Well, I suppose I"m less interested in mmo's but I was more interested in them as a mixture of morrowind and neverwinter nights which is what I thought they were and which they are not.

I've enjoyed myself in several mmo's and I think I'll still play them from time to time but after Lineage 2 I've yet to find a game that captured me in the same way.

Of course, the obvious remark would be "that was your first mmo and first mmo love" but the more I think on it the more I realize that isn't completely it.

The game was a brutal world that brought people together and it was a rather large world where you had to be dedicated. There was a bit of exploration and of course there was castle ownership, alliances, a pride in who you were, etc.

The other obvious remark is "well, lineage 2 is still there, go play it". Thing is I always hated the brutal economy. Even now, with a better economy it still feels like i have to spend more time making money than I want.

I've been playing a lot of skyrim, been enjoying Glactic Civilizations II, and bought disonored and x-com.

I still play a bit of Tera, Aion and Vanguard but I don't spend near enough time in them as the single player games.

Well, we'll see how archage fairs. I think I'll always buy them and play them but I have always preferred single player games as they are always more interesting.

It's sad to say, but the one game that comes closest to what I want is Sims 3. Unfortunately, it also bores me to death after I've played through each expansion once or twice. So, using Sims 3 as a paradigm (model or baseline) these are my pros and cons. [I'm bringing this into the conversation only as an attempt to quantify what I want in an MMORPG.]

PROS

• Multiple career paths (and can change paths at any time)
• Optional quests
• Real life needs (eating, bathing, using a toilet, recreation, socializing, sleep)
• Personality types that drive a character's response to various situations
• An agricultural component (gardening and Pets Expansion)
• [my favorite] ability to completely customize houses and other structures and do extensive landscaping
• Lots of things to do -- collecting, fishing, dungeon crawling (not that great), training pets (dogs and horses)
• When the Pets Expansion came out I was in 7th heaven for a while because I'm a former horsewoman, and the depth of Equestian-related professions and skills was most compelling
• NPCs are more "life like" than any other game I've yet encountered
• With the next Seasons expansion, weather will become a factor -- rain storms, deep snow, lightning strikes
• A martial arts component, where skill level is based on the amount of training done (unfortunately, what you can use this skill for in the end leaves me wanting terribly for more)

• No meaningful combat (beating up on mummies is laughable)
• No MMO component (this is huge for me)
• Game worlds are relatively small (also huge for me)
• Too many rabbit holes
• Non MMO movement and navigation

Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

Originally posted by Quirhid
 

Disagree, they might have been SIMPLER games or had fewer features doesn't make them WORSE games.

Case in point, I had a buddy back in college with a '65 Buick. Thing was over 20 years old and had over 500K miles on it. No matter what abuse was dished out it kept running like a race horse. A couple years back my boss (at the time) bought himself one of those fancy new hybrids, had all the bells and whistles on it. That thing was in the shop every 3 months and nearly killed him when the CPU freaked out and decided to automaticaly accelerate the car on it's own. The '65 Buick was BY FAR the better care even though it didn't have an air-conditioned glove box or a camera for backing up.

Things are not made to last anymore. I have a friend who has had the same optical mouse for atleast 5-6 years and in that time I've gone through 5 of them (its worth noting he abuses his mouse more than me mine). My parents also have a microwave oven close to 25 years old (!!) and it works like a charm. Today's ovens... they basically just rot in the shelf even if you don't use them.

But this is OT.

Originally posted by asmkm22

I'm with you.

I really started up with WoW, then LotRO and some EQ2.  For all the hate WoW gets around here, and all the crappy design changes they've made over the years, it really used to be a great MMO for me.  It's just long in the tooth, and way too simplified these days.

I was kind of holding out hope for SWtOR, but that turned out to be a major letdown :/

There is litterally nothing on the horizon that has me the least bit excited.  In terms of IP, the Elder Scrolls Online game should be interesting, but once they stated they are just doing the same old crap that WoW does, I flushed that dream down the toilet as well.

The worst part is, there aren't really any good single player RPG's to look forward to etiher, because all of the big publishers are focusing on consoles and making sure they have multiplayer or cash shop/dlc components to them.

All in all, it's a bad time for the industry right now.

