My God, if you are going to write an article, please learn how to s-p-e-l-l.

Or....hire an editor to proof your work...

Maybe I slept too much in biology class - but isn't evolution change for better? Not sure MMOs improved recently, nor do I see that in those things listed. Hm.

Originally posted by arctarus

I find it very strange. If whether a certain item is successful of not is not base on the numbrs of the product sold, than what should it base on?

Say A-phone only sold 300k, B-phone 3 million. Which project is successful?

There will never be an item that will be able to cater/ to be like by all kinds of buyers, but as long as ALOT of consumers buy it, than it is sucessful, whether you like it or not...

 

There have been millions of Volvos sold but only a handful of the exclusive models of Ferrari. Which do you think is seens as a pinnacle of car technology?

Just because it caters to the masses does not mean that it is the pinnacle of said area. WoW caters to the masses but the gfx, sound, features, whatever is not revolutionary nor innovative. WoW is a Volvo and the Ferrari of MMORPGs is nowhere to be found.

Originally posted by cfurlin

My God, if you are going to write an article, please learn how to s-p-e-l-l.

Or....hire an editor to proof your work...

Well, I've now proofed the article twice more just to be certain. What is it exactly you THINK is misspelled?

Most MMORPG players that play today were brought into the game with WOW.  I played it for three years and basically left as I was tired of being spoonfed.  Having played MMORPG's starting with UO and then EQ a player hardly plays their game anymore.

I could see a mmorpg now without all the mods.  I am not saying mods are bad.  I am saying a mod that tells you your threat or what a boss is casting is not playing the game.  They even have mods for pvp that will tell you what your opponent is going to do.  UI mods are great other then that MMORPG's are still mainly fantasy settings.   

WoW took whats was good and made it better and what was bad, death penalty and took it out.  They cater to everyone and almost every MMORPG developer want to emulate WOW.  Thus in my opinion innovation has stagnated.  Sci Fi MMO's consistently fail.  Eve is the exception.  

Game devs are so worried about losing players they make drastic changes to games that were never needed.  They listen to the vocal minority and make their changes.  I salute Blizzard on this part.  They know where they want to take the game. 

Alot of the problem is most of these game for the last two years werre over hyped and failed to deliver on their promises.  You know the games I am not going to get into those. 

A game that will allow a sand box style of play with consequences if you go bad is what I am looking for.  I do not care if you want to be a murderer as long as you know that players will be out for you head.  Games today are so linear and restrictive.

I hope some day a dev will be happy with a niche game like Eve and make a quialty game.  Inovation does not mean my new games needs a high end machine to run it. 

Originally posted by Soultice

Most MMORPG players that play today were brought into the game with WOW.  I played it for three years and basically left as I was tired of being spoonfed.  Having played MMORPG's starting with UO and then EQ a player hardly plays their game anymore.

... and yet it took you three years to get tired of it. 

A decent article and though I don't agree with everything I agree in general that MMO's are evolving.  I would probably disagree with many as I see the evolution as positive, albeit slow.  I think another evolution in the MMO genre is the people playing the games are much different, coming from the days of UO and EQ, I think players lack the loyalty to a title like they did in the old days and I think in opart this is due to the vast list of titles that players can chose from... how dare game devs try to apeal to the masses when faced with this.  Its to easy for us all to shame and blame companies when the its not our money lost if a game fails to make it to launch or dies shortly after.

Ridged players who fail to evolve with the genre will never be happy... have we learned nothing from Geico? 

Neanderthals!

Originally posted by Stradden

Originally posted by cfurlin

My God, if you are going to write an article, please learn how to s-p-e-l-l.

Or....hire an editor to proof your work...

Well, I've now proofed the article twice more just to be certain. What is it exactly you THINK is misspelled?

Lack of consistency of the headings, this is more noticeable than a spelling error.

Your points numbers 1 to 3 use this format:

Number # Text

Your points numbers 4 and 5 use this format:

Number # - Text
 

Someone else mentioned that 'Warp Up' should be 'Wrap Up'

I am pretty bad at spelling myself, but it's good to try and keep standards up :)

Evolution or Devolution?

IMO the genre is in many regards devolving:

 - Housing is all but lost. Since UO, there has been just one game with housing (that I know of): SWG, and recently also Darkfall, though it still has to prove how well it is implemented.

