Originally posted by Katilla

Originally posted by zaxxon23

Originally posted by Reklaw

To me someone who speaks about WoW-clones is a person with a limited playstyle, often the click mission/quest/accept without reading it and go to the marker on the map type of player. One that doesn't read or get's involved with the games lore/story will also consider many MMO's to be WoW Clones.

I played or tested many MMORPG, been playing MMORPG since meridian59 and have yet to see a WoW Clone due to HOW I play games in this genre.

A wow clone is not an exact copy, but it retains a very similar formula.  For example, AOC was a wow clone.  There were some minor variations in combat, a bit of instanced guild housing, and a bit easier to navigate quests on the minimap.  Other than those few changes, it was essentially the same game with a different skin (and of course half the polish and half the content of wow, which is also a staple of a wow clone nowadays).

So technically you're right, AOC is not a wow "clone" in the strictest sense of the word.  However it is so close to the same playstyle and formula that wow clone is a very apt term to describe it.  There's nothing "limited" in that.  If you wanna get all picky you go for it, but that's not gonna change the minds of reasonable people out there.

 WoW people are hilarious.  AoC is nothing like WoW.  It just happens to have characteristics that every MMORPG have, even the ones that came out before your obsession.  Stop calling them "wow Clones" and making yourself look extremely narrow minded and start calling them MMORPG's

Life is way too short to get into all the minute details of a game.  Yes, there are differences AS I STATED IN MY OP (which you obviously did not read), but when 90% of the game is the exact same mechanics, it's a wow clone.  I don't give a darn how picky you want to be, it's the same game with minor insignificant variations.  You're just a closed-minded fool thinking otherwise.  It's like getting mad that someone calls a common small brown house spider a spider rather than it's exact name.  Nobody cares.  Everybody who is reasonable understand it's just a darn spider. 

To state that AOC is nothing like wow is psychotic imo, unless it has DRASTICALLY changed from release (and I played up to level 50 or so at release).  You're just smokin' crack in my book.

Originally posted by TheHatter

The only game I can really call a WoW clone without even a hint of second guessing myself, was Warhammer when I played it. I have no clue what it's like now, but when I played shortly after release it felt completely like WoW with better graphics and worse physics. 

Other than that, the rest of the games out there aren't really WoW clones (other than the obvious ones like Allods & Alganon), they just mimic WoW to try and capitalize on it's success. 

 Interesting.  Sure there are definate similarities, and I'd agree it's a wow clone in principle, but war at least tried something different with public quests, pvp lakes, and battleground queues from level 1 (which wow quickly copied).  Out of all the wow clones recently, war's actually one that tried to be something a bit more.

Originally posted by justmyself

Deal with that WoW is not perfect game, it's boring and monotonous. LotrO is much better game and it's 100% original. As I said, WoW couldnt sue LotrO, because WoW was first to steal something from Turbine. Deal with it, your game sucks.

I'm sorry to inform you that LOTRO is a wow clone as well.  There are certainly enhancements that add value to the game, but it's still the same old same old.  Crappy quests, level grind, forced zones on rails, same interface, same pretty much anything that actually matters.

Then again, you state that lotro is 100% original, so I find myself wondering if I took the bait for a troll, cause lotro is maybe 10% original at best.

Originally posted by Reklaw

To me someone who speaks about WoW-clones is a person with a limited playstyle, often the click mission/quest/accept without reading it and go to the marker on the map type of player. One that doesn't read or get's involved with the games lore/story will also consider many MMO's to be WoW Clones.

I played or tested many MMORPG, been playing MMORPG since meridian59 and have yet to see a WoW Clone due to HOW I play games in this genre.

A wow clone is not an exact copy, but it retains a very similar formula.  For example, AOC was a wow clone.  There were some minor variations in combat, a bit of instanced guild housing, and a bit easier to navigate quests on the minimap.  Other than those few changes, it was essentially the same game with a different skin (and of course half the polish and half the content of wow, which is also a staple of a wow clone nowadays).

So technically you're right, AOC is not a wow "clone" in the strictest sense of the word.  However it is so close to the same playstyle and formula that wow clone is a very apt term to describe it.  There's nothing "limited" in that.  If you wanna get all picky you go for it, but that's not gonna change the minds of reasonable people out there.

I don't really think today's mmos are really mmos.  They've been slimmed down to be more arpgs than mmos while still meeting the base definition of a mmo.  They're in a purgatory of sorts to me.  They don't have enough content to be a true AAA mmo, and at the same time they aren't good enough to be a quality arpg.  That's why they fail.

Originally posted by Phelcher

 

Nobody has made an EQ clone yet...  WoW is vastly different than Everquest.

