Originally posted by Nevulus

The greatest "red flag" I have encountered so far, leading me to believe the genre of MMOs has died, was when my gaming hobby met my real life occupation in a high impact crash. I work at an investment & consulting firm which deals in large capital private companies waiting to break out. One day a spokeswoman for a gaming company approached our firm looking for potential private investors and to discuss a possible IPO offering for their company to go public in the stock market (more complicated then I am making it seem, but I'm trying not to bore you). What was extremely frightening was that this company EXPECTED their game to only last 2 years. Their intention was to milk their subscribers for 2 years and cut costs to the point there would be only 3 developers and 1 artist left on staff to carry the game after that. Their entire business model was planned on raising as much money in 2 years as possible and then bailing out leaving the players to fend for themselves. That was a sad day indeed when a gaming company finally admitted that MMORPGs have no shelf life, and that their main goal was to "milk" as much money as possible from their subs in a short amount of time. Their own words were "milk" not mine :(

Well that's the world we live in now, that is what our genre has become.

Nothing will ever compare to a good old D&D PnP game with your friends at home. No MMO will ever truely be "sandbox" enough for most of us, and I have come to the brink of quitting myself many times over. But I am hopeful and I am going to give one more game, coming up this summer a shot, my last shot.

The above quote is what I have figured out in the past 3 years. People these days will throw money at anyone with a decent MMO concept. Just look at Darkfall people so desperatly want the concept to work good they fool themselves into thinking its a decent game. You cant really blame the company for this tactic. If morons are willing to throw you money why not take the opertunity. In the end the world revolves around money. If I had the means Id be doing the exact same thing. AoC is another perfecrt example. Funcom is now working on hyping up a 3rd MMO, The Secret World. Why the hell were they even working on TSW when AoC was such a mess. You know it was being worked on pre- AoC launch, because there was even mentions of their 3rd MMO. All they are doing is milking money, yet you go to TSW forums and you see countless goons sitting in there defending funcom. When AoC came out they abondoned AO, now when TSW comes out guess which one gets swept under the rug yup AoC. Sucks to be an AoC fan. Funcom along with other companies are banking on these peoples hopes, and its working. There are a few legit companies out there working hard on games, but there are also the milkers out there. Just like Baseball where it had its steriod era, and it gave baseball a bad name, MMO genre is going through its "steriod era" where companies are giving MMO's a bad name. I have just lost faith in the majoirty of the MMO populace. The Majority of people that MMO's attract do not have real world reasoning.

How I miss the phrase " Train to Zone" in mistmoore. There are allot of us in your boat, tens of thousands if not more. I remember my first day in EQ1 standing 50 yards up in the woodelf town build in the trees looking down thru the fog and watching a woodelf player running away from a orc and thinking how great that looked. Then  grouping with another player in that starting area and really feeling bad for each other when you died becuase there was a death penalty which also added excitement to the game. That guy i grouped with was a friend in that game for as long as i played it, like 4 years and is still a friend to this day that lives 3000 miles away. Thing is todays games don't excite me like old EQ did and I also don't bother trying to talk or group with other players like I did in EQ. So maybe it's not just the games out today but also US that are the problem. I would like a MMO that has treasure chests that pop up randomlly and named mobs that have a decent chance to drop a nice item. Also player made items that are better than anything you can find. Combine EQ1 with Darkfall PVP with Age of Conan graphics in a world the size of Eve. Btw, Fallen Earth is looking good............../rambling off

Originally posted by movindude

How I miss the phrase " Train to Zone"

Haha that phrase does bring back alot of good memories, tho they were bad at the time. Some of the best trains I ever saw was in FFXI in the zone crawlers nest. There was always 1 soldier crawler in a mess of normal crawlers, that when the soilder agroed it linked ALL the normal ones (that dont agro by themselves), Dead before your screen even loaded.

Edit: This was before SE fixed the train: by the mobs de-spawning if out of home area.

Amen, Rekindle.

