Originally posted by UOlover

PvP: the majority of the player base wants absolutely nothing to do with pvp.

 

It's not that people want nothing to do with pvp, it's more that people don't want anything to do with crappy unrewarding pvp.  Not very many people want to be ganked over and over by a high level, and not many want to have their gear lost to pvp.  Yet pvp focused mmo games focus on just that! 

Yet wow battlegrounds do just fine.  What does that say?  It says to me that people don't mind pvp, as long as it is in a safe and rewarding context.  It's the competition that matters, and the rewards for winning that competition.  So instead of crappy unrewarding pvp, why not provide plenty of competitive pvp both in instances (ala battlegrounds) and open world resource control? 

For example, you're playing a mmo with plenty of resources, and a very valuable one spawns in a pvp zone.  There is some mechanic that allows for battles to control land for a specified period of time, and the reward is the ability to mine this rare valuable resource, while the loser has to wait 24 hours again to fight for a spot.  This is of course an extremely crude description of a mmo mechanic, but the point should still be clear.  You can take it further and guilds can fight for control of an area of land that spawns a rare resource.  Same concepts apply, and the guild/faction that wins gets to mine for the valuable resource while the other guild has to wait 24 hours to try and capture that mining spot again.  If you have multiple mining areas, a guild could potentially spend entire evenings fighting for crucial resources with a variety of other competing guilds.  Now THAT is rewarding and meaningful pvp.

This type of example is a very crude but realistic example of meaningful pvp that I feel would attract a great many players, hardcore and casual alike.

What you cannot forget is that no matter how much you may despise "casual" gamers, they are nonetheless a part of your market.  MMOs are supposed to be massive after all, and focusing on just a niche market doesn't make a massive game.

Instead of removing things you don't like but the mass market does, why not simply add the features you like to a mmo?  Don't remove instances.  Add non-instanced content and give a good reason for most people to try it.  Don't get rid of levels, instead add a nearly infinite amount of levels (you can do this thanks to marginal returns) and add skills on top of it.  Levels can give stats and skills can be in a class of their own.  It's the best of both worlds.  Don't get rid of classes, leave them there for people who would get lost without them.  Simply add in a "non-class" class, with all skills available for those who are inclined to that type of playstyle.

The biggest problem with today's mmos is that devs FORCE their players to do things.  Well that's just baloney, and the OP's idea isn't a darn bit better.  You want to give people more and more stuff to do, without removing stuff that people like to do, to create a broader game world that attracts additional subs and retains the subs you already have. 

That being said, OP you do have good ideas.  Nothing that hasn't been talked about plenty before, but good none the less.  Resources, economy, control of land, these are but three mmo concepts that have died out as of late that add tons of replay value.  There's no doubt in my mind that those three aspects will be a crucial part of the next gen mmo.

Originally posted by helthros

Originally posted by Ozivois

Originally posted by lilnate22

Originally posted by rozenblade1

Originally posted by lilnate22

thank you for the OP troll. first of all, all those games failed cuz they SUCKED.

 

Yea, in your opinion...

I happen to REALLY like LotRO, AoC, and definitely FFXI...are you a WoWtard?

 

yes..im a "wowtard"....when 

1- i never played wow

2- i hate wow

3- i never had a wow account...

 He never played WoW yet he hates WoW...

He sounds like one of those people who hate the Yankees just because they pay top dollar to maintain a better team.

 

Just because they pay top dollar to maintain a better team? To any true sports enthusiast that's downright blasphemy.

Sports should be about teamwork, chemistry, a gameplayn, home-grown players. Not going out and buying the best line-up money can buy.

 

How can you even compare the two. Silly.

How can you completely discount the effect of business management in professional sports?  It's just as much a part of the competition as teamwork and chemistry.  To ignore it is ignorant.

Earlier mmos were pioneers.  It was the game that mattered, not the polish and graphics.  Then wow hits the scene and completely raises the bar.  Now the old mmos have lost many subs and had no business case to upgrade. 

Originally posted by Horusra

How about having an option in quests to get an item or something to upgrade items you already have.  thus if you have that nice shiny crafted armor you could get something to increase that armor and make it better.  That way you can wear what you want and increase it along the way.

 Torchlight tried this concept with their ARPG, and it was....interesting.  There's positives, and negatives.  Positives being the ability to upgrade your item.  Negative because you want to, ya know, FIND new items.  After all that's usually why people play, because in reality a mmo or arpg is just really a grown up slot machine, affecting the exact same kinds of pleasure centers in your brain as you would if you htt a good payout or jackpot on a slot machine.

