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.

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.

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.

I agree that the problem with MMOs today is mainly the players. Hell, even FPS titles suffer the same problem of idiotic players and wannabe trolls. This is why I tend to avoid playing MMOs for the most part. I'm playing FFXI, but I'm seriously thinking of dumping the subscription since I know full and well I'm likely to find a gaggle of a---hats. 9_9

WTH does Adam Smith's concept have to do with MMOs?

First, the invisible hand does not preclude collusion, corruption, and down right human stupidity (if you knew the biography of Adam Smith, you would know he didn't assume as such). It merely means that given all possible choices, market actors will inevitably choose what works best for the factors of production.

Second, MMOs are expensive to make because of non-market forces like so-called intellectual property and various regulations on videogames in other parts of the world (the US is not the whole planet). That's why you have many game companies creating their own in-house software stack. If IP law wasn't so onerous, it's likely there would be many more developers making MMOs.

Third, what you like or prefer is not objective. I hate to break your heart, but good or preferable depend on your subjective valuation. What I like is certainly not what you like. So, don't expect developers to pull out a powder blue turban and try to read your damn mind. At best, they'll try to respond to failures of not meeting your demands, however vague they may be, but they're not guaranteed to come up with exactly what you want in any case. This is key above all things because the invisible hand says nothing regarding innovation or entrepreneurship (if you even had read some of the work of Frank Knight on the matter, you would know this), that's a subject entirely alien to economics.

Originally posted by eyeswideopen

But...but...Carbine Studios has "heavy hitter" developers!

Hmmm, so did Vanguard.

So did Tabula Rasa.

So did Hellgate: London.

lol

People never learn.

That reminds me of a saying I've heard once. It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. I don't see much fight to Wildstar. Nice art style, but I'm looking for something that will keep me playing more than a month if it's going to be subscription based. Otherwise, I could play this year's RPGs and FPSes coming up before and just after Christmas for quite some time (I already own Dead Island and I'm playing hell out of it).

I think to say PC gaming is dead is like saying journalism is dead. Certain models of business come and go, but the core of entertainment like PC gaming always live longer than their detractors and often transform into another medium. For example, radio dramas declined as television took hold in the US and the world, but dramas never died, they went to television. And when the Internet became a cheap means to transmit audio, audiobooks and podcasts took off even though talk radio is still gaining popularity today. PC gaming today has shifted from being an affair where one goes to a brick and morter store to purchase the latest lased disk, there's Steam, Impulse, CoG, Origin, and other digital distributors to purchase the same games from without the hassle of a drive to Bestbuy or Gamestop.

In fact, I'd argue PC gaming is growing because the marginal cost to produce one more PC is cheaper than producing one more console. Why? Because the components don't functionally change. Consoles are built for TVs and TVs evolved in a weird way where there's two basic standards NTSC and PAL/SECAM. So that means a console has to be made to handle one or the other, that means two different production lines even if the core components (memory, storage, gpu, controller inputs, etc) are the same. The revenue gains are lost from dividing a portion of the factors of production between two competing standards. It's much like the problem that HD-DVD vs Bluray presented. Btw, this same argument applies to smartphones vs consoles. It's cheaper to produce one more smartphone than it does to produce one more console for the same reasons (especially since there's a convergence toward LTE now). If there's any 'threat' to PC gaming it's from PC makers who keep crapping on their customers in much the same way the brick and morter vendors did for supporting PC (and to a lesser extent console) gaming.

Also, motion activated gaming is a fad, it's come in various forms since before even I was born. The real trend in gaming is agumented reality inside and outside of games. Be it smartphone apps that allow you to access some of your game account's features or even offering other conveniences up front or at a premium. Plus, I think gaming will become more mobile in the sense that smartphones are a great way to consume some games than to sit in front of a console or a PC (angry birds and Plants vs Zombies comes to mind).

Only in a handful of situations have I ever bothered to read quest text. Both were in LOTRO and Eve. In LOTRO, there were a few quests that incorporated some of the Appendices, so reading them was like reading the actual novels at times (especially when they were referencing some 1st and 2nd ages lore that was still in play in the 3rd age). In Eve, if you didn't pay attention you'd might leave something behind even if it was a frelling kill mission, so the text tells you what you need to do and where to go.