Here's one that might be interesting.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity

---

Originally posted by Quirhid

---

Originally posted by GrumpyMel2
Disagree, they might have been SIMPLER games or had fewer features doesn't make them WORSE games.

Case in point, I had a buddy back in college with a '65 Buick. Thing was over 20 years old and had over 500K miles on it. No matter what abuse was dished out it kept running like a race horse. A couple years back my boss (at the time) bought himself one of those fancy new hybrids, had all the bells and whistles on it. That thing was in the shop every 3 months and nearly killed him when the CPU freaked out and decided to automaticaly accelerate the car on it's own. The '65 Buick was BY FAR the better care even though it didn't have an air-conditioned glove box or a camera for backing up.

---

Things are not made to last anymore. I have a friend who has had the same optical mouse for atleast 5-6 years and in that time I've gone through 5 of them (its worth noting he abuses his mouse more than me mine). My parents also have a microwave oven close to 25 years old (!!) and it works like a charm. Today's ovens... they basically just rot in the shelf even if you don't use them.

But this is OT.

---

Originally posted by Sovrath

Well, I suppose I"m less interested in mmo's but I was more interested in them as a mixture of morrowind and neverwinter nights which is what I thought they were and which they are not.

I've enjoyed myself in several mmo's and I think I'll still play them from time to time but after Lineage 2 I've yet to find a game that captured me in the same way.

Of course, the obvious remark would be "that was your first mmo and first mmo love" but the more I think on it the more I realize that isn't completely it.

The game was a brutal world that brought people together and it was a rather large world where you had to be dedicated. There was a bit of exploration and of course there was castle ownership, alliances, a pride in who you were, etc.

The other obvious remark is "well, lineage 2 is still there, go play it". Thing is I always hated the brutal economy. Even now, with a better economy it still feels like i have to spend more time making money than I want.

I've been playing a lot of skyrim, been enjoying Glactic Civilizations II, and bought disonored and x-com.

I still play a bit of Tera, Aion and Vanguard but I don't spend near enough time in them as the single player games.

Well, we'll see how archage fairs. I think I'll always buy them and play them but I have always preferred single player games as they are always more interesting.

You see when I came to MMOs, I had a Pen and Paper background. Not so much D&D, more the German "The Dark Eye", which is WAY less combat oriented and more story-driven. You can have an entire evening with 1-2 fights in some adventures. In the Dark Eye P&P you essentially play a fantasy story. Some classes can't even fight. That was and remains what I am seeking in a TRUE MMO which maybe someday comes. It may be on a greater scale.

THAT is also why I put so much emphasis all the time on SWG-entertainers and the other non combat "classes" of SWG like Creature Handler asf.

I see the ideal MMORPG as a sort of Pen and Paper-story driven world setting. You get a sort of overall mission, not so strictly a quest. In The Dark Eye you do not get XP for kills, as in D&D, you get XP at the end of the story, either all the same, or some extra XP for how well you played your role or contributed to the success. That may be how well you sneaked and got intel, or how well you persuaded someone, or how well you bartered or anything that is within your powers. That MAY be fighting, but The Dark Eye has many classes which hardly can do any combat. I would want such a MMO have a holistic approach.

First, 80% of all you do requires a party, that remains together for a prolongued time. See EQ2 in the early times. It would be a story that evolves slowly, could be made into smaller and longer adventures or missions, but they all have some line to make sense. It would be more "missions", split it quests and open world events equally. Always related to you and your party. And in several cases making a permanent change in the world, which I only see possible via phasing. It would not be such an "open" world for all the same as we are used to, but not a totally instanced world like DDO quests. Despite the issues, I see phasing so far as the best compromise between meaningful impact and open world.

It would not be so much an individual story as in SWTOR, but the story of your group. Sure, that would limit your playtime to times when they all have time, but why not? Better a few hours a week REALLY meaningful experiences, than 8 hours a day mindless grind.

Sure, these are just basic, rough ideas. But THAT was and is what I would seek in a MMORPG, an online transition of story driven Pen and Paper games, NOT entirely combat-centered and team-based missions inside of an open massive world. Yeah, I guess finding the Holy Grail is easy compared to that, heh. But I seriously think the current line of MMOs is WAY too much thinking inside the box, inside given paradigms of what a MMO is supposed to be like. And I am simply tired of this stone-age idea.

