Not polished enough.

2. Not enough PvE content.

Yep.  Before NGE, those were the two massive complaints about SWG from its players.  Fix the bugs, add more content.  Every fucking SWG thread had a dozen people calling for that.  Were they willing to tolerate the game as-is?  Nope.  People were jumping ship in massive numbers because of those problems.  On about half of the servers, 95% of the player towns were deserted, most of the major merchants were gone, and almost all of the locations were dead.  The forums were filled completely with bitching about how bad the game was.  This was before CU.  Before CU.  Repeated, before CU.  Because some people will ignore this part, before CU.  Because some people still don't get it, before CU.  Just to make it clear:

BEFORE CU

BEFORE CU

BEFORE CU

B E F O R E   C U

 

No SWG vet will admit this because of their wonderful selective memory, but you can see it on any SWG forum which has posts going back that far.

It's the same shit that people say about Saga of Ryzom.  Seriously, go to the boards.  I've seen most of the sandbox enthusiasts on MMORPG.com talk about how they couldn't play Ryzom because there was no content after the newbie island.  By content, they mean quests, the exact same shit they claim to hate.  Go look right now.

Oh, and lets talk about UO.  Most of the "veterans" here bitch about how "Trammies" ruined the game.  This is so hilarious disconnected from reality that it's completely absurd.  Trammel doubled UO's then-declining population, essentially breathing life into a game whose FFA nature would have killed it in about two or three years more.  After Trammel saved it, many people later left it because they didn't like _new classes_ because they didn't _fit with the game_.  Oh God, the new classes ruined the sandbox!

In summation, your life will perpetually be despair and sadness.  You think you want a sandbox game at any cost, but you don't.  You want a game which is everything at once.  Sandbox + perfect PvP + WoW's amount of quests + completely polished + hires Spanish swimwear models that come give you BJ's every half-hour.  You will never be satisfied, and every good sandbox game that comes along will not be played by you because it is only good and not perfect.

I hope this has clarified your situation for you, thank you for playing.

I hear you man and I was waiting for a response like this.  I knew I came off this way, but i'm not really burnt out.  I mean i'm married and have a kid on the way, and I don't play MMO's near as much as I used to.  I'm definitely not burnt out as I still have a lot of fun with some MMO's.  I was just in shock that I decided not to be there for Warhammer's release.  I would never miss a release at any time in my life of a decent sized MMO I knew about.

I do not need to be preached to.  Especially not by someone like you who thinks you have read me like a book and have passed judgement on me.  I have not burnt myself out.  I still play EVE, and I go back to FFXI every few months for some fun with old friends.  I returned to CoH/V with some friends last month for some PVE fun.  Two months ago I played Anarchy Online for about three weeks.  I have fun with all of these games.  I am in no way burnt out. 

My life is full of happiness man haha.  I don't want all of those things you mention.  I just want some creative variety.  I know what I want is impossible when a mainstream title in our genre costs hundreds of millions and what makes money makes money. 

I am not one of those people who talks about sandbox games and then complains when I have them.  I loved Ryzom.  I love EVE.  I loved Neverwinter Nights persistant Worlds.  I loved FFXI.  I loved all of these games and I got everything out of them I possibly could.  (Still working on EVE.) 

I never said SWG didn't have bugs, and wasn't a rough game.  I am not whatever type of person you are preaching to.  I never once complained about SWG or Ryzom.  I ate it up.  I still had a blast at launch.  My complaint is that the game was changed drastically so that it could be...  Closer to everything else coming out.  Of course that upsets me when I don't like what's coming out in the first place. 

I am easily satisfied man.  Very easily.  Just not by this genre at the moment.  Sorry that upset you so much.  I hope you have fun with WoW, WAR, LoTRO, AION, and the rest of the games coming out.  I hope for the next 150 years companies continue to make games easier and easier so that you can actually lose skill, knowledge, and experience at playing MMO's to the point where you have a mouse with one button to control everything in the game for the three thousand hours you spend in it. 

Where do you draw the line though between solo and group?

The group players want grouping, the solo players want to be left alone.

