Great post OP!

This is the reason why I quit Aion again. It went F2P and I was playing since the day one. It was okay at first....like 20 levels. 20-30 was okay still because I went to abyss. But after lv 30 when leveling curve starts going up in heavens it became tiresome. Well, okay I unlocked Fire temple, first popular dungeon. But damn, it was boring as hell. All dungeons have the same concept, kill hordes of mobs just to kill boss that fights like every other mob. Great, and after 5 times no loot for me, because I have to pass the loot to others that use that piece of armor.

This won't happen in GW2. Leveling curve is nearly flat, looting is much more rewarding, and grind is set to minimum if there's any.

With all that you get new quest design through dynamic events that make things 1000 times more interesting. And also destroying the holy trinity, among other things.

Almost every core mechanic about mmos is being drastically changed, and at first it will cause massive confusion among players, but once people get used to it, and - as you said - once this mmo design gets more supporters, that many that this mmo philosophy that arenanet has created will become so huge that other companies won't be able to ignore anymore.

People dont have to agree with the OP, his writings or his vieuws.

But in a  nutshell the man explains also that since EQ the red line stayed the same with not much inovation from any mmo that came out.

Looking at GW2 and Anet they want to change as much as they can.

I support their way of thinking and balls to bring us their vieuw of a good mmo.

It might be the shittiest mmo ever in history (doubt it) but even when it does (fail) they tried doing something diffrent.

I played hardcore untill i got a wife and 3 kids, and a job so my game time is limited, does that mean iam a casual ?

Perhaps i am, but face me in PvP and you woulnt say iam a casual as i know what iam doing and how to beat you when on even ground.

Its just that i dont have the time to play 12 hours a day anymore, iam lucky if i can play 2 or 3 hours a day.

But my wife and kids are prio #1 and my job is prio #2 then comes along my hobby witch is gaming like all the rest of you :)

+10 for the OP post 

Originally posted by DarkPony

Oh dear ... someone just made instant gratification, lack of long term gameplay incentives and Anet's player conflict avoidance philosophy sound good ... and got away with it!?

BM' ing this for future reference.

I disagree on almost all parts but I do recognize your speach writing capacities. You could probably sell people bricks for gold bars.

+1 & QFT.

I'm really looking forward to GW2 and think it will be a really great game, but some things... Eh, I'm not even going to go there regarding this OP...

A drug junkie once told me: "Hey man you dont need any goals in life, you can just have fun!" - I dont disagree, just not sure if it's the best way to go forth with.

Originally posted by Rhianni32

Originally posted by Neverdyne

Originally posted by Adalwulff

Originally posted by Neverdyne

Originally posted by Dream_Chaser

@Neverdyne

You're equating an RL activity (saving for a soccer ball) to a game. A game is not RL. A game is not work. This is where the argument falls apart for me. In my opinion, if you want to work then why not get a job? A game is something you play to enjoy some leisure time. And the progression comes from the story and your personal enjoyment of the game.

 For some people, possibly you included, the hassle of "working" in a game is not fun, but for many others, like me, if we get everything free and easy it becomes meaningless. My enjoyment of a game comes from accomplishing things, hard things, and feeling how my character is progressing. If I accomplish something that was never hard or didn't require "work", like buying a vanity item from the store for 5 bucks, I really don't feel attached to it. I don't find value in it. 

 

You could definitly do that, one way is find the lowest level mob, probably near town, and grind on them until you hit max level. I am sure that would very hard to do, if you make it, that would be something to feel proud of.

 

There's a difference between a challenge and doing something stupid.

Becoming the No. 1 tennis player in the world = challenge

Trying to become the No. 1 tennis player in the world by playing without a racket and shoes = stupid

Does buying the best racket and shoes mean you will win the French Open?

