WHAT IS A FAILED MMO?

In these days when we discuss another new MMO, words of "fail" and "downfall" are used, while others address the issue to be no issue at all, branding the critics haters. As so often, the truth lies inbetween.

Recently here and otherwise the idea came up that we gamers are like locusts, consuming content in ultra speed and thus ruining all MMOs. I think even Isabelle Parsley here didn't mean to blame the players, but I still feel the need to defend us a bit. I know I have lots of time and I spent much of it in SWTOR. So I *am* sort of the target audience of this critique. Partially this is so, as I myself have said already, because MMOs have become populated by an over average degree by people with less money and more time. And no, I don't mean to critizise anyone, I am just seeing that as a fact, a mosaic piece of the overall image.

Now many of the recent MMOs certainly can't be called failed, because that would imply a massive fall like in the case of Vanguard, Dark & Light or Tabula Rasa. Age of Conan, Warhammer and SWTOR are not failed games. And it certainly is the case that a lot of people enjoy(ed) these MMOs. But the reality remains that AoC, WAR and apparently SWTOR failed to capitalize in the expected grand and long lasting triumph. Not necessarily dethroning WOW, but all these MMOs have quick fall from grace to a relatively mediocre level very fast, which stands in stark contrast with the high profile companies, the money involved and the famous IP. In other words: these games jumped as tigers and landed as alley cats. Maybe a nice alley cat, but the contrast remains. In this, SWTOR is just the most recent example, although we may still see how it goes, I guess they can't hold their 1-2+ million subs aspirations at all! And whether or not you like SWTOR, it remains a fact that the other three pillars besides "story" are just very, very mediocre. And with EA, Bioware and Lucasarts, with so many years, so many people involved and SO much money, it is just astounding.

One of the things in all the previous "problem-MMOs", shall we say, is this: the issues were on the table way before release. In all cases of either mediocre performance or outright fail, there were enough people who brought the issues on the table. So if we see this, it is the development process itself which needs to be revised! Whatever the usual "dos and don't dos" in gaming companies involve, *something* in the paradigm how MMOs are developed must be FUNDAMENTALLY amiss, if so many years and so many MMOs lead to the same result: strawfire hype.

ARE WE LOCUSTS?

Now of course we as consumers are partially to blame. In a capitalist society that is always the case. If a product has issues, don't buy it. I recall well the time when one big paradigm shift happend. I was in EQ2, the EQ follower, and it was then the critique began to arise. People attacked SOE for "forced grouping". I never had heard that term in my time in SWG, which I had played before. Grouping was the essence of MMOs. But suddenly this term arose, banding things as "forced" and thus unwanted. And this idea began to spread that formerly unquestioned hardships were doubted. It was a sort of a "religious crisis": people stopped believing in "atonement through pain". And once this avalance had started, it was too late for the pebbles to vote. (Sorry to Kosh to steal his quote.^^)

Today we are at the lower end of this avalanche, we realize, that all those grindy hardships taken out of games have led to an accleration. And that is where I think we are not to blame to be locusts. We consume as fast as we are allowed, that is the nature of things. People can't blame us gamers, if we rush through games, if there is nothing inside that invites us to linger! SWTOR is just so extremely symptomatic for this. The often dead, sterile worlds, the lack of the many "small & animated things", the lack of real social hubs, the entire focus on story not as 4th pillar, but as the ONLY pillar. It's like with a monocultural farming, which usually invites locusts, it's not the locusts who are to blame, it's those who put up the monocultural farms! Or on our case, the developers. Sure, we gamers asked for soloability, for easier gameplay, for being more casualfriendly. But it is the task of a game company and of professional designers not just blindly to listen to customers, but to keep the system as a whole in mind. Of course customers have tons of wishes, and devs are advised to listen to that, but not blindly!

WAS THE PAST BETTER?

Now the point is: we can not just return to the past. Partially because I think some see it with pink coloured glasses when thinking of UO and EQ. But also because we changed, many of us, at least. The answer can't be to simply add old hardships. Maybe some of them a bit. But by and large we must decelerate the MMOs again, and take out this every faster "gogogo" and "speedrun" mentality, by inviting the gamers to linger. Do you feel invited to stay in any of the SWTOR planets? After Balmorra, after Tatooine, do you stay there just so? No. There is nothing that invites you to stay. Anchrohead is just a city people rush through, while Bree and Rivendell remained places where people stay and linger. They don't always rush through, but they DO in SWTOR. It's a matter of design, and no one has capitalized more the fast move through quest tunnels than Bioware. I think this design is one of the most fatal flaws in SWTOR especially, as it also has been in Warhammer. People are always rushing from quest spot to quest spot, lead on a hook on the nose. Players are not invited to explore, to linger, so stay, to look around. there are no open PVP on the planets, no social hubs, nothing to do or see. You just move on from quest to quest. It is that flaw that breeds locust behavior!

