MMORPG's are thriving, and the industry has done nothing but show signs of growth. In 2010, the global MMO market was worth $6 billion. I imagine it has only gone up since then. Your argument is baseless and nothing more than an overemotional response to your own personal problems with the genre as it currently is.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2010-08-11-mmorpg-revenue-to-grow-60-percent-this-year..

Since when does revenue = reception, longevity, or review of a game?

Perfect example. Financially Diablo III was one of the biggest successes of all time,

By virtually ever review/thousands of fans across the world it has been a huge disappointment, they have pushed PvP back indefinately, and the launch was terrible.

Just because they're making money, does not mean they are having longevity success, or that the fan base is happy.

You are taking profit as sheer success, it may be for the companies, but not for the players.

Tera, GW2, SWTOR, and every big game has lost most of his subs/player base within 90 days of release.

MMO's are not being nearly as successful as they can be.

Please prove to me otherwise. Maybe you work for one of the big developers, so you're happy with how the MMO industry is, but last time I checked, they all weren't doing too hot 90 days +, how's Diablo doing these days? I figure will all them millions of box sales they'd have a huge fan base still going.. Oh wait, no one is playing it, by no one, maybe less than 5% of original box sales.

Also keep in mind a large portion of that is WoW (1 game) and ASIAN MMO's

most of which aren't out in the U.S./Won't be out until they're years old and old news.

So not only are you wrong, but you're looking at a global profit margin which is not a representation of the U.S. market, U.S. products, or actual play value, only sales.

Originally posted by ShakyMo

yeah but thats more to do with more people having access to high speed internet.

Look at the sucess of games like Wow and counterstrike.  They launched just at the right time when broadband started taking off in Europe and North America

This current crop is more to do with an increase in potential players due to better internet infrastructure in places like China and South America imo.

Either way, the industry is growing and thriving, which only means good things for gamers (reasonable ones, anyways.) You can attribute it to whatever you want, but it doesn't change anything. All signs point to positive growth. It's not the doom and gloom that people like to constantly talk about here. The industry isn't dying. The games being made aren't garbage. A new generation of players comes in everyday and enjoys the games being made while the old bitter cynical vets come to MMORPG.com to post about the golden days of MMOs.

edit: More money is the result of more players. Presumably, these people enjoy the games they're paying to play. YOU don't like the games. It doesn't mean the genre is dying, or the games lack longevity. It just happens that's how YOU feel about it. You're attempting to speak on behalf of the entire MMO genre because of trends you see on forums.

OP I know how you feel! Thats why I was so excited about what's happening with RSI / Star Citizen on kickstarter. My hope is high that kickstarter will bring a flood of innovative and independent games with a ok or high standard/quality.

Think a big part of the problem are the publishers, that don't want to risk anything and go for "Wow clones" to get the money in. The other part of the problem is us, the gamers, that buy unfinished games and let them get away with shity products and keep buying their stuff.

It may still take some time, but necessity is the mother of invention!

No, it's not you, newer MMO's today largely follow one main design path, and if you don't care for it you're pretty much out of luck.

But that said, there seems to be some bright spots on the horizon, so keep your eyes open and perhaps one day one of these titles will really suprise and please us.

EQ mac  + [pc , login) from rerolled.org.   FTW 

Classic Everquest as it gets.  only real mmo that still exists....  and yes i've played them all . got 5 lvl 80's on gw2 etc etc....

Originally posted by Spector88

Originally posted by SnarlingWolf

 

Well 1) All of the 4 games you mentioned in your first paragraph are still running. So you can still play the games that you liked.

2) Turbine just reopened AC2 so I think you mean kickstart an AC3.

 

The thing that always amazes me is people will say "Why doesn't Turbine make an AC3, I loved AC1 so much!!" Well AC1 is still there (and so is AC2 now) so you can still play them. If your response is "Well the graphics/UI are old", then gameplay isn't what you're actually after so you can't really complain about games not having quality gameplay.

 

Personally I haven't like a new MMO in at least 6 years. But that is the very reason I still play the old ones and that is why many other do too.

 

So the best thing I can suggest to you is go play those older MMOs you loved. You will get the experience you are looking for and it sends a message to the new MMOs that they're doing it wrong. If everyone keeps buying every new MMO so that the companies keep selling millions of copies out the gate, the companies will keep making new MMOs in the same way. If everyone goes back and subs to the old MMOs and don't buy the new ones, it will let companies know they have to change their approach.

 ----

1) was not aware AC2 was reopened, that might be fun.

2) Yes I meant AC3.