I got the

• PC,
• Money,
• Ability,
• Willingness, and
• Readiness to game.

But I ain't got a game.

I, like you, am not subscribed to a single MMORPG.

If we continue to subscribe to games whose gameplay, content, worlds, customization and so-forth are creatively lacking and uninspiring, then it is OUR fault, as gamers, for the games we PAY for and CONTINUE TO PAY for.

Gamer for life? Yes.

But the MMORPG industry does not design games for people like us anymore.

So they do not get MY money.

(yes, I've tried nearly all of them, can even play some for free, and I refuse to even do that.)

Originally posted by galad2003

If you miss EQ so much go back and play it.

That is exactly what I'm doing at the moment. I have given just most of the major MMOs going around a try in the last 4-5 years (when I stopped playing EQ). After playing all thoughs MMOs I realized I still liked EQ, so I started that up again a couple of months ago, and have been having a total blast. (I have even got a few friends back into it as well, and they are also having fun)

Originally posted by Loke666

 

Actually, Mortal online are aiming to make a new game after the old model, if it will work or not is anybodys guess. It is hard to go back to older times.

But Im not happy where MMOs are going either, it feels like very little have happened for the last 5 or even 10 years. The genre must reinvent itself again to continue to be fun.

My hopes are to CCP/Whitewolf and Bioware right now. The mix of an experienced pen and paper company and a experienced MMO company should inject some fresh blood. As for Bioware, they have always done their own thing and are not likely to copy from that Wow/EQ rosetta stone.

 

I jumped on the Darkfall bandwagon and got massively ripped off with that pile of crap.  Hopefully MO is better but I'm going to wait for other suckers to buy the game first and pay to finish the development cycle before I even thnk about buying it (oops i just called a bunch of people suckers).

MO does have promise but so did maaaaany other titles.  As I mentioned i'm personally finished with chasing rainbows.

The problem with it as i see it is there are plenty of people out there that will be willing to settle for mediocre games and therefore this trend of craptastic releases will invariably continue for a long time to come.

The pay to play model used to offer something truly unique. Now I think its more of a scam.  Yes the development costs are high but if you were to look at dev costs and then operating costs on the same graph.....well you wouldnt be able to see the support costs because they are so much smaller than dev.  Basically these guys are getting money to allow you to connect to their service and they aren't trying / caring to do anything new.

/scurries back to carl sagan dvd.

Originally posted by Rekindle

I don't have time to group for the entireity of my gaming session to enjoy the best the game has to offer.

Good post but i have to touch on this. You mention EQ1 as one of your fondest memories but you also in the same breath criticise how you don't have time to group to see the best a game has to offer. Unless you were in a top raid guild you would miss out on a good portion of the game you would never get to see in EQ. Back in the old days when i was playing, only 2 guilds on my server was able to raid in veshaans peak/sleepers tomb. Unless you were lucky to know somebody you were pretty much screwed. EQ1 was an awesome game i also miss fondly but i do not miss how the game 100% catered to elitist hardcore no job kind of gamers. WoW is the game that caters to players like yourself that doesn't want to group. If you want some awesome gear you can PvP your way to it alone

The things that has killed the genre for me is quest grinding and instanced dungeons. Those two things has killed socialization and made all behavior accountability extinct. People remembered the aholes back then. Today their names are as quickly forgotten. Not because we now have 11 million people to remember because the server sizes hasn't really changed all that much since the days of EQ but because you group for 30 minutes and solo for 5 hours afterwards. There is no incentive to group. You do an instance then it's back to doing your own thing again 