Originally posted by Rhianni32

Great post and you make a lot of good points. Too often we see the "back in my day MMOs did X and thats how they are supposed to be!" arguments. I think what excites me most about GW2 is that it is different and does challenge these traditions. If its successful perhaps we can finally get away from a WoW clone with 1 small difference and claim to be innovative.

lol.   I"ve played on-and-off for fourteen years.    Not everything the old MMOs did was all that great...   In fact a lot of it was rubbish.   But I will say the easy-button that has been put into so many of them leaves me bored in weeks.

Too many developers have forgotten players need things like challege, community, productive-enjoyable time sinks to remain engaged with an MMO.   Now many of them are more like co-operative single player games than anything else.   It's like you're paying $15 a month for a giant LAN party with strangers...

Originally posted by Kuinn

Originally posted by DarkPony

Oh dear ... someone just made instant gratification, lack of long term gameplay incentives and Anet's player conflict avoidance philosophy sound good ... and got away with it!?

BM' ing this for future reference.

I disagree on almost all parts but I do recognize your speach writing capacities. You could probably sell people bricks for gold bars.

 

+1 & QFT.

 

I'm really looking forward to GW2 and think it will be a really great game, but some things... Eh, I'm not even going to go there regarding this OP...

 

A drug junkie once told me: "Hey man you dont need any goals in life, you can just have fun!" - I dont disagree, just not sure if it's the best way to go forth with.

Lol this has a lot of irony in it.

It's interesting nonetheless.

Originally posted by Dream_Chaser

 

But if you understand the paradigm shift, here, if you understand how the patterns are changing, then you understand why every one of these new threads exists. It's forcing people to question all that was supposedly set in stone about GW2. And like I said, that says to me... GW2 works. I am pleased.

Very well written. 

As I've posted recently, I have a stinking suspicion that the anger about the RMTs, etc, is not actually that.  It's a fear that the game isn't to be exclusive, but inclusive. 

A player with time will always outpace a player without as much time.  Considering both have paid the same price of admission(box cost), I fail to see the problem in allowing the player without time to reach some sort of parity with the player that has time. 

Once that occurs, there's only skill.  While we may never reach that goal with any MMO, I'm rooting for GW2 to at least takes us on our way, and if we're lucky, get us to the promised land. 

This has nothing to do with a paradigm shift and you know it.

Originally posted by RefMinor

Originally posted by Rhianni32

Originally posted by Neverdyne

Originally posted by Adalwulff

Originally posted by Neverdyne

Originally posted by Dream_Chaser

@Neverdyne

You're equating an RL activity (saving for a soccer ball) to a game. A game is not RL. A game is not work. This is where the argument falls apart for me. In my opinion, if you want to work then why not get a job? A game is something you play to enjoy some leisure time. And the progression comes from the story and your personal enjoyment of the game.

 For some people, possibly you included, the hassle of "working" in a game is not fun, but for many others, like me, if we get everything free and easy it becomes meaningless. My enjoyment of a game comes from accomplishing things, hard things, and feeling how my character is progressing. If I accomplish something that was never hard or didn't require "work", like buying a vanity item from the store for 5 bucks, I really don't feel attached to it. I don't find value in it. 

 

You could definitly do that, one way is find the lowest level mob, probably near town, and grind on them until you hit max level. I am sure that would very hard to do, if you make it, that would be something to feel proud of.

 

There's a difference between a challenge and doing something stupid.

Becoming the No. 1 tennis player in the world = challenge

Trying to become the No. 1 tennis player in the world by playing without a racket and shoes = stupid

Does buying the best racket and shoes mean you will win the French Open?

 

Yes, assuming an equal level of playing skill, you would have bought an advantage vs the guy who had the worse racket and shoes.

Agreed, These arguements only take one person into consideration.

So, yeah above other things, the person who wins the French Open in all likelyhood has the best equipment.

Know what else? You coul also make the assumption that they paid for the best trainers too.

It's true that you can't look at the winner and say they won ONLY becaue they had the best gear........However, it's not impossible to say the loser lost ONLY because his gear was inferior.

