Why Oh Why Have Good MMORPGs Died?

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chalmers

Platinum Member
Mar 14, 2008
2,565
0
76
tential I don't think you understand the phrase 'different stroke for different folks'.

You also seem to take this shit way too serious.
 

NickelPlate

Senior member
Nov 9, 2006
652
13
81
For me the whole genre is just really stale and dead. I played Guild Wars for several years and liked it but then when I got bored with it I tried virtually every other MMO around, D&D online, LOTRO, WoW and they all just felt the same and seem to boil down to:

1. Talk to some NPC
2. NPC gives Fedex quest
3. Kill and/or fight stuff
4. Return for reward
5. Repeat ad nauseam

Then the community in a lot of these games seems more interested in standing around in crowded areas showing off all of their exclusive "look at me I'm special" equipment and armor, rather than actually playing the game. And grinding for levels, titles and rewards is just so damn boring I'd rather watch paint dry.

As funny as it sounds, the only one I still play regularly and that holds my interest is Runescape. People make alot of fun of RS, but it's original, has alot of skills other than combat and killing things that you can engage in and has a really complex and tightly woven economy of materials, supplies, food etc that makes it possible to practice a variety of professions. It can get very grindy too but with so many different skills you can switch things around and not get bored out of your skull.
 

tential

Diamond Member
May 13, 2008
7,355
642
121
tential I don't think you understand the phrase 'different stroke for different folks'.

You also seem to take this shit way too serious.

Nah I certainly do.

"Why have good MMORPGs Died?"

If it was different strokes for different folks then sure. But what happened was WoW came along and all MMOs moved towards that to hit that mainstream target. But I won't solely blame WoW, because MMO private servers also played a role in screwing up MMOs. I know because I played private servers quite a bit. I think that just ruined innovation as games like Lineage, Ragnarok, and WoW, etc. were trying to figure out ways to get people to pay their subscriptions, or hell just pay for their game rather than play a free server that was hosted primarily on "donations".

Certainly I enjoy MMOs, or I used to when I played them all the time. I think the industry as a whole though got messed up with WoW, and the F2P servers/hacked servers of many games just really screwed up the industry.

I think a lot of gaming has went mainstream/easy mode because people don't want to put work in. As a more casual gamer now who really only plays to kill time and not to be "the best" at any game like I used to, I get it. But it certainly sucks for those who prefer more competitive play.
 

Tweak155

Lifer
Sep 23, 2003
11,447
262
126
You can't make a perfect game that suits everybody. It makes sense to attract the largest number of customers possible. The number of subscribers supports that Blizzard & WoW created a very successful formula for this and in fact attributed to the growth of players of MMORPG's, not declined them.

It has only started to stagnate because people can only continue to do the same things for so long. If other games did what you suggest previously and they did not reach the success of WoW, that fact in and of itself suggests their formula was inferior - not superior.

The goal of creating an MMORPG isn't to satisfy the customer unfortunately, it's to generate revenue (which leads to greater profits). Ironically, if you strive to attract as many players as possible, this is also where you gain the greatest revenue. You can argue WoW "destroyed everything", but the numbers indicate they did it the best. It is why we even have so many companies entering the MMORPG market.

So while you don't need to "thank" them for everything, you can't blame them for everything either. Hate the players that enjoy things you do not, not WoW for cashing in on them.
 

justoh

Diamond Member
Jun 11, 2013
3,686
81
91
the only mmos ever worth playing have been everquest and wow, and they are both still alive?
 

Veliko

Diamond Member
Feb 16, 2011
3,597
127
106
Because an MMO is a "massive world". An Instance, is the EXACT opposite of that. It's taking a "massive world" and eliminating it entirely. Someone walking up and killing you isn't "insecure" it's part of what can happen at any time out in a wild forest. When you remove that, you remove immersion from the game.

A world in which you're out there mingling with every person, then are "whisked away to a private dungeon" is utterly retarded. It has nothing to do with "insecurity" it has to deal with reality. In real life, there are a finite amount of places to do things. You don't get to be "whiskey away to your own private gold mine" when you want to gather resources. You have to compete in an open market.