I feel I have to agree with the OP and similar sentiments in this thread, the MMO market seems to be suffering from an attempt to emulate WoW and its huge moneymaking ability which does no good for those games, while others like Darkfall attempt to stray fromt he standard and end up generally sucking (and yes I played Darkfall for about a month before I became bored and fed up with it). Another problem with the MMo market is that companies have seen it for the potential cash cow it can be and all sorts of developers are jumping on the MMO bandwagon, thus leading to a huge oversaturation of the MMO market. This in turns creates so many MMO games that gamers are too spread across so many games and thus games suffer from low populations and end up basically dying because of lack of interest and gamer focus. Also, as stated before, some developers begin trying to emulate WoW and make changes to their games accordingly, which may work for WoW but not necessarily for other games. I play LotRO pretty dedicatedly right now, but I see the Turbine devs making changes to LotRO to make it more of a gear oriented grind much like WoW, and this just plain sucks. We'll have to see which direction the next batch of MMO games take, like Star Wars:The Old Republic, Star Trek Online, Aion, Fallen Earth and others. The MMO market is starting to fall into mediocrity and is starting to feel something akin to the endless slew of Hollywood movie remakes in terms of style and substance.

I agree with the OP as well... MMOs have just declined so much in recent years. 

Even though I am constantly TRYING to get into and enjoy each new MMO that hits the market, none of them ever seem to pull me in like they did in the old days. I have played MMOs since Ultima Online was first released and I have never been able to find another game that I enjoyed as much as UO.

Back in the old days, players spent their time exploring and living out a virtual existence because the entire concept of online roleplaying games was fresh and new. Now everyone is in a constant race to the max level and guilds have become like businesses. I remember once while I played WoW when my guild leader called me on my cell phone and told me that I HAD to log in for a raid we were doing that night. It hit me like a ton of bricks in that moment that MMOs had become like a job to me. It was no longer fun... it was a competitive grind race for virtual gear. There was no more feeling of exploration... nothing that felt new or fresh. No REASON to play other than an endlessly repetitive grind and a feeling of social obligation. Just the same garbage over and over and over again.

I have tried literally every major MMORPG that has been released and I have found exactly the same thing in each and every one. Sure, each one puts a slightly different spin on things... but at the core they are all the same thing.

The problem is that developers are no longer motivated to innovate. Why should they be when the majority of players are seemingly content with the same tired game mechanics? And this did not originate in WoW. It has been slowly occurring across the entire genre since well before WoW was ever released.

Fortunately I think it is only a matter of time before the genre changes for the better again. The mass market has been introduced to games like WoW at this point and the same gamers who enjoy this type of game now will be in our same situation in a few years. Eventually, no one will be satisified with the same old same.

Its a shame for us old-school MMORPG players that we got into the genre so far before the mass market. If we had gotten into it a bit later, our tastes might be changing WITH the genre, rather than before it.

/nods in agreeance

WoW lingo- I'm pretty sick of it too when I hear it on vent... ZOMG DERS A ZERG COMING DIS WAY or LETS ZERG TO HIM BAFORE HE BUFFS UP

I could do without ever hearing another used of the word zerg.

I do hope mmo developers read threads like these but also don't disreguard them (saying in a stiff voice) "oh well, your not the majority of the subscriber base anyway"

Originally posted by Rekindle

You can have my stuff from:

UO,

EQ,

DAOC,

EQ2,

Eve,

Wow,

Ryzom,

Vanguard,

Darkfall

Well done Sir. I think this should be the standard format for every "I quit" post from now on.

I am disappointed that D&D has not released the Online Gaming board, or whatever it was they were calling it. The concept looks great, I don't know why it was pushed back, or scrapped.

This, with a lobby and voice chat would be fun. Not for the solo MMO players, but for the roleplayers, sandbox lovers, this would be great:

Originally posted by Rekindle

-The commercialization of MMO's has turned out to be horrible for the genre.....period. 

All MMO's are a commercial enterprise.

 (Sorry females no offense but you are clearly the minority). 

It's about 50:50 now.

I enjoy text chatting and I am capable of reading it in all forms.  I HATE hearing a lvl 50 Warrior sound like a kid who hasn't hit puberty yet.....sorry.

It's most likely a 20-something male acting like a kid, there are LOADS of these people.

Every game has a con system that lets you see if a mob is suposed to be group or solo.

