When I say death, I don't mean does this mmorpg have a "stinging death penalty" or a non existent one.  I'm talking about when your character dies, is there a lore or story reason for him/her to suddenly ressurect outside of the nearest town, or at some common player spawning area. 

It's a pet peeve of mine, but I find a game with no reason given for a player respawning after death to be less immersive. 

My first and still favorite mmorpg was Asheron's Call.  It handled it simply.  Asheron had cast a spell over the land allowing everyone brought to his world by his portals to be magically tied to lifestones scattered throughout the land.  This also explained why mobs respawned.  Maybe not the most creative explanation, but it was at least an attempt to put a story behind player ressurection.

Other mmorpgs such as Anarchy Online and SWG used cloning. With AO, you even had to go to a reclaim terminal to recover your items after your clone activated.

Nowadays though, there seems to be no explanation given.  When you die, you respawn as a ghost and in some cases have to go loot your own corpse, which bothers me the most when no explanation is given as to how that is possible.  With a few exceptions, most new games don't even bother.  It's just a game mechanic and can take me right out of any immersion I might have initially had.

I may be nit picking, but this seems to be just one more of the dozens of things that made me feel like I was on another world and not just playing an arcade game.

Originally posted by SignusM

Originally posted by Akaronia

Originally posted by MeTed

To sum it all up the game is getting stale. Blizzard knows this and should double up efforts on Titan imo.

   That is not a good switch off Titan is a MMOFPS.  WoW is a MMORPG 2 completely different genres so how are you comparing them?

Either way WoW loses subs. They haven't innovated or brought anything new in 7 years, and people are starting to get bored.

 Gamers play WoW for years before they get bored.  I think those guys who admit to playing WoW for 5-7 years and now rage about how bad the game is are amusing.

I wander if ppl take into account how many gamers hold several active accounts but take a break from actual playing.  Those accounts still count.  I always think about EvE and its 300k subscriber boast while only ever seeing 50-60k max ppl on at a given time. 

I'm of the opinion that WoW is no different in regards to community than any other mmo of the past.  I remember griefers back in AC and EQ.  I remember gamers using offensive names for attention and taking up chat with innane coversation that should have been taking up in /tells.  But for some reason, some oldschoolers have gotten so thin skinned that if they see a Chuck Norris joke in gen chat they rage for an hr and come here to post about the terrible WoW community. 

Originally posted by DontazeMebro

What facebook has done is get people who have never played a video game to start, and become totally addicted. They have no idea the game they are playing is complete garbage. It's like they are still playing Atari, and don't know that PS3 is out there.

 You say that like all us oldschoolers aren't addicted to mmorpgs. I think most ppl would say we were crazy for spending years playing one mmo for hours a day.  When I think about how much time I spent grinding mobs or camping for hours waiting for a specific spawn I shake my head and wander about my sanity at the time.  Not saying facebook games aren't garbage but let's keep this in perspective.  Facebook games kill time.  Mmorpgs kill time.  Neither one is going to change life as we know it.

If we're going to mine the 80s for mmorpg material, we have to include Automan, Manimal, and Knight Rider for it's turbo boosting awesomeness.

Originally posted by Turdinator

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Seems like when a new mmorpg comes out, it always get the same excuses to defend its flaws. maybe you have seen comments like this on the forum:

"WoW had several years to polish their game. (Insert game) just came out."

Well for this above statement, why is it that this statement doesnt apply to MMORPG's that are older than WoW, when they get compared to the quality of WoW. Hey I am sure they also had several years to also improve their game before WoW came out, but that didnt stop WoW's success. Hey EQ2 came out a month before WoW, but how did that turn out?

Another excuse I have seen thrown around, is:

"(insert game) has better graphics than WoW, so that makes it higher quality and better."

I seen statements like this from the AoC and Aion community in zealot zergs during the hype phase. We have seen this time and time again. Graphics doesnt make the game. The Gameplay does that. Once these high graphic games come out, the same players, revert back to the first excuse.

interesting, that a game like Rift, which came out only 2 months ago, has more quality than most of those post WoW MMO whom the community defended with these reasons. What did Trion do differently?

 

[Mod Edit]

 

If you think those people are bad, you should check out the ones that claim WoW isn't dying.

 I had the exact same thoughts as regards to WoW having 6 years to get so polished so give the new games a chance argument.  If all it took was time, then all the oldschool games should be as popular or more popular than WoW.  I'm not saying that WoW is better than any oldschool game...I just find the logic faulty as well. 

It's always nice to read a review or opinion about a game that doesn't try to elevate it by trashing another game.  If the game can't stand on it's own merits, it's already doomed.   

WoW clone has become a term gamers use to describe a game they don't like.  They don't like WoW so any game that comes along and they find boring or not "innovative", it's a WoW clone.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by generals3

Originally posted by Torgrim

It's the instant gratification growd that made the MMO market as it is today and it started with WoW.

And that crowd is unfortunately a lot bigger than the old school one.

 

It is not unfortunate at all. There is nothing wrong with instant gratification. And who calls grinding a week to get a piece of epic gear (yes, many of WOW's epic gear take at least that, or more time to get) "instant" needs a elementary school English lesson on the word "instant".

