Originally posted by alexanys1982

I have to wait around for the female members of my guild to show up to start a raid, regardless if its a healer or not, the other officers simply wont go if its a sausage party.

 

I have to feel pressured to help them through earlier content and if i dont im seen as the ogre who must be gay because he isnt helping mary sue.

 

They ask for gold more then any male guild member iv had since DAOC

 

When its all guys in a guild, theres very very little drama on vent or gchat UNLESS something drops 2 guys want. Lockerroom enviroment, soon as females join people behave differently over vent.

 

when you DO get one thats skilled at her role, without fail she has  becomes impossible to deal with, think Diana Ross in a room full of nobodys.

 

This has just been my experience over the last few years when woman have really started to make themselves known, and so far its been mostly negative for me. Anyone have any POSOTIVE stories to share? Cuz im close to throwing up a no chicks allowed sign on my GW2 guild come next month....

Very strange as my expereinces have been the opposite.  I have always found female raiders to be better team players than their male counterparts.  They have much more empathy, come better prepared, point fingers less, tend to play needed support and healer roles more often, do not have the ego or need for big numbers, are on time more often, are signifigantly mroe mature, miss less raids, and strive to improve more.  In regards to skill level I have seen some very bad female players but then again i have seen the same with male players.  But if I would have to guess I would say as a whole they have a harder time with mechanics but they also try harder to improve than male players.  The learning curvemight be a bit longer but eventually they become as good if not better players.

I don't want to get into generalizing but I prefer female raiders as their attitudes, teamwork and selfless play is much superior.

I would ask what kind of guild are you in?  I am guessing it would be more casual, less hardcore and less structured? I would guess the more casual a guild gets the greater tha chance the female player is new to the genre and the more help she will need.  But on the high end of MMO play I think the female player is superior to male players just on attitude alone.

I think there is generation gap between people that grew up with the internet and those that did not and had to develop some patience.  The internet generation is used to getting everything they want instanteously and cannot fathom waiting a day or a week.

I cannot consider any of the new games to even remotely a grind.  While i agree the new games are over simplified and lack difficulty and complexity they are simply not a grind.  New MMOs take 2 days played  to rach Max level.  In AOC people were 80 a day after release.  In Rift it took 2 days.  ToR 2 days and I am sure people will be maxed in GW2 in 2 days.  There is no such thing as a level grind anymore.

I fondly remeber EQ1's 50-60 days played to max level.  Grinding an entire day and barely seeing ones xp bar even move.  The same with DAOC.  There were actual penalities for dying and poor play.  Peoples reputation mattered and most people actually possesed patience, team 1st attitudes an attention span, manners and etiquette.  Today's internet generation is all about me, me , me and getting what they want now.  Its almost like they are afraid to have downtime where they might actually have to think.  No offense to the OP or anyone else.  But it is very sad.

Originally posted by Razeekster

 

I am kind of tired of coming here and looking at articles that put a positive spin on things that are clearly negative. The latest insult to my mind is how all these articles are being written about SW:TOR going F2P and having the gall to say that it's not because the game is an abject failure. Wake up and smell the humus MMORPG.com. 

 

One has to remember this website has no interest in journalism,accuracy, providing information or helping the MMO genre.  All they care about here is making money.  Their interest is in page hits only.  Nothing more.  Which means they write articles with provactive sexy titles, blindly hype games to create interest and keep people coming back, let fanboys run wild over the forums, censor critical posts, and hire writers with limited MMO expereince who play MMOs only in the most casual of definitions. 

The end result is mainstream MMO websites, especially this one, do a lot of damage to consumers and the genre.  As they hype bad games and allow companies to lie, mislead and get away with selling unfinished games.  They help sell bad games and turn a blind eye to a games faults because their only interest is in making money and being anything close to a legitimate newsite will make them less money and possibly damage the relationships they have with developers. When people talk about the decline in MMOs and ask why and how this has occured,  They need to look no further than mmorpg.com which has been a major contributor behind the simplyifying and "McDonaldization" of the genre.

It is a shame that websites like this sellout for the dollar as there really is a need for a legitmate, honest and accurate MMO website.  One that caters to actual players rather than one that is just used as a vehicle for developers to hype and advertise their games.

