You can use a system similar to rest experience or power hour. Where basically you give players full experience for a period of time, and then after they have eaten up that allotment of rest experience or time, they start getting reduced returns or none at all.

Originally posted by thedarkess

I agree with OP. Reviews should be harsh. In my opninion the problem is that relationship between a review site and that developer would become bad. For example, devs would reject advertising their game on sites that have bad reviews about their game. Or developers will not give anymore early access or demo to those sites to try the game and review it.

That's why reviews tend to be from 'ok or has potential' to 'great or amazing' rates, imo.

That's exactly the reason why. The problem is, as a reviewer you develop a relationship with the developers. It's hard to completely trash a game because you realize what it will do to damage that company who may have been very helpful to you in the past. It's a lot easier to trash a game developed by someone who you have no working relationship.

I love the game. Played it for about 10 hours so far, and it's both addictive and fun. That having been said though, the interface is poor. Is it too much to ask for an auto-run toggle, or for there being an easier way to switch between spells? They've been doing this for a long time, the weakest part of their games is the UI. Would be nice if they address it at some point.

Originally posted by Ramonski7
I mean think about it...from playgrounds to lunchrooms to workplaces we've been breaking into smaller groups and socializing well before mmorpgs came along...only thing different now is that mmorpgs finally have big enough player bases that we can break into groups once again. So if we are not socializing, it's only because we ourselves have not found suitable playmates we can clique with.

You lost me at some point here. I understand that people travel in clicks, you have your friends and while you know a lot of other people, you have a certain group who you generally spend more time with. I get that.

However, in a WoW clone what you generally have is very different from that. You have a bunch of individuals, doing individual things. And that's where the problem is. It's not a problem that people can solo. It's a problem that the best way to level is to solo much of the time and that as a result of that many players never group. I'd guess the average WoW player probably solos to max level, and then suddenly realizes they are out of quests and either discovers other stuff (battlegrounds, raids, dungeon finder) or quits playing/rolls an alt.

So the problem here, is that there really isn't much reason for players to meet people until they max level. It's faster for them to quest at their own pace. And if they burn out before maxing level, they probably missed out on much of the MMO experience. If you look at a game like SWTOR, why would people group? Even if they group with someone else of the same class doing the same instance, they aren't going to get credit. So what's the point of doing it?

Players shouldn't be forced into groups. But content should be designed in a way that makes it easy for players to socialize and interact with other players, under common goals. And from there the ball is in their court. RIght now a lot of MMO content does the exact opposite. It encourages players not to group.

Originally posted by Cephus404

It's almost entirely the players.  Yes, games don't encourage social interaction, but games mirror the wants of the players, not the other way around.  Designers are out to make money, therefore they give the players what they want.  That means more solo play, less manditory social interaction, etc.  If the players wanted  social interaction, the games would provide it.

I disagree here. Designers design systems that they think players want, and then they need to wait and see if the player base actually embraces things or not. There have been so many things that seemed like great designs on paper, that completely flopped once they hit the player base.

Wow was successful for many reasons. It ran on old computers which was great for Asian markets. It was much more soloable and in general easier to use. The world was large, and Blizzard has always had a large fan base who would try most of their games, ensuring that players would at least give it a shot. Due to WoW's success, a lot of companies cloned those concepts and design because they felt it was the safest route to go. The games that have experimented with more radical features in recent years have primarily flopped. Even though no WoW-clone has reached Wow's numbers it still seems like the safest route for developers to take in most cases. And as a result, you see games that tried to Out-WoW it, making things even easier. Even more solo friendly. Yet none of them has had the same level of sucess.

The bottom line is that if someone comes out with an idea that is successful, people will clone it. That does not necessarily mean that is what the player base wants. If you look at a ton of polls from MMORPG fans in the past year, a lot of people want more difficulty. They want more group content. They want less kill X quests. But we'll keep seeing most of the games stick with a WoW style format until something else comes along with a new approach that is successful, then we'll see games start cloning that.

Originally posted by mrcalhou

As far as best and most successful Sandbox, I'd say that these terms are so vague and open to interpretation that Eve is the clear winner of this.

I think the people who like Eve would say that it is both (it's a love it or can't get into it at all type of game). Those who couldn't get into it (such as myself) might go with something else (UO or SWG for me). But there's no question that Eve was the most successful.

I'd go with UO and SWG as a close second. UO just reached so far with housing, boats, mounts, polymorphs, fluctuating economy, the pet system, etc. Unfortunately the rampant PKing and 2d graphics turned people away.

SWG also reached far, with their player created cities, and space flight in addition to many of the other UO features. But I think I enjoyed UO more overall.

Most of the F2P games I've played in the past year, I've never felt like I had to pay to compete. Sometimes I'd feel like I wanted access to some content and I would pay. And during EQ 2's double exp week after their hack,  I splurged on some Experience Potions to try to get the most out of it. But In general your generally pretty competitive without spending much, and even when your buying content packs and such, it's cheaper than a subscription so long as you aren't going crazy on experience potions or such.

Forced grouping is tough on casual players. But right now we've gone to the exact opposite extreme, where there is very little reason to ever group until your max level, and then it's only generally to get loot. It's counter-productive to group with players for long periods of time in most modern MMOs, unless you are both on the exact same points of quests. You may group up shortly with someone on the same quest as you, but once your done you go your own ways, and often you don't even group then. Often you'll compete with them for spawns for no reason other than you just don't want to be bothered.

I think the big thing here is encouraging players to be social, without actual forcing it. Public Quests are a good example of this, because players really have zero reason not to work together, and it is helpful if other players do aid them. What results is that even if players don't group up for the public quests, they are in contact with other players. They become familiar with those players, which often leads to a group invite or to some casual banter with people you cross paths with.

