I must have played a dozen MMOs since the last time I actually a) had fun and b) stuck with a game for a while.  In all honesty - Dark Age of Camelot was the last MMO I every played for a good, long while.  I've plaed others like AO, SWG, EVE, WoW and so on, but never for more than a couple months each.

When I started in this genre, MMO's were text based things called MUDs which I would log in to for several hours a day, several years in a row.  Then UO came out and I was addicted.  AC followed that and then came DAoC for over a year.  That's the last time I ever recall playing an MMO for any length of time.

I can't pinpoint exactly what the cause is either.  Somewhere between real life issues and boredom with the genre, I think.  Even when WoW came out and crippled innovation afterwards, I still looked at it and thought "been there, done that" as I saw traces fo DAoC and AC in that game.

Another contributing factor these days are the small, low budget indie devlopers that are killing it for me.  I want a game when I play a game, not a patchwork design of a potential game.  Mortal Online left a bitter taste in my mouth and I'm not in the habit of falling into that trap again.

I know what you mean.

I fell in love with MMOs with UO and played it for hm 6 years I think.

Since then I played/tried pretty much every major MMO and quite a lot of Niche and F2P Games only to relive the kind of fun I've had in Ultima.

And while sometimes I think that the games just suck or at least aren't for me to keep my interest, quite frankly I think I've become bored with the genre as a whole. I'm still chasing my proverbial Dragon to relive those awesome moments I've had all those years ago but nowadays excitement in a new game usually last exactly as long as my learning curve with potentially new mechanics and things to see, which tends to be anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks.

Maybe there's going to be another game someday that will keep my interest for a longer period of time but even then I'm sure it will never live up to the good old days, simply because it can't...the most exciting experiences are new ones, and in MMOs those rarely ever happen after your first "MMO Love". Mostly they dress a little different and superficially change a few things but are really only new versions of the same things over and over again. Not placing blame here, it's natural that those kinds of games are similar in basic matters of mechanics and gameplay and even "innovations" that at first glance look interesting and new are rarely more than a fancy new dress or sleight of hand.

I will keep on searching simply because I'm not ready to let go yet hehe.

I only wish that people will at least be as lucky as the both of us and find their "awesome memorable game" before they become bored with the genre. At least then they will have something to fondly think back to. :)

As strange as it may sound..to me UO seems like a home long lost.

Love it while it lasts.

Cheers CK :)

I think the problem for me is that I enjoy MMOs but I start to feel like they're just a waste of time.  EQ was so long ago I barely remember it, but WoW for me just became too much of a grind.  I've always been a min/maxer, so of course I wanted to get the best gear.  My gf can barely stand three nights a week of raiding, so forget about joining the kind of guild that would demand four (not that I have much stomach for it either).  So then you're raiding with uncommitted people or not at all.  And it's fine for a while, and then you realize that everything you're doing is basically wasted anyway, because in six months there will be another expansion that makes the gear you worked so hard for worthless.  Maybe if I actually enjoyed raiding it would be different, but it's too much like a second job.  Not to mention all the time spent on dailies to support your raiding supplies.

I thought about getting into Rift to bide my time, but I just read the writing on the wall before it even came out.  Grind to 50 and then what, raid for gear?  PVP?  Why do this to myself?

Right now my only hope is for GW2.  Partly because it's B2P, partly because they're doing a ton of innovating, but mostly because it's going to deemphasize the endgame.  I have a bunch of friends who are also burnt out gamers and I can't get them to play anything right now.  I really sincerely hope we can just get together and have fun doing dungeons and events and just playing around with it.  To not have it be how can I squeeze another 1% dps of the only viable spec/rotation/gem/enchant/glyph combination.  I'm hoping I can say today I'm going to make the best longbow build I can, and tomorrow the best greatsword build, and you guys can do whatever you want to do and we'll just run it and try to pull victories out of crazy situations.

But who knows.  Maybe I won't be happy doing that, maybe I'm just done with the genre.  I'll just have to wait and see.