Originally posted by Foomerang

100% combat oriented online games. Cash shops come standard. Purely developer driven content. Esport is the name of the game for pvp. Socialization has become automatized.

If you were to tell me ten years ago that this is what MMORPGS would be like, I would have never even bothered to get involved.

MMO versions of old console games from a decade ago. Thats what we have right now. The irony is that console games today are actually more open and diverse than these so called mmorpgs.

Its a shame. I have faith in indie devs, as always. But the AAA mmo devs have really led the genre astray as of late. I wonder if it will ever get back on track.

I am not sure I would go so far as dead but I think your point is valid.  The Genre has shifted to the mainstream market and the target audience now are box sales for  non-MMO players.  The end result is we have games targeted towards high eye candy flashy type of play that non MMO gamers want.  FPS combat, PVP base, no grind and simplistic mechanics. But these players are not the type wth the patience to play a MMO very long which is likely why they did not stick with MMOs in the past.  Esssentially we have box sales games and people jumping from game.  Websites like this help to make it worse by hyping up new games regardless of the quality and letting the fanboys run rampant with their wild claims.  The fanboys atack anyone that disagrees with their dream game calling them names and running them off the forums.  Bad games are released and a few months later the fanboys have moved on to hying their next game of the week.  The only ones that benefit here are the developers in box sales and websites like this with massive page hits.

The more traditional model games lose players every time one of these new gimmick games is released and then get some of those players back a few months later. The sad thing is these gimmick games not only take the non MMO players away but they hurt the traditional games as many people there will buy into the hype until they play a month or two.  It does a lot of damage to guilds and the health of these games.

Maybe the best thing is for more games to fail like ToR and maybe we will see more games directed at MMO veterans  who want to actually put time into a game rather than being given all a games rewards simply for knowing how to log in.  I doubt we will see the vocal FPS/PvP crowd that has emerged the last few years go away but if the money and the hype goes away maybe they will go away to.  Maybe the best thing is lower budgets and for MMOs to go back to being a niche genre.  With Tor's collapse and the possibiltiy of something similar with TESO it might become much harder for games to get that type of investment.

Regardless I liked your post and feel for you and for what has happened to this genre.

as of 7/22 on Tor Staus we can see the results of the merger.

Tor  gained players everyday on ToR status for the past 5 weeks.  The merger has left ToR with 16 very healthy servers (12 NA and 4 Euro).  The daily gains for weeks has left them with servers that should remain healthy for quite awhile.  The last two days they have been shown to have lost players and likely that will continue and grow larger larger each day.  But given the size of the population of the 16 servers now Tor should be able to sustain a month or two of decline before any of these 16 servers become in jeopardy of dying.

Overall the gain was suprising and it allows BW a larger winow of time to improve the game before the entire population leaves.  With 16 pretty full servers they likely have 150k-250k total players left.  Which looks a lot better than where they were before the merger.

For a comparison EQ2, after they did their merger down to 16 servers, peaked at 250 subs but for the most part not getting above 200k.

While my orginal post was critisized and I agree with some of the criticism as to projecting actual numbers but from what we have seen with the mergers it seems to have validated my orginal post as to the amount of players, state of the game andthe  health of the servers left. If anything my OP overestimated the number of players still playing.  More likely ToR was down around 100-150k players before the merger.  

Mainly what one can see from a site like Tor Status are trends and the health of servers along with momentum in gains and losses.  We can project players based on X number on each server. Although that number is debateable as it would be anywhere from 5k to 20k per server depending on the game, the server size, the health of the server and how much the average player logs in.  What generally happens with a server whether its Tor Staus Rift status or whichever is very soon after a server declines to 1.4 or 1.5 there is a mass exodus. In Rifts case it seems to swifter as players can transfer to any server whenever they wan for free so you often see multiple  guilds move one after the other over a few days.  While not as volatile as Rift it still holds true in ToR when a server declines below 1.3 the drop to 1.0 and dead status  usually happens within 2-3 weeks.

