This is why the whole idea of basing an MMORPG around "content" is flawed.  Developers will never even come close to keeping up with their players. 

Originally posted by Ordero

Originally posted by demalus

Besides what I have said before, let me put it in a new light:  MMOs are becoming increasingly developer-centric.  Players must wait months (even years) for new content - which will be completed in a day or two anyways.  Only Blizzard has been able to keep a pace that is at least functional to the playerbase.  Most companies don't have that kind of resources, and therefore the MMO they make is lacking. 

 

Evidently you've never heard of Turbine or played Lord of the Rings Online, big/sometimes massive regular content updates every couple of months, in the form of new book chapters, sometimes new regions, sometimes "extra fluff" is introduced like housing, hobbies i.e fishing etc.

And all this from an independent and much smaller developer than Bizzard. And it's not just Lord of the Rings they provide content for either, Turbine also do it for their other title Dungeons & Dragons Online not to mention the even older (but still going strong I presume) Ascheron's Call, where I understand that they provide new content every single month for it's remaning playerbase, now that is dedication to the players :)

I didn't mean to offend you - you obviosly like LOTRO a lot.  I have heard of it, and I've been to their studios (a friend of mine worked there).  I've always said that Turbine is an amazing company.  They make QUALITY games (just like Blizzard).  However, like someone else said, they have not actually added as much stuff as WoW adds.  I'm not saying they haven't been doing a good job, but you kind of proved my point.  LOTRO is developer-centric.  It has the single-player model in mind (they didn't copy WoW, but certainly used the same model).  No matter what company, the content cannot be produced at a rate to keep people playing for years (if it wasn't the Lord of the Rings IP, I'm willing to bet its longevity would decrease severely).

I'm not trying to say that it's a bad game - hell...I currently play WAR (I know... shame on me :p) - but I am saying that MMOs like WoW and LOTRO have overlooked what makes an MMO special - they feel more like coop games than MMOs, and this trend is only going to continue.

I'm a bit confused...and it's probably due to me coming into the genre with WoW...

but what makes people stay for years other than content?

Originally posted by Capn23

I'm a bit confused...and it's probably due to me coming into the genre with WoW...

 

but what makes people stay for years other than content?

the world and the people you meet in it. if you want content go play a single player game. mmo's are suppose to let you cut your own path into the world, not do it for you.

Originally posted by ronan32

Originally posted by Capn23

I'm a bit confused...and it's probably due to me coming into the genre with WoW...

 

but what makes people stay for years other than content?

 

the world and the people you meet in it. if you want content go play a single player game. mmo's are suppose to let you cut your own path into the world, not do it for you.

I disagree with this.  The content is the tools that let you 'cut your own path in the world'.  A MMO without content is like a club without music or alcohol.  You an still go there and socialize but it is not as much fun and you can do it better other places.

If I didn't want to play some of the early MMORPGs back when they were new, why would I want to do so now?  One big reason that the entire MMORPG industry didn't have nearly as many players then as now is that many potential players didn't want to play the sort of games they were putting out at the time.  Why would such people suddenly want to play those games today?

You cite the old Mario and Zelda games from a couple of decades ago.  And indeed, most of them were very good to great games.  A Tecmo Super Bowl or a Super Mario World may be loved and played to this day, but most of their contemporaries then weren't of near that quality.  For every great game that is still loved today, how many lesser games are all but forgotten and deservedly so?

The early MMORPGs you cite were not the best, except as compared to their contemporaries, but only the first.  I haven't played most of the games you list because the game mechanics sounded like excessive grinding.

I have, however, played Anarchy Online, and it really wasn't a good game.  The random missions led to obscene amounts of rerolling being necessary to get a good quest.  About half of the time in the game consisted of running back and forth over long distances.  To start a battle, go AFK for a couple of minutes, and then come back to see a mob dead worked almost as well as actively fighting the mobs.  If a game with all of those problems were released today, it would be quickly discarded and all but forgotten, and rightfully so.

The good news is that MMORPGs are rarely taken down entirely.  So long as there are enough players to fill one server, it rarely makes economic sense to shut down the game entirely, rather than continuing to collect monthly fees from the remaining players.  Further development on a game or advertising to bring in new players may no longer make sense, but the bare bones costs to keep the game running are usually more than paid for by continued revenue.

There seems to be some issue over WoW’s free updates, thank you for that link. But is WoW putting out a proportionally larger amount than LotR, bearing in mind their larger revenue and the fact that WoW is the older game? Many of the patches in the link for WoW were for weather effects or the likes of voice chat, were there any new regions, not just another dungeon? I stand by the opinion Turbine does a lot more than Blizzard in the way of free content.

Oh and if I got something wrong that shows I was mistaken, I am not in the business of lying on these forums.