Why is this a problem?

Now you do not even set foot in the dungeon without having your Healer/DPS/Tank combo set up.

I've been in groups with no healers at all

I dont think its necessarily a time contraint issue that interferes with mmo's mature player base.   I think its simply lack of difficulty.   I admittedly play video games a lot less now then I did eq1 1999.   I do not have time for corpse runs that take an hour.  I will not have time to camp a spawn for 14 hours.   I will not have time for waiting in line 38 hours to then camp that same mob for 14 hours.

I do however have time for the difficulty of it all.  ANy darkelf necros here remember trying to find their fuking guild leader?   There were no maps.  The ability to tell what wwas N,E,S,W was a skill that had to be worked up. There was no Allas.   You found some text on the screen, you had to read it and figure out what word you needed to say.     Once all this was done, you had to find your way through this 3 zone maze of a city to forest where a snake would beat your ass,  making you do this process all over again until you found the newbie log which was surrounded by hordes of people .......  then those halfling bastards came along.

Then gettingin tired of your darkelf not being able to make it past seargeant slate or  into freeport to check out the rumors of this trade town.   A game actually had rumors ... thats how much faction meant.     So, you roll a human and then when nite comes you realize your fuking blind in cave  with no glow stone and your not sure if your are stuck running into a wall or making your way to outside.

That kinda stuff I do have time for.   Die on a path.... atleast you can find your body.   I dont care if I ever hit max level with my 1-2 hour max playtime.

Originally posted by dinurium

I dont think its necessarily a time contraint issue that interferes with mmo's mature player base. I think its simply lack of difficulty. I admittedly play video games a lot less now then I did eq1 1999. I do not have time for corpse runs that take an hour. I will not have time to camp a spawn for 14 hours. I will not have time for waiting in line 38 hours to then camp that same mob for 14 hours.

I do however have time for the difficulty of it all.

I'm on the same page as Dinurium, and a few other posts here. There dosn't seem to be an MMO that has targeted the crowd that wants the challenge of the "Classic" MMO's like Original EQ / UO / DAOC, but who cannot or don't wish to commit to the same blocks of time we used to.

I hope ours is a large enough niche that some MMO designer takes notice. My current hope is on 38 Studios future MMO. For now however, I really only enjoy a bit of EQ-1 (In small doses), but it's not the same as it used to be.
 

Some great posts in this thread.

For me though, I don't think it's the games, or the developers, that are the problem here.

It's the players.  It's the actual people who play MMORPGS now, the type of gamers they are, and what they enjoy and want from their gaming experience.

Back in "the good old days" that everyone talks about, you (we) were playing with a whole different crowd of people.  Nearly everyone who played the early online RPGs were RPG players.  They came from a history of playing pen-and-paper games, or MUDs, or roleplaying on BBSes, or playing all of the old classic CRPGs that were some of the first computer games ever.  They were interested in, fans of, the core fantasy role-playing genre.  As such.  In its own right.  For its own sake.

Back then, you (we) were playing with almost entirely a group of actual RPG players, in a new and exciting online, graphical, multiplayer context.  But most of those players were there to play an RPG, first and foremost.

RPG players, as such, have a totally different outlook, totally different expectations, and totally different ideas of fun, challenge, and immersion than other types of gamers.  They have some shared gaming ideals which are not held by the larger masses of general gamers.

Back in the day, just about everyone playing MMORPGs were RPG players, and thus they weren't massively popular.  Because RPG players make up a pretty small portion of the population.

In contrast, most of the people playing MMORPGS now are MMO players, not RPG players as such.  They're there to play an MMO, which happens to be (nominally) an RPG.  An RPG player is there to play an RPG, which happens to be an MMO.  There's a big difference in mindset, but the RPG gamer is by FAR the vast minority.

There might be 10,000 old school RPG lovers out there, wanting to play MMORPGS.  But they're eclipsed by the 10,000,000 non-RPG players who make up the bulk of the MMO market now.