Battlefield 2 was my solution to part of the MMO problem.  Just play the game and you don't have to worry about grinding.  World of Tanks is now another relief fom the MMO trap but neither of them are really the type of game I want to be playing in the long run.

For me it was always about the people, far less about the game or even the leveling. I remember starting out on dragon realms when it was a free addon to the aol chat room service right after aol went to monthly billing. Back then I just played for fun, and to role play with people I found to be like a second family. I didn't even care about my level, I cared about the people. Then I went to EQ and was pretty much the same, until I tried SWG and WoW both of those games were more or less just me in a sea of people I didn't care about or even want to know. After that I became a solo player, ignoring most of the other people online.

I grouped with my classmates from college in games like lotro, and recaptured a little of that fun. then they started to quit as the real world came crashing in, and I just ended up being the last one in the pool. At times I feel like the last adventurer in a party, looking out on the road. All his friends retired, or passed on to the next deminsion. He looks to the right and left and all he see's is fresh young faces, they call him grandpa or old timer, snickering behind his back at the wisdom he tries to share. Softly, he says to himself one last time, one last adventure and I am done. Then with these new people he sets off down the road to the relm of nextgame, his hopes high that he will at last find a place to call home.

We all know how that story ends though, he dies, or leaves the party to retire to some remote cabin never to be heard from again. That's how I see most of us, we were around in the first age of computer games, we were there when the great floppys were forged, we saw the pixels of war. Then it all changed, we adapted, it changed again, and we adapted to that as well. Then they came, the new generation of gamers, they came and they wanted something else, they believed in different gods. They spoke a different tongue, and they pushed us to the side.

For me this is easy, I have learned to hate the long list of go kill/fetch quests given in each section of almost every mmo. If anyone makes a mmo today where I have to go kill 10 animals for their fur I'm just not going to play. Guild Wars has spoiled me, I dislike monthy fees because it feels like I need to pay x amount of hours to justify the payment I make each month.

Totally in the same boat. For the past year I must have played every MMO out, none for over a month though. I don't know what it is I will play them a while...stop and think "Is this really fun?" and then I stop playing. MMO in general just havent evolved in so long that theirs nothing new to play.

I also have fallen into the indie potential trap too...multiple times. I bought MO, Earthrise, Xsyon (they were nice enough to give me a refund), and would have probably bought DF too if I had of heard about it at launch. I suppose I'm to optomistic when it comes to potential in games.

If the next batch of MMO's doesnt deliver (mainly SWTOR, GW2, ArcheAge) I will most likely be done with MMOs for a while until they actually ge a major overhall. Hopefully I'll be able to play BF3, Skyrim, and Brink if all else fails.

Currently however I'm enjoying playing the WAR trial casually between single player games.

I quit Asherons call 2 in early 2005 after 2years, then i played several mmo's f2p and p2p inbetween kind of burnout untill 2009, then  i started with Darkfall, played sinds launch untill now i just quit after bit more then 2 years.

I was looking around a little but somehow i can't find my self even go over to mmo site looking if i wanne play it or not.

And with games like GW2 and SWtor i even have less and less desire to play anymore.

Its started reasontly with DA2 and Crysis 2 when i saw these game developers who became well known and great companys on PC took step 100% to CONSOLE and abandon PC:(

DA2 was already a follow up from a game that was not real a classic PC game but with rediculous action small maps DX9 in 2011 and limited freedom a console game badly ported to PC. But Crysis a FPS thats played best on PC is degrace to PC community its a badly ported console version to PC:(

GW2 i saw some ingame gameplay movies and im convinced soon i wont play mmo games any more not only is it also rediculous DX9 its with in mind that it must please on new generation with cool console moves childish hold hand and very bad graphics so old pc's can handle it im not even surprised if it will also be launched on consoles.

