I liked the letter except for generalizing fans at the opposite end of the spectrum.  Instead of insisting that these people are lesser beings of low intelligence simply because they have a short attention span, he could have just stated that they were steering EVE away from the core audience that had built it up and made EVE the success it was.

To each his/her own is a good thing to live life by if you find it too easy to insult others based on what you perceive as intelligence.

Other than that.. overall nice write up for the people who have stuck with EVE so long. I am not one of them, but I understand where he is comming from with this.

The problem was that Bill was not ready to run a company. These start-up companies no matter how talented can hit rock bottom with bad management. He tried to be vague as possible with his answers here.

The P2P system was horribly implemented.. I even wrote lengthy posts about how they are preping the game for failure with the system they were proposing. Then I got ambushed by 20 fanbois talking about how the lifetime subscription option is awesome.

They seperated the community and the loot grinds. If you stop paying for the premium membership you lose your extra bank slots.. you lose the ability to use all your items you collected.. You lose any motivation to dedicate any time to this game.

They pushed out a product that was hardly even ready for Open beta let alone release. May be EA's fault, but what can you do? Management decided the publisher.. they even probably decided the ETA to tell the publisher how long till the investment returns.

Simply put.. bad management with Bill basically at the helm killed Hellgate.

I see a lot of assumption in these posts on both sides.

BoE is a gearing issue that addes another element to things. You may be rich.. but you still have to grind to get another item. Yes its a bit like gambling but what game today isnt like that? You can spend time in a place and not really be guarenteed anything but some gold. Some F2P games today take it a step farther by making everything random slot machine where you can actually lose everything you invested a weeks worth of time in.. But I digress..

WoW has some good ideas that should be implemented into Diablo 3 with care. BoE and less pots are not going to make it much of a WoW clone. If I was to make a list of bad things from WoW, I do not think BoE would top the list.. but it may be in the top 25 of bad implementations. It is more of the BoE combined with other elements.

I would agree more if they added dedicated healers and group only end game content that contained all the best gear. But if there are no dedicated healers.. it will probably be easy as hell to find a group no matter what class.

They have made lots of mistakes with WoW they wish they could take back.. thats for sure. But whats done is done. From the looks of this, I see damage control. The attempt to not make waves and keep people thinking that they are listening, even if they are basically doing nothing.

Most of the future thinking.. "New Directions" are being taken into project "Titan" I am sure.

Games like Guild Wars 2, SWtoR, and even Diablo 3 will take people away from WoW. They probably will not go back as usual once the hype machine is in full gear for Titan.

There is little forward thinking left in WoW. Its not their fault. Just the real development and the really good WoW devs moved onto new projects at Blizzard. Even Titan will run its course and may be people will get their vanilla WoW with WoW 2 of some sort :)  In about 8 years though :-p

Originally posted by UsualSuspect

It just looks like a quest driven single player game, which is only enforced by the fact there are no dedicated healer/cc types. There was no interaction with other players in that video, no grouping, the usual solo game stuff was in there with the usual arrow pointing you to the next quest location. The combat was too fast and out of combat healing allowed you to run from one mob to the next without a care - this kills the ability to interact with other players as all you see is the next target and not the person next to you, which is going to make forming a community hard.

 

While the game does look nice, it's just going to be another solo grind by the look of it. Not something I want from an MMORPG.

 Im not sure I understand the logic that an MMORPG= Grouping to progress ORPG or some other accronym mix. MMO just constitutes that was are basically interacting with many players on the same playing field. Whether it be fighting in the same event....roleplaying...trading...ignoring...helping...grouping.. or even just killing eachother. MMORPG does not mean that you should be required to group.

As it is alpha. I am sure some classes/abilities/HP regen/etc... those things will change dramatically come release due to player feedback. 

Best is subjective of course. The poll is subjective. Thats the point of this poll really...

The most successful one of 2011 will probably be the most popular as well and considered the best by the majority of players. You can still find people who think the new FF online game is the best of 2010.

The guy said its basically the same thing as the hype meter.

I think most know this is a popularity contest, but if the game looks like crap(again subjective) its not going to be very popular now is it?