Hardly insecure. It rather seems to me that you dislike competition and would rather farm without other people there. In such a case, don't sign online, and play single player, or co-op mode.

I like competition fine, it's why I sometimes play online FPS games and why I used to play football with people after work.

What I don't like is people ruining my enjoyment - if (for instance) someone repeatedly went out of their way to injure me during a game of football, I would either confront them or simply play somewhere else. I don't tolerate dicks in real life and I don't tolerate them online either.

If you want something that mimics real life, then don't sign online, and play single player, or co-op mode with people in real life.

As for the "insecure killing people while farming", that in almost ANY MMO, led to your gear being droppable. Yes you could troll people, but that's how you lost good gear for being a dick. I saw a lot of people lose a lot of good gear, and hell I got a lot of good gear off people who were douches like that. You're welcome to troll and be a dick, it's part of life, but there were consequences if you weren't good at it.

You talk of consequences yet you aren't willing to deal with the consequences of the things you did.

By and large people don't like being trolled (especially if they're paying a monthly fee), so they go elsewhere. If the trolls scare everyone off with their trolling, then that's their fault and they should learn to face up to the consequences of their actions instead of trying to blame everyone else who went off and played a different game with different rules.
 

blackened23

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2011
8,548
2
0
Honestly, WoW's new system of anonymity has made trolling worse in spades, since you're bringing that topic up. Back during vanilla / TBC you had to earn reputation and based on that folks would want to group with you - servers were tightly knit and smaller back then, and everyone mostly knew who the troublemakers, jerks and trolls were.

Now trolls can basically spout the N word nonstop and even if you report them, nothing happens.This is made even worse since you don't have to actually find groups, you can just queue stuff nonstop (this is something else I HATE) while parking your character AFK in orgrimmar or stormwind.... One thing I dislike is that in the old days, up to WOTLK i'd say - blizzard took reports seriously, if folks were trolling with racism and what not you could count on said trolls being banned for 72+ hours. Nowadays? Nothing happens. No matter what anyone says or does when they troll, their account will not be actioned against.

I really feel like they stepped back on enforcing their policies as to retain their playerbase. Which in the process doesn't work, because the trolls aggravate the more mature players.....there is such a huge contrast between how well blizzard enforced their rules from the vanilla-wotlk era to current. They don't enforce ANYTHING now. That's one thing I appreciate about ArenaNET as well - while they've been a bit overzealous in this respect, they can and will show trolls/jerks/idiots the door. I wish blizzard did the same.
 

pathos

Senior member
Aug 12, 2009
461
0
0
By and large people don't like being trolled (especially if they're paying a monthly fee), so they go elsewhere. If the trolls scare everyone off with their trolling, then that's their fault and they should learn to face up to the consequences of their actions instead of trying to blame everyone else who went off and played a different game with different rules.

This sort of reminds of what happened with Aion.

For those unfamiliar with it, Aion has pvp zones, and non pvp zones. But, many of the non pvp zones have rifts that occur in them, letting people from opposing factions come in. The rifts aren't permanent, and only let a certain number of certain level characters through.

But, the number of people was fairly large. And, they sold kiosk that let you respawn out in the field after dying (so the invaders wouldnt have to reuse the gate after using it once, and being killed). Plus, the level range was fairly wide, so you could have a level 40 invader running around a level 20 area.

So, you'd have people out in the field, in whats nominally considered a no pvp area, having to deal with forced pvp anyway. And, usually against people much higher level, and in full pvp gear, so they didn't really stand much of a chance anyway.

So, the "carebears" didn't find the game very fun, raised a big stink, and many of them qui playing.

Now, the people who made the game lost alot of subscriptions over it, and losing money isn't a very good business model, so they decided to do something about it. And, started placing stuff in place to make it easier for people trying to level in peace, without totally doing away with the rifts themselves.

They tried alot of things, but pretty much everything they did pissed off the people who actually enjoyed rifting.

So, you had a situation where everyone was unhappy.
 

diesbudt

Diamond Member
Jun 1, 2012
3,393
0
0
This sort of reminds of what happened with Aion.