And the answer was on the table. For years! Sandbox elements. It wasn't that Bioware was dumb or didn't know it. It was the clear paradigm that there "is no Uncle Owen". Or that movie type heroes are not weird aliens but humans. Heroes don't craft chairs, they don't run shops and they don't dance or make music. And as a result, people have nothing to linger around, to slow down their own gameplay. I had 2 chars in SWG a combat char and a dancer. After many hours of heroic combat and exploration, I went back to my dancer and was in some entertainer group for an hour to relax, to chat and just get away from heroic business for a while. Some MMOs have such stuff: the music and farming system in LOTRO. Or how much time I spent in LOTRO to dye various clothing sets for my daily changing whim. Or the much debated social effect of fishing and holidays, both things Bioware devs left no opportunity out to mock.

But people tire of being always a hero in a story, and now this game opens a new chapter. It's "The Revenge of Uncle Owen".

THE FUTURE

The future can't just be a copy of the past, but game developers need to rethink their development process on a VERY fundamental level, they need to question the MMO paradigms of the past, that "only pure themeparks work", and need to envision a broader approach than capitalizing on ONE strength alone. Story would have been good as one of four pillars, not as THE only pillar. Previous MMOs have made the same mistake, capitalizing only on one single strength. And that is what WOW did better: they always focussed on many different parts of their game, they reshaped their game from time to time and learned from the mistakes of others. If we want to move on beyond WOW, we must again make MMOs first and foremost WORLDS to stay in and not only pure themeparks. That concept has failed often enough to be proven a flawed concept.

It is a shame that the genre has come so far, that we must wish the fall of SWTOR. But maybe only a large enough crash can cure the game developers from the hubris that "all is well and we know better". The suggestions and critique was on the table for years! If the situation is that dire in the near future for SWTOR, there is only one to blame, and one alone. Bioware.

I love that, "The Revenge of Uncle Owen."

This whole thing is rather rambling and incoherent, but I get your message, and I agree with you - heroes are made slowly, and not everyone wants to be a hero.

The reality is that there's a secret fifth pillar in MMO's and that is called "Socializing". 

SWG was my first MMO, which had plenty of socializing. I enjoyed the interactions I voluntarily participated in, and even some I need to as part of the game. When I tried EQ2 I saw people just running from one spot to the next in search of the next quest location. There were no social hubs, unless there was some coordinated event. It made the game feel lifeless.

If a game would take place socializing on the same level as combat, I think you'd see a good game. Humans afterall are social creatures. When you meet new people and enjoy participating in activites with them you're willing to gloss over multitudes of shortcomings in other areas.

Not ALL gamers are not locusts, simply the majority of people who participate on sites such as this are. Stop thinking the genre needs re-inventing because the fringes of a community say so.

Things will not change in the mmo market until people start buying games for what they are and not buying them because of who the publisher, developers, and IP are.

If people see bioware they run and buy it. People see gw2 and cant wait to buy it. People are just sucker to marketing these days.

Originally posted by travamars

Things will not change in the mmo market until people start buying games for what they are and not buying them because of who the publisher, developers, and IP are.

If people see bioware they run and buy it. People see gw2 and cant wait to buy it. People are just sucker to marketing these days.

There is a logic, and that is people buy something from a company or source that they trust, enjoy or respect in some way. If you bought a Ford and found it to be a great car, why wouldnt you buy another Ford?

Developers may not need to reinvent the genre, but they do need to advance it. I remember when some development firms promised open world MMOs where the scale would come close to realism (either 1/4th scale or slightly smaller). Instead, we got instances (AO) and phasing (LOTRO and WOW) and updated graphics. Besides that, nothing has really changed about the essence of MMOs other than they keep paring down the feature list. 