With all this happening im on verge of lose my whole intrest in mmo's maybe even solo games, becouse i can almost not find any games anymore that are comepletely mine i eather must be connected to steam, witch i boycot or some other company so i research games if i know it will be 100% in my controll ill buy other wise not.

The Witcher 2 will prolly one of the last games in history that will be 100% under my controll when i buy it.

I also place my last hope in Bethesda Elder scrolls V:Skyrim if i see any mention of DLC in launch day becouse they have worked for many years on this game so i want a complete game not a hall ass game and rest through DLC i wont buy games from money grabbing bastards anymore and must be connected to internet to play it then i wont buy it for god sake its a solo game.

Im totally burnout with how it it evolves gaming on internet or even on my PC:(

People well most of them anyway, think its cool that steam and some other companys, you give your game key and you wont have to dl or dl on steam or need of disk ever again but dont realise you give all the controll to these guys while you bloody pay for it and they screen your whole HDD how naive can you be lol.

Im totally fed up with whole gaming industry as it evolves now most of restrictions or all control you give up is becouse of piracy people who illegally dl games i hate them also and understand this cant go on any longer stealing games, but i dont give damn about that if i have to suffer for these criminals, i should not be punished for that period, ive bought all my games over past 12 years in box and i got alot of games that is now almost completely stopped becouse of these same game companys who comeup with dlc limited install always be online or dl sites like steam who also have the bloody nerfe to screen your whole HDD so result its there fault that im not buying almost no games anymore.

Im stuck with my old games then hehe.

This was from a frustrated old skool gamer:P

Originally posted by Ragnaven

For me it was always about the people, far less about the game or even the leveling.

I completely agree.  I penned a blog article similar to your post.  Mine was about a nostalgic return to EverQuest a while back.  I know that I'm not interested in rushing around a game world to accumulate items, levels and other gubbage.  I just want to do some interesting things with interesting people.  I'm after a much less frenetic experience, but given that even the game designers are dramatically younger than me, I don't hold out much hope of that happening.

I think it really all comes down to the "new" factor, when something is new, you want to do it all the time, because its exciting. Similar to driving a car, when you get your license you want to drive everywhere and anywhere. But after a while you start to realize just how much time you spend in that car, you realize the costs associated with it, your find a newer, more interesting thing to do, etc, and it just gets old.

Now sure you can go out and by yourself a BMW to replace the original Ford, and yes, its a nice ride but eventually that too will get old, and it will get old sooner than the Ford did. Its the same thing with MMO's, they might be very fun at first, but once you realise that in the end you are still just "driving", you lose interest that much quicker.

So really what we need is something truly "new" that can capture the attention of us experienced gamers and hold it, without giving that same feeling of something we have already done.

Its because MMOs are designed to keep you doing mudane tasks for making money, rather than entertaining you to make moey. Theres a lot of research and articles about it. They even have experiements with rats where they reward the rat randomly, but very rarely with a treat for turning a light bulb on and off over and over and over. At first the rat gets a treat everytime, then very often, then sometime, then rarely, then almost never, but it kept doing the task for that tiny reward he may or may not get (grinding for rare virtual/pretend items)

Thees a lot more to the experiment and article, but thats what MMOs are. Theres teams of people dedicated to figuring out how to get people to play and pay longer, wheter its subscriber, cash shop, or both. They aren't designed to entertain in the least bit. Microsoft is a big part of this. They spent a ton of money coming up with the concept of the GamerScore. Getting people to play games and do pointless tasks and even gt online acheivemets for game score points that DO NOTHING. What sense does that make. You can't spend the points, you can't unlock anything, you just get them. And people actually fall for it.  Thats because humans are horders by nature. Thats why we can easily fall in love with MMOs so fast. Theres always a collecting asect somewhere, and "badges", "trophies" , achievements" etc feed on this. And grinding for gear/weapons/items does so as well.