For those unfamiliar with it, Aion has pvp zones, and non pvp zones. But, many of the non pvp zones have rifts that occur in them, letting people from opposing factions come in. The rifts aren't permanent, and only let a certain number of certain level characters through.

But, the number of people was fairly large. And, they sold kiosk that let you respawn out in the field after dying (so the invaders wouldnt have to reuse the gate after using it once, and being killed). Plus, the level range was fairly wide, so you could have a level 40 invader running around a level 20 area.

So, you'd have people out in the field, in whats nominally considered a no pvp area, having to deal with forced pvp anyway. And, usually against people much higher level, and in full pvp gear, so they didn't really stand much of a chance anyway.

So, the "carebears" didn't find the game very fun, raised a big stink, and many of them qui playing.

Now, the people who made the game lost alot of subscriptions over it, and losing money isn't a very good business model, so they decided to do something about it. And, started placing stuff in place to make it easier for people trying to level in peace, without totally doing away with the rifts themselves.

They tried alot of things, but pretty much everything they did pissed off the people who actually enjoyed rifting.

So, you had a situation where everyone was unhappy.


So you are saying assholes/trolls ruined the Genre? I can actually see that. MMOs are community run games, and if part of the community are like that and scare off people not like that, overtime the community drops.
 

railven

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2010
6,604
561
126
Still just keep reading bitterness.

WoW was so successful the people playing the games you enjoyed left, thus causing your preferred MMO to fail.

Makes me think more so the MMO you preferred wasn't that good that a competitor stole it's fan base.

Also to the person that mentioned Wildstar, thanks, that game looks like it's going to be fun!
 

Midwayman

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2000
5,723
325
126
Let me stop you right there, as you had good intentions but didn't realize one thing. Single player games and RPGs have some length, usually in the 20-30 hour range, 40 if you try and do everything and collect everything. There is usually very little replayability in single player rpg's aside from combat and seeing the story again.

Online RPGS on the other hand, want to, and do command 100s of hours.. I clocked over a year in everquest...

You say that like its a point. I'd much rather take my subscription fee and buy a completely new game every couple of months and have a real story. I don't really want to play a skinner box I want a game.
 

Anubis

No Lifer
Aug 31, 2001
78,716
417
126
tbqhwy.com
Honestly, WoW's new system of anonymity has made trolling worse in spades, since you're bringing that topic up. Back during vanilla / TBC you had to earn reputation and based on that folks would want to group with you - servers were tightly knit and smaller back then, and everyone mostly knew who the troublemakers, jerks and trolls were.

Now trolls can basically spout the N word nonstop and even if you report them, nothing happens.This is made even worse since you don't have to actually find groups, you can just queue stuff nonstop (this is something else I HATE) while parking your character AFK in orgrimmar or stormwind.... One thing I dislike is that in the old days, up to WOTLK i'd say - blizzard took reports seriously, if folks were trolling with racism and what not you could count on said trolls being banned for 72+ hours. Nowadays? Nothing happens. No matter what anyone says or does when they troll, their account will not be actioned against.

I really feel like they stepped back on enforcing their policies as to retain their playerbase. Which in the process doesn't work, because the trolls aggravate the more mature players.....there is such a huge contrast between how well blizzard enforced their rules from the vanilla-wotlk era to current. They don't enforce ANYTHING now. That's one thing I appreciate about ArenaNET as well - while they've been a bit overzealous in this respect, they can and will show trolls/jerks/idiots the door. I wish blizzard did the same.

yep, there was a reason i used a mod called ignore more and had an ingnore list with over 500 people on it
 

JeffMD

Platinum Member
Feb 15, 2002
2,026
19
81
You say that like its a point. I'd much rather take my subscription fee and buy a completely new game every couple of months and have a real story. I don't really want to play a skinner box I want a game.

Who says you need a subscription fee? I stopped playing wow for guild wars 2 because I think the game is better, the lack of subscription fee is a bonus.
 

tential

Diamond Member
May 13, 2008
7,355
642
121
I like competition fine, it's why I sometimes play online FPS games and why I used to play football with people after work.