 - The feel of a whole world has been smashed to pieces by instancing. Only a select few niche games hold on to the feel of one consistent world.

 - Non-combat roles as fully viable playstyles. Crafters, traders, gatherers. I cannot remember a game since UO, that allowed you to play a full-time non-violent career.

 - a fully living, breathing world. A world where roles interacted in often unexpected ways. You would see people go about doing their own small things. Many different roles, meeting under circumstances not set in stone (like questing or instance dungeons). And often people would meet on uncommon ground - a gatherer would see an adventurer in need and help him out. An adventurer asking direction from a lumberjack, who can warn him about the nearby orc raiding party etc.

Maybe the genre did in some ways evolve, but what was the cost? IMO we got an "evolution" that sacrificed some of the pillars of what I feel constitute an MMOG.

MMOGs nowadays are moving away from worlds and much more towards games, and in this move, game replayability and longevity is also lost.

Evolution? Are you so sure?

Originally posted by Yamota

Evolution? No. Devolution.

Five proofs of MMO Devolution

5. Quest driven MMORPGS - I have nothing against quests per se but the way quests are done in current MMORPGs are counter intuitive to how MMORPGs are done. Some times it is fetch X items or kill Y mobs and that is, altough boring, fine. However many quests have storylines where you rescue someone or kill some evil boss, however since this is an MMORPG the same storyline is done in identical parrarell realities in the same world. Totally contradtictive to having a persistant world.

4. Themeparks - I dont know how came up with this idea but MMORPGs are supposed to create virtual worlds, NOT themeparks. The influx of themepark MMORPGs where you "ride" certaint events is again contradictive to a persistant WORLD. Just look at games like AoC and WAR, the world looks like a playground with teleporters zip zapping you across the so called world (read themepark).

3. Instancing - Yet another completelty contradictive feature in an MMORPG. How can you explain having identical areas in the same world? You cannot and is a cheap way for the devs to make the world appear bigger because they cant be bothered to just have a random generator to atleast make the instances look different. And when you start making instances of towns then it is gone to far.

2. Casual play - This concept has more or less destroyed the original idea of having a peristant virtual world to evolve in because now everything has to be easy and casual. No death penalties - making death seem meaningless, instant travelling - decreasing the already small world, P2P - instead of advancing your character by playing then you can BUY yourself to get to higher levels much quicker, heavility restricted PvP - taking away any possibilities for guild politics.

1. WoW - This MMORPG is the best proof anyone needs for how MMORPGs has devolved. It has all of the elements mentioned above and with its enormous popularity has made tons of developers trying to create the next "WoW killer" which means they will try and make a copy of WoW but with some features that WoW does not have. Newsflash for you devs, there is no such thing as a better copy. Innovation is what will create the "WoW killer". Not plagiarism.

The reason WoW is the number one reason of MMORPG devolution is that it has no persistant world where you actions affect same world. PvP is meaningless, PvE is meaningless they are all for getting more items actually achieving, even partial victories, in the world of WARcraft, is not possibly as the war is an illusion. Beside being static it is also very linear. The game is basically the Volvo of MMORPGs, it works and is safe but does it have any innovative features? No.

I couldn't agree more.

Originally posted by Rasputin

Evolution or Devolution?

IMO the genre is in many regards devolving:

 - Housing is all but lost. Since UO, there has been just one game with housing (that I know of): SWG, and recently also Darkfall, though it still has to prove how well it is implemented.

I agree to a point, I miss housing that is meaningful, but as you bring up UO I will speak from; loved that you could craft and train from you home and set up shops.  However, one of the problems with that games housing... houses were everywhere!!!  The land was littered with houses, towers, etc and made the world feel very congested.  I would like to see devs create housing that maybe isn't not instanced but is limited to specific areas across the world to encourage player build hamlets, villages, towns, cities; I'd like to see options for players to craft from these homes and step up shops... if they could give me the latter then I could overlook the instanced part.

 - The feel of a whole world has been smashed to pieces by instancing. Only a select few niche games hold on to the feel of one consistent world.

I agree that I will not play any game that has instanced zones, not today, I can live with instanced dungeons and the like as long as most are accessible to all players. 

 - Non-combat roles as fully viable playstyles. Crafters, traders, gatherers. I cannot remember a game since UO, that allowed you to play a full-time non-violent career.