 

 Whatever.  If I didn't put that in my op, your post would be replaced by someone telling me a wow clone is really an eq clone. 

I agree with alot of points.  A jarring change, particularly when it isn't done well, just isn't a formula for success.  It's pretty darn clear that people like wowish type gameplay.  The next big mmo will evolve the gameplay and add in value that wow doesn't have (e.g. better crafting, resource gathering, player housing, better community, etc).

That being said, you also bring up the point that more recent mmos have had all kinds of technical issues.  Well, this all comes back down to polish.  If you ask me, polish is the single biggest reason why no recently released mmo can compete with wow.  Devs are scaling back efforts, releasing games with a tenth of wow's already limited content, and buggier and less polished to boot.  That is no formula to success.  Even a person without any kind of business education can see this.

There's lots of good innovation that can take place in the next generation of mmos, however that innovation is gonna be more about polishing up some older mechanics and putting the first m back into the mmo.  Wow took away the massive component to get the mass market.  Now it's time to show the mass market what a mmo really is.

Anybody can make a eq/wow clone, and that to me is the standard for a good (e.g. mediocre) mmo.  Wow has upped the bar with their polish to make the formula a very good mmo.  But what makes a great mmo?  To me a great mmo has most of the same polish and gameplay of wow, but adds in all the other stuff that used to make mmos great when computers couldn't handle the gameplay of wow.  Good crafting, resource gathering, exploring, meaningful pvp, etc.

To date I don't think there have been any "great" mmos.  All mmos released so far have stuck to either themepark or sandbox, with no successful hybrid to date.  It's that first properly done hybrid that will make the first "great" mmo.  I can't wait, cause it's gonna blow wow out of the water.

Guess i"m a bit late to the thread so i probably shouldn't even waste my time typing, but oh well.  I agree with the op that today's quests are both overrated and boring.  Many people playing mmos now have absolutely no idea what an mmo without quests is like.  To be honest, my only mmo without quests was swg, so I guess I have some shared ignorance as well.  That being said, I'd rather run out mindlessly killing mobs for xp any day. 

See, I really liked SWG's mission terminal system.  It gave you some coin for the xp grinding you were gonna do anyways, and added a bit of structure to it all.  You didn't have to use the mission terminals, but it provided enough benefit to be worth the time.  Of course, mission terminals aren't quests, and we all know that mmos need to have at least a baseline level of quests.

The thing I get about wow and all the other quest focused games is that it does the exact same thing as the mission terminal system, but tries to hide it by being a "quest", and even worse causes me to run around doing nothing but going back and forth to town.  IMO, the quest system is designed to waste even more time which is all unproductive.

To me, an ideal mmo will have a mission terminal type system as well as true quests.  Don't insult my intelligence by trying to hide the grind, and don't waste my time making me run all over the place turning in wanna be "quests".

sibs, this one is supposed to be sort of a mmo version of d2/3, whereas d3 is clearly an arpg rather than a mmo of any sort.  don't get me wrong i'll be buying d3 as well, but if you want more of a mmo version of diablo, you may wish to give mythos a look.  that being said, i believe that mythos will sadly be a f2p.  :(

So what exactly is wrong with a zerg fest.  For example, I'd rather play D2 than wow, even though wow's combat system is really excellent for a mmo.  I just hate slow pulling and would much rather blow through the instance slaughtering every enemy in my path and doing my best not to get swarmed or beat up by the miniboss with lightning/conviction.  Boy would I love to see that in a mmo format with more than three small zones for end-game.

Interesting topic.  Mine is Star Trek.  Surprisingly, they actually had some pretty decent systems in that game, but something about it bored me to tears after just a few nights playing.  That being said, I think it's pretty darn tough to make a good space mmo.  I mean, there's really not that much you can do with ships that are slow.  If we were dealing with more of a fast action dogfighting game, perhaps there's some potential there, but does that really fit into a mmo?  After all, we're back to the same point that there's just not much you can do with ships, even if dogfights make flying more entertaining.

It still comes back to the same thing with me that it does with any mmo.  You need freedom, crafting, city building, politics, meaningful pvp, etc.  The EQ/WOW formula on rails just doesn't do it anymore.  People get bored with it way too quickly, and if they're into it they won't be leaving wow for a game with half the polish and a tenth the content.

mmo subs are generally considered a great value versus other entertainment options.  One month of a mmo is less than one night out at the bar and two tickets to a movie.  So if you've used 1200 euros to entertain yourself with a mmo versus the 4500 euros you would have spent for a movie, food, and some drinks over the course of the same time for a number of weekend nights out, have you really wasted your money?