When I read a book, i don't want to wait months to know the ending. When I watch a movie, i don't want to wait months to know the ending. When i play a SP video game, i don't want to wait months to finish it. Why would i want to play a MMO with no rewards for months?

Thank GOD modern MMO is not like  a job that you need to work a year before you can get a bonus.

 I've noticed the same thing.  Everytime a WoW hater posts about the game it seems to get easier and easier.  I used to read how it only took a month to get to endgame, then it was 2 weeks, and lately the party line is you can get to max lvl in 3 days.  They use the term "welfare epics" and "instant gratification" when I don't think the words mean what they think they mean.  The only difference I see in WoW and games of the past is you're guarenteed a gear drop of somekind when you down a boss where as in the past you'd have to camp a mob that spawns twice a week and kill it 100 times to maybe get what you want.  Raids nowadays actually take strategy and working together as opposed to games of the past where you just hack and slashed the boss till it was dead.

The thing that no one ever considers is that it's impossible for WoWs graphics to be outdated because they never went with a realistic approach to begin with.  Graphics get outdated when they go for realism and the inevitable happens and the next game out manages to push its realism further making the previous game look "outdated".  WoW went with stylized graphics consistent with the world it created with its previous warcraft series.  The only thing that can really be said is some people are bored with those graphics but these people are the same ones that had a problem with the graphics style to begin with and that's another topic.

Look at the progression of mmorpgs over the years starting with AC, EQ, AO, DAoC, SWG, etc.  They all went with a realistic approach and you can see how the graphics of each one get outdated with the release of the next.  AoC can arguably be said to have pushed the realism a step further. 

I would argue that at this point in mmorpg history, AoC was the last one to do so.  Looking at the latest batch coming out, all I see are stylized "cartoony" graphics that will maybe stand the test of time graphics wise a little longer than their predecessors. That's not to say that their graphics aren't pretty, but I'm talking about that gritty realism that some gamers are searching for.

Like I said before, it wasn't WoW that caused the "dumbing down" of the mmorpg genre, it's the result.  Unless you want to say UOs trammel was somehow WoWs fault.  IMO, that's where it started.  All of the original mmorpg s, UO, AC, EQ, AO, etc., got "dumbed down" with each update and expansion.  Why?  Because the old school gamers whined and complained about time sinks and downtimes way back then.  Each subsequent mmorpg learned from the "mistakes" of the previous ones till we got WoW.  You got what you wanted.  Stop whining and support the few games out there that try something different and maybe we can slowly get devs to see us as a viable target audience again. 

Seems like I remember left for dead 2 catching a lot of heat for supposedly having a lot of African American zombies and most or all of the action taking place in the south.

Raise your hand if you've had someone threaten to find you and kill you or kick your ass over something that's happened in a game.  I bet there's a lot of hands going up.  I'm one of the most laid back, go with the flow kind of guys you'd ever meet.  In 12 years of mmo gaming, I've never been banned or even warned for bad behavior.  I can count on one hand how many times I've even gotten into an argument with someone ingame.  Yet, I've been threatened countless times during pvp.  There are crazy people out there.  Anonymity is not there to protect the bullies and allow them to get away with abnoxious behavior.  It's to protect the innocent people from the crazy people, simple as that.

It seems to me taking away anonymity only does the opposite of what you think it will.  It will gives the bullies and crazy people more power to harrass the innocent ones.  Now they know who you really are.

This isn't really a new thing.  I was just on Youtube the other day looking at some of the old school mmos and came across the cg trailers for UO and EQ.

I think the main difference of earlier mmos and the newer ones is about where the focus was/is.  In the earlier games the focus was on character progression.  Leveling, increasing stats, gaining better and better weapons and equipment so you can take on bigger and bigger mobs and see more areas of the game world was the main points of the earlier mmos.

Now, it's more about action.  Anything that slowed you down at all has been removed.  Travel times, long mob spawns, death penalties, etc., are relics of the first few mmos.  It's all about getting you to a fight, making it as brief as possible so you can get to the next.  Mmos are now all about adrenaline surges and getting your blood pumping.  Gone are the days of all day gaming sessions.  You play a current mmo for an hr you need to sleep for 8 hrs to recover, lol.  For me, mmos were never about that.  I never got the flop sweats or shakey hands playing AC, EQ, or AO.

Now this doesn't apply to all the current mmos.  I think some are trying to cater to old schoolers to an extent.  But they are usually small indie devs and many gamers just won't give them a chance.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Deathofsage

It started with concepts like summoning stones.

Once lazy players found out someone else could go and drag them in, that was all they needed, though I wouldn't give up the ability to summon a person who needed to hearth for an item forgotten.

All instant-teleport did was make it so less lazy players didn't have to summon the lazy ones.

Of course, we all play these games too much, lazy irl > lazy in game.

LOL .. it is not a job. If traveling is not fun for most players, it should be taken out of th game.

"Lazy" players? what a concept? Do i get paid by playing?