In regards to the post above about the return on a game sold.  The traditional rule of thumb on a video game is the developer gets 25% back of the retail sales price.  That number has gone up in recent years with digital sales where the % is a lot higher.  About a year or so ago MMOs moved past the 50% threshold where over 50% of pre-orders now come form digital online sales. Which greatly increaes the return to a developer.  But all in all i would be shocked if BW/EA got more than a 40% return from total sales. Which would be about $57 million from total box sales.

Best:

Eq1, Daoc, Vanguard

Worst:

AoC:  Hands down the most juvenile onbnoxious self centered kiddie community of any MMO.  But the game was designed and targetted towards kiddie with an emphasis on juvenile themse with blood, gore, profanity and nudity with a simplified follwo the arrow target audience and shallow thoughtless gameplay.

2 and 3 Fill in any modern MMO with a PvP focus.

I don't think its entirely the type of game that people were brought up on but more the age of the player.  Those who have grown up in the internet generation (under 35) simply do not  have the patience or maturity to play MMOs.  They need to be constantly entertained, pampered and hand held.  They do not have the ability to think on their own, handle situations where there is actual time for thought and in many cases they simply do not have the social skills to interact with adults.

Nothing will kill the hype that is GW2 except time.  WoW going F2P will not kill that hype.  People want GW2 because its new and  a fantasy that they hope  will solve all their MMO problems and dislikes.  Gw2 is a game made and designed for ultra casual players not people that actually play MMOs.  Give it 2-3 months and those that bought into the massive hype will become bored and move on.  The people that are hyping GW2 simply do not have the patience or matuiry to play any MMO.  They will always be anticipating a dream game on the horizon and likely will never realize that the prolem is not MMOs but their own self.

[mod edit]

Gw2 is likely a lot younger but the average age in Most MMOs is in the early 30's. Not to mention GW2's target audience is a lot more casaul than most AAA MMOs appealing to those players that do not want to grind, are PvP players and do no want to invest a lot of effort or time into a MMO.  In regards to College Students it is the start of the semester and if they want to spend a few weeks at release playing non stop it should not matter much as they will have planty of time to catch up.  I cannot recall anyone ever studying the first weeks of a semester.  Once you get out of  schoola nd get a job you will realize how much more freetime you had as a student.  In regards to the devs I doubt they care if it inconviences anyone as they have already sold an amazing total of pre-order boxes.  I doubt they care if anyone plays as long as they pay to buy the game.

Originally posted by teakbois

Originally posted by Zippy

Originally posted by Theocritus

Originally posted by Istavaan

It is still in its essence a dungeon grinder/raiding mmo like 90% of the mmo's out there, and the quest chain system is enough to drive a man insane.

      THe quest system was my biggest beef with the game also....It just feels so generic.

90% of MMOs?  There are only 4  MMOS with supported progression raiding Rift, EQ2, andWoW.  

  Rift is essentially the sequel to EQ2/Vanguard.

You forgot EQ1.  EQ1 stll probably gets the most raid content out of any of the games.

 

And no, Rift is absolutely NOTHING like Vanguard.  They couldn't be more different.  EQ2, in some ways but its really more like a sequel to WOTLK, it has the most in common with that era of WoW.

In many ways I agree with you that Rift is not like Vanguard .  Horizontally it is not like vanguard with Vgs 4 zones for each level area broad content with crafting, diplomcy and adventuring.  But its raiding is a sequel to Vanguard with the VG dev that designed and ran the testing for APW and its raiding is what VG should have been if the game had actually been supported.  HK shares a lot of similarities with APW.  VG IMO could have been the ultimate game if only Sigil was allowed to finish the game.  Such a shame.  But Vgs failure and its development problems had an influence on Hartsman and Rifts development.  Also keep in mind almost all the guilds chosen for Rift's Alpha (Silky Venom, Trinity, Enigma, Brotherhood of the Spider, BoW and more) were from VanguardI.  It was these guilds that first tested all the dungeons and GSB and had a large influence on Rifts development. 