Yes by god give us back the option of creating careers that are supportive and don't require me to level up to cap to be effective as a tradesman!!!

 - a fully living, breathing world. A world where roles interacted in often unexpected ways. You would see people go about doing their own small things. Many different roles, meeting under circumstances not set in stone (like questing or instance dungeons). And often people would meet on uncommon ground - a gatherer would see an adventurer in need and help him out. An adventurer asking direction from a lumberjack, who can warn him about the nearby orc raiding party etc.

I like to think that if you are implementing the above that you are already taking a huge step in the right direction to creating a worl that players feel they can drive a "persistent" world. 

---

Maybe the genre did in some ways evolve, but what was the cost? IMO we got an "evolution" that sacrificed some of the pillars of what I feel constitute an MMOG.

MMOGs nowadays are moving away from worlds and much more towards games, and in this move, game replayability and longevity is also lost.

Evolution? Are you so sure?

See my responses above, but I have to add that another shortcoming of early MMO like UO was that players had no real story/quests and you often found yourself "grinding" the same areas for loot.  I found that tedious...

Originally posted by Yamota

Evolution? No. Devolution.

Five proofs of MMO Devolution

5. Quest driven MMORPGS - I have nothing against quests per se but the way quests are done in current MMORPGs are counter intuitive to how MMORPGs are done. Some times it is fetch X items or kill Y mobs and that is, altough boring, fine. However many quests have storylines where you rescue someone or kill some evil boss, however since this is an MMORPG the same storyline is done in identical parrarell realities in the same world. Totally contradtictive to having a persistant world.

Please help me to uderstand how you would implement a persistent world where hundreds or even thousands of players may be on at the same time?  If I cut down an acre of trees to craft some chairs, burn down a house, save someone or kill and boss and those things are forever gone what happens with the next hundred or so players that....  so if you die then your dead right?!?  Because to come back to life even with penalties would be contradictive to having a persistent world.

4. Themeparks - I dont know how came up with this idea but MMORPGs are supposed to create virtual worlds, NOT themeparks. The influx of themepark MMORPGs where you "ride" certaint events is again contradictive to a persistant WORLD. Just look at games like AoC and WAR, the world looks like a playground with teleporters zip zapping you across the so called world (read themepark).

Agree that travel and such should be in line with the lore of the world in which the game is set.

3. Instancing - Yet another completelty contradictive feature in an MMORPG. How can you explain having identical areas in the same world? You cannot and is a cheap way for the devs to make the world appear bigger because they cant be bothered to just have a random generator to atleast make the instances look different. And when you start making instances of towns then it is gone to far.

I couldn't agree more that worlds that are instanced are a no go for me.  I do not mind instanced areas like dungeons and such, but I don't think that this is a sign of devolution. 

2. Casual play - This concept has more or less destroyed the original idea of having a peristant virtual world to evolve in because now everything has to be easy and casual. No death penalties - making death seem meaningless, instant travelling - decreasing the already small world, P2P - instead of advancing your character by playing then you can BUY yourself to get to higher levels much quicker, heavility restricted PvP - taking away any possibilities for guild politics.

I disagree, in part.  You guys always want to have your cake and eat it to... the heck with death penalties or traveling without instant traveling.  How about perma death!!  Now thats a death penalty!!   And this supports the theroy of a living persisitent world.  I do not support or play games where you buy your levels.  I would like to know what you consider "heavily" restricted PvP;  I think what you really mean is you want to be able to kill anyone and loot them, good luck keeping subs with that one... reality is that most people don't want to pay to be "grieved" by players with twenty levels higher/maxed skills and too much time on their hands.  Best you could hope for is an  indy dev creating a small niche game for this play style.  Me, I will fondly remember my days in UO and SB ganking and getting ganked, but any large studio is not going there - and this is not a sign of devolution.  

1. WoW - This MMORPG is the best proof anyone needs for how MMORPGs has devolved. It has all of the elements mentioned above and with its enormous popularity has made tons of developers trying to create the next "WoW killer" which means they will try and make a copy of WoW but with some features that WoW does not have. Newsflash for you devs, there is no such thing as a better copy. Innovation is what will create the "WoW killer". Not plagiarism.

This is so flawed I am not even going to... yeah.