 Calling a gamer "lazy" for not wanting to push a button for 10 mins to get to a certain place is akin to calling someone a "coward" for not wanting to duel or pvp at that moment.  Makes no sense.

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by i_own_u

Justify it however you want, but there remains 1 constant that cannot be refuted.

WE were the ones who made it sucessful.

Look at it however you want, but the truth is that the kind of MMO that WoW is (i.e. Dungeon finder, themepark, etc.) is the dominating force of the MMO industry. New MMOs are taking the ideas because statistics show that this is the kind of MMO the population wants and will buy.

Again, justify it however you want. The facts are there.

Who are we?

If you mean PC gamers in general then I would say yes.

If you mean MMORPG gamers then I would say no.

The MMORPG player base, in the west, before the release of WoW was less than 1 million. After it was 5 million.

And seeing as not all other MMORPGs suddently became empty it is safe to assume that not all those 1 million started playing WoW (and by that I mean more than just tried it).

So the ones who made WoW successful were PC gamers and not MMORPG gamers and that is because Blizzard basically said lets screw this virtual world thing and just go for single player quests and instances, much like single/multiplayer RPGs. That is what made it big, because it catered to NON MMORPG players.

So WoW is responsible for bringing in a bunch of people who previously were not interested in MMORPGs and are now demanding games that are even farther away from how the MMORPGs were before WoW. And that is how it basically killed the genre and transformed it to something else.

 Before WoW came along, mmos were already moving in the streamlined solocentric direction.  Everyone can probably name the expansion that ruined their favorite mmo for them going back to UO's trammel.  Even WoW didn't start off in a bad way.  Many hardcore, oldschool gamers still talk wistfully about "vanilla WoW".  The thing that WoW did was be the one mmo that could retain gamers while continuing to grow.  Each expansion brought in more people.  Word of mouth, advertising, mainstream parodies like the WoW Southpark eps made WoW more of a pop culture phenomenom. 

I agree that at this point, alot of console gamers came on board and launched WoW into the stratosphere.  But it was the old school gamers that whined and complained about downtimes in early mmos that led us to the place we are today.  They wanted more action and now we have it to the point where we can't breath much less have the time to socialize.

For me, it's all about choice.  Old school mmos really didn't give you a lot of choices as to what to do.  For the most part, it was find a mob that offered you the best xp and lowest risk, then kill that mob for days or weeks till you out leveled the mob.  The best thing to do was to find a group doing the same thing and kill the mobs faster.  That was the socialization we old schoolers miss.  Just grinding a mob with a group, chatting about this or that.  The action was slow and sedate and gave you time to type.

Nowadays, you log into a game and have to decide am I going to gather resources, craft, quest, pvp, raid, explore, solo, group, etc.  The action is fast paced with little to no down time and certainly no time to type during a fight.

Vent allows for a lot of socialization, but many old schoolers resent having to use vent.  I certainly don't like it when I'm told I need to log into a vent to participate only to be forced to listen to some idiot sing or eat.  Maybe I'm just turning into a crotchety old man.

In the end though, even with mmos having gone too far into the action based direction, I still think we're better off and have more choices then we did before. 

Maybe one day a dev will release an mmo that makes us go all glassy eyed and transports us back to the olden days when we were young and naive. But then what would we have to complain about?

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Loktofeit

It sounds like you are lumping all completion and collection content into one group. They actually apeal to several different archetypes of players. Achievements, trophy items, collection and gear sets are just as much 'collection' content as getting to max level when you put them all in one general group like that. :)

You're right, I did lump them all together, they are all similar in my book and I feel the appeal is more universal than you say.  And all equally pointless. (to me of course)

It looks like most of what you list is optional and offers no reward that affects your gameplay, so I don't see why they should bother you as you do not have to do them.

Bingo.  They are optional, offer no reward that affects your gameplay, (so why do them?) and more importantly, they too frequently are being offered as gameplay instead of features that I favor in my MMORPG's.  Leave them out I say.

As for the globals about world firsts, a lot of people like that. Not only is it rewarding for the person that triggered it, but it is an incentive for certain other players to seek out firsts. There's also the chat voyeur that likes to see those messages go by as well.

LOL, I agree, a lot of people like this, I'm saying its shallow and unrewarding (again, to me)

 "Oh yeah, and lets put more socialization mechanics back in the game."

What socialization was taken out? - It wasn't, however the time to socialize was removed in favor of increasing players ability to rapidly collect things.

We don't really want to go there in this thread, been done before but the short list includes timers, cooldowns, travel times, "encouraged grouping" etc.  But thtat's a topic for a different day.

 But hasn't this been one of the big complaints old schoolers have had with current mmos, that gamers only do things when theres a reward, the carrot on the stick?  Here you have a game feature, collections, that offers nothing but the satisfaction of doing it, yet this is a bad thing because it's meaningless without a reward?  Im confused.  I always saw collections as just one of hopefully many things to do in an mmo when you get bored with questing, pvp, dailies, exploring, etc.

That was always my pet peeve with books like lotr or any fantasy book really.  You'll have some kind of event, then it will cut to thousands of years later, but society will be identical to what it was thousands of years ago.