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

 

---

Originally posted by Quirhid

---

---

Things are not made to last anymore. I have a friend who has had the same optical mouse for atleast 5-6 years and in that time I've gone through 5 of them (its worth noting he abuses his mouse more than me mine). My parents also have a microwave oven close to 25 years old (!!) and it works like a charm. Today's ovens... they basically just rot in the shelf even if you don't use them.

 

But this is OT.

---

To bring it back around, games are no longer built to last, either.

 

I knew someone was going to grasp on to that; It was somewhat of a low hanging fruit afterall. The old games had grind and timesinks, much more than today's games. By and large, players no longer tolerate the same amount of wasting time and stretched content anymore. They identify such features fairly quickly. They've also become very effective in finding and exploiting vulnerable mechanics.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by ste2000
MMOs 8 years ago were worlds..................today MMOs are just games.

Another way of putting it would be: MMOs 8 years ago were bad games... today they are better. And even then I preferred playing PnP games for the "world effect".

Stone him.

There are games that you guys want out there...you just aren't supporting them because they aren't AAA titles...and never will be. The MMO's you want have always been made by a few coders who put their heart and soul into the making their visions. They didn't need much, not even a lot of people, but a few supporters. Instead, now in days, you won't even give indys the time of day because they don't have supporting them, and the indies fall by the 'waste' side...

It's just like anything else in this world. The financially stable "Pimp My Crib" fast stores bring in millions of people with no individuality, while our table top gaming homes were housed in old hole-in-the-walls barely making ends meet, but there was a family bond there where all indivuduals had respect. The mainstream stays waway from these places because they simply have no clue. No matter how many proffessions a game has, you won't find "I remember when I was THE guy" with tens of thousands doing the same thing. It's just the way it works guys. More of something just equals more problems. Another comparision would be the mainstream music vs the undergound scene...no explaination needed there. 

You dream game will come from individuals, not industries. Stop going to the strip club looking for a wife.

What we need is another war!

Originally posted by Elikal

Sigh. For a very long time I was really, really interested in MMOs. I followed the development of each of it, and tried a lot of them. But among the DOZENS of MMO I play, I can only say of three of them, that I played them a long time. Everquest II, SWG and LOTRO. Those were the only MMOs I actually played years.

Now they are all more or less old. So maybe I too changed, but I can't help to think that MMOs changed and most important the community changed. If I recall these three MMOs and the dividing factor compared to the other MMOs, in EQ2, SWG and LOTRO I found an active community. (Lotro speaking of the first 2 years here.)

<Snip>

I'm the same I've grown jaded as well I'm playing GW2 right now but I'm  finding I'm having more fun online with games like LoL, minecraft  & TL2 my brother set up a tekkit server and started host TL2 games and I've just haven't been back to GW2 for nearly 2 weeks and I like GW2

To this day I still swear SWG Pre-NGE was my best MMO experience, yeah WoW Vanilla & TBC and even GW2 were/are good times, but I find myself turning more away from MMO's in favor for SP's online/multi player modes, I'm even starting to look at online RTS's I feel the MMO genre has stagnated and gone in another direction I just don't like.

Originally posted by dustyhayes

Originally posted by Elikal

 I feel the MMO genre has stagnated and gone in another direction I just don't like.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

 

---

Originally posted by Quirhid

---

---

Things are not made to last anymore. I have a friend who has had the same optical mouse for atleast 5-6 years and in that time I've gone through 5 of them (its worth noting he abuses his mouse more than me mine). My parents also have a microwave oven close to 25 years old (!!) and it works like a charm. Today's ovens... they basically just rot in the shelf even if you don't use them.

 

But this is OT.

---

To bring it back around, games are no longer built to last, either.

 

I knew someone was going to grasp on to that; It was somewhat of a low hanging fruit afterall. The old games had grind and timesinks, much more than today's games. By and large, players no longer tolerate the same amount of wasting time and stretched content anymore. They identify such features fairly quickly. They've also become very effective in finding and exploiting vulnerable mechanics.

As a guy who played muds extensively in the olde days, i dont see much difference in player capabilities and effectiveness.

What has changed is the perception of the community and devs, when in the past they would just shrug at things like people playing 36 hours straight and being stronger (which i never was :( ), they are now out and about to destroy any possibility of it with a nearly religious devotion.