3) I've come back to AC several times most recently 3 months ago, including have tried to get people to come back, the gameplay itself is fine, and the UI/Graphics don't bother me. The dead population does. If 500-1000 people were still online and at the keyboard daily. I would play AC gladly. They aren't. I already have 275 chars, augs, etc, its not the same without PEOPLE, AC is no longer an MMO, its a ORPG.

 

Now take a look at how many people have made such a comment on different internet forums, probably thousands at this point. If everyone of them actually stuck around (and invited their friends) then there'd be more people which would increase the likelyhood of the next one to stick around, which would increase... and on and on.

That's the funny thing about MMO gamers. There are a ton who comment everyday how they want the old, but then don't play the old. Tons of them say it is because there aren't enough others playing, when if everyone who said that played... there'd be a ton playing. A ton of the others say the graphics or UI is too old, then they complain that games with fresh cutting edge graphics and UIs are no fun. Well do you want to be focused on gameplay or on eye candy? Sure, you can say both, but for a certain large section of the MMO gamerbase there isn't a game that has both the gameplay and the cutting edge graphics.

I also have no problems of finding people to play with in AC. The most common thing I hear is people want to just bump into hundreds of other people as they move around. The problem is AC is a truly massive place. With housing, and allegiance/general chat, there are very few reasons to sit in a town like the old days. If you do go to town for something you are typically there for less than a minute and there are a lot of towns in AC. It doesn't take much to get into an active allegiance and then you'd be surprised how often you are chatting with and running quests with others. Hell, there is a complaint on the main forums right now because there is a quest that you can do once every 2 weeks. On one server they bring 5 full fellows along each time to do it and the boss at the end only drops 9 trophies so they have to sit around for the respawns and want it to be faster. In other words, you can find plenty of people to play with.

I just point all of this out because over the many years that I've read these forums on and off I've seen the same comments over and over and over. People saying they liked UO, AC, EQ, DAoC (You're one of the few to say The Realm which was my first MMO and was around before UO despite UO constantly getting the first MMO title) and why can't they find a game like that to play anymore when in fact all of those games are there to play right now.

Originally posted by morbuskabis

OP I know how you feel! Thats why I was so excited about what's happening with RSI / Star Citizen on kickstarter. My hope is high that kickstarter will bring a flood of innovative and independent games with a ok or high standard/quality.

Think a big part of the problem are the publishers, that don't want to risk anything and go for "Wow clones" to get the money in. The other part of the problem is us, the gamers, that buy unfinished games and let them get away with shity products and keep buying their stuff.

It may still take some time, but necessity is the mother of invention!

 

I wont keep my hopes up. There is little evidence that kickstarter works. In fact, it is just a way to spend money on wishful thinking.

I would much rather look at the actual indie devs who releases games. There are some cool games out there, though not MMOs.

Originally posted by Spector88

 

Am I just getting too old for it, or is there no such thing as a solid MMO anymore. 
 

If you self-identify as different than the masses, then you're basically broadcasting "don't aim a game at my tastes because I'm a niche market".  Don't delude yourself into thinking there was ever an era when graphical MMOs were not about turning a profit.

Originally posted by Beatnik59

Yeah these aren't places you can live in anymore.

They are more or less casinos now, without the chance for a payout at the end.

 I love random loot and for me, they are obviously less casinos.  Things like cash shops, badges, daily quests and other forms of paying for items is just another form of accounting for gains.

Originally posted by Spector88

"This may come as a surprise, but despite your earlier beliefs, you are not the center of the world. These games are not made for you, specifically. They never were. So do us a solid and cut the victim routine"

 

I hate to break it to you but when it comes to buying games and spending my own money, I am the center of the universe.

OP, you haven't gotten too old.  I have been playing games since Atari and Pong and I believe that WoW has done more to destroy the genre than it has to advance it.  Blizzard made it for those that didn't have the time, skill, or patients to succeed in EQ (EQ was a second job after all) and now that the "every kid gets a trophy" and "entitlement generations" are playing games, I don't see anything changing anytime soon.  They dumbed down MMOs and the genre has gotten dumber as the years pass.  It is apparently too hard to do a little research and learn to be able to win.  I mean we can always download an addon to think for us, we still have to press the correct buttons... For now anyway.

As long as players demand to log in and win to feed their overinflated egos, nothing will change.  There are people that actually think that GW2 is hard.  These same players would probably throw the controller at the TV if they played Donkey Kong.  Too much thinking involved and they wouldn't have the top score as soon as they start, not to mention there wasn't an addon that told them when to jump.