GW2 seems to be the choice. IF.... If it lives up to the videos, hype, news, etc. that we have read and watched. But so far with the information I have seen it should be a great game. But could be wrong.. I never played it obviously :)

Perfect for here in Japan.. at 5:00pm I am already home from work..

Thank you blizzard for finally thinking about Japan again with your games.

On a side note :-p

Dont judge people lives based on what you think is right. Many of these "no-lifers" have kids/family.. a job..success and are able to juggle all of them together.

Its fun sometimes to stay up with friends get the game and midnight and thats that. Sure we can all wake up early the next day and play, but you are just killing the fun for many people. Im not screaming mad(partly because I am in Tokyo) but it is kinda weak how they did this.

GW2 doesnt have to be p2p to take subscriptions away from wow. Blizzard know WoW is running its course soon(Around 2 years) and is setting up its future based on that. I guarentee there will be some kind of combo subscription deal with its next NEW mmo at blizzard. Basically making WoW a $5.00 a month thing in the end.

Also I would say lore is a bigger part of WoW then some may think. Your loots means nothing if the world around you means nothing. GW2 is building that. The goal is to make the world simple enough to see and know the "bad guys" yet complicated enough to make the player think there is another bad guy even worse just behind that wall there.

People seem not to give enough credit to the lore of WoW that drew people in the game. RP servers remained the most popular for many reasons. One reason is the simple RPers went there. The other is that many many players who dont RP love the enviroment RPing brings to the world. Again GW2 has some of this.

Innovation? Its all over the place there. Cataclysm offers little in innovation when it comes to WoWs next expansion. People are looking for a fresh feeling away from their home(WoW) but they still want their family(other players) there and home cooking(basic gameplay elements)available. SWtOR does this.. but the innovation part worries me.

Gameplay for hardcore, medium... soft...We will see..

Lots of this is basically up to if GW2 lives up to what we have read.

Originally posted by twrule

Originally posted by Lukekini

What we need more of?

Randomness...

Dont confuse random dice rolls with attacks and skill with randomness in the world's enviroment. Items, bosses, MOBs in general, locations/map, etc.

We need GM made events as well. You cant depend on random fun all the time. Once in a while a true GM event held on each server. I still think the best people at this were in the MUDs I played in the past. The events had mystery...combat...real time strategy making.. and rare loot. Multiple server shards made this more difficult but its still do-able.

I think you should read the article from cracked.com that the OP posted - there are specific reasons why this "randomness" is part of the problem.  Given, there is still variety, which can seem random (but isn't truly random), such as the dynamic events in GW2.  Dynamic/changeable/interactive, is generally good, true randomness not so much. 

Dynamic/changeable/interactive is probably more what I was shooting for with the idea. But remember you cant just define "random" as one idea like boss loot in wow or someone gambling. But basically we agree past the vocabulary of it :)

 Ya that random is only based on the loot dropped by a specific boss. Its closer to playing pachinko in downtown tokyo than a random drop that I am thinking. Many many f2p games take this type of randomization as they mentioned in the article. Which you pay $5.00 to try and then you have to hope your item doesnt break and your 5 dollars goes down the drain. Basically you have to gamble to win.. let alone pay2win as they say for some f2p.

Games like WoW are themepark MMOs as many say. There are good and bad things about it. Lately most could argue as they did in the article that it has gotten really out of hand. Basically the replayability is down to upgrading 1 set of armor over and over again by killing the same bosses over and over again. In my opinion kills lots of the aspects of being an MMO and basically makes 95% of the world a waste of space.

Basically this is nothing but a dream because we wont see a system like this anytime soon.....What I am saying with these things below is that you are asking for the impossible in some ways..even though I myself would love to see it in the game.

Random as in randomly generated areas of exploration that have random. You walk along an area that you never seen before. You search for it on wiki yet no one has posted anything about it. You encounter a rare named creature and you wonder what loot it drops yet there is nothing listed on wiki since this event was randomly generated as the enviroment of the world. So there you are only knowing that this creature looks like a spider.. so may be some skills are better than others. You are forced to strategize on your toes.. not google2win.

Now people can argue things in real life are not random.. but if someone was smart enough they can find the begining of the equation and basically be able to predict the future :) So even with a pure sandbox randomization.. there will still be some guide.. some exploit.. some better place to find some creature. But a good system would adjust to something like that.