Originally posted by arenasb

Originally posted by uquipu

All MMOs are the same, more or less.
.
So why not play the best?
.
That's WoW.
.
The one thing all the MMOs you listed have in common is they failed to compete with WoW in an open market.
.
They all have missions or quests. They all have an inventory for you to manage. They all have some means of progression. They all have a toon for you to equip. They all have a world for you to explore. And so on.

 Why eat an apple when we all know that fruit is all the same, more or less.

So why not eat the best.

That is a banana.

The one thing all of the fruit listed have in common is that they failed to compete with bananas in an open market.

 so let's see, do banannas really outsell other fruits 10,000 to 1?   Oh, you didn't think about that particular flaw in your drivel did ya....

Originally posted by Devalon

Originally posted by laokoko

You can look around for the financial report of funcom.  They been shifting office for tax reason, and cutting staff, so they'll be lossing less money.  I think they been lossing a bit per month, but nothing major. 

You usually have to be a stock holder to get one of those easily. I don't feel like digging any more.

Also, That amount per month could be from developing expansion or even the graphic update for Anarchy online. It stuff that regain later. You didnt count EA out when it lost a billion one year or Sony when it release it PS3 what lost tons. They are now catching up to 360 in console sold.

Their stock price have fallen alot since it's release.  But I think that's mainly because it's the over hype that bring up the stock in the first place.

Over all they are not really lossing that much money.  But alot of that is due to them cutting cost.  Me personally, I dont' like the idea that the mmorpg i'm playing is cutting developing cost.

Yeah the idea of your mmo dieing sucks. Im surprised they cut development when I thought AoC grown some.

Devalon, most any company will either make their 10k available on their website or it will be available through any midmajor stock site.  It doesn't take hard work at all to get financials.

Hmm, you'd have a point if they had actually made excellent mmos as you state.  However, I played most of them, and found them half as polished as wow with half the content (and THAT is saying a LOT).  They were mediocre mmos no matter how you want to spin it, and they've suffered as a result of their shortsigtedness.  Can't say I have much pity for them either.  They made their bed, time to sleep in it...

about a year training on eve.

The reason why the type of game you mentioned fails is because it falls into the same trap wow does, specifically end-game raiding / dungeon running and pvp as the only two end-game activities.  It seems to me that by removing crafting from the wow model that you push people into end-game EVEN QUICKER and bore them EVEN FASTER through reptition ad naseum.

The only way mmos are gonna become mmos again (rather than some glorified ARPG) is by expanding crafting, city/nation building, resource competition, and meaningful pvp.  This doesn't mean the game should take away some of wow's better core gameplay, such as easy grouping, lots of instanced dungeons, and pvp battlegrounds.  It's just that mmos should be MORE, not less.  Today's mmos are so efficient that they have devolved, and your suggestion devolves the genre even more.

To me, the next gen mmo is one that pleases both the "hardcore" and the "casual" crowd.  The casuals can run around in their instanced dungeons and battlegrounds and have a blast while at the same time picking up crafting components to sell to the more "hardcore", those who wish to build cities and guild fortifications and the like.  Everyone wins.  The casual player gets to see the world grow while taking the easy way out, while the hardcore player gets to BUILD the world and provide much-needed variety to gameplay.

After how far mmos have devolved in the past five years, it hardly seems real that players want to dumb down mmos even more.  Quite sad, really.

first visited back in 2001, I think my account is from 2006.  Just lurked until then.  :)

I'm still around on occasion, but since most mmos are utter trash today I don't really have much reason to stop by.  Add in the stagnant discussions that we've had since 2004 when wow ruined the industry, and there's just isn't much to discuss anymore.  We already know today's mmos suck, and we've already rehashed the good parts of mmos over and over, and been ignored by the industry over and over.  Either we're just idiots and we don't know squat or the industry is ignorant.  It doesn't much matter to me anymore which side is right.

I still keep an eye on newly releasing titles, but when I find out they're wow 67 point oh, another cash shop trashola game, or another pvp ffa loot gank fest, I just close down my browser and come back a month later.  In the meantime, I keep myself busy with Diablo 2, a 12 year old game with a hundreth the content of today's mmos yet 100x more fun, although truth be told they've made the items so easy to get and powerful, and the bots are so prevalent, that the game is really a shadow of its former self.  Still better than any of the trash mmos on the market.