Now, cutscenes... I really don't like them if they're too long or they're abused like in MGS or FFXIV. Cutscenes should be a reward for doing something or the start of something that will be rewarding itself (like how it seems GW2 and TOR are trying to do it).

Originally posted by Athillian

Considering that the west and east have two totally different views on what makes a good MMO, its hard to say. But to be honest Western gamers are alot more open to playing say, Vindictus or Tera, than a korean is likely to play Runes of Magic or Lotro. (Pardon me if those are poor examples but you get the jist).

I think culture has much to do with MMOs since I remember some of the words exchanged between Richard Garriott's team and the Korean team working on Tabula Rasa lead to them scrapping the original implementation since neither team could grasp what they felt was important or significant for the game. Garriott wanted a game where players could be immersed in the lore not only through the look and feel of the game, but also the decisions a player could make. The Korean developers were probably focused on things like the artwork and game mechanics which promoted teamwork (this oddly a common cultural theme/trait among the various asian cultures).

Originally posted by saker

Well america is in general decline, if you equate america with "the west" then the answer is yes. There is some evidence the the EU may get itself into a stronger union and who knows what happens then. But China and India are powerful up-and-comers in the next few years. If they can get their internal issues straightened out the future is theirs.

You realize that most of the game development in the US revolves around the console market? The mmo market is an afterthought (possibly abortive in the eyes of most developers and investors) here in the US. The current investment in mmos exists purely due to Blizzard's success, and when Blizzard (not if) can't replicate their success then I think that'll mean bye-bye to the gobs of money being pelted at the niche market of mmos.

Edit: I want to make it clear that I have no ill will toward mmos, hell I bought a copy of FFXI to go through San d'Oria one more time (it's surprisingly doing well). But I won't stand around and let people blame X thing on the fundamental limitations of the MMO genre. The MMO genre bears many of the same flaws as JRPGs: highly technical game mechanics, relatively simple storylines (excluding Guildwars and possibly TOR), insular playing communities (not developer's fault), and large divide between haves and have-nots. A handful of developers are possibly competent to tackle these flaws and possibly remedy them, but the majority of developers don't have the interdisciplinary knowledge or skills to do that. Knowing how to hammer out code or even cobble together a rendering engine doesn't mean you know how to see architectural decisions as actual playable implementations or even how a player could see a way around an implementation to exploit it.

Single player game for sure. :3

To the OP, yes, most MMOs are terrible. It's like every title tries to be an action-comedy, but they all wind up being remakes of remakes of remakes of classics. That's why I don't bother paying or even playing. *goes back to minecraft* :3

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Then your definition of realism is different from mine. I'd call that... coherence. ...or having features that complement each other and form a larger whole.

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I call it good architectural decisions, but realism seems a better term for me since often I use ontology (computer science) to describe things. It's a great way to handle design.

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There are some aspects which usually contribute to the "goodness" of the game. For example, people generally like high production values or good coherence between features.

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Which is entirely subjective.

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Why should I cater to the minority?

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Why should I cater to vegans? Because there's money in it.

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You cannot possibly claim that WoW and Rift are bad games.

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Yeah, I can. They suck, period. That's the beauty of values, they're subjective. *hands Q copies of Human Action and Process and Reality*

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You cannot call today's MMOs worse just because their target audience has shifted away from you.

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If I can point out weaknesses both on the business side and the consumer side of MMOs, then that means they're worse off. Why? Because investors get little in terms of their return for the time it takes to produce one (even lower quality ones) and because consumers have made numerous complaints regarding them (btw, the biggest complainers are casual gamers, not veterans like me). If you want further proof, watch any video by Ben Croshaw (aka Yahtzee).

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What? How did you build a strawman like that out of what you quoted?

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You're the one defending the undefendable, dude.

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Can you show any industry metric for MMOs anywhere?
Why don't you google for yourself? http://www.industrygamers.com/news/mmorpg-market-to-reach-8-billion-worldwide-this-year/

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Many indie MMOs have fallen because they've tried to focus on realism and interaction with environment rather than what is important.