     I agree with a lot of the points of the original poster. The genre in a large way has become very stagnant. If nothing else I hope GW2 is very successful just to break away from some of what everyone accepts as concepts that must be part of a MMORPG. I started playing MMOs with Asheron's Call on the Darktide server and I've played pretty much every major MMO with full PVP servers since then. So my viewpoint is more from a PVP perspective then a PVE one.

     In my experience with the new batch of MMOs the gear driven focus is the major problem. And in my opinion it comes down to developer laziness. Its much more difficult and time consuming to develop fun compelling content than it is to add a couple new dungeon crawls put together a new armor set for your classes and call it a day. And we are seeing this in literally every game now. The same old recycled content over and over with new gear. That’s the mindset that needs to change. I was part of a raid guild in wow back in vanilla and after about 2 months of grinding the same crap over and over I just didn’t get it what the hell is fun about that? With games as they are now you can damn near get a video walkthrough on every boss encounter within the first month of release on youtube. Just as long as you don’t have a full raid of mouth breathers raid content isn’t a challenge anymore its just a time sink to keep people playing. And that’s what games are supposed to be about fun and challenge. When you have a raid on farm status its neither of the above so why is that system still used in games?

     In regards to the comments about progression I get it. That’s the whole point of RPG's to level your character and see them progress and get stronger. And that’s true I think it is important but I don’t think that an arbitrary time sink has to come along with that. The timetables on progression in most games seems to be developed thinking more about making sure the player stays busy long enough for the company to develop yet another time sink than if it makes sense for the players general well being. For instance how many games simply have busy quests? What I mean by that is quests that make no damn sense other than to just waste your damn time. Like go collect 200 berries for the orphanage and we'll give you some water to generate mana. Only to turn that quest in for them to tell you to run your ass back and collect some wolf slobber from the same area. And you're sitting there wondering, "WTH does this have to do with me being a great warrior for the kingdom?" Why is that needed? Give compelling NPC interaction that makes sense and isn’t just busy work. That’s all grinding is, busy work. How can developers keep people busy to milk them for their 15 dollars a month? Answer, make them grind for digital pixels for months on end and call it content. Don’t get me wrong I’ve fallen into that category myself more than once at one point I played MMOs pretty hardcore spending 5-8 hours a day playing so I'm speaking from experience.

     Developers need to start moving toward more dynamic and player driven content rather than spoon-fed static content. Here is a clear example. In Asheron's call on the PVP server the content was largely player driven. Raids were done on a regular basis but you weren’t raiding NPCs you were raiding other players leveling spots, bind locations, and guild mansions. Literally every engagement was different, the challenge was high, the PVP was fun, and the most skilled team won. And you didn’t just win the fight if you were fighting over a dungeon you then got to level in that new dungeon area and you had to spend time policing it for attackers. That is compelling content and a developer didn’t have to tell people to do it or give them a shiny quest they just had to come up with cool mechanics for the PVP and give the players the freedom to make it themselves. In the years that I played there, there were wars between alliances where you would have 50+ people on both sides fighting it out in open world PVP fighting over leveling areas or simply to exert dominance over an area or quest location. And Darktide 12 years later still has people talking about how awesome the PVP was. It wasn’t about how much resilience or expertise you spent hours grinding in early darktide it was all about skill where a level 60 or 70 player could dominate a level 100 person based only on player skill. 

     Those are some of the issues I see with the genre as it is. Sure there’s a ton of people playing MMOs now but when has numbers ever meant quality? If that’s the case HP makes the best PCs, and Justin Beiber is one of the best musicians out right now.  I’m not even saying that WOW and games like it haven’t added anything to the genre they have without a doubt. However we can’t look at WOW and it’s success and think that, that is the only good or even successful way to design a MMO. Grinds are not needed, the class trinity is not needed, PVP only stats are not needed, 4 hour dungeon crawls are not needed. These are not the key to a successful MMO they are features of the big dog on the block.  