For me, this is why I don't play MMOs anymore because developers aren't even maintaining the old feature list, they're simplifying every aspect of MMOs to the point that there's no challenge anymore. It's funny that I put more time into singleplayer games like FO:NV and Skyrim by comparison to say TOR or FFXIV. And for my time, I get challenges, some surprises, and sometimes I cuss at the computer because I wanted to try something new (but I learned something new in the process too). But when I play an MMO it's press buttons 1 2 3 4 5 and maybe 6 and 7 if I have some oh shi- abilities. Beyond that there's no challenge, not even in PVP (open world or arenas). Dumbing games down make them less into games and more into drugs, imo. Especially when they focus too much on "phat loots" and less on experiences and exploration.

Well when we finally get a mmo that isn't easy and made for those people who only play 5 hours a week then perhaps players will not finish mmos as quickly as they are now. The mmo genre needs to stop catering to casuals.

 Well at last the OP has stopped calling everyone here a idiot and stating he's the only intelligent person on the board. Nice to see he's checked his hollier then thou you all can burn in hell attitude that was modded out of the locast thread. Nerd rage its a very ugly thing. 

Originally posted by nikoliath

Originally posted by travamars

Things will not change in the mmo market until people start buying games for what they are and not buying them because of who the publisher, developers, and IP are.

If people see bioware they run and buy it. People see gw2 and cant wait to buy it. People are just sucker to marketing these days.

There is a logic, and that is people buy something from a company or source that they trust, enjoy or respect in some way. If you bought a Ford and found it to be a great car, why wouldnt you buy another Ford?

Its that kind of blind loyalty that leads to these shitty games.

And i do drive i ford and its a great truck and i'll never sell it. But if i get another truck it will be a GMC because they make them better (IMO) than fords today. Just because something was better years ago i dont run like a fool and buy their next product

I guess you wouldn't even check out the competiion and just hand over your money living in the past. Then dont complain when when quality sucks.

Originally posted by nikoliath

Originally posted by travamars

Things will not change in the mmo market until people start buying games for what they are and not buying them because of who the publisher, developers, and IP are.

If people see bioware they run and buy it. People see gw2 and cant wait to buy it. People are just sucker to marketing these days.

There is a logic, and that is people buy something from a company or source that they trust, enjoy or respect in some way. If you bought a Ford and found it to be a great car, why wouldnt you buy another Ford?

Your logic is a bit faulty here. When I buy a car, its feature list is fixed for the most part. I can use to drive from place a to place b. It has some features which make the drive comfortable or more fruitful (radios, GPS, etc). But the core of the product remains the same: personal conveyance. Lets compare that to the evolution of MMORPGs. They started out mostly as graphical copies of MUDs with some key differences: large populations over continuous game spaces (little or no instancing/sharding) and open ended gameplay (or metagaming whichever best fits here). Now, MMOs are heavily instanced, game spaces are not continous anymore, and even the core rulesets from MUDs have been dumbed down (rather than clarified or re-rationalized). So, no MMORPGs are not even the Fords of games. Instead, we started with cars for MMORPGs, and then the manufacturer (game devs) decided to par everything down to where we just have a bicycle retro-fitted with a mower engine. Sorry, I don't want a massively single player game where I have to pay month to month or buy in-game currency/items from a cashshop to keep playing. I'll just buy games like Skyrim, Saints Row, or the latest GTA where I know I get the same core features and then some (as added value) instead.

Don't be ridiculous, he's got a good point. There are certain developers I can basically always trust to deliver an excellent gaming experience (Capcom comes to mind), but I can't think of a developer I purposely avoid because of a bad experience (except maybe Square-Enix in recent years.)

BioWare is a quality game studio.  $300,000,000 is a lot of money.  SWTOR should have been a mind-blowingly fantastic game.  It wasn't.  It damages the company's reputation for me personally.  But I don't think it's totally off-the-wall to play a game made by a developer you like and expect it to be good.  It's the same reason musicians have fans.

I'm not being ridiculous. You take the first generation of MMOs and compare their modern analogs feature by feature then you'll see they're quantitatively different products. We got massively single player games today, not MMOs. The only thing that makes modern 'MMOs' massive are their budgets, nothing more. As for TOR, it just goes to show that you can put money into a large firm and get crap products (not unlike governments which are massive in their bureaucracies). Bioware just proves the old ideas of Hayek and company are right: bureaucracies always fail to capture market trends be they private or public.

You know what sucks...

10 years ago - if you had held roundtable discussions with EQ/DAOC/UO players and asked them what features they'd like to see in games in 2012... virtually none of the celebrated things you see in TOR would've been on the list.