I agree Rifts influence influence and design is more EQ2 with Hartsman.  EQ2 even though it did very poorly at release recovered thanks to hartsman pumping tons of content into the game and its focus on raiding.  While Rift had a very good release hartsman has kept the same philosphy of pumping tons of content into the game and growing it leaps and bounds with a primary focus on raiding.   In regards to EQ1 its raiding now they get an expansion get one raid then wait a year get another expansion I would not call that supported raiding and given its age I would not think its viable alternative for most raiders so they are essentially only 3 supported raid games left Rift, EQ2, and WoW.

There are only 3 supported progression raiding MMOs presently EQ2, Rift and WoW.  One might add TOR to the list but I do not see any serious raiding guilds playing it.  One could also add EQ1 to this list but it doe snot havemuch of a playerbase left.

There are only two  real raiding games in development that I know of EQNext and ESO and one has tow onder about both of their commitments to raiding.  Will ESO have seriosu progression raiding?  Will SOE seriosuly develop EQNext? 

With EQ2 and WoW turning 8 this later this year  Rift looks like the only serious raiding game for the future.  Rift under Hartsman's guidance is essentialy the sequel to EQ2 and its first and foremost a raiding game.  Its raiding is very good and somewhat difficult but one has to wonder what direction it will go.  Raiding is the core and focus  of Rift endgame but I will not be surprised if they end up going the wow easy mode route with the next expansion.  I guess the problem is if they make raids to hard like HK people complain but if they make them to easy like the beginning of ID hardcore guilds become upset.  In todays MMO world where players have no patience and will leave a game anytime they become bored it is hard to make raiding to difficult.  Which is my guess why we bhave seen the hurdles or ability to gear up for rift raiding become so easy and also why we thgey are changing PvP gear to be useable in raids by adding hit'/focus.

Originally posted by thatkenguy

I can't believe the Rift developers implemented this coin lock idea.  Being careful, I used a web-mail address which is hard for anyone else to compromise, then by the time this silly coin lock thing comes up I have forgotten the password and can't get the e-mail code they send you so you can turn it off.

I am sure this won't bother everyone, but I have no doubt that game will remain relatively underpopulated when they play games like that with their users.  Thank god I didn't spend money on Rift hehe.

I have seen people post your problem on the official forums.  They have the problem was quickly solved by calling Trion Customer Support.  It would probably not take you much more time to get your acct transferred to a new email  than it took to make this post.

Originally posted by Berikai

Originally posted by Zippy

Often new games that do not live up to expectations makes a solid game like Rift look a look better.  When ToR came out Rift expereinced a huge increase in subs from January to March.  When people leave a game in droves it often means good news for other games.  Tera never had that much hype, big population and its gameplay is not as similar as ToR/Rift so it has not had helped Rift anywhere near as much.  In Fact Rift started expereincing a large decline in players once Tera came out but keep in mind D3 came out shortly after and GW2 beta weekends started then soon as well,  The last month Rift has been slowly gaining back some of those players.   I am guessing D3 players but maybe some from Tera but it is still lost a lot of players since March.  During this time Rift dropped down from 16 to NA servers to 8 with two bearely hanging on. While the Euro servers have dropped down to 4.  Rifts 12 totwl servers left compares favorably to ToR's 16 total servers left and will likely continue to be healthy much longer than ToR.

My login screen still shows 16 NA servers,where did 8 come from?

The rest of what you posted I agree with,but the server info you have is off.

If you look at Rift Status you will see 8 servers have died and dropped to 1.0 which explains why all the guilds have transfered off these servers,  Sadly before the decline these servers were all healthy.  Hopefully the slow increase the last month will pick up steam.

Originally posted by Theocritus

Originally posted by Istavaan

It is still in its essence a dungeon grinder/raiding mmo like 90% of the mmo's out there, and the quest chain system is enough to drive a man insane.

      THe quest system was my biggest beef with the game also....It just feels so generic.

90% of MMOs?  There are only 4  MMOS with supported progression raiding Rift, EQ2, andWoW.  Maybe  ToR would be a 4th on this lsit but no serious raid guilds raid there and I doubt they have the content or they type of playerbase to be considered a real raiding game.  Raid games are few and far between. Some games may have zerg raid mobs and some ellements of raiding but not what one would generally call raiding which is progression raiding.