Originally posted by Dream_Chaser.

It went something like this:

 

"So why are you raiding?"

"To get better gear."

"Which gives you?"

"Bigger numbers."

"Why do you need those?"

"The boss has bigger numbers."

"What do you get from the boss?"

"Better gear!"

"And what do you do with that?"

"Kill the next boss, duh!"

 

I am scared at how vaguely accurate this is , coz i probably have the same mindset as a wow player

---

Originally posted by Nevulus
2. Guild Wars 2 is not shaking ANYTHIG up other than every fanboy's hopes.
3. How do you know what works and doesn't work when the game is NOT EVEN OUT. Your entire post is an assumption, and a very bad one at that which discredits your ENTIRE point of view.

---

It has already demanded that re-evaluation; it has already caused large numbers of gamers, designers, and journalists to discuss issues which were not previously deemed worthy of discussion. It has already made a difference. When the game actually releases, it can only make even more of a difference.

Great Original Post!

I guess I've already made the paradigm shift, because status qou games now have zero apeal for me and absolutely nothing in the OP struck me as odd or controversial.

Some people will fail to make the jump, but I'm starting to think this game will be bigger by the end of year one than I originaly projected, as I think that anyone who does make the adjustment to GW2 game design will also have trouble going back to any MMO that follows the old design doctrine and it will be a while before other titles in the pipeline will be able to adapt to address new expectations.

I usually never post.

But i think this post was a fun read and I hope it does change the way future games will be viewed and created.

Very good read. I just had to spread it around. :D

Applying the impending shift of man's universal conscious to the mmorpg world!? I like it. Very well written and extremely well thought out. I believe you have something here very brilliant and sadly...I doubt many see it's weight mirrored in real life today.

Funny. I never dreamed we would be making the paradigm shift with guild wars 2 by my side. This I am pleased.

do like. though one thing i want to know is why do so many people need (as the pony put it): "long-term gaming incentives"? i don't want to be incentivised to play! i want to have fun! yeesh... some people just like the grind i guess. me? i have midterms to pass.

EDIT: and what's with the random fonts?

What depresses me is how the actual MMO model is considered as a paradigm for the majority of gamers. How close minded they are.

I find it so stupid to lock a whole genre only to existing products ... Or in other words to lock a future inside the past ... That everytime I see people ranting at a new product just because it's changing their habits, I want to send this mix of stupidity and agressivity back at them in a simplified way : punch them in the face.

Originally posted by Dream_Chaser

One of my prime hopes for Guild Wars 2 was that it would have people re-evaluate things, possibly on a large scale, that it would have people looking at stuff that occurs that we take for granted as part of the system. That it would shake things up and prove that things set in stone don't need to be set in stone.

I'm familiar with the concept of a paradigm shift from a scientific viewpoint. Eventually something comes along, a new theorem that no one cares to accept, and then the evidence starts piling up in support of it and slowly you get more and more supporters. It really pisses people off, and everyone hates the change, but at the end of the day everyone still has a better understanding of the inner-workings of the Universe than they did prior.

And I really think that we need to do some deconstructionalist analysm of MMORPGs in general, there are many things that we accept as set in stone that clearly... well, aren't. The accepted paradigm of the MMORPG has a linear flow to it, and one that many developers have been afraid to break. It's something that's been so ingrained via both classic conditioning (pavlovian responses) and oeprant (consequential) conditioning that people believe it has to go that way.

What those who play a singleplayer or co-op game expect is vastly different to what those who play an MMORPG accept. And I think that the MMORPG has fallen into an unhealthy, stagnant rut. So what do we accept?