However, people are starting to look for entertainment. I started looking in around 2008 and have yet to do it. Like most people who have played as many games as me and as long as me, they're getting tired of the current stuff because collecting isnt doing it. New MMOs are failiing because people don't want to collect pointless gear in them. Nearly all the MMOs have placed in pointless collecting or badge/title earning. So everyone is getting brned out faster + many other reasons of course. The only MMO that shows signs of being made to entertain are anet with GW2. The new star wars game is going to depend on its name to carry it through. Not mention with bioware behind it which is overrated. Bioshock, Mass Efect, and Dragon Age aren't that great. If I want a deep story, I'll buy a book, not 60 dollar video games.

The ony thing I can stand now is Guild Wars (in attempt to hold me before guild wars 2) and non-mmo games. But honestly, I hope the mmo industry just dies so that all these greedy bussinessmen leave the industdry for good so that the real developers are left to make the games they've always wanted to and are backed by publishers that *get it*. This is will take forever though because theres still way too many people falling for MMOs like we did back in the day. But maybe once a ton of mmos come out and stretches everyone out, it'll go to sleep so that one day it can be reborn.

I will echo what some others have said here.

I did MUDs a little bit, but really cut my MMO teeth on EQ. Back then it was new, innovative, and amazing. I just thought it was cool to see other people running around and know they were players. I loved meeting new people, making new friends, some from foreign countries (I have met IRL people from other coninents that I played EQ with and still talk to regularly).

Never since, with the exception of WoW when it first launched, have I felt much of a connection to the other players in the games. Grouping has become a chore to many, rather than the point. Games are so frenetic now, that when you *do* group, you do not have the time or chance to actually talk. You are too busy mashing hotkeys and trying to stay alive.

Some of the best, funniest times I had in EQ1 were when priests were medding to get their mana back and we just sat there shooting the breeze.

I think technology has caught up to the genre. Never before have humans had the ability to communicate so readily, so frequently, and yet lived such isolated lives. These games feel more like single player games with other people running around all the time.

I am to the point where if the Oblivion series were playable on a LAN setting, I would just play a game like that with my wife and friends, to be honest.

But I keep coming back to MMOs, looking for that elusive, first rush....it would take a time machine to get it I think.

I completely know what you mean.  I started mmo's with DAoC.  I was what I would consider to be spoiled by the pvp, or rvr if you prefer. I have tried nearly every game out there since.  None hold me more than a few months.  I wish EA would just understand that if they rolled the game back to the shrouded isles expac, put a new graphics engine, new interface, and updated graphics they would have a huge, huge, huge hit.  Needless to say though that won't happen.

As far as other games they just don't have that 2 hours of being in a group to get a bubble of xp, and just enjoying eachothers company.  That's the way the mmo genre has evolved though.  I wanna bash my head off my monitor every time I hear, "Pull what the "insert curse here" are you waiting for you "insert curse here" noob.  Maybe I'm just being nostalgic.

WoW- good pve, horrible pvp, community is horrid, never last longer than a month

LoTR- good community, great pve, horrible horrible pvp, played off and on since launch a few months at a time

AoC- played at launch, I'm sure game is far better now but left a bad taste

WAR-was fun but scenarios are stupid in this game and split the player base plus the issues still play occasionally

SWG- just started it's fun, but already losing interest

EVE- I found boring

Darkfall- just could not get into the game

many many f2p games that are generally just a p2w with a craptastic community.  Maybe one day something will come out that actually appeals to those of that aren't into the themepark games.  Not all of us gamers want our hands held, and to be spoon fed.  I'm starting to feel like those of us that feel that way are an extreme vast minority now.

It may be MMOs in general, but I would suspect it is probably the format of modern MMOs in particular.

The "grind for rewards" format that modern MMOs use is very, very good at keeping players' interests for a certain amount of time, say a few years.  But eventually players weary of it, and realize they are on a hamster wheel that will never stop.  When eventually they do leave, either due to fatigue or to real world taking precedence, they are unlikely to come back for extended periods of time.  Consequently, the industry has succeeded in capturing a number of people for a certain amount of time, but is now facing steady attrition.