That has changed, thus we cannot have nice things.

Flame on!

:)

Originally posted by Baramos79

Originally posted by dustyhayes

Originally posted by Elikal

 I feel the MMO genre has stagnated and gone in another direction I just don't like.

You and me both. Bring back the magic, bring back the adventure!

Basically this.   It is not because new mmorpg's are bad games, they do ok what they are build to.  Just I don't like what KIND of game they are.   Direction mmprpg's went is just not interesting.

I feel the same way op.  I've played mmorpgs since 2002 (started with Everquest) and its getting to the point where I try to force myself to play but I end up hanging out in a safe area and alt-tabbing out then messing around elsewhere.  

I do think the key element that is missing is a sense of community.  In Everquest you would form a group then grind away for possibly hours and maybe make some new friends.  These days its all about rushing to each quest hub without interacting with other players because you've got to kill those mobs to get your quest updates done so you can rush off and repeat the whole process.

Then there is raiding...kill mobs in the starter raid instance so you can gear up so you can kill mobs in the next tier of raid instances so you can gear up...etc. till the next xpac and repeat the whole process again.

Which leads to PvP:  people rolling the fotm easy mode class to kill everyone / outgearing other players / outnumbering other players / h4x / doing whatever it takes to win all while frapsing the whole time to show everyone how uber you are (don't forget to edit out every time you die and add metal music!).

TL;DR:  I'm ready for something new.  

Originally posted by Arakazi
Well, MMOS are more narrowly focused on gameplay rather than the community aspects. Althought the trumpet the community but things like dungeon finder and dynamic grouping etc. is primarly there to improve a players gameplay experience rather than  anything social. Although I can understand your furstration I feel that any online interaction will always be a shallow experience in comparison to something as simple as sitting in a cafe with a friend during your lunch break.

Your not kidding the term NARROW is an understatement.

Following linear quests around with awful highlited hues around everything makes for a really dumbed down,ugly gaming experience.Add in question marks over everything and more than generous xp and it adds up to meaningless gaming.

EVERY single game treats early levels like instant gratification,they never last long eonugh to become useful for anything.Got some cool level 3 gear,oh sorry it is already outdated 15 minutes later because you are now level 8-10.Want to learn your skills,no need ,already replaced by better skills 10 minutes later.

Want immersion,no need,just follow the question marks over the npc heads,no need to even bother reading the chat,just follow the markers/arrows.

Wan t to learn the game world and the NPC's?No need it is just a speeding train to end level so you can pvp.

Have MMOs changed?  Oh hell yes they have!  Gone are the days of running when you see TRAIN!!!!!! pop up in the chat window.  Gone are the days of corpse runs naked across zones you are KOS in just to get your gear back.  You could lose a level for dying if you weren't careful.  Grouping was almost a must unless you wanted to grind green mobs.  The change came with WoW and EQ2.  

Back in the day you had to work for your accomplishments, now we have add ons that tell you when to move out of on AOE, gear score, group finders, cross server grouping, games that can be soloed all the way to max level, instant travel, and god forbid you actually have to talk to other people or read the chat window.

Don't get me wrong, some of the changes are good.  I never liked looking up respawn times and then leaving the game running and setting the alarm so I could get up at zero dark thirty just for a 5 minute fight just to watch someone else with a better connection take the mob away from me.  But there has to be a happy medium and as long as suites are sticking their noses into the development process, we will never have a game that has anywhere near the correct mix of ease and challenge.  Those jack holes want nothing more than to have the next WoW and if they would just listen more than they talk, they just might succeed.

I am kind of buned out too.  In 90% of all MMOs you enter the world and start committing mass murder. And in most MMOs you do that 70 - 90% of the time. I do not mind combat in MMOs, its just the how and why.

But the real problem with MMOs these days, as i see it, is the "blending", the strive to make everyone happy. (Aka make more money.) The industry needs to reverse this process and needs to start making more specialized games again.  The devs should not try to go for the largest playerbase, but for the most happy and loyal playerbase.  Eve is a good example imo. It only has like 300.000 subs (players really, really like it, or not play it at all), but apparently is successful, and generates enough money so that ccp can work on 2 more games at the same time. 

Originally posted by Simphanatic

The OP mirrors my sentiment EXACTLY.