The PvE environment can't accomodate both.
The solo players, in high number, will complain about large areas being completely inaccessable.
The group players will complain about large areas being pointless to visit.
Everyone complains.

The only feasible way to do it would be to make a game that's geared directly to group play. We'll see how long that'll last.

Beyond naming, and hangouts, what features can actually be added for roleplay?
Roleplaying boils down to, in its most basic form, a bunch of bored people pretending to be someone else within the game lore. What features could a game add for them? Ye olde Englisch text generator? An "enemies" list alongside a friends list?

Tanking is too easy - in which games? Why? What makes it easier now than ever before?

Features for roleplayers? Like what?

No PvE skill required? That's a lie, through and through. Try getting beyond halfway through levelling before making that judgement. Suddenly it isn't so easy when you're juggling 3 stunlocks, 2 DPS skills, 1 potion heal, and managing to kill a mob that does twice your damage using these.

Honestly, I don't think you're complaining because the genre is dead. I think you're complaining because you WANT the genre to die. Nothing you've really complained about is specific.
I've been on this forum for 6 or 7 days, and already I've seen at least 5 topics made by people complaining about the state of the mummorpuger in today's world, and plenty more on other forums. And the vast majority only played the free, Korean grindfests or the select few MMOs that hit supreme publicity.

What do you want? I mean in relation to an MMO. What do you WANT to play? What kind of game do you enjoy? Because everything you've mentioned so far are trademarks of the MMO genre, and always have been. If you don't like them, then you're associating yourself with the wrong genre, maybe even the wrong medium.

Originally posted by TheGrid

Where do you draw the line though between solo and group?

The group players want grouping, the solo players want to be left alone.

The PvE environment can't accomodate both.
The solo players, in high number, will complain about large areas being completely inaccessable.
The group players will complain about large areas being pointless to visit.
Everyone complains.

The only feasible way to do it would be to make a game that's geared directly to group play. We'll see how long that'll last.

 

Beyond naming, and hangouts, what features can actually be added for roleplay?
Roleplaying boils down to, in its most basic form, a bunch of bored people pretending to be someone else within the game lore. What features could a game add for them? Ye olde Englisch text generator? An "enemies" list alongside a friends list?

Tanking is too easy - in which games? Why? What makes it easier now than ever before?

Features for roleplayers? Like what?

No PvE skill required? That's a lie, through and through. Try getting beyond halfway through levelling before making that judgement. Suddenly it isn't so easy when you're juggling 3 stunlocks, 2 DPS skills, 1 potion heal, and managing to kill a mob that does twice your damage using these.

 

 

Honestly, I don't think you're complaining because the genre is dead. I think you're complaining because you WANT the genre to die. Nothing you've really complained about is specific.
I've been on this forum for 3 days, and already I've seen at least 5 topics made by people complaining about the state of the mummorpuger in today's world, and plenty more on other forums. And the vast majority only played the free, Korean grindfests or the select few MMOs that hit supreme publicity.

What do you want? I mean in relation to an MMO. What do you WANT to play? What kind of game do you enjoy? Because everything you've mentioned so far are trademarks of the MMO genre, and always have been. If you don't like them, then you're associating yourself with the wrong genre, maybe even the wrong medium.

 

I am not complaining that it is dead at all.  I think it is more alive than ever.  It is just in a sad state from my perspective.  I definitely don't want it to die.  Like I said I do want every game coming out to be successful to add variety.  I just wish there was more creative variety and less of the same old. 

I just want a game with soul. 

There are a number of things to change this trend:

1) Make games harder like they used to be.  (Soloing to end game in a couple of weeks?  Weaksauce.)

2) Allow for players to solo to end game if they want, but reward grouping more heavily than soloing.  Increased XP, increased loot, and have something that can be leveled by being social, grouping, etc.  Reward players for helping others finish quests they have already completely.  When a game is harder then players will do what they can to level more efficiently, and thus will group.  In grouping players will make more friends and forge relationships.  When grouping helps everyone then finding groups does not take long. 

