Great thread in the main forum:

It's been a good eleven years but I'm just not liking the direction MMOs are going in

And its sad. Even if Vanguard would actually get more players now, it would result in SOE assigning more developer power to the project. Which would very likely NOT result in a better game - it would probably be invested to turn Vanguard into another F2P crap, like EQ2 already is.

I think one can summarize the state of SOE in special and the gaming industry as a whole like this:

The market is controlled by a huge number of big companies who have no interest in making great games. Instead, they just want to make great profits. Thus they invent all kinds of tricks to get more money from the player, including F2P etc.

Even relatively clean companies like Bethesda has recently decided to end my guaranteed buy of their product by using Steam as "copy protection". Which completely killed my interest for Skyrim.

Originally posted by Adamantine

 

Even relatively clean companies like Bethesda has recently decided to end my guaranteed buy of their product by using Steam as "copy protection". Which completely killed my interest for Skyrim.

 

I feel the same way.

Great series like "The Elder Scrolls" and "Total War", while possibly getting better with each launch, are actually getting much worse in terms of long term play.

They are becomming less and less like tools, workshops, toys and playgrounds for creating and recreating fiction and non fiction. And more and more just an entertainment product to be consumed.

And most MMOs are going the same way. Everything is designed to be controlled by the companies and players arent allowed to do much of anything that the company hasnt thought of. 

Ofcourse that comes from games being more thouroughly designed than early generation games.

But I miss having players make their own rules and laws for how you behaved in a gaming world. Like who gets to kill a certain monster and who gets to loot it. break the rules too often and you would have a hard time getting to do anything worthwhile in the future. 

I think the current games are overengineered borefests.. I could compare it to cars.. modern cars have so many gizmos and thingamabobs that make them very efficient for getting from A to B in a comfortable and relativly bio friendly way.. But they arent much fun.. sure some of those gizmos can also make it a bit easier and safer to have bit of the thrill you could have in a stripped down full on old school racer..

But getting back to games... They are primarily for fun. And you dont get physically hurt when they go wrong..

So all the overengineering is wasted on the consumer.. They are only there for the sake of the producers. To make more money. Minecraft seems to be quite popular at the moment (I dont personally like it, but...), precicly because it doesnt have specific rules for every contingency