You're gonna use your money for some sort of entertainment anyways.  Why not use it on one of the better entertainment values?

Hard is a relative term.  Is anything in a mmo truly challenging?  Not usually.  Is it easy to keep playing when it will take you a year to reach level 99 and another year to become an acceptable crafter, and one more year to max out your combat and crafting?  Well, it's not challenging, but it's certainly not easy and requires dedication.  That basically makes it "hard" to achieve all that you want to achieve.

So to sum up, mmos aren't hard because they're challenging, they're hard because it takes a lot of time and dedication to succeed and conquer the game.

I don't believe in burnout from the mmo *genre*.  However, modern mmos have stripped out all the stuff that kept people playing in the name of efficiency.  It doesn't take a phd to figure out that having limited pve and pvp as the only two valid end-game activities will burn *anyone* out.

Things like crafting, city building, exploration, basically the "fluff" stuff is what gave mmos longevity.  Now that they've removed that stuff is it really of any surprise to anyone that you get bored of mmos much quicker?

I just get such a kick out of the apologists here trying to blame burnout on the people and totally ignoring the fact that mmos are a shell of what they once were.

Originally posted by Thomas2006

Originally posted by ChrisMattern

 

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Originally posted by malpoodle

PVP
First and foremost, any MMORPG worth its salt must have PVP and not just as a byproduct or afterthought. PvP has to exist in an mmo from a marketing perspective at least. Let's take a look at a few examples...

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Stopped reading right here, because it's just ludricrously wrong.

I like how he makes it sound like pvp saved EQ2.  Saddly he must not remember the time when EQ2 and WoW where neck and neck in the subscriptions both boosting about there 500k subscriptions each raceing to the 1 million mark. For over a year they fought back and forth and pvp wasnt even a factor in them large numbers back then. Yet now that they have added pvp in and focused somewhat on it the numbers have dropped off alot since then.

He also didn't mention anything about how the pvp focused games like WAR made a big opening splash but died faster then pve focused games like LOTRO.

PVP is by no means a saving grace / requirement for a MMO. In fact I would trade pvp for a more refined PVE focus and story any day of the week.

What the heck alternative universe are you living in?  EQ2 was toast from the very moment it was released.  Wow had 1 million+ subs the first day the game was released!  There was never even remotely close to ANY competition between the two games, and there sure as heck was no "race" to 1 million subs.  Really, now I've seen it all... /boggle

Originally posted by malpoodle

Originally posted by zaxxon23

 

Eventually everyone arrives and stays at the end-game (even in a skill-based sandbox mmo).

 

 

 

I wholeheartedly disagree there. It's impossible for everybody to arrive at the same end game where skill is a factor unless we consider that everyone's skill is equal.

The end-game is the point where the time you put into the game generates only marginal return.  There is no one specific spot where you go from newb to endgame.  Now just you're being too literal just to be argumentative.

Originally posted by malpoodle

"Mal, you want to remove instances, even if not all of them."

 

Well, when you say, "don't remove instances" I took that to mean don't remove any instances because you said, ""Don't remove instances.  Add non-instanced content and give a good reason for most people to try it."

The appropriate answer is to allow instancing for some places, but not others.

I never said remove all instances. Furthermore, instances incredibly impact the dynamics of the entire game. There should be instances! There should also be some areas which are not instanced for the sake of creating finite resources.

bottom line; there should be instanced and non-instanced content as outlined in my original post. When you replied by saying there should be instances and non-instances... to me that didn't add up.

Eventually everyone arrives and stays at the end-game (even in a skill-based sandbox mmo).  If a mmo is retaining subscribers, people will spend much more time at the end game than leveling to get to the end-game.  You clearly stated in the op that you want to remove end-game instances, or control high level resources/items by only placing them in open areas.  You are in effect removing instances for the only part of the game that really matters.  That's not to say that we shoud forget leveling and the journey to end-game, but we all know that the real meat of a mmo is in the end-game.

I will concede the point that my blanket statement was not well stated.

Mal, you want to remove instances, even if not all of them.  Removing ANY instances in the name of forcing open world over instancing is still a removal of instances.  There's not much more to say.

Levels, I was just adding to my example.

Originally posted by lilnate22

 

1- i dont need to play wow to know what wow is like

2-  i hate wow, simply because its not "MY" type of game,  and its pure bias based on me, and not anything specific to the game

3- even though I hate wow, i still realize its one of the best games ever.

You know, you should at least try it if you haven't.  It may not be a good mmo, but it really is a great game.  I bet you get at least six months of enjoyment out of it, even if eve or uo is more your cup of tea.

On top of it, you'd be more credible if you have to argue against wow, and will have good examples to back up your point.