3) Redesign the classic roles.  One or two tanking classes, one or two healing classes, one or two dd'ing classes, one crowd control class, and parties consisting of 2-3 different make ups run rampant.  Allow more flexibility so healers aren't always necessary, tanks aren't always needed.  These roles are too well defined and too restrictive.  They force endless complaining, balance issues, and cases of confused identity.  It should never be a case in any MMO where you can highlight a person and know immediately whether or not you can beat them.  It is sad when there is a very small range of people you can run into that could actually cause you to think before attacking.

3) Design the World so that it isn't so linear.  Have more cities where players gather from early on to end game.  (WoW does this well.  Ogrimmar is a great example.  Jeuno from FFXI is another.)  Still most games are far too linear.  Once a village is passed there is no reason to ever go back in games.  These Worlds should be used and all parts should be pertinent at all levels.

4) Player driven economies are needed to create a real social economy, and RMT has to be eliminated.  There are ways and designs that can accomidate this and if you are pushy i'll come back with one eventually.

5)  Allowing player based content no matter how small like Ryzom Ring and the new stuff in CoH creates a more social and less static World and is awesome.  Neverwinter Nights Persistent Worlds were amazing for this. 

6) Role playing can be instantly enhanced by not making the story so linear, scripted, and fully fleshed out.  Allow the players to interpret things as they wish and one major thing with this is player/guild politics.  Like in Lineage 2 with castle sieges where guilds could change the taxes of shops where lot's of non guildies needed to go to shop, and guild politics took hold.  This is the kind of role playing i'm talking about not just 'I put on my robe and wizard hat' stuff.  Getting involved in the World and not playing it like an Arcade Game is just as much role playing.

7) Create more need for player interaction.  It is an MMO.  There are thousands of others playing.  Don't forget it.  If you need <this> done you need some help.  There are hundreds out there who can help and they need help also. 

8) Honestly Auction House's are nice but they remove yet another social aspect of games.  Need something for crafting?  Don't worry about interaction just buy it on the AH.  Player driven shops, players running shops from their character while logged in, and things of this nature create a more social aspect if only to put a crafter's face to their name.

9) Real world player housing is a very cool feature that can boost a lot of things i've talked about from Role Playing aspects and being a part of the World, to player driven economies, to more social interaction with trades and crafts.  SWG is the prime example of this. 

10) More interesting crafts.  Things like ship building, house building, engineering, furniture crafting have all been cool and fun, but there is so much more that can be done which can also allow for more depth in role play and interactions.

These are just a few things and they are very generalized.  None are that specific and they are all things that I think would improve upon the genre.

Originally posted by Kurush

 

Yep.  Before NGE, those were the two massive complaints about SWG from its players.  Fix the bugs, add more content.  Every fucking SWG thread had a dozen people calling for that.  Were they willing to tolerate the game as-is?  Nope.  People were jumping ship in massive numbers because of those problems.  On about half of the servers, 95% of the player towns were deserted, most of the major merchants were gone, and almost all of the locations were dead.  The forums were filled completely with bitching about how bad the game was.  This was before CU.  Before CU.  Repeated, before CU.  Because some people will ignore this part, before CU.  Because some people still don't get it, before CU.  Just to make it clear:

BEFORE CU

BEFORE CU

BEFORE CU

B E F O R E   C U

 

No SWG vet will admit this because of their wonderful selective memory, but you can see it on any SWG forum which has posts going back that far.

Those are some ridiculously good, completely made up numbers. Player towns were still populated even after the CU.

I don't know what your point is about people crying on the forums. Have you ever played a game where people didn't cry on the forums? Cry babies are going to cry, can't do anything about it. Just because other people complained on the forums doesn't mean that SWG vets had "Selective memories". I saw the crying on the forums, and I never once complained on them. I loved the game and every second I played it right up to the NGE.

So to make sure I've got this right.

You want:

1. A harder game.
2. Greater rewards for grouping (also known as punishment for soloing)
3. Class diversity
4. More incentive to populate cities.
5. Elimenation of RMT (aka gold farmers)
6. More player based content.
7. Guild politics affecting non guild members.
8. Removal of auction house - forced communication.
9. Player Housing.
10. Craftable houses/ships/etc. More interesting than 4 str 4 stam leather belts.