• You pay a subscription.
• You can't buy anything of worth in the game with real money.
• You have to make time investments (called 'work' by some) in order to acquire resource units.
• These time investements are massive and favour those without real life responsibilities or connections.
• Excessive time investments cause MMORPG players to consider the genre 'hardcore' because of that.
• Those who invest time ('work') control the economic flow.
• Those with the best gear get into the best raids.
• Those who make large time investments are entitled to exclusive content that no one else is.
• Further content should take greater time investments and not be completed quickly.
• In order to substantiate these time investments, a 'carrot' is needed.
• this 'carrot' is exclusive gear, which is then used for further exclusive content.
• That's when the raiding treadmill occurs.

This is a fascinating concept. Not only because I can't really understand the appeal, but because of the divide it creates. First of all, I want to cover not understanding the appeal. The lack of appeal in my case is that I can't understand why you'd want to waste your life for a constant chain of 'carrots.' There was one Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw video that summed this up eloquently.

 

It went something like this:

 

"So why are you raiding?"

"To get better gear."

"Which gives you?"

"Bigger numbers."

"Why do you need those?"

"The boss has bigger numbers."

"What do you get from the boss?"

"Better gear!"

"And what do you do with that?"

"Kill the next boss, duh!"

 

Imagine that.

 

The problem is is that not everyone is able to make these ridiculous time investments. You have people with children, a family, a job, social obligations, and so on. The sort of people who're considered 'casuals.' Now, the usual MMORPG talks about these people in derogatory ways, often considering them not 'leet' or not 'hardcore' enough. Because having a job and a child isn't 'hardcore.' So they sneer at such people and demand that the game be made more for them, creating more time investments.

 

But where did this begin?

 

It all started off with subscriptions. In order to justify a subscription, you have to pad out content. This means that instead of a ten minute mission in Mass Effect 3, you're doing a five hour questing slog. Really, it shouldn't be that long, but it is. So you get to the quest vendor and they offer you these 'carrots,' these rewards. The idea here is that more weak-willed people get hooked on the idea of somehow, somehow being better than other people. In some small way... better.

 

It takes advantage of them.

 

So via conditioning and peer pressure, the average MMORPG gamer then continues to spend their life playing the game, without even realising the harm it might be doing to them. What they get out of this is the feeling of controlling the economy, of being able to separate themselves into haves and have-nots, in order to sneer down at those who don't have the same level of access to the game that they do. That's what it's all about. That shiny mount, that exclusive raid, that high-end armour? It's all to be better than someone else. One-upmanship, plain and simple. It's not a difficult concept.

 

However, things are changing now. And that has those people terrified, because they can't handle change. What this means is that there's no grind, there's no gruelling slog. This in turn means that there's no carrot. That means that they have no way to be better than other people. This is something I've discussed before - Guild Wars 2 enforces player equality. It's an egalitarian game. Everyone gets the same chance at the game, through different methods of content.

 

At the power plateau, it won't matter if you've put eight hours into the game or eight thousand, you're all equal.

 

This is a terrifying concept to those who've ruled with time investments. Because for the longest time MMORPGs have been whispering delicately into their ears that their way is the only way. Subscribe to our game, we'll let you be better than other people. But the market is changing. More and more developers are realising that these people who want time investments to rule the economy are a vast minority (vocal, but still a vast minority).

 

There are casual players out there just waiting for the MMORPGs that are designed for them to play. And those are on the way. One of the first is Guild Wars 2.

 

And like I said, it's working.

 

What Guild Wars 2 is doing is shaking things up, it's altering perceptions. It's saying that what was set in stone was an illusion, and that things can be completely different. Those who helped set those rules in stone are going to rail against that. Of course they are. No more exclusive content for them. Yes, that's going to suck for them. Because the reason they play an MMORPG, even in PvE, is just to be better than someone.

 

But there are games out there for them. Games which encourage competitive PvE, games which encourage people being arseholes to each other, and games which encourage player inequality. And they'll always have those games. But they're worried that one day... they're going to run out of games and they'll have to play our games, the games of casual players. And yeah, that scares them.

 

I mean, look at WoW.