The reason WoW is the number one reason of MMORPG devolution is that it has no persistant world where you actions affect same world. PvP is meaningless, PvE is meaningless they are all for getting more items actually achieving, even partial victories, in the world of WARcraft, is not possibly as the war is an illusion. Beside being static it is also very linear. The game is basically the Volvo of MMORPGs, it works and is safe but does it have any innovative features? No.

What is meaningless is that people expect a game to be more than what it is intended to be... I think the devolution is in the player base more so then the studios.  Players change MMO's these days like most people change their socks.  We all talk about devolution of MMO's but almost every negative post blames devs for not doing it like it was done 8-10 years ago.  Species that stop evolving become extinct like many titles out there have become and some players find that they may no longer fit into the evolutionary chain and may need to move on.  I am sure going to miss "you".

 

Originally posted by wyrde

They are evolving, but with that 3-5 year wait between concept and initial release, that evolution seems glacial to us players.

Probably the biggest revolution in the evolution of MMOs will come when some kind of framework is developed that allows for much faster iteration through the development process.

 

-w

Add to that the fact that most Devs are only looking at what works. This becomes Eons!

Too many MMO's are cutting corners and that will NEVER create a successful game. Warhammer has it's good and bad points, WoW is just past it's used by date with people bored and waiting for the next evolution.

So I say to the Devs out there, try something different, after all you can always change it after launch. WoW did, well didn't they?

By different I am meaning branching out from the limited scope of MMO's. Just imagine if the mouse wasn't invented, I cannot imagine a world without one, yet alot of Devs are pushing for a backward push to Console based MMO's. Get real, give us something to sink out time into and you might just find enough subscribers to survive your next attempt.

Evolution or decay depends largely on whether the observer approves of the changes.  Certainly things ARE changing.

Ken

Originally posted by Raithe-Nor

No, a genre is a branding applied to individual entities that helps potential customers determine in what entities they might be interested. 

We who like" MMOs" (as branded) don't all like the same type of game.  The genre is becoming meaningless to us all. 

It's time for the separate genres to become unlinked.  And no, I don't actually care what words are used to label any particular one.

It's odd that you decided to complain about labelling of genres, only to then say you don't care about labels.

Genres DO evolve based on the progress of their individual components. FPSs evolved through Escape from Castle Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Serious Sam, Deus Ex, Halo and so on. Dune 2000, Command and Conquer, Total Annihilation, Starcraft, Warcraft et al evolved the real time strategy genre. MMOs have evolved through The Realm, Meridian 59, UO, Everquest and a ton besides.

As for "other game styles" are attempting to hijack the MMO, too late. Shattered Galaxy has been doing the MMORTS for years. PlanetSide and WWIIO did / do the MMOFPS. Although both UO and EQ were MMORPGs, they were very different games despite falling under the MMO genre label.

Finally, five minutes reading a review / feature list of a title is likely to tell you if you are going to possibly enjoy a MMO. It's not like the publishers label a game as a MMO, take everyones' money, lock the door then run away screaming "SUCKERS!" while burdened with large bags of easy cash.

I'm going to have to completely agree with the deevolution as well. As people have already mentioned, the MMO genre has gained a couple new features over the years, but lost many important ones in the process.

We wanted storylines, and unfortunately the only way to tell a story is by being linear. Go here, go there, do this, do that to reach the climax. Quests mean nothing now. Quests in Everquest, as few as they were, felt special partly because they weren't that easy to find. I remember having to actually talk to NPC's by using trigger words to start dialogues. People had to figure that stuff out, it wasn't handed to them.

Another very important thing missing is exploration. There is none anymore. I remember playing AC and I would literally spend half of my playtime just running around to random places, or seeing how far I could get up a mountain. Most MMO worlds don't feel natural anymore. Zones are nothing more than single player levels that players advance through, which means everyone has the exact same experiences.

Everything gets spoiled now as well. There is no mystery. There are lists of what items people recieve at what levels, and how to get them even before they start playing. Everyone knows what mobs they will fight, what dungeons there are and how to get to them. Anyone can easliy findout that crafting materials X result in outcome Y, what skill is required to make it and how it is made.

UO was the pinnacle and its all gone down hill from there. I don't know anyone who has played UO/Everquest/AC that doesn't feel MMO's have moved in the right direction. Skill based systems, housing, meaningful PVP, consequences for death, exploration, ability to impact environment are mostly all gone. I mostly play current gen MMO's simply due to boredom, but am typically disapointed. I'm hoping Mortal Online has something to offer, but I've been let down too much in the past to pay too close attention.

