The story, setting and atmosphere are all great, but the combat is -garbage-. I found it difficult to play as a result.
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Did WoW (and EQ) kill the mmo genre? (warning, very long post).
- Thread starter Stiler
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The story, setting and atmosphere are all great, but the combat is -garbage-. I found it difficult to play as a result.
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
The thing with those kinds of MMOs is you need a dedicated core to reach levels big enough to keep things happening in the game world.
Considering how transient most of the MMO player base has become in recent years that would be hard to do. It feels like most people are just looking for a new flavor of the month MMO to try out and then promptly abandon. I saw it happen a few times in the past 12 months, blade and soul, black desert, archage, wildstar f2p and probably a few more I can't recall.
It is rare that an MMO manages to cultivate a consistent growing core base. The only real examples recently are FF14 and GW2.
Many new MMOs aren't really listening to what player mean when they ask for stuff and just do things as superficially as possible.
Wildstar specifically seemed to misunderstand what players meant when they said "I want a challenge" they just wanted longer term goals and not everything handed to them for showing up. Wildstar literally just made the game too frustrating to play unless you're a power gamer.
Really players want depth beyond just getting gear.
"Garbage" my ass. It's almost exactly the same as GW2 combat. That doesn't mean it's anything great, it's not, but it's totally fine and in line with other games in the genre. It's a lot less colorful but that's about it.
eot
Banned
You could look into Albion Online.
Haven't tried it myself, but from what I hear it's inspired by EVE. I also hear it's not quite the game everyone hoped for
Netherscourge
Banned
WoW didn't kill the MMORPG genre - it IS the MMORPG genre.
WoW pretty much took every other MMO's players and has completely monopolized the subscription-based MMO model.
WoW pretty much took every other MMO's players and has completely monopolized the subscription-based MMO model.
Saucycarpdog
Member
I see a lot of people mention sandbox MMOs in threads like this one as something that would revitalize the genre. The thing that people forget though is the sandbox have been and always will be part of a niche. People tend to exaggerate things like SW galaxies as if it was immensely popular when in reality it was a niche title with a small but dedicated player base. Eve is as sandbox as the come but you won't see the game ever charting with populations that rival other mainstream MMOs like WoW or GW. Sandbox MMOs always required a lot of time and commitment out of its players in order for them to get the most out of the experience. That type of play style is niche in itself since many Gamers don't have or want to put in that much time into one game.
In my opinion I think most of the sandbox MMO base have migrated to survival games like Rust and ARK which have characteristics of those old sandbox MMOs.
In my opinion I think most of the sandbox MMO base have migrated to survival games like Rust and ARK which have characteristics of those old sandbox MMOs.
Before he designed Ultima Online, Raph was one of the writer/designers and implementors of LegendMUD, a heavily customized DikuMUD adaptation (which I started playing in 1994 a little less than a year after it opened). He's one of the most key people in the direction that MMOs have taken over the past two decades. So he's not theorizing, he's remembering.
Great read, OP, I agree on all fronts. My journey was the same except I never got to play AC.
One issue which is never explicitly discussed is the concept of guidance.
In EQ, you needed to learn from others or the guide you bought. In AC you needed to learn spells from other people.
On WoWs launch, the same was true. However, WoW quickly spawned the online wiki guides. This took all of the "magic" I inferred from your descriptions. The in game "help" wasn't as heavy handed as people make it out to be.
One issue which is never explicitly discussed is the concept of guidance.
In EQ, you needed to learn from others or the guide you bought. In AC you needed to learn spells from other people.
On WoWs launch, the same was true. However, WoW quickly spawned the online wiki guides. This took all of the "magic" I inferred from your descriptions. The in game "help" wasn't as heavy handed as people make it out to be.
KiefbladeMaster
Member
This is how I feel about it. There are quite a few action oriented MMO's coming out as well, that seem to be fairly popular. (ESO, Tera, Black Desert, Neverwinter, etc.)
I think the market is just moving towards different tastes and/or people are just sticking with the same game because it offers them the best gameplay/social experience in the genre. I've tried many, many MMO's -- subs and otherwise, and none have really hooked me as much as WoW has.
shiftplusone
Member
From what I remember, Everquest had the highest subs before wow and would consistently hit 500k
about galaxies before it launched:
in wow's first full quarter they had 1.5 million and climbed for 4 straight years to 12 million and were still at 5 million before they stopped reporting
seems to me that the MMO genre was fucking unimportant until wow came along and created the market
for all the fond memories of UO I have, it's ultimately irrelevant to the scale of the genre. People heard of EQ and I had friends who played Anarchy Online and shit like that but it seems WoW's success is the only reason anyone even cared about the copycat games in the first place
about galaxies before it launched:
in wow's first full quarter they had 1.5 million and climbed for 4 straight years to 12 million and were still at 5 million before they stopped reporting
seems to me that the MMO genre was fucking unimportant until wow came along and created the market
for all the fond memories of UO I have, it's ultimately irrelevant to the scale of the genre. People heard of EQ and I had friends who played Anarchy Online and shit like that but it seems WoW's success is the only reason anyone even cared about the copycat games in the first place
Feeroper
Member
Not surprised to see many people think that WoW is the cause of the MMO decline. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion though.