 

The problem as I see it is that so many MMOs are little more than websites providing us with varying carrot and stick quests, where PvP and economy are little more than second thoughts.

 

SWTOR wasn't a bad game, when compared to anything else on the market, it just didn't deliver on the promise of an open world that would give us more than other similar games. Even though I've since tried a few other MMOs, SWTOR really was a nail in the coffin insofar as my long-term MMO participation is concerned.

 

In short, I want a gaming world that can be a destination in and of itself. I want to live in that world, not merely do a series of stale, constrained quests. Before I ever invest my time and money in another MMO, it absolutely must meet these criteria:

1. Have a dynamic, player-influenced, open environment
2. Possess a fluid, impactful economy that is not at all affected by infusion of real-world money
3. Provide meaningful player professions intrinsic to the economy
4. Furnish recreational venues that players can engage in when not in combat or working
5. Give players the opportunity to construct residences
6. Have non artifical, open PvP -- the world should be a risky place
7. There must be a player-regulated system for penalizing gankers, scammers, and other evil doers
8. Quests/missions are ok, but should not be a central focus of the game world (I'd prefer to see them as a starting point to game play -- a world introduction -- certainly not a destination)
9. Community is not a factor because if the foregoing are executed properly community will follow

Unless I see all these in an MMO I'm not bothering with it. I am just fine reading books; watching movies; or, gawd forbid, playing the latest Sims 3 expansion.

Darkfall was to hit all of those criteria. Did you play it? Just curious if you did.

I started with Ultima Online and I have played a ton of games since then.

SWG was close second to me. WoW was okay and captured me for a few years, but nothing like UO still. It was just too easy.

The thing I missed most about UO was the mixture of playstyles all in one game. The game captured so many aspects and it was the little things that kept people playing.

Crating was superior, because you relied on crafters for your gear. You could go out into the Wild and seek out magic gear, but in UO it was random. You couldnt just go take down a boss to get a piece of gear, you had to fight 1000s sometimes 10000 things before you got what you were looking for. It was exciting and random. This made crafted gear MEAN something. Item decay til loss of item, full PvP loot, etc. All of this made the crafting experience meaningful. You will rarely find a game that has meaningful crafting, because you need all of the elements I mentioned to make crafting "needed".

Housing. Wow! Housing was fun. Decorating houses, storing treasures for all to see. It was a fun experience.

Rare Hunting. The game had items that would spawn after the server came up. It shut down every night and when it would start again, these little rare items you could get. We hunted them, collected them, and stored them in our houses.

Taming. Animal taming with rare creatures. Now a days, you dont get rare creatures. You get cookie cutter pets from a hunting class and thats the end of it. Be done! LOL Its boring these days.

Treasure Hunting. On land and in sea? Holy smokes you get a treaure map with coordinates and dig or fish up treasure? What other game has done this? It was good times for our Guild back then.

PvP was great in UO. Chaos vs Order, Open World PvP with guards as your back-up in cities and towns, Factions, Evil vs Good, Guild vs Guild. It was truly an amazing experience and with full loot PvP, it made the economy a real economy as you could lose items you worked hard for. Now, its just easy mode in most games.

The sad thing is that the people have changed. All the games that are anything like the above turn into a Prison yard for hooligans. It isnt the socializer playing those games, it isnt the explorer playing them, it isnt a casual gamer, it is for the most part just the dicks that like to gank and screw people over and ruin everyone's experience by going out of their way ti just be dicks.

Ive said this before, those games will never capture what UO captured because there are more than two games to play and people prefer to have a good time in a game. For me, having all of the playstyles together make it a great game. Good people banding together to take out the bad people. But the truth is, the good people will never play a game where bad people can ruin their fun.

Sad, but true. It will never be the same experience again, at least not for me. I tried Darkfall and the community in general sucked ass. It was just a game full of jerks and shit talkers and it reminded me of Felucca in UO. The prison yard of bullies.

Sucks. But it isnt the company that makes the game fault, its the people playing the game. If I were creating a game, I wouldnt go with sandbox either. I wouldnt go with an open world. It will always fail due to the type of people that play those games. Theres not enough of the "good" people interested to make the game an actual success. Afterall, its all about sales in the end and those games are of the minority because "good" people do not want to play in a Prison Yard of bullies. :D