 

WoW, from the ground up, conditions you to want to be better than someone. It puts in various ways to force you to compete. You can easily accidentally flag yourself as PvP, resource nodes are instanced globally rather than per player, which makes people fight over them, and the whole thing is one massive sociopathic circlejerk. It's just people being horribly indecent to each other. But again, the old MMORPG player, the time investor, they're comfortable with that.

 

In Guild Wars 2 they'll actually have to socialise with people, they'll have to be nice, they won't be in complete control, they'll be equal. This turns everything they know on its head. And that's why we've had so many threads about this. It's old MMORPG players damn near having a brain aneurysm at all of the rules they thought they knew being turned upon their heads.

 

No longer lords and ladies. Just peons. Like the rest of us.

 

They have to come back down to the real world.

 

But what we're getting instead now is that they're seeing the other side of the equation. Just because there's equality, they're blowing it out of proportion and saying that money ivnestors will be on top. That's obviously not the case, but that's the fear that they have, because they're having these crazy slippery slope theories. You know? Oh no, we've lost our regal status, soon our slaves will be our masters, and we'll be the slaves!

 

That's not going to happen, but they're seeing things from the side of the have-nots and the results?

 

The results are frankly hilarious.

 

If I were a vindictive person, I'd pester ArenaNet to actually include an $80 monocle in the game, just so that I could buy it, wear it, and flaunt it at the time investors. But I'm not a vindictive person. Like I've said before, my approach to the game will be to find the most sensible, utilitarian armour I can and stick with that. I don't really give a shit about being the prettiest pony on the block.

 

But if you understand the paradigm shift, here, if you understand how the patterns are changing, then you understand why every one of these new threads exists. It's forcing people to question all that was supposedly set in stone about GW2. And like I said, that says to me... GW2 works. I am pleased.

Your comments made me long in and post.  I think your way off the mark in terms of "What People Want".  You are describing a FPS for a XBOX 360.  Log on mindlessly shoot afew people then log out, no growth, no change and no thinking.  People want something for their investment.  People like me with proffesional jobs and little time dont mind falling behind the 8 ball because we have something to work towards.  In short I believe people want 6000 hours to count in an MMO; just like they would in any pursuit.  What people really want is a new and better carrot n a stick, like battles for territory control, building things in a persistent world (not like GW2 instanced junk).  People want some real risk with some real reward.  GW2 is the softcore version of WoW (Im about to get flamed) but it is what it is. 

Just my opinion thou. 

Successful MMOs prior to WoW did not have gear grinds. When i came to WoW, it was such a foreign concept. My 1st character in Vanilla was a hunter. I was level 23 I think, someone said to me......."You gear doesn't have any stats"

I'd been leveling up spending my money on gear upgrades from NPCs

THAT was a paradigm shift.

What GW2 is doing is simply catering to a spcific group of people Nothing more. 

People need a reason to play every day. Fresh content will only last so long with little reward to show for it.

People need to build something. In games of old, it was your world...you game, your environment. It was permanent.

WoW changed that. Instead of building the things I just mentioned, they sai...OK, now you will build your character.

The thing that GW2 offers will not appeal to a lot of people. Many are in this thread going "GJ OP! CYA Ingame!" becaue they are looking for something different. New Combat mechanics? Yeah that's good. Until they become routine. DEs...Not really new. and they too will get repetative. Other than that?

But to play the next big thing simply because it's NOT WOW is gonna leave disappointment.

And don't tell me that ANet and NCSoft aren't capitalizing on the fact that they aren't WoW.

GW2 is not a paradigm shift unless it converts the masses into it's target niche.

Titles and social gear.

And I have never seen a Cash Shop that is benign.  And if they can't put anything in there that could be anyhting but benign...Then what is the point of this game? Fun is to short term.

For the record, I am not trashing this game...I am buying and playing it. But I want to play Devil's advocate here for the purpose of finding a realistic view of what GW2 is and what it isn't.