Players wanted a more lively world... behavior for npcs... seasons... weather... places to conquer... things to build... ways their guild/group of friends could affect the world.... essentially they wanted the MMOs to be more "real."

2012.... TOR doesn't even have day/night... and 100 player pvp will give you worse lag than 2002 DAOC.

Originally posted by ladyattis

Originally posted by nikoliath

Originally posted by travamars

Things will not change in the mmo market until people start buying games for what they are and not buying them because of who the publisher, developers, and IP are.

If people see bioware they run and buy it. People see gw2 and cant wait to buy it. People are just sucker to marketing these days.

There is a logic, and that is people buy something from a company or source that they trust, enjoy or respect in some way. If you bought a Ford and found it to be a great car, why wouldnt you buy another Ford?

 

Your logic is a bit faulty here. When I buy a car, its feature list is fixed for the most part. I can use to drive from place a to place b. It has some features which make the drive comfortable or more fruitful (radios, GPS, etc). But the core of the product remains the same: personal conveyance. Lets compare that to the evolution of MMORPGs. They started out mostly as graphical copies of MUDs with some key differences: large populations over continuous game spaces (little or no instancing/sharding) and open ended gameplay (or metagaming whichever best fits here). Now, MMOs are heavily instanced, game spaces are not continous anymore, and even the core rulesets from MUDs have been dumbed down (rather than clarified or re-rationalized). So, no MMORPGs are not even the Fords of games. Instead, we started with cars for MMORPGs, and then the manufacturer (game devs) decided to par everything down to where we just have a bicycle retro-fitted with a mower engine. Sorry, I don't want a massively single player game where I have to pay month to month or buy in-game currency/items from a cashshop to keep playing. I'll just buy games like Skyrim, Saints Row, or the latest GTA where I know I get the same core features and then some (as added value) instead.

I completely agree.  Honestly, when you compare the the current MMO design to a game like Ultima Online (back in 2000) the difference in complexity is staggering.  Back then we had a living world to participate in with each day of gameplay holding something completely new.  Today we have a straight line to run our character's solo through until we get to the end and then group with a dozen or so people to do the same content repeatedly.

We really only have ourselves to blame though.  MMO consumers apparently like paying $15 a month for a shallow linear single player game that just so happens to share the same server with other people.

I won't even get started on raiding, one of the worst ideas for any game ever, in my opinion.

Edit: I'd just like to note that it's really sad that that the only game to come out in the last decade to encompass everything the early MMO gaming fans would have loved to see in an MMO is a single player game.

I am a locust... here's me on holiday in spain... good times

Dear OP,

A Themepark is a Themepark is a Themepark. Please branch out and try some different styles of MMOs and your outlook may greatly improve.
/fortunecookie :D

Yes, you are locusts, if you buy those themepark games and even *gasp* sucscribe to them.

Stop buying them. Problem solves itself.

Originally posted by DannyGlover

Dear OP,

A Themepark is a Themepark is a Themepark. Please branch out and try some different styles of MMOs and your outlook may greatly improve.
/fortunecookie :D

Well if we had a good market of mmo's to play it might be helpful. But most all mmo's released this day in age are themeparks. Unless you want to play mmofps, mmorts, browserbased, etc. But to me those are not mmo's. Sandboxes and hybrids just arent numerous. With the lack of features and enjoyment coming from them, i can see why most people are upset with newer releases. It feels like the exact same mmo with new skins and the major content is dailies, warzones, and/or raids. Gets tedious after the first 20 or so ;)

Originally posted by djmtott

The reality is that there's a secret fifth pillar in MMO's and that is called "Socializing". 

SWG was my first MMO, which had plenty of socializing. I enjoyed the interactions I voluntarily participated in, and even some I need to as part of the game.

SWG may have had some issues, may have changed due to the NGE, but all in all was a damn good mmo. I didnt have to quest, i wasnt forced into something I could go to a planet and spend a week there just looking around, hunting, etc. Crafting was intense and well worth it. The social aspect of that game was so nice. Even player cities in its prime before the mass exodus was just fun to see "neighbors" and talk to them. Take a minute or 5 and just be a community.

We need more games like this. Just rushing thru the game, the content, the world just o max out is so lame. And everyone says well i cant play sandboxes, im a casual player. Yeah thats what sandboxes are for, the casuals ;)