My opinion, like several others on here is that the decline was due to the cash grab imitators that wanted a piece of the pie that WoW had. WoW is an exceptionally well designed game - true it was informed quite a bit by EQ, but Blizzard is quite talented at presenting more niche games and ideas like that to the mainstream. I think often folks will accuse them of "dumbing down" when in reality its just a matter of presenting it in a more understandable way.
I have played MMOs since UO launched. EQ was a big one for me when it came out, and when WoW finally arrived I was just as riveted since I was a big Warcraft fan before so the lore was great. Another great thing that WoW had going for it was no zones and a real world clock - I loved it! One complaint I don't get is calling it a single player game - the community was a major part of WoW and a huge part of its success. Allowing content to be played alone only made it easier for people who could be intimidated by "forced" multiplayer.
I have been playing WoW since the original beta up to present, and although I take breaks, I still love it. I have tried many MMO's since WoW was introduced, but none have been able to grab me as much. WoW does what it does perfectly in my opinion, so I don't need a WoW clone.
The MMO world is so quiet now because no one wanted to try to innovate and take a risk on something that could be costly, and instead wanted to simply copy and paste a proven formula (or so they thought).
I've tried to get into other niche MMO's with limited success - I had really high hopes for Pathfinder Online for example which was touted to be a fantasy style type of MMO like EVE with only a little bit of the "theme park" elements, but it just never worked. I like the Pathfinder pen and paper RPG, but the MMO is pretty poor.
Ultimately though, we have to keep our expectations in check with what can be accomplished in any type of video game - They don't have the same type of openness as table top RPG's like Dungeons and Dragons. (interesting side note though, I was able to convince a large number of my friends to let me run a D&D campaign for them because of WoW, whereas previously they wouldn't have had the interest - now we have a regular weekly D&D game).
My opinion, like several others on here is that the decline was due to the cash grab imitators that wanted a piece of the pie that WoW had. WoW is an exceptionally well designed game - true it was informed quite a bit by EQ, but Blizzard is quite talented at presenting more niche games and ideas like that to the mainstream. I think often folks will accuse them of "dumbing down" when in reality its just a matter of presenting it in a more understandable way.
I have played MMOs since UO launched. EQ was a big one for me when it came out, and when WoW finally arrived I was just as riveted since I was a big Warcraft fan before so the lore was great. Another great thing that WoW had going for it was no zones and a real world clock - I loved it! One complaint I don't get is calling it a single player game - the community was a major part of WoW and a huge part of its success. Allowing content to be played alone only made it easier for people who could be intimidated by "forced" multiplayer.
I have been playing WoW since the original beta up to present, and although I take breaks, I still love it. I have tried many MMO's since WoW was introduced, but none have been able to grab me as much. WoW does what it does perfectly in my opinion, so I don't need a WoW clone.
The MMO world is so quiet now because no one wanted to try to innovate and take a risk on something that could be costly, and instead wanted to simply copy and paste a proven formula (or so they thought).
I've tried to get into other niche MMO's with limited success - I had really high hopes for Pathfinder Online for example which was touted to be a fantasy style type of MMO like EVE with only a little bit of the "theme park" elements, but it just never worked. I like the Pathfinder pen and paper RPG, but the MMO is pretty poor.
Ultimately though, we have to keep our expectations in check with what can be accomplished in any type of video game - They don't have the same type of openness as table top RPG's like Dungeons and Dragons. (interesting side note though, I was able to convince a large number of my friends to let me run a D&D campaign for them because of WoW, whereas previously they wouldn't have had the interest - now we have a regular weekly D&D game).
Dargor
Member
I dunno about Everquest, but I think that WoW did kill MMORPGs.
Its simply too big and takes up all the space. Its that much harder to make anything successful in this genre when, no matter what you do, you are immediately compared to WoW.
I think we'll only see a big resurgence of the MMORPGs when WoW dies or when VR becomes accesible enough to bring gaming experiences to the masses that simply can't be compared to WoW by virtue of its nature alone.
Its simply too big and takes up all the space. Its that much harder to make anything successful in this genre when, no matter what you do, you are immediately compared to WoW.
I think we'll only see a big resurgence of the MMORPGs when WoW dies or when VR becomes accesible enough to bring gaming experiences to the masses that simply can't be compared to WoW by virtue of its nature alone.
I think the opposite - Wow being so big and inviting comparison gives you a lot of room to make something DIFFERENT and good. People don't do that, which is why the 'wow killed the genre' shit exists. Everyone tries to copy wow, and that's literally the last thing the genre needs. No wow clone is legitimately better than wow is, and trying to one up them in the exact same space is pointless - you might do one thing better but you'll do 10 worse (I base this assertion on the fact that it's how every single wow clone turns out). Games that take risks might be harder to educate people in how they should be played, but they're going to grab a sustainable audience better since the ones that like it won't just go 'but wow is better still'
I know it's not newer, but Eve is the best comparison still - if it was just wow in space, it would probably be dead. I think it's legitimately a bad game, but that doesn't actually matter because the point is that it's DIFFERENT and therefore can totally sustain a separate audience. compare it to say, SWTOR, which I think is an ok game (I enjoyed my time in it), but it's SO similar to wow that it actually has a harder time co-existing because the entire time you play it you might as well just play wow. It appeals to the same audience but does nothing better.
tearsintherain
Member
imo the MMO space was always destined to die, it lived in that short time period between the rise of the internet and the rise of social spaces. Once facebook, instagram, twitch, twitter, snapchat, etc became a thing the people who played MMOs to hang out with other real people mostly moved off.