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The kinds of realism I'm talking about has little to do with what you may call realism. For me, having each part of a game make sense or even dovetail into another part is what I consider realism. For example, in an MMO that has tacked on crafting is not realistic, having crafting being the main means to gaining equipment is realistic. Having a magic system that doesn't integrate across all combat types is not realistic, having it interact with all combat types is realistic (think of imbuing attacks with elemental damage as an example of this). And so on.

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A good game. Every good MMORPG has one inside.

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It depends on your definition of good. I'll give you an idea of what good is: I like chocolate ice cream. Meaning, it's subjective.

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There's nothing wrong with single-player games being more popular than MMOs. Adding realism and interaction to MMOs is not the silver bullet to make them more popular either. Realism doesn't even make a good game half the time!

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So having tacked mechanics and unthoughful themeparks is a definition of good design? LOL WUT

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If 10% growth is not "doing great" then I don't know what is. I'm sure MMO market is also growing.

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Can you show any industry metric for MMOs anywhere?

Edit: Why does the forum software continue to consider every quote as part of a larger quote? It's RETARDED! /vent

To really get into FFXI, you really need to find a linkshell first before deciding what to roll for your starter job (I'd say warrior since it's nice to just be a big wall of HP early on, but Redmage is good too). The reason why I say this is because FFXI has no LFD/LFG functions, so the community is driven around linkshells. Talking to people in public doesn't really work out since most probably are focusing on their vent/mumble/TS3 chat or even doing something else away from the screen at the moment (if we're talking about hanging out in the towns).

Q, I have to take issue with your claim that the MMO market is doing great. No market today is really doing that great for the fact of Western sovereign and private debts being at an all time high (possibly historically highest, even). Now, taking that problem out of the picture, I'd say MMOs are still doing lackluster compared to their singleplayer counterparts since many of the singleplayer games have multiplayer functionality, which directly competes with MMOs. Until MMOs are designed both to capture reasonable level design and possibly better attempts at realism of interactions/environments (this isn't graphical, necessarily), then I think the reigning entertainment king is still the singleplayer game.

The current problem with the industry is that everyone thinks larger budgets means better products. The reality is that larger budgets means more risk adverse investment since the accumulation of capital depends on investors with low time preference (Human Action by L. Mises). But if your investors have a high time preference, getting them to sit and wait for the expected rate of return isn't going to happen, they can easily put that money toward any other market or industry with more reliable rates of return in the same time frame. If you want less risk adverse investors and firms, then expect to play indie games which don't have the high end graphics like Crysis or the polish of WoW.

It's more about how much effective computing you can buy per dollar. If price is no concern, then the best Intel has to offer usually trumps AMD. But if price is a concern, then you should look at AMD since dollar for dollar it manufactures the best CPUs for low to mid range systems, which can be easily overclocked (note: OC results vary depending on motherboard and RAM) to compete with high end high price Intel rigs. Also, the next problem is whether you're going to integrate the PC with your other activities like watching TV or DVDs. That may seem dumb to worry about, but since services like Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Netflix are offering bigger catalogs of TV series and movies it pays to have a PC that can handle these too (and run the flat screen TV you already own). So, look at motherboard features after you decide which processor you want (for OC options and RAID options).

The biggest thing that makes an MMO or Multiplayer RPG fun is exploration. I love complex geography and dungeons. I don't know why everyone today wants nearly flat, walled-in maps over diverse map design where all three dimensions are exploited. It just irks me how easy it is to get to something anymore. I don't want it to be impossible in the sense that there are ubermensch monsters waiting to devour me if I try to explore, but I would like something left unknown for me to discover or solve for myself. I think that's the biggest fun thing of MMOs (at least for me).

Personally, I'm just glad some developers have the stones to take these old ideas and run with them again. Ryzom was a failure, still is in many people's eyes, so the monster ecology thing being dabbled in again seems like a gamble. The same goes for player made cities and landscapes since SWG did the biggest jumping the shark in MMO history (so far). And the other features, the same oldie, but goodies getting sneaked backed into the genre is a good thing, not a bad thing as some may believe (unless they can prove that copying is bad or that these specific features ruined the genre).