In regards to Rift being a  gear grind.  It is a shallow gear grind.  It offers quite a bit of endgame activities for most playstyles butat its heart its a raiding game.  That was how it was deisigned and how it has evolved post release.  Raiders simply are more dependable  long term subscribers than the normal ADHD player that leaves any game the 1st second they become bored.  The EQ/EQ2/Vanguard crowd was the first to come to Rift and made up of most of the games ALpha Testers and Alpha guilds as well as followers thanks to Hartsman.  Rift is essentially the sequel to EQ2/Vanguard.

Funcom -  Recall what Funcom did with AoC.  Just before release they told the beta testers that the beta build was 3-4 builds behind their internal testing and that they had full content for the level 30+ zones that would be in at release including DX10.  None of this was true the game was completely unfinished outside the starter 1-20 zone,  They played bait and switch with the general public and let open beta testers only play level 1-13 which was well done.  They designed a game for children marketing the game to children with an emphasis on sex, obscentiy, blood, gore and a simplistic gimmicky combat system.  They paid people to post non stop on these forums posting  postive reviews of AoC.  The game was built on lies and targeted to the worst of the MMO community.  Designed to last players a few weeks.  It was a box sale game only with lies designed to cover up the true state of the game and maximize box sales.

SOE - Its lies about EQ's expansions.  Intentionaly putting in bugs that would stop guild progress to let them finish therest of the expansion that they claimed was done when they sold the expansion.

SWG lying to its players about the inclusion of the JEdi quest when it was not in game.  NGE Completely changing the game in the expansion wihtout telling anyone of the changes until they purchased the expansion.  Vanguard when SOE entereted into an agreement with Sigil sigil completely changed the design of the game between beta 1 and beta 2 resulting in Sigil having to spend over a year ofbeta time redoing the entire game resulting in an unfinished game wgich eventually was sold to SOE.  WHen the game was purchased by SOE they fired almost all the devs and  stopped evelopment of the game relasing almost no new content except finishing content that had already been staretd by Sigil.  One cannot invest hundreds of days played into an SOE game as SOE simply cannot be trusted.

I do agree with Pokket's point about Wallmart customers.  They are sub human.  Going to a wallmart is like going to the zoo when you look at the people there.  I have always felt sorry for the poor Wallmart employees that have to put up with these customers.

That being said I thought her 1st biography of an addicted gamer article went over better than this one.  I think as game players or MMO players many of us can see ourselves in that article and relate to it.  This article IMO contained to many meaningless details which prevented at least me from being drawn in and feeling part of the story.  If she is going to continue wrting articles like this it is going to be tough to keep it fresh and humerous. She might be better off including more  in game details.

Often new games that do not live up to expectations makes a solid game like Rift look a look better.  When ToR came out Rift expereinced a huge increase in subs from January to March.  When people leave a game in droves it often means good news for other games.  Tera never had that much hype, big population and its gameplay is not as similar as ToR/Rift so it has not had helped Rift anywhere near as much.  In Fact Rift started expereincing a large decline in players once Tera came out but keep in mind D3 came out shortly after and GW2 beta weekends started then soon as well,  The last month Rift has been slowly gaining back some of those players.   I am guessing D3 players but maybe some from Tera but it is still lost a lot of players since March.  During this time Rift dropped down from 16 to NA servers to 8 with two bearely hanging on. While the Euro servers have dropped down to 4.  Rifts 12 totwl servers left compares favorably to ToR's 16 total servers left and will likely continue to be healthy much longer than ToR.

Keep in mind that fanoys constantly troll these forums attacking people only because they post views that differ from theirs about the game they pathalogically defend. They call the people who disagree with them "haters" and "trolls" when most of the time it is the fanboy who is trolling as they normally offer no argument or justification to support their opinion other than "because I said so."

While there is certainly bad behavior on both sides of the isle  fanboys are a much bigger menance as they offer much less substance to the argument and these fanboys do so much damage to the genre as a whole as they help support and hype bad games.  They ridicule and laugh at any questions or criticicsms and help developers release unpolished poor products because they know they will be aided by thousands of fanboys who will hype their game to extreme levels.