Same way that the casual gaming market (as previously known - Wii, party games) changed once mobile gaming took off.
Very few people really WANT to treat video games like a second job, or enjoy a game where a guy who can play 10-15 hours a day gets far ahead of someone who can only play a few hours a week. Still, the social aspects of MMOs were SO compelling pre-current Internet era that it attracted millions.
We'll see the rise of second generation "MMOs", although it'll be called something else, in the future for sure. It'll combine ARG (ala Pokemon Go), collectathons, real life social spaces, and some form of monetary interaction like ads paying for everything or being paid by other people to do stuff in real time ala twitch. We think of it as the Cyberpunk alt-verse, but I'm sure it'll look very different than what anyone can imagine now.
Same way that the casual gaming market (as previously known - Wii, party games) changed once mobile gaming took off.
Very few people really WANT to treat video games like a second job, or enjoy a game where a guy who can play 10-15 hours a day gets far ahead of someone who can only play a few hours a week. Still, the social aspects of MMOs were SO compelling pre-current Internet era that it attracted millions.
We'll see the rise of second generation "MMOs", although it'll be called something else, in the future for sure. It'll combine ARG (ala Pokemon Go), collectathons, real life social spaces, and some form of monetary interaction like ads paying for everything or being paid by other people to do stuff in real time ala twitch. We think of it as the Cyberpunk alt-verse, but I'm sure it'll look very different than what anyone can imagine now.
Even without the subscription, people have finite time and want to play with their friends. So if they happen to like niche MMO #12 but their friends don't; they'll end up re-subbing to WoW whent he expansion drops. I have 0 interest in legion but I re-subbed, bought the expansion, and faction changed a guild and 1 toon to play with my friends.
I would disagree with this though. I would go as far as to say not even a million people are playing this, many servers at this point need merges badly and are pretty much dead. Final Fantasy XIV has potential to be something more than it is but this is the prime example of an mmo that is playing so safe and cookie cutter that it's literally hurting the game. Kind of understandable since they had to make all that lost money back.
Any time these guys have tried to do something different they abandon it and because of it you have PVP that's dead on almost all data centers, ideas like Diadem that are cool but no support so that's dead and so on. Aside from the fact it's Final Fantasy this game has nothing that sets it apart from any other mmo out there. The game at this point is so formulaic that it's dreadfully boring at this point and predictable with a team that has literally put zero effort into trying anything new at this point.
I always though games like DC Universe Online had potential to capture that whole open world aspect but it just seemed to never reach that point. The unique characters, open world pvp and mission/boss fights were pretty we ll done it's too bad they couldn't expand on that because it had potential. I also think part of the problem is that there is so many mmo game snow and most are F2P that many won't stick/invest time into them, I know a lot of people who jump mmos constantly once they hit cap and stuff.
eot
Banned
It's not out yet, still in beta (though some betas do get OTs)
Did you buy my coal stacks back in 2004? If so, thank you for helping me buy my runite armor set.
Being serious now, that is the only reason I would play a MMORPG these days: a community. Current WoW lacks it, same with FF XIV:ARR. Dont remember GW2 had it either. Playing those games on your own gets boring after a while.
Dargor
Member
I don't agree, because even games that do try to make things differently still get flak simply by not being more like WoW. Just look at all the more action oriented MMORPGs, they are always relegated to the way side, only surviving by being F2P.
These games only get the scraps left by WoW, in fact, even some of those scraps are just WoW players looking for something different to play when they get momentarily bored with WoW or while they wait for a new expac to come out.
Nothing will ever be like WoW and thats great, but, hardly any MMORPG, at least for the foreseeable future, will ever surpass it either and thats not so great.
In every other genre there is a change in what is on top at every given time, not with MMORPGs though.
I love WoW, I'm a proud Horde player (always main an orc warrior), but I can see how WoW was hurt by always being on top.
The rehashing of old content for new expacs, the poor pacing in realeased content, going months, at times more than a full year, without having anything new to do. The terrible choices that really hurt the lore (at least for me as a Horde player).
I honestly believe that if WoW had a competitor with at least a fighting chance, things would have been much better for WoW players.
Rapscallion74
Banned
I was thinking about coming back to WoW for Legion, but then realized there is no point. The magic is gone. It's not the game that sucks, it's the people playing it nowadays that are garbage. They want everything to be super fast and super easy.
In my opinion, the precise moment the game started to take a turn for the worse was when they first introduced cross server stuff. As soon as there was a scenario in which a player could be an asshole and get away with it, it was over. Then they introduced other asshole mechanisms such as paid name changes and server transfers and the games fate