It is my opinion that "cash shop" games essentially ruin the defining factor of a mmo, that being the economy.  The major flaw to the cash shop is that it creates goods out of thin air, thus diluting the game world and causing rapid item inflation.  I firmly believe that the players should populate the game world with items they have found, and the cash shop system destroys that concept.

In my way of thinking, cash shops are but a bump in the road.  I'm of the belief that a system similar to SOE's exchange system will be the end game for this industry.  With a mmo designed around such a system, including the way itemization occurs, the mmo would become more like a collectible game like magic the gathering, which has had huge success over the years.  There's no question of the market for in game items, so the logical course of action is to properly monetize that market.  It is my opinion that the cash shop does not properly monetize as it takes away the reward factor of finding your own items and using, trading, or selling them.  Without that, there's little real incentive for people to play.

Alternatively, I also believe there's great value in the "pure" market, that being those who wish to play a mmo with no rmt in any way shape or form.  This type of game would be designed much differently, be supported differently, and would have an entirely different market segment.  It would require the developer to actually take a hard line stance against rmt, or perhaps design the game to completely discourage rmt and make it useless. 

Generally, I'm a man who tends to believe in middle of the road thinking, the best of both worlds type approach.  However, in mmos I think it's clear by now that kind of thinking won't work.  You either go black or white, and take the market that goes with your choice.

So the substandard wow clones go f2p.  What a surprise.  Meanwhile, wow's still raking in 150 mil+ per mo on sub fees.  Make no mistake about it, real quality mmos will still be able to charge a fee.  The substandard ones will go compete in f2p hell against a thousand other noname mmos.  I wouldn't be surprised to see all current mmos with the exception of wow going f2p.  Hopefully the next AAA MMO competitor will actually have a AAA MMO ready to compete for sub monies, not a single A mmo masquerading as a AAA.

Originally posted by randomt

Say what you will about swg, it's been going strong enough for sony to keep it alive after all this time.. Despite how vocal the oldschoolers are about how the old game was much better, many people enjoyed the new one, especially the wow generation types.

 

 Just because a game is "alive" doesn't mean it is successful or a huge money maker.  The initial investment is a sunk cost, so from a business perspective you simply compare the fixed and variable costs of keeping the game running versus the revenue.  It doesn't take all that terribly much to keep the game running when you've already got the infrastructure and the designed game in place.  They could probably get by with only 5-10k subs perpetually while making a slight profit.  But we all know that in comparison to the industry that kind of sub base is beyond sub-par.

Since I haven't read the thread this has probably already been said, but anyway...

Forced grouping is when you are cut off from content and rewards by being forced to group to participate in that content and get those rewards.  The most obvious example is vanilla wow raids where you could solo to 60 and get mediocre gear, but the only way you could get top gear is to join a raid (and we all know it's much more complex than "joining a raid").  It's an artificial barrier that forces people to play a specific playstyle.  That is not the choice of game design I advocate or support.

I *like* raiding, but not as the sole means of progression in a mmo.  I'm much more of the Diablo school of thought where drops are so random and rare that joining a group doesn't really help you find top gear any faster.  In that scenario, you join groups because it's fun to group, not because you have to.

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by zaxxon23

The concept of making many different playstyle servers is a bit asinine in my opinion.  After all, aren't mmos supposed to be about a gigantic online community?  Segregation splits up the communities and the diversity of those communities.  I LIKE playing with someone who likes full open pvp even though I don't, and I greatly hope there is an option in the game for that person to have an outlet for their preferred gaming style within the same server I'm playing on.  In fact, I'd like to join that different environment on occasion as it adds variety to my play.  I'm not about to play any mmo that requires me to make multiple characters on different servers to satisfy my need for variety in my gameplay.

The problem is, in order for him to get his free, open world PvP, you have to become a target.  If you have the ability to turn it off, then he cannot have open PvP.  His desires affect your ability to play the game you want to play, but for those of us who would rather die than play open PvP, that's not much fun.  I'd much rather have him over on a server where everyone has voluntarily chosen to play open PvP than on one where everyone is forced, by circumstances, to deal with it no matter how much they hate it.

 You know that's really not true at all, and this is exactly the kind of thinking wow has produced.  One of the bigger reasons I left wow (outside of bop the worst mechanic ever made) is that there were (during BC) a grand total of two small zones for high level players, and everything else is instanced.  That's retarded in a mmo.  There should be huge vistas of open land to fight for resources over and build player cities and guild fortifications.  There's absolutely no reason you can't have your "level-up" zones and your "end-game" zones.  Just because wow has been too short sighted to implement such a system doesn't mean it can't and shouldn't exist.  It's for this very reason that I call wow shallow and laugh at the people who tell me I'm being nostalgic.  It's closed minded thinking.