And let's not forget, the human race had evolved at least 5 different human species on the way. Homo Sapiens is exactly one of those, with possible blendings of Neanderthals and other parallel developers.

Q. What happened to all of the other evolved species?

A. They died out, because their evolution was in the wrong direction for survival.

So let's not just say that "evolution is happening, therefore it's good". The evolution of humanity itself has gone in many wrong directions - an industry doing the same is no surprise.

Look at any industry that has ever existed, and you can see where evolution can lead. For example, custom craftsmen competing locally against one another to produce the highest-quality goods led to monstrous, mass-production businesses, which then evolved into sweatshops producing the lowest quality junk they could make a buck off of. Which is now finally leading back to small, niche companies competing to bring about progress, which they then sell to the mass-producers to take advantage of their production capacity.

To me, this is exactly the stage at which the MMO industry is in. I would love to have the point at which those creative game artisans fell into the maw of the monster mass-production machines taught thusly in every school in the world - "This is what you do NOT do if you want to avoid your industry falling into a decade-long slide into craptastic product clonage, not to mention turning your own cool, progressive jobs into soul-draining code sweatshops. Any questions?" lol.

MMO's are about the people playing them.  None of those reasons have anything to do with us. The game is just a medium for us to interact. What evolution have you seen there? There is none. Until the games start getting back to the people playing them, instead of the developers themselves..there can be no positve growth. Only money wasted and a few publishers running everything.

Originally posted by evasiege

Everything gets spoiled now as well. There is no mystery. There are lists of what items people recieve at what levels, and how to get them even before they start playing. Everyone knows what mobs they will fight, what dungeons there are and how to get to them. Anyone can easliy findout that crafting materials X result in outcome Y, what skill is required to make it and how it is made.

I can’t see your point from the statement above. If the content of game sites becomes more ample in the category their game guide, it doesn’t mean people will lose their fun in exploration, because gamers could choose if they want to read those instructions or simply skip it, just like you can explore the maps or fulfill the quests by yourself, while glancing over the common gamers trying their best upgraded within the fastest time span.
The problem is people will get affected by the common flow and people just want to imitate what they see in the crowd. But if there is really a certain group of players who seek out the real exploration, then this group can also create their own evolution of play for themselves.
I have even envisaged the future setting of a game site, where players need to choose if they want to see the full version of game guides when they login, and they need to create their own game- wiki if they want. Then the revolution of games could turn into another direction: people pursue a slow tempo of playing game, instead of being swallowed up by the speeding flow and greed for consuming a game.
 

Originally posted by Rasputin

Evolution or Devolution?

IMO the genre is in many regards devolving:

 - Housing is all but lost. Since UO, there has been just one game with housing (that I know of): SWG, and recently also Darkfall, though it still has to prove how well it is implemented.

 - The feel of a whole world has been smashed to pieces by instancing. Only a select few niche games hold on to the feel of one consistent world.

 - Non-combat roles as fully viable playstyles. Crafters, traders, gatherers. I cannot remember a game since UO, that allowed you to play a full-time non-violent career.

 - a fully living, breathing world. A world where roles interacted in often unexpected ways. You would see people go about doing their own small things. Many different roles, meeting under circumstances not set in stone (like questing or instance dungeons). And often people would meet on uncommon ground - a gatherer would see an adventurer in need and help him out. An adventurer asking direction from a lumberjack, who can warn him about the nearby orc raiding party etc.

---

Maybe the genre did in some ways evolve, but what was the cost? IMO we got an "evolution" that sacrificed some of the pillars of what I feel constitute an MMOG.

MMOGs nowadays are moving away from worlds and much more towards games, and in this move, game replayability and longevity is also lost.

Evolution? Are you so sure?

You could have personal housing in Shadowbane as well.  I thought that game was pretty revolutionary even if the game engine was lacking.

SWG was pretty revolutionary when it first came out, later to be "devolved".

CoH/CoV/CoX was a revolutionary game for breaking the mold even further.  It's big revolution was character customization which a lot of people like but a game up to that point had not been able to provide at that level.

I believe that there may be some de-evolution going on in some games but I don't think the genre is a whole is following that trend.  I like my glass half full, thanks.

AC2 was my first MMO, just for reference.