The lack of all of those has no impact on whether or not a game is soulless, it simply means it's features you don't like.
I don't like levelling at all, so I look to MMOFPS, or the MMORTS genre.
If the hypothetical game was harder, people would be forced to group, causing a lot of people to quit. Believe it or not, there's a hell of a lot of people out there who consider "ganking" to be the only valid, worthwhile interaction in an MMO. Their money is as good as anyone's.

Personally I'd be turned off a game completely as soon as I find out I can't get any good lewts unless I suffer the incompetence of a badly organized group, or a guild leader that blames everyone else. It's ultimately why I'm not actually playing anything right now. Mortal Online looks worth the wait though.
Some will see rewarding group players as instead, punishing soloers. I would.

tbh class diversity has always been a problem to me. I vote for completely abolishing the class system entirely, and allowing players to choose their skills custom. A little sword fighting, a little magic. Maybe a little healing and a bit of stealth. Maybe a tiny bit of everything.
That however carries its own problems - when players choices have just multiplied tenfold, how do you keep all possible combinations in check alance-wise?
It sounds great in theory when a guy with a sword can also heal himself and cast fireballs, but what happens if the devs don't take into account a rather clever little sod who tweaked his skills so perfectly he's an invisible one hit killer with radar tracking and stealth detection?

I don't see how any incentive to sit around town even longer could be added. I do treat MMOs as "the game starts at 70/99/max" so I want to spend as little time doing nothing as possible.
But that aside, what are cities? A decorated area of the map that elaborately provides stock item purchase functionality and a safe place to AFK. An entire city could be condensed into a single NPC inside a circle.

The only way to improve it would be to give players a reason to stay in town longer than needed. Make them gain something from it.

Gold farmers make the game go round. If gold farmers never discovered WoW, they wouldn't have half their subscriptions.
Literally, because at least 5 million of them are probably farming accounts,

But also because "a whole gold!" is a privelege to a newbie. Everything costs copper, then silver, THEN gold which is just ludicrously expensive stuff!
Their monetary system was the worst choice Blizzard ever made. It took me so long to get a whole gold the first time I played WoW, I just went to a gold farmer and bout a few hundred. As far as I was concerned it just saved me hours of screwing around, because I wanted to role play, and I wanted to PvP. I idn't want to screw around killing boars or other such crap.

The only way to remove gold farmers without doing their job for them, is to make a game fun. Honestly, MMOs aren't designed to be fun. They're designed to be time consuming so you can brag to all your friends about your level 70 Gnome Warrior or some shit.
The whole point of an MMO is to walk into a town and be envied for all your glowing crap because you just spend 8732314 hours mindlessly accepting quests between regular masturbation breaks.

Auction house - the perfect way to clear the chat of people spamming trivial things like 5 leather, 2 grains of rice, their virginity, etc.

Sod it, I'm done typing. I've tired myself out and it's half 5 in the morning.

Originally posted by TheGrid

Solo content is a necessity, and I wouldn't play a game without it.

The worlds are growing, and the market is growing too. Thus, it's not just that easy to find a group, and if I'm paying £10 a month to play for 4 hours a day, I won't be spending an hour each day looking for a group.

I'm all for getting my money's worth.  The problem arises when people have different values, wants, needs, desires.. what have you.

I'd just like to see an incentive to do things more with others.  Running through the world, killing things, you stumble upon some other person running by and you say "hi" and all you get back is "I'm busy soloing, leave me alone" makes you wonder why you're playing the game anyways.

I think if this trend continues we'll end up with something like single player games that allow you to later export your character and play it on a multi-player platform just so that you can show everybody else that you've managed to get to the top level, or that you have the "ultimate sword of mega pwnage".  No longer are any of the games suggesting that people be a part of a bigger thing, together defending the land from others who are trying to take it from them with their allies.

I honestly believe that in a few years if things don't change, we'll end up with the above example.  I'd even go as far as say that perhaps in 10 years MMO's will no longer resemble what they are today be it for good or for bad.

Originally posted by Illius

Running through the world, killing things, you stumble upon some other person running by and you say "hi" and all you get back is "I'm busy soloing, leave me alone" makes you wonder why you're playing the game anyways.