In my opinion, the industry will need a new model if it is going to build something sustainable.  Simple variations on the "classic" MMO will not work.  There needs to be something more than the grind to keep players interested - either more competition, or better communities, or more rewarding goals to work for and achieve, but something other than the level/gear grind.

Remember the old Bartles test?   I think part of the problem is that the games today are dedicated toward the Killer aspect followed by the Achiever.  Social is of course there but no real dedication toward it and oddly enough the addition of convenience programming has tremendously affected it.  Explorer is nearly non existent and adversly affected by web info and convenience programming..

So if you are social/explorer you find that most games dont entertain you for long.  Just as an fyi I think many people drift toward social/explorer as they age too, it might not eclipse the others but probably impacts them.

Originally posted by Komar

So if you are social/explorer you find that most games dont entertain you for long.  Just as an fyi I think many people drift toward social/explorer as they age too, it might not eclipse the others but probably impacts them.

Great insights.  I am firmly in the "explorer" category, and consequently find that MMOs are far less than satisfying.

I kept expecting the genre to grow in the way the virtual worlds were represented, broader, wider, more detail. And while that has been offered graphically, in many other ways the viritual worlds are smaller, and less virtual. So yes besides the one I'm sticking with, I've lost interest.

I was heavy into the Dragon Realms mud for a number of years, but the 1st generation of MMO's had absolutely nothing for me.  I stuck with DR til' SWG put out JtL.  once NGE hit, I tried a number of games, but Eve was the only one that stuck for more than a couple months. 

Now my main game is LotRO, and has been for about 2 years, now.  It's the only game that I regret not getting a life sub for.  But even then, I don't play as often as I used to.  My life has changed since those days.

So it's entirely possible, I think, that it's not the games having changed so much as you have changed.  Could well be that there's some voice inside your head that telling you to do something else with your free time, and, like the creatures of habit we all are, you keep trying to squelch it with games you no longer enjoy.

Originally posted by Gudrunix

Great insights.  I am firmly in the "explorer" category, and consequently find that MMOs are far less than satisfying.

 Me too, I played a bard in EQ back before they became fashionable (at the very beggining) and many of my most entertaining moments were running full tilt through a zone way over my level just to see what was 'over there'.  I tell you there is nothing more exciting than looking forward and seeing something new and awe-inspiring then looking back to see a trail of vicious monsters nipping on your heals, waiting for you to make that one mistake...

There are no new MMOs I have found to date that allow this to occur.  If you move fast and combat ensues you get knocked out of speed.  All to prevent the 'speed' kite (which in my opinion is really silly with the ease of single player today, bard kiting was really intensive much more so than the root/slow methods).

Originally posted by Komar

Remember the old Bartles test?   I think part of the problem is that the games today are dedicated toward the Killer aspect followed by the Achiever.  Social is of course there but no real dedication toward it and oddly enough the addition of convenience programming has tremendously affected it.  Explorer is nearly non existent and adversly affected by web info and convenience programming..

So if you are social/explorer you find that most games dont entertain you for long.  Just as an fyi I think many people drift toward social/explorer as they age too, it might not eclipse the others but probably impacts them.

Not much for Social, but definitely an Explorer.  I used to go around intentionally finding things, even breaking things just for the sake of finding them.

Uncharted Waters Online was actually a really good game for this but once the learning curve ended, the age started to show; an old game with an old engine and all the limitations.  I wish them the best and hoep they make a sequel but even that game only lasted about 2 months for me and being an Asian compnay, I doubt we'll see a NA port of a new version until years after its release as well.

I guess I'm just old.

I'd rather my games not mix genres anymore.  Or in the terms above, I'd rather not have games blend a Killer aspect with a Social apsect.  For me, it's been done to perfection about 10 years ago.  Today, they're just trying to reinvent the wheel.

This is probably the reason I've gravitated towards games like Minecraft and Mount & Blade.  They can each fulfill part of those gaps without making emply promises like the others that can't deliver.