What I don't like is people ruining my enjoyment - if (for instance) someone repeatedly went out of their way to injure me during a game of football, I would either confront them or simply play somewhere else. I don't tolerate dicks in real life and I don't tolerate them online either.

If you want something that mimics real life, then don't sign online, and play single player, or co-op mode with people in real life.



You talk of consequences yet you aren't willing to deal with the consequences of the things you did.

By and large people don't like being trolled (especially if they're paying a monthly fee), so they go elsewhere. If the trolls scare everyone off with their trolling, then that's their fault and they should learn to face up to the consequences of their actions instead of trying to blame everyone else who went off and played a different game with different rules.

You're completely twisting what I'm saying lol.

I'm talking about fighting over a farm area in high level areas where yes, they are controlled by clans/guilds who need the materials dropped their for high level quests, bosses, or weapons that can't be farmed solo.

Trolling people on purpose and killing them when they are farming for enjoyment is always punished in MMOs. In lineage it was punished by a Karma system, more you did it, the more likely you dropped gear. I'm unsure where in my post at all you decided that "You talk of consequences yet you aren't willing to deal with the consequences of the things you did." which I quoted in bold. That is completely false.

Nice to see though that as usual, people take what someone says on a forum, and twist it to mean something completely different than what the poster meant.

Honestly, WoW's new system of anonymity has made trolling worse in spades, since you're bringing that topic up. Back during vanilla / TBC you had to earn reputation and based on that folks would want to group with you - servers were tightly knit and smaller back then, and everyone mostly knew who the troublemakers, jerks and trolls were.

Now trolls can basically spout the N word nonstop and even if you report them, nothing happens.This is made even worse since you don't have to actually find groups, you can just queue stuff nonstop (this is something else I HATE) while parking your character AFK in orgrimmar or stormwind.... One thing I dislike is that in the old days, up to WOTLK i'd say - blizzard took reports seriously, if folks were trolling with racism and what not you could count on said trolls being banned for 72+ hours. Nowadays? Nothing happens. No matter what anyone says or does when they troll, their account will not be actioned against.

I really feel like they stepped back on enforcing their policies as to retain their playerbase. Which in the process doesn't work, because the trolls aggravate the more mature players.....there is such a huge contrast between how well blizzard enforced their rules from the vanilla-wotlk era to current. They don't enforce ANYTHING now. That's one thing I appreciate about ArenaNET as well - while they've been a bit overzealous in this respect, they can and will show trolls/jerks/idiots the door. I wish blizzard did the same.

This is actually the WORST part of all genre's attempting to cater to the maximum amount of players and draw the maximum amount of revenue. Rules are COMPLETELY ignored. League of Legends, WoW, Xbox Live, etc. No matter what people say or do, no one is banned. In League of Legends, they don't let you see updates on whether the person you reported actually was banned or not. In contrast, in Dota, I submitted someone on a forum, checked back next day, they were banned.

Now it is "I don't want to ban them because they pay for the game and banning them may cause them to pay for another game instead.
 
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chalmers

Platinum Member
Mar 14, 2008
2,565
0
76
tential, read your first post in this thread. That's the shit people are referring to. If you can't get it through your head how some people want to play MMO's WITHOUT dealing with all that horseshit, then you're beyond help.
 

blankslate

Diamond Member
Jun 16, 2008
8,581
472
126
Now trolls can basically spout the N word nonstop and even if you report them, nothing happens.This is made even worse since you don't have to actually find groups, you can just queue stuff nonstop (this is something else I HATE) while parking your character AFK in orgrimmar or stormwind.... One thing I dislike is that in the old days, up to WOTLK i'd say - blizzard took reports seriously, if folks were trolling with racism and what not you could count on said trolls being banned for 72+ hours. Nowadays? Nothing happens. No matter what anyone says or does when they troll, their account will not be actioned against.

This is the truth. Another reason WoW is being slowly killed by none other than itself
 

Grimbones

Senior member
Jun 12, 2004
551
0
0
Oh, cool. If that's the new thing with MMOs then I gladly applaud the fact that it is a dying genre. WoW made MMOs attractive to those who don't even play games. Soccer moms. Teenage girls. Great, good for blizzard.