No longer are any of the games suggesting that people be a part of a bigger thing, together defending the land from others who are trying to take it from them with their allies.

I honestly believe that in a few years if things don't change, we'll end up with the above example.  I'd even go as far as say that perhaps in 10 years MMO's will no longer resemble what they are today be it for good or for bad.

MMORPGs have become too self reliant. There is never, and never has been pressure on the player to do anything specific. People are realizing this now, and instead of playing it like intended, they're just grinding. This isn;t the player's fault, it's actually the developer's fault for giving them little else to do.

I hate the term "end game content". If companies stopped wasting time on this elusive end game content, maybe they could get some of the mid, or even early game content worth playing. Maybe people wouldn't solo grind if grouping was fun, if levelling with a group was an enjoyable experience.

This can be achieved by a requirement of setting up a nail gun pointing at each party member's testicles. This way if you fail to heal me then blame me for not telling you to, I can remove your priveleges of procreation.

This is where MMORTS games come in. They're mostly 100% PvP, and in spirit of RTS games, you can clean an enemy out forcing them to start aaaaall over again. You can play guerilla, with many small bases all over the map doing piracy runs on trade lines, or build up one huge fortress armed to the teeth. In the end though, to avoid obliteration you'll need a good guild to watch your back when offline, lest you become a pebble in another guild's path of progress.

I honestly think RTS will replace RPG in the MMO world sooner or later for PvPers and grinders, and God, I'm getting sick of spouting acronyms. OMGWTFBBQLOL

i dont think WAR is going to be the be all end all.  hell it wont even be all that different from the other games...but i will still give it a shot.  just because every other game out there burned you out does not mean every one that is released will be the same.  you never know, WAR might be your cup of tea

Originally posted by Abrahmm

Originally posted by Kurush

Those are some ridiculously good, completely made up numbers. Player towns were still populated even after the CU.

I don't know what your point is about people crying on the forums. Have you ever played a game where people didn't cry on the forums? Cry babies are going to cry, can't do anything about it. Just because other people complained on the forums doesn't mean that SWG vets had "Selective memories". I saw the crying on the forums, and I never once complained on them. I loved the game and every second I played it right up to the NGE.

Not really made-up, but thank you for the vote of confidence.  The developers actually admitted recently that they were bleeding about 10k subscribers per month pre-CU.  That's why they got so desperate and accidentally (oops) killed the game with the NGE.  I agree that NGE was horrible, but it wasn't the only thing that killed SWG.  It was slowly collapsing under its own weight because it had serious problems even before then.  It was like a house with a solid foundation and a thousand tiny structural flaws.  I tried a bunch of servers myself before CU.  Many were pretty much abandoned.  Almost nobody in sight aside from other newbies, and this was visiting every planet I could to try to find a hot spot.  Don't get me wrong.  It wasn't nearly as bad as post-NGE, but it was bad.  I'm not sure how you possibly could have not seen that.  Maybe it was luck.  You could have played on the most populated servers, and I might have hit the worst ones.  Possible.

And yeah, most of the really vocal vets here do have selective memories.  They act like they had unconditional love for the game back then and played it until the very bitter end.  Most didn't, though.  I remember the same people bitching their hearts out and many quitting because they couldn't take the bugs.

My point isn't about crybabies, it's this:

Most people here want to have their cake and eat it too in regards to a sandbox game, then they complain that there are so few of them.  They want a game which has all the strengths of a mainstream title and all the strengths of a niche title.  It's not possible.  If you want something that isn't mainstream, you can't be that selective.

Those aren't all of the things I want.  They are just numerous very un specific examples of what i'd like to see to shape the feel of a game and make it more social. 

I guess it's impossible to know what i'm talking about unless you've really gotten wrapped up in some of the older games like EQ or FFXI.  I would think you have though.  I am complaining about new games and how molested the feeling is I get from them when compared to these games.

I don't want all of those things in one game.  I was just giving examples of ways that I think games need to go to get a good soul, add more sociality, and breed more fun.

I am full of sadness and despair not anger so it is hard to argue with people about it.  It is a feeling I get from new games and no debating can change that.  I am just listing things that can make it better for me.  If i'm the only one then that's fine...