So developers are just giving the customers what they ask for.  The dissenting voice of 1% (or less) of the player base is just not going to carry any weight.

We used to be the only customers, and then for a brief moment we were the majority, but for quite a few years now we've been almost insignificant in comparison to the flood of gamers with other interests, other ideals, other desires from their games.  The problem is not really in the new games, or how they're designed, or in the mindset of game developers.  It's in the other players.  The actual people who make up that "massively multiplayer" part of these games today.

They're not all idiots.  They're not all misanthropes.  They're not all obnoxious.  They're not all kids.  They're not all douchebags.  They're not all whiners.  They're not all twitch-junkies.  They're not all lazy-minded.  Some of them are, but as a rule, they aren't.  But what they are is, they're NOT RPG players.  They're just not.  And so trying to play an old school multiplayer RPG with them just . . . isn't viable.

You (we) miss the days when the whole (or nearly so) player base of online RPGs was composed of RPG players.  And as such, the needs and philosophies of that kind of gamer were the main priority for developers.  The biggest difference between then, and now, the biggest detrimental factor to your (our) sense of enjoyment in these games now, is not really any trivial detail of game design.  It's the other people we're forced to play with.  Not that they're terrible people, but just that they aren't your (our) kind of gamers.

Don't blame the companies who are bound by the realities of economics and rational business practices to produce that which the millions ask for, love, and will reliably buy.  It isn't the games they're making which have ruined your (our) hobby.  It's the people who have taken it over, the players, the millions of general MMO gamers whose playstyle, mindset, idiom, and preferred avenues of fun are contrary, sometimes antagonistic even, to your (our) own.

The majority of gamers now want to play a competitive game where they can beat other players, and if it happens to be an RPG, that's okay.  Or they want to play a casual social game, and if it happens to be an RPG, that's okay.  Or they want to play a fun, colorful, pretty game, and if it happens to be an RPG, that's okay.  They want to play the next big thing, what's popular, what their friends play, something with lots of people . . . and if it happens to be an RPG, that's okay.  They don't care about the quality or integrity of the game as an RPG, or preserving the RPG experience.

People hardly even use the term MMORPG anymore.  They just use MMO.  Because the elements of RPG gameplay that were central to the creation of this style of game are no longer valued by the player base.  They aren't RPG players, so playing these games with them, where they make up almost the entire population, where the community is defined by them, and where the development trends are catered toward what they want, is obviously going to be increasingly dissatisfying to an old school RPG player such as you (or me).

There aren't enough of you (us) left in this market to realistically target with any new enterprise, given the costs and the economic climate.  You (we) are too few.  It isn't the games' fault, nor the developers of those games.  It's just the reality of the social dynamics of being a tiny and contrary subset of a very large group.  The other players are what make MMORPGs unappealing to you (us) now.  They don't game for the same reasons, seek the same things, communicate in the same terms, or play the same way as you (we) do.  They aren't RPG players, and although you (we) remember so fondly the days when you (we) were able to play with nearly nothing but your (our) own kind, those days are gone.

And there is nothing that any of these game development companies can do about that.

Originally posted by Wighty

It's like the latest batch of MMO's are like a f'n Kevin Costner movie... <think Waterworld, the Postman, etc> they cost a FORTUNE, they sound like they may be good but then you just realized you sat around for 3 hours of WTF...

This made me laugh out loud for several seconds.  I think I'm sigging this.

Ya know, I recently returned to EQ1 within the last couple weeks. A LOT has changed since my last real time playing (8 Years ago). I have to admit I am actually enjoying it again. My cleric has gained 12 levels in basically a week. 47 to 59. 4 of those levels were just last night. So I have to say they have definatly upped the exp you get per kill (especially if your in one of the hot zones). Mercs are great. It makes it so that some of those classes that couldnt solo worth a dime, can now solo with their merc.  I really do like some of the changes they added but in a way I feel they also have "sold out" to the mainstream with a lot of the changes. It took my mage a solid week of fighting to gain 1 level post 50 back then. My cleric solo with my merc can gain 1-2 levels a night post 50. Maybe they made it give to much exp. POK always seems to have many people in it, but the old zones have almost none. its sad for very many reasons.

