The term Jumped the shark refers to when something changes from its origional intent to be something entirely different and or bad.

For instance, if you've seen Terminator the sarah connor chronicles when they stopped running away from terminators and when Sarah Conner was having a mental break down in season 2.

The entire thing wasn't really based off the origional idea, and hence jumped the shark.

If MMO's jumped the shark it would be if they pretty much all made games like Guild Wars and stopped making gmaes like WoW.

Although i agree the genre has turned into shit it has far from jumped the shark.

The term' jumping the shark is from the show Happy Days where Fonzie is water skiing and jumping over a shark. The scene was so rediculous it pretty much signified the end of 'Happy Days'. As far as i know MMORPGS have never been so popular as they are now. Back in the day the highest a MMO could achieve was EQ numbers which were around the 350.000 mark. Today millions of people plays MMOs and MMORPGS.

MMORPGs are expanding more and more into the mainstream market and we can thank Blizzard and WoW for that. They made MMORPGs the facebook and myspace of the genre. The genre is far from over. Only over for us vets that prefer them old school style. The old school MMORPGS died with Brad McQuaid leaving the business and good riddance

Originally posted by Laughing-man

The term Jumped the shark refers to when something changes from its origional intent to be something entirely different and or bad.

For instance, if you've seen Terminator the sarah connor chronicles when they stopped running away from terminators and when Sarah Conner was having a mental break down in season 2.

The entire thing wasn't really based off the origional idea, and hence jumped the shark.

If MMO's jumped the shark it would be if they pretty much all made games like Guild Wars and stopped making gmaes like WoW.

Oooooh... now I get it. 

I could have sworn it was this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDthMGtZKa4   < ayyyyy

...at least that was the first thing that popped into my head when I read the title of this thread.

hehe

Originally posted by JGMIII

Originally posted by Kungaloosh1

Judging by his signature, i see this as a pvp person who hates pve elements.

PvP fans i believe are the most difficult to appease on any level.

 

I disagree, PVP fans are easy to please.

Toss us on a map face us toward the other faction and we will kick the shit out of eachother for months if not years.

Toss in some territorial control and were happy as a pig in shit.

 

PVErs on the other hand require a stacked endgame, A game loaded with handholding quests and constant content updates since they seem to powerlevel and bitch that it takes more than 3 months to make more dungeons to run.

I agree with Kungaloosh1 here,

In response to JGMII:

PvE'ers do require stacked end-game cant argue there more the better.  Alot of us older PvE MMO'ers hate the the handholding that goes on. We can thank WoW for that. As it seems the casual PvE'ers who love handholding far outnumber the "hardcore" PvE and PvP'ers combined X10. Alot of us do like challeneging PvE and thankfully that number is growing due to all this handholding crap being released, and people finally get fed up with it. However were still a long ways away from where we need to be. But we are a niche group just like hardcore PvP'ers. Again WoW made instant gratifacation and everybody a winner with little to no effort. Casual PvE'ers eat it up like candy, sub up in masses thus thats where the money is at so devs are trying to cash in. EQI and FFXI has no handholding, not all are cakewalks.

The majority of PvP'ers are not even remotly easy to please. If they loose to another person its instant crying about such and such is OP. God forbid someone is a better player. Devs spend all their time nerfing and buffing classes, and it never gets balanced.

Classes are not suposed to be balanced IMO. Its the old Rock, Paper, Sissor, argument. How many times does Paper beat sissors? ummm............... NONE.  But PvP'ers cant have this, they dont understand this concept. Everthing has to be equal, when things shouldnt be equal. Making it impossible to be equal. Learn to pick your fights wisely. In a game that trys to mix 50/50 pvp/pve, just go look at the game forums what you will see a good 65-75% of the posts dealing with class balance issues.

AoC was the last MMO i bought so ill use it as an example, and that was a year ago, the forums were ablaze with PvP'ers crying for nerfs and buffs, and the devs listened and spent patch after patch messing with classes, when their time should have been allocated to me important issues like server problems and memory loss isues, or even fixing the OP gems which would have solved some of the PvP'ers problems.

I can't say I 'hate' hand-holding as a certain lvl of it is sometimes helpful if the systems are unfamiliar, but it does get old real quick, I tried two recently where this hand holding was WAY too much, Dragonica online was pretty bad and the other, whose name is forgotten as being completely unimportant, was TERRIBLE not to mention horribly done.  There is certainly more appeal in just being dumped into sink or swim as it gives you a feeling of accomplishment as you figure it out on your own.

I know exactly what you mean, but you left out Ultima online in the list of what you need to play to get an idea what the genre offers. I'm board to tears too, hence why I'm really looking forward to having a go on the Dark Prophecy Space MMO. The cockpits views screenshots  made available took me right back to my Wing commander days.

  I've been going through the last 3 years for single players hits I missed and having a blast playing them whilst I keep an eye on the MMO genre to see what's new, though I've always dabbled in FPS online PVP. Battlefield Heroes is the best browser game for that. It's great fun PVP as you get to level a character like a MMO and pick build your character, but with none of the grind just fun.

A little hand holding is a good thing for new players but it needs to stop after the first several levels. then it should be "sink or swim" Games now dont do this, they take you all the way to max level, which is sad, and its why I havnt bought a new MMO in over a year now.