Originally posted by Johnie-Marz

Originally posted by Spector88

"This may come as a surprise, but despite your earlier beliefs, you are not the center of the world. These games are not made for you, specifically. They never were. So do us a solid and cut the victim routine"

 

I hate to break it to you but when it comes to buying games and spending my own money, I am the center of the universe.

I hate to break it to you but when it comes to developing games, and attracting an audience, you are not.

You're not alone....I cut my teeth on MMO gaming with Ultima Online, and spent a little time in Star Wars Galaxies & Lineage 2, before I settled on World of Warcraft.  While I'll take a UO experience any day of the week, over what has become a genere of themepark clones, WOW was an excellent game, and a very enjoyable experience for the first few years.  It was a nice change of pace to experience a dungeon scenario that had a beginning & end.

With that said, the falacy in the themepark model is that it's based on one theme of play....action combat to aquire gear, along a scripted linear progression model.  You get a bunch of quests from a hub that has you explore the surrounding area, with the final quest having you run to the next quest hub where you do it all over again.  You raid one dungeon to give you gear that will allow you to have enough HP & damage to complete the next......again, rince repeat.

It's the same concept, whether your in the lands of Azeroth, Moria, or Tatuine.   After 4+ years of playing WOW (80 levels over several alts), you're tired of the game and are willing to give anything new a shot....hoping you could regain that level of interest & immersion you once had. 

New game rolls out, you try it out....and after a few weeks, or months, you find yourself having the same bored feeling you had in WOW.  No wings, dynamic public quests or voice acting can cover the fact that you are yet running another delivery or kill quest so that you can get another piece of gear that will allow you access to higher level content that will reward you with yet more gear.

Because all the AAA publishers tried to sieze on the success & formula that made WOW great, they all used the same linear progression model that appeals to the largest subsection of gamers (casuals).  What they don't understand is that because many of these people have 5+ year histories with this MMO model, they take their burnout baggage from the previous game (usually WOW) with them....and put the game down much faster than they did with their original experience.

Another self defeating issue these casual MMOs face is that they are built to appeal to casual gamers.  By definition, casual gamers are fickle, and don't have the time, patience, and level of interest to invest long term in any form of entertainment.  Casual MMOs have to compete for casual gamers time with things like movies, tv shows, social media games, mobile platform games, and other single player games.  This drives casual MMO development to make things easier, faster to complete, and with increased rewards in effort to retain their attention.......which plays into the "selling out" feeling many old school MMO gamers feel towards the new stable of MMOs.

I think though, with the relative failure of SW:TOR, AAA publishers have realized that the MMO genere is too competitive & too costly of an endeavor given the diminishing returns & their inability to reproduce what WOW has done.

This has made way for many indie companies that don't have the financial burdon to have to create a game for the masses to justify the investment made.  Because they aren't spending 100+ million to develop a game, they don't have to design it to appeal to millions of gamers so that they can recoup the money spent.  They can focus on more niche audiences, and can take chances on more unique experiences.

I am not old and yet still disappointed. I believe it was a miscommunication. We all thought that games were going to become bigger. Bigger worlds, more people, better fighting, better interactions, more crafting, more options for everything. Instead worlds got smaller. I was forced to follow a quest line or grind. My rewards for exploring were taken away or supplemented by petty achievements.

Even if the MMO market is "growing" companies producing them are taking notice. Once these companies release flop after flop and have to lay off people (BTW laying off is because they are not making enough money) it is finally getting back to them that we have WoW. We want something else, entirely. 

To the people that have been ragging on the OP: The OP wants fresh new adventures and you are ok in your small box of an MMO. If everything is so happy in your box, please go back to your little box.

To the OP:  The people are being heard and the day of reckoning is coming. We will see worlds again, it just might take 3 years.

Im ready! 

 [need a beer mug clinking emote btw mods]

OP..I would say

1) for big  game companys given the time ,cost to produce,financial risk......many game directors are playing it safe and making me too games  for an experienced gaming audience

2) pressure from investors for a return on their investment grives "more of the same" game development

3) then you have some people put in charge of mmog game development who don't have a clue about making a mmog(because they never have made one)....SWTOR for example

4) You have game makers who don't understand the market they are trying to penetrate and it's growing sophistication

5) Game makers forget spending money on games is discretionary spending. In todays poor economy spending on gaming is getting harder and harder for some gamers to justify.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Johnie-Marz

Originally posted by Spector88

"This may come as a surprise, but despite your earlier beliefs, you are not the center of the world. These games are not made for you, specifically. They never were. So do us a solid and cut the victim routine"

 

I hate to break it to you but when it comes to buying games and spending my own money, I am the center of the universe.