WoW turned everything that put RPG into MMO and turned it into convenience and catering to whiners. Purples are the new blue. Everyone gets purples. Don't want to group? Just sit in orgrimmar all day and queue it up. No need for exploration, no need for socializing, no need for any effort. Just sit there AFK and queue it up. You know what? Screw this. That isn't a RPG. That is garbage. I want exploration, journey, and I want to savor it. I don't want a game to be based around my convenience. I don't want a RPG or MMO to be based on whiners, which is what blizzard caters to.

As a game that's not what I want. What some 30 year old mother who plays 30 minutes a day wants in a game isn't what *I* want in a game. Thank GOODNESS mmo's are dying, lol. Didn't blizzard lose nearly 2 million subscriptions in their past earnings call? Good riddance. If this is the future of MMOs, I happily accept the death of the genre - and the fact that every P2P MMO has outright failed. And it appears that others feel the same way since blizzard's sub numbers have done nothing except dwindle by the millions every quarter. Again, good riddance to MMOs. You will hardly be missed.

I agree with you, but i think you are coming off a little strong. First of all, vanilla WoW had a lot of stuff to offer, and while it was easier than EQ, or other MMOs that preceded it, there was still difficulty to learning your class, and yes i even managed to die a number of times when i was a lower level.

What i really appreciated about vanilla WoW was the story, and basically how you began as basically some random dude (i was a dwarf) in the middle of nowhere. I thought that was a great place to start a game, and it slowly wound you onward toward Ironforge, and it introduced things to the player at a slow pace.

After BC, it just became too easy, and time was not important to the game, and neither was the social aspect--although, admittedly, WoW was an easy game to solo because of the Themepark nature of the game, and the ability to get a ton of exp from certain quests.

I do agree with you though. I want the same things you want. I think exploration is one of the most important part of an MMO, if you are not intrigued to go out and explore the landscape ON YOUR OWN (without guidance from quests, i mean), then you made a bland and uninteresting world or story, and there is no further reason to really play it. Social aspect is also incredibly important to keeping people playing and wanting to return.

Call me crazy but i really dislike the following things that are occurring in many of the "next generation" mmo games...

-Very little variety in spells/abilities that could be used for different situations.
-Classes are being rendered almost pointless. Everyone can do everything, and classes are undefined.
-Tradeskills are all but ignored, and incredibly bland. (They are built for people that basically do not want to tradeskill in the first place, they just want the good loot.)
-Action gameplay. I have yet to see an MMO where this is done very well. It tends to make the combat tedious, and not very strategic. I understand the attraction to this, but to me, i just do not think it will work in a hardcore MMORPG space.

Basically, they are trying to reinvent the wheel, to try to be different.

There were plenty of MMO's that have come out since WoW that could have been better, but did not run with things they did well. My main example here is Rift. It could have been incredible, and rifts could have been so much more dynamic, and brought the world together to plan and strategize a way to defeat them. They unfortunately were so bland, and popped up so frequently. I honestly think it would have been amazing if Rifts were random and WERE NOT SHOWN ON THE MAP, and people had to discover them, and the creatures from the rifts started to fortify their position, and if it went too long they came in with seige equipment, and started launching strategic strikes, etc. etc...instead they basically became a tiresome meta game that got in the way of leveling...

Here is a snapshot of what i am saying.

-Old school MMO mechanics are not bad. People are just tired of WoW clones--namely themepark design.
-Exploration and social aspects are key.
-Classes and tradeskills need to have a real importance to the game.

That is all, it really is not more complicated than that from a design standpoint.
 

ImpulsE69

Lifer
Jan 8, 2010
14,946
1,077
126
You can't compare todays MMO's to UO or Everquest. It was entirely different breed of gamer then.

The only remotely distinctive MMO today is Eve Online. While it's not for everyone, due to it's complexity, and learning curve it does lend itself more to the non casual player, and it's pretty damn good if you have nothing but time to kill.