Pure exploration comes along with this as well. Discovery.. but for what reason? How long does an area remained discovered? A day? Week? Years? If not.. you will just find this newly discovered place on the local wiki again.

With those things in place there still needs to be some predetermined action throughout the world. After all its a game... we need action beyond just hoping something pops out.

Though that wont stop people from being obsessed. They will now be obsessed with exploring new areas and discovering new MOBs.

Now past that.. its generally something technology can hardly do correctly. Basically nothing short of the Star Trek ala Holodeck could produce the results to satisfy it.

Where is the imagination that Dungeons & Dragons offered, or tabletop Warhammer? These games, along with fantasy literature, was the basis upon where MMOs got their ideas. EQ1, Ultima, Diablo 2, DAoC, FFXI, all offered aspects of gaming that appreciated social community, the unknowing of traveling without a map, open forms of PvP, experience loss, hard dungeons, etc. Old MMORPG experience was about risk and feeling like something unexpected could happen at any play session.
 

I understand where you are comming from with Old MMORPG experiences with the unexpected. I remember when I played UO beta and I was so happy to be in a world with all these people I just sat in Yew amazed I can carve a tree for twigs to make a fire and kill the deer to make food. It was a bit of a sandbox world which left mysteries everywhere...PvP got annoying... losing your house/castle become troublesome... ragequits were mounting on this issues alone... Still I loved walking around a place not knowing if there was some PKer walking around trying to ruin your day.

I could walk around an orc forest for the longest time and bamm.. there is a strong orc guarding a treasure chest with who knows what inside... no idea what will come after that. May be a PKer will jump out. May be another Orc swarm will come.. Who knows.. there was no real online data base equal to today's.

However....

I would have to say that old mmorpg did not have to deal so much with the age of wiki this and that.. wow head... this and that. The age of discovery was dead before you even stepped in the world. Its very very hard to "surprise" anyone using old methods. Hard dungeons became only as hard as the predictable script... or the gear listed on the forum.. or the strategy you watched on YouTube.

As for experience loss? I have always been wishy washy about this. Its hard to punish someone for 6 hours of grinding for 1 mistake..This is a huge turnoff and ragequit factor for many many players. Only a few dont mind the down time that may come along as well. But at the same time death may become/has become just a minor problem. No one worries if they will die. They will run into any situation and die and then shrug it off. Developers are going to have to think out of the box with this one. Permanent death is not really a good idea for any company who wants to run a large MMO these days.

Open PvP... well I mentioned this before. Its a double edged blade that can be fixed a bit by not making death penalties too serious in PvP and leaving it open everywhere to keep players in suspense. Still, this will cause many many ragequits.. which like you said a company does not want because of the $$ aspect.

With the technologies as great as they are today.. it is still difficult to give D&D its proper place in the online world. We are talking about a sandbox world with no limitations here. Howerver, people still want a story to go through. They still want the chance for random events that are more than "Help I am being chased by kobolds." You can hardly match a good DM running a good story.

Games like WoW turned everything into a job with 0 randomness beyond will the boss drop this or not. I loved the early days of WoW because of a few reasons. Dungeons were difficult at times, loot took time to obtain, purple items were very rare and random. Today's wow is just check wowhead...run the boss with the strat from youtube... repeat.

Most likely we will never see

1. Serious death penalties. Permanent Death/Huge Experience Loss/Item Loss

2. "Hard" dungeons. Due to the internet databases alone. Eventually everything is broken down and will have a guide.

So what upcomming games have a chance?

Guild Wars 2 looks like it offers some unique ideas with exploration and the unknown if they live up to their hype. Depends if everything they are saying truely is as interactive as they say.

Diablo 3 looks to still be linear as Diablo 2, but may have more random encounters/quests/areas/etc. But they gave up on open PvP which is a shame. It was always a little exciting to have there. However, they could always change it back? ;) Probably not considering the game rules change in PvP Arenas a bit.. from what I read atleast.

What we need more of?

Randomness...

Dont confuse random dice rolls with attacks and skill with randomness in the world's enviroment. Items, bosses, MOBs in general, locations/map, etc.