The biggest problem I see with Full Loot systems is that it rewards the griefer, while punishing the normal player. Generally I think it should be the other way around. The most telling factor there is if a game features PvP, even if you had a separate full loot server, there are going to be some very vocal players about how the game needs to be full loot. If they can have full loot on their own server, why should they care about the other servers they aren't playing on? Because griefers get most of their enjoyment on ruining the day of casual players. In a multi-server setup the casual guys will play on the no loot servers, and only the hardcore players who enjoy full loot will play on those servers. Which kills the thrill for them.

That having been said, I've played several full loot games that were enjoyable. Most notably Ultima Online.

In EQ 1 they had a Legends server for a while which I think was $45 or $50 a month, and quite a few people paid it. I tried it a month myself. Problem was they didn't really deliver enough GM controlled events, and the events went down over time. After a while people started moving back to their old servers.

It was nice though to see them a bit more often. I think there would be a marketplace for it. It would be a smaller market though.

UO used to have mobs that might drop full sets of armor and a weapon when killed. Not always but they did do it. It was more realistic, but one of the problems is that most of that stuff is going to be not all that useful, and you wind up with bags full of them. And then generally with all of that stuff dropping it devalues items. They are so easy to come by that you need a way to get rid of them. In UO they could rot on your corpse, people could loot you, etc. As a result items had less of an effect on the game.

The system can work, but the game has to be designed for it in mind from the get go.

I don't think developers are being lazy or anything of that nature. But good AI comes with a CPU cost. Normal MMORPG AI basically is sleeping most of the time, until something moves into it's aggro radius or interacts with it. Then it generally performs actions on a timer which is simplified and quick.

Advanced AI is going to take up more server side horsepower. In the case of 10-25 mobs, that's not a big deal. But when you consider areas with hundreds of mobs in them, your talking about a significant increase in server load, and a decrease in profit margin, or in a worse case, reaching a point where a game is no longer profitable.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for better AI. But I think oftentimes people see what happens in single player games, or in FPS type situations and they think that MMOs should be able to be just as good at all of those things. But that often isn't possible when your dealing with thousands of players.

I don't disagree with him. I'm looking forward to SWTor as much as the next guy, but let's be honest, most people will solo their way through the game. The early content revolvse around storyline quests and you can't share the rewards in them. Sure someone else can help you do it, but even if they had the same quest, only you get credit. They have been adding some dungeons for group content now, and two high end raids. But the vast majority of that game is a single player game. I'm not sure how there can be any immersion with dozens of characters on the screen wearing the same clothes and having the same companions (even the same names), in a world without a day/night cycle.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still absolutely looking forward to TOR. But I'm looking forward to it for the same reasons I look forward to Bioware single player games. This trend started with WoW and it has never really stopped.

They are both worth playing, especially now they are f2p. They certainly don't seem to be dying any time soon, unlike what some others have said in this thread. I played EQ 2 recently on the free to play server to check out the Halloween event, and there were tons of players. The population seems very healthy. I haven't tried LoTRO in six months or so but last I checked it had quite a few people, as well.

I think both games offer different things. I think LoTRO is very polished, but at times a bit bland. The combat in EQ 2 is superior, imo. The quests vary greatly in both games. Tons of Wow-style simple quests in both, but each has their own share of cool quests. EQ 2's Heritage, Epic and Signature quests are in lengthy and give great rewards. They have some huge chains in some of the expansions. LoTRO meanwhile has it's storyline quests that are also very well done, and make you feel like your in the Tolkien world.

I haven't raided in LoTRO since early launch, so their raiding may have improved. But it was pretty simple before. At that point EQ 2 had better raiding.

Legendary Items in LoTRO are a nice little gameplay feature, but EQ 2 offsets that with their Alternate Advancement feature, which I personally think is a better approach than LoTRO's deeds. You get a bit more customization in EQ 2.

I think the new player experience though is better in LoTRO. It seems simpler to jump in and get going, where EQ 2's newbie zones sometimes leave a player scratching their head.

Originally posted by Draron

Originally posted by eycel

Will there be changes in graphics engines that allow better gameplay?

What?

But on topic, I think they will be done with WoW-type quests and slowly move over to GW2's way of doing them. That, and a more action-based combat system will be more common I think.

I think there's room for both that and old quests. I'm a little concerned with the lack real quests in Guild Wars. I'd guess we see a lot of generated content with much better generation systems than we see in current games, that allow for mutation and custom tailoring thngs for each player. I don't think old style quests should go away, but the kill 10 _ quests aren't serving much purpose other than as a means of experience. I'd like to see more EQ 1 style epic quests with generated systems that require players to think, and are spoiler proof.

There will come a time when we hit a plateau and games will no longer entertain people at all. Everything will be done, and everyone will be claiming everythings a clone. Unfortunatly this will happen.Id like to hear all your thoughts on this matter.

I don't think we'll ever hit that point. Movies have been around for a hundred years, and theater for thousands. But they still entertain us. Games will be the same. 

I expect.

1. A unique experience, rather than just another wow-clone.

2. Not to feel like I have to buy my way to power. I don't mind experience potions but I don't want to feel like I need to buy those items in order to advance. And I am very much against items that offer real power, though don't mind mounts, cosmetic or convenience items.

I'm annoyed by.

1. Games that don't feature good anti-spam protection and allow gold spammers to spam the world chat.

2. Games that allow you to buy your way to power. Same rules apply as above.

I don't mind the item collection, but it's ridiculous that each expansion on the first day the top gear in the game is suddenly on par with gear someone can solo quest for on day 1.

I don't see why not. I'm not sure how often I'll get a chance to, but I can see myself playing these games on and off until the day I die.