(sorry for seeming to lash out at you but the closed minded post-wow mmo design that takes away any kind of open world sort of gets me in a bit of a frenzy)

The concept of making many different playstyle servers is a bit asinine in my opinion.  After all, aren't mmos supposed to be about a gigantic online community?  Segregation splits up the communities and the diversity of those communities.  I LIKE playing with someone who likes full open pvp even though I don't, and I greatly hope there is an option in the game for that person to have an outlet for their preferred gaming style within the same server I'm playing on.  In fact, I'd like to join that different environment on occasion as it adds variety to my play.  I'm not about to play any mmo that requires me to make multiple characters on different servers to satisfy my need for variety in my gameplay.

Originally posted by zeowyrm

Originally posted by zaxxon23

I unfortunately did not play DAOC, so please help cure my ignorance by explaining "random loot".

DAoC did not have random loot, AC1 does.  Basically, think Diablo.

 Gotcha.  Thanks for the clarification.

Originally posted by Kyleran

While I do think some online games do not really meet the classic definintion of MMORPG (STO, GW's etc) I'll have to disagree with the OP as WOW does in fact meet the defintion as it is commonly understood.

 Yet wow only meets that classification just enough so they can charge the $15/month fee.  Ultimately, the standard definition of a mmo has just one specific factor to make a game a mmo over a ARPG or a CORPG, and that one specfic definition is over fifty players able to congregate in one place.  In today's mmo genre that one specific aspect is nearly meaningless to gameplay, as you can have a persistent world that's all instanced that could technically be just as compelling as a mmo yet not classified as such because of that one single element.  I'd hope that we're all mature enough to recognize that arguing over this one nearly meaningless clarification is a worthless argument nowadays. 

Blizzard is a master of illusion.  They've convinced people that just because they see other people when they play means they're playing a mmo, but really it's just window dressing.  You could package instance wow just like Diablo 2 and it would be nearly the same exact game it is now, you just wouldn't have to deal with Ironforge lag or travel time.

Originally posted by WSIMike

Originally posted by Jairoe03

 

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Originally posted by WSIMike

I agree with the WoW statement. I stopped calling it a MMORPG a while ago. It's a MMO Action Game as far as I'm concerned, as they've removed or otherwise demoted anything 'RPG' in it.
That's neither good nor bad... it just is. People enjoy the game and so it's delivering on what they want. I enjoy it when I'm in that "mode". But, for me, it lacks too much of what would make it a true RPG - to me - for me to call it one.

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That's exactly what I been getting at on the first page. What's it matter what it really is called? Changing the "genre" that people want to confine it within isn't going to change what WoW actually is. Ultimately, its a game, for other people's entertainment. The genre just loosely defines the category that it does belong to, but just because we choose to stop calling it an RPG and start calling it an Action Game doesn't mean the game is all of a sudden going to work differently.

I think people are just too hung up on the semantics and "ideals" of it all when in the end, WoW is a game for many to enjoy all at once.

 

Many people feel the need to inflate their opinions as being something more meaningful than they are... and not only games. So they'll attempt to "define" the given topic they're discussing... It could be movies by a certain movie-maker, books by a certain author, games, music... anything. Many people don't seem secure in simply having an opinion, but need to feel that their opinion is "right". So... they presume all these variables that support their opinion, project them on everyone else (such as someone else I've debated a little bit with in this thread) and then attempt to hold everyone else to them; applying various labels to them if they don't fit their definition.

A great example you'll see is on Amazon.com, or other sites where people can review a given album.

People will review an album and, time and again, you'll see statements like "This is not a true "band here" album. Any true fan of "band here" would agree and if you think it's good, then you are not a true fan".

That's a paraphrase - almost a boiler plate - of what many of them say. It's, of course presumptuos and silly... but all too common. The same mentality applies here with MMORPGs.

 True points, however when MMORPG is such a broad definition for so many different gameplay elements, such discussions are a given.  Classical is usually classical, rock is usually rock, with perhaps some minor variations; but a sandbox sure as heck isn't a linear theme park, yet they're both supposedly mmos.  The bottom line is that the line has blurred greatly in the past five years about what is a mmo and what isnt, and that's guaranteed to fuel discussions such as this.