We need GM made events as well. You cant depend on random fun all the time. Once in a while a true GM event held on each server. I still think the best people at this were in the MUDs I played in the past. The events had mystery...combat...real time strategy making.. and rare loot. Multiple server shards made this more difficult but its still do-able.

Not much depth in this game other than aiming some skills. With little advancment the game will become boring fast for most. Nothing but PvP is fine, but if there is litterally no point to it other than killing some time.. people will just move onto the next similar game fast.

I played it for a bit. I like the way skills work but its the same thing everytime. Its balanced for 3v3 and thats it. The balance there is still being worked on.

But beyond this.. the game gets boring after first or second day.

Well hindsight isnt the issue here.

More of news of the approaching blame game that is incomming.

We will hear down the line sometime that some upper level manager pressured some other guy into keeping this game on track for release. Clearly someone within the business wanted this venture to fail or had little knowledge of the MMO game world in both the US and Japan. There are lots of reasons someone within the company would want the game development to stop and/or fail.

 I can understand the Japanese complaints and when I read their complaints, it nearly mirrored the western complaints. So its hard for me to believe that the peopel at Sony did not see this comming.

In the end? MMOs in general will get more of a bad rap because of this release. Though possible good news would be that companies will see this as another example of releasing games to early and not taking negative feedback seriously enough.

Originally posted by GTwander

I love how when people get butthurt over a poor launch they take it upon themselves to inform the masses about it like some kind of superhero.

*I'd link a pic of Captain Hindsight, but even with my superior powers of Google-fu, I have failed to find one*

Well hind sight has nothing to do with this. People have said for months before the official release that this game was a failure if released at the date given at that time.

This is  a forum where people post opinions, news, updates. Butthurt people have the same right to discuss these things and show their opinion. Like one opinion would be it seems your butthurts a bit more when people make these posts?

As for the game? Its too bad really.

Sid sent me a working key but I have yet to get my 2 keys in my email box nor the junk folder.

So sid will have two more as soon as I get it.

Thanks sid!

justin_here911@yahoo.com

Thanks :)

Have any left?

Sure there are people who say WoW is a failure.

Then there are those who say AC II was a failure.

Other than one being in the past tense, you can look at who is right in that idea.

For games that are still out today. It would be comparing a failure of an MMO in terms of its current subscribers. AoC was considered a huge success in its first 6 months, but the complaints started rolling in about so many things. They went from 700,000 current subscribers to less than 100,000.

Thats what people see with FFXIV because of some very frustrating issues at the moment. Most here dont want to see FFXIV fail..most are just frustrated to see it happen.

Whats it up to now? 170,000 preorders? Thats a good number because MMOs that are good have a habbit of spreading to initial subscriber's friends. However, if its too frustrating for both newbies and hardcore mmo players it will be a failure financially atleast.

Not much room for error with games like SWtoR, GW2, Tera, Diablo 3...etc comming soon. Not all exactly MMORPGs but all of them are generally competing for the same market.

Controls in MMOs over the years have become more customizable with more options.

What we see with FFXIV seems o be less of both of those things.

I wouldnt say its more of the lack of adaptability by players. Its more like frustration.

You give someone a cell phone made 5-6 years ago after having the android/iphone for a year.. you have someone searching for functions they got used to and having to adapt to older less sophisticated systems.

You dont ask your customers to adapt unless you got a strong foothold on the market. Even Steve Jobs tried that with the Iphone("you are holding it wrong.") and lost in the end, however sales didnt get hit that hard.

FFXIV is a beautiful game with a skill system I enjoy quite a bit. Combat is fun when it runs smooth. Most of the collection mini games are interesting except for fishing :-p... The problem is if people cant get past the controls, UI, and lag... they will never even experience other things in the game before their mind explodes in frustration.

Lets look a little beyond the rant even though it has the basic idea about Dungeons at the moment.

Well besides the Kawaii, the game will fail in Japan if they dont fix things. I can understand Japanese for the most part even if slowly and I read the same thing people are saying in English.

"Where are the recipes? Where do I learn new recipes?" I pointed them to our English website of goodies on crafting... Then later I hear him talking....

"Even though I got a good PC the crafting UI is so slow."

Lets hope things clear up a bit, no one likes to see games fail except their competition.