I hate to break it to you but when it comes to developing games, and attracting an audience, you are not.

 

Sorry if you play games because other people like them, but I buy games I want to play.

The games we remember were about taking us away from the real world and give us the ability to imagine ourselves being someone else for awhile. Escape the real world rules and let the imagination roam within a new world with another set of rules. They managed to Immerse us, because we weren't constantly brought back to real life conscience (suc as: voicechat, point systems, shops, references to everything from Easter eggs to movie references; aswell as other players who aren't playing for roleplaying *loose sense*).  Escapism at its finest, otherwise known as Roleplaying.

You can discuss the reasons, but simple fact is that games are not just about that anymore. Some games contain a little taste of the spice, and you play it anyway trying to ignore the bitter taste of fake that follows. People who dont understand this, will reason you are just getting old and say stuff like "your first mmorpg was....", which you can't really deny because there is some truth to it, but only a little.

Also we must admit as gamers, we are getting better at everything. If you think about it, you quickly learn how to be "effecient" what combinations work and so on, much quicker than 10-20 years ago. Your demands have risen, and it is after all quite hard to create game patterns that aren't recognizable right away, just as hard now as it was 20 years ago.. computing power may be 1000 times higher but human brain power hasn't risen; computers don't think only humans do :).

Gamers are not gamers anymore, they are consumers and they need to be fed entertainment. So as gaming is an industry and they manufactor gamefood to consumers, it is easy to fall into safe and proven logic. Blizzard is the prime example of this, and yet I enjoyed.. err consumed their games, so am I a gamer of a consumer now? Were we ever really gamers ? Will I recognize or even notice a non-fake game now that I have been on stand-by for so long as a consumer ?

To mention some games that was able to intrigue me and the past few years.. Path Of Exile, Dungeon Defenders, Creeper World. Not since 2004 where the last contender to a real mmorpg was released has any mmorpg been able to Immerse me - I consumed alot of them, and I recognize and enjoyed each for what it was, but mmorpgs they weren't. The mmorpg Era is over, and Everquest Next will prove this once again.

Originally posted by kjempff

The games we remember were about taking us away from the real world and give us the ability to imagine ourselves being someone else for awhile. Escape the real world rules and let the imagination roam within a new world with another set of rules. They managed to Immerse us, because we weren't constantly brought back to real life conscience (suc as: voicechat, point systems, shops, references to everything from Easter eggs to movie references; aswell as other players who aren't playing for roleplaying *loose sense*).  Escapism at its finest, otherwise known as Roleplaying.

 

You can discuss the reasons, but simple fact is that games are not just about that anymore. Some games contain a little taste of the spice, and you play it anyway trying to ignore the bitter taste of fake that follows. People who dont understand this, will reason you are just getting old and say stuff like "your first mmorpg was....", which you can't really deny because there is some truth to it, but only a little.

Also we must admit as gamers, we are getting better at everything. If you think about it, you quickly learn how to be "effecient" what combinations work and so on, much quicker than 10-20 years ago. Your demands have risen, and it is after all quite hard to create game patterns that aren't recognizable right away, just as hard now as it was 20 years ago.. computing power may be 1000 times higher but human brain power hasn't risen; computers don't think only humans do :).

 

Gamers are not gamers anymore, they are consumers and they need to be fed entertainment. So as gaming is an industry and they manufactor gamefood to consumers, it is easy to fall into safe and proven logic. Blizzard is the prime example of this, and yet I enjoyed.. err consumed their games, so am I a gamer of a consumer now? Were we ever really gamers ? Will I recognize or even notice a non-fake game now that I have been on stand-by for so long as a consumer ?

 

To mention some games that was able to intrigue me and the past few years.. Path Of Exile, Dungeon Defenders, Creeper World. Not since 2004 where the last contender to a real mmorpg was released has any mmorpg been able to Immerse me - I consumed alot of them, and I recognize and enjoyed each for what it was, but mmorpgs they weren't. The mmorpg Era is over, and Everquest Next will prove this once again.

 

 

Spot on post.

My hope is that games like Minecraft will reintroduce some of those classic features into games again.  Then again, we have to wonder if the publishers even consider these games as "places to live," rather than "places to consume and discard."

Seems to me that both the players and the publishers have determined that these are "places to consume and discard."  We consume and discard the games, and the games--in turn--consume and discard us when the publishers are through.