Originally posted by Tamanous

Originally posted by Thorbrand

MMORPGs where never suppose to cater to the casual RPG gamer and this is where it all went wrong. What they have done is push true RPG gamers to go back to playing PnP games because today games (I will not call them MMOs) lack so much content and depth they are maybe 10% of what games use to be.

They will continue to fail for the gamers but not for the companies which is all the companies care about.

Quoted for truth.

 

I've stated nearly exactly this before. Developers went for a cash grab and totally forgot their core audience who is willing to commit to only one game. Casual, watered down mmos (with the rpg taken out of it) are killing the genre. In fact it has become an entirely different genre with a playerbase thinking sandbox games with deep and long term investment requirements are only for an old school dieing breed. This couldn't be further from the truth.

 

MAKE A GAME FOR THE RPG GAMERS! It is ludicrous to think a developer would strip core systems or add fluffy mini-games  to FPS or RTS games just to attract players who never played them before ... so get them the f#ck out of my role playing game thanks and stick to a pay model that nurtures community and not separates it. This could be a different model entirely for all I care as long as it supports the game and doesn't forever corrupt it.

You are totally correct here. The people that make games (Developers) discovered that if they made these games appealing to other people, they could sell them, and make a living doing this. The change from casual pastime, to commercialized career path meant that if they could spend their full time making games. This resulted in more games being made, and improvements in the complexity of the games themselves.

Once upon a time people made games just because they could. Now they make games to make a living. The commercialization of gaming has changed the goal from just making something (that may or may not work, etc) to making something that people enjoy playing (the more the better).

Originally posted by Lustmord

Despite the existence of a small group of people who seem to take some bizarre delight in positioning me as a fervent promoter of free to play,

 

Says the guy who writes a column about the Free to Play model.............

Agreed.

I facepalmed hard when I read that line.

I think he actually believes himself victim of some sort of injustice. It's also a comment that is completely unrelated to the article as a whole or even the point he was trying to make.

Originally posted by Alberel

Judging by SOE's recent shift in design philosophy I think it can be said that's not true at all. The MMO industry is now completely saturated with casual MMOs leading to new releases having too much competition to meet their sales targets (the number of games that have shifted to F2P is proof of that).

The 'old-school' hardcore MMO style which was generally more feature heavy and sandbox in style is now a MASSIVE gap in the market. The more casual MMOs that saturate the market the more likely it is that a developer/publisher will decide targetting the old-school audience is more profitable.

It is inevitable that the market will eventually swing back the other way and SOE has made a lot of noise to that effect lately already.

Shall we wait until SOE actually gives us something playable showing their new design philosophy before we point to them as the savior of mmorpg? We do see a slow move to more 'sandbox' like gameplay at the moment, but it is nothing like the 'old-school' games. You say there is a massive gap in the market, but all those developers do have market research. If there was such a gap and they thought they could make money of it, they would be. Since they aren't, that means either the gap isn't there or making the games for it doesn't bring in as much profit as making the next 'casual' game.

It was inevitable that as more and more people got into MMOGs, they wouldn't all be the same. As a basic example, it appears the average playing time is down perhaps a third or more from a decade ago when it was in the range of 20 hours per week. Sure, quite a few still play that much, but proportionally, more new users put in less time, which has caused the average to drop.

So a decade ago a smaller player base, smaller selection, a different type of mmorpg also?

Present: A much larger player-base, more online norm for games, more online options, larger selection of mmorpgs, and the predominant type of mmorpg played eg wow, lineage etc different? Also F2P skew: eg stats of customers who try and never return? So I'm not sure it's just the players, that affect that stat: It's a whole ton of reasons. What I'd be curious to find out is:

mmorpg(s) that has highest proportion of players with highest av hrs / week  and a list of top 5 of these... That would be an interesting stat.

"It was inevitable that as more and more people got into MMOGs, they wouldn't all be the same. As a basic example, it appears the average playing time is down perhaps a third or more from a decade ago when it was in the range of 20 hours per week. Sure, quite a few still play that much, but proportionally, more new users put in less time, which has caused the average to drop."

 Those were the golden ages of the MMO world.  Now a days we're just being fed the same garbage over and over again but with a different title.  I swear we'd cry and bitch alot less if MMOG's were being released at a paste of 2-3 a year instead of a dozen and a half. Would you imagine how GW2 would of been welcomed if MMOG's were released at a slow paste? WoW would of been dead by now , but no , because we're getting garbage month after month  we get that feeling of "deja vu" "Been there , done that."  Hence , the only reason why WoW is still the king of the world when it comes to MMOG market.

The future of MMO lies in the following:

1. Mixed pricing model based on F2P + RMT + optional Premium sub.
2. Approved player made content available in the official store
3. Themed Sandbox

[quote]In a related vein, we see little talk among readers about how the MMOG audience has shifted away from what it was years ago and is continuing to. It seems as if certain people want things to be the way they were, and just refuse to recognize that those days are gone, never to return. The problem isn't the change itself; it's not being fully open to seeing it and to adapting accordingly.[/quote]

You talk like everyone who liked "the old way" is wrong for wanting that in their games. They aren't wrong for wanting that, not at all, and if the MMOG industry has changed such that none of them exist any longer, then it's time for them to just quit playing them. Not because the changes are wrong, but because their kind of game simply doesn't exist, and the modern MMOG can't fulfill that desire.

There's nothing wrong with anyone asking for publishers to make games they like! There's nothing wrong with asking them to limit their player base to the kind of players that want a certain type of game. Certainly we should all recognize that we are asking them to take a bigger risk, or settle for a smaller subscription base (so make less money), but there's nothing wrong with asking them to choose what we might see as quality over quantity.

Not every book is made for every person; not every movie, painitng, graphic novel, is made for every person to enjoy.

I think that the right game, made with all the heart a talented developer team can put into it, with little consideration for who will buy it and so distortion of the game to fit the modeling of some market analyst, can be as big or bigger than WoW, with a more loyal player base over a longer time. I think every fantasy reader could be a market for the right kind of MMORPG that makes no compromises, and there are many millions of us!

For those of you like me - don't do what I did by playing WoW all these years, which helped Blizzard and other publishers to come to think I liked all of the things WoW offered, when there was plenty I didn't like. Just quit spending money on them at all until they start giving you what you really want.

The modern MMOG publisher is targeting gamers, not readers, and that's the biggest mistake I think they are making. I didn't come to Everquest because I was a gamer, I came to immerse myself in the kind of universe that existed in the books I read.  I came because I'd lost my roleplaying group (something like a Dungeons and Dragons group) and was looking for a more stable replacement, one that was more stimulating in the way an online RPG could be.

There is nothing wrong with a publisher doing market analysis and trying to make as much money based on their guesses as they can - but as we've seen time and time again in the movie business, market analysis only takes you so far, and rarely produces memorable movies. Fun movies, profitable movies, but not memorable ones that the critics expound over. And, independent movies made with a vision and with the heart of storytelling in them can make as much or more money than formula movies.

So; if all the current publshers think they should make their MMOGs based on some version of the WoW model, fine, maybe they'll all keep making money, but they won't keep making money from me and the kind of player I represent. Give me heart, give me depth, give me the kind of immersion I get from a good novel, in a persistent universe. There's nothing really wrong with WoW as it is today, or making games for people who want their RP on the very light side, they just aren't what I really want. And, I think you can actually make more money off the kind of game I want as opposed to what you are making based primarily on a marketing strategy targeting gamers.