I hate to say it, but the system they have now, may be the closest compromise of the old and new MMO's. Its not without its flaws. the graphics and animations are horrible compared to todays games but the game play is still mostly the same. I do not like the new starting zones, they are definatly way to "new mmoish" for me. I liked the fact that you had to explore the world and figure out what the key phrases were to actually get a quest and then once you got it, you had to figure out where to go. Although I think I would have liked a little more help in that area, but its still way better in terms of using your brain than todays mmo's are. My two biggest issues with going back to eq! I cant get none of my friends to go back and play and I am giving money to sony in the form of monthly fees. I dont mind monthly fees at all, playing 4 games right now and 3 of them are pay to play but I just feel dirty giving money to sony again after all the trivial trash they have brought out since eq. Personally I am just waiting and hoping that star trek comes out soon and doesn't suck! I could see myself playing that game a good long while if it doesn't suck (of course it probably will though).

---

Originally posted by firesnake77

---

A very good summary of where things stand. In truth, I suspect that there are dozens of 1% communities out there waiting for a game that they could play with great enthusiasm. A perhaps obvious question is whether or not the games industry can figure out how to target content for that size audience.

Games are for fun to enjoy free time life but people make it their life, play MMO like zombies burn out after playing every single title, then come to forums to cry and moan about how much this genre sucks. Fault is with people who have nothing better to do then spending whole day in front of computer.

On the other hand there are people like me who get one to two hours a max a day soemtimes only weekends. I still have to get bored because of overplaying. Fault is with young MMO crowd with way too much free time on hands and not MMOs itself.

Originally posted by Kyleran

I'll agree, the mainstreaming of MMO's and modern technology (voice coms) has dramatically changed the MMORPG gaming experience. The thing is, OP didn't change.

I understand this, I miss the challenge (ok, call them timesinks) that the older games had at times, but then again, not having to rest for 2-3 minutes after a strong fight has a certain appeal to it which is why most games take this path now.

Sure, during that downtime we used to do other things, chat with our group mates, read a book, level another character, but I'm not sure I'd really appreciate those "features" in a game anymore.  Why do I say this? Because those features are still available in the older games, and just like the OP, I'm not playing them.

Sure, OP can say thats because no one else is there, but we know that's not true. You can still play EQ 1 and find many other folks playing, so OP could go back if he wanted to.  But he doesn't want to. 

He wants a new game built after the old model, (so do I ) but realistically, not likely to happen, nor would many players accept it if it did. (much criticism was directed at VG because they incorportated old school concepts like death penalties, corpse runs and long travel times)

Face it, most of us who've been playing these games have come to appreciate some of the modern conveniences, and we're not likely to go back.

 

 

this simply isnt true.  You ask any TRUE fan of the old everquest to go back and see what it is today and he might faint.  The old memories we have of that game are golden and that game is a steaming pile of crap right now.  I tried going back to it due to the fact im tired of paying for WoW version 1,2,3,4,etc.  Its dead...nobody plays it anymore and so many stupid ideas have been added into it its disgusting.  Even some of the lame newer mmo standards have been poorly slapped onto it.  Give me old everquest with the same experience and i would go back to it in a heartbeat. 

Im not just looking for the new everquest though, im open to something new.  The same crap over and over again though isnt anything new.  Its just run into town find a big symbol over a guys head.  Bring him 10 daisies then go back out again and bring back 15 deer droppings.  After your finished with that he tells you where you can find the next guy with a big symbol over his head.  Repeat this until you get to max level and then you can start raiding where everything is scripted now.  Stand here at 50%, do this at 20%, get ready for his breath attack at 10%.  For a while it was nice having these unique fights, but i hate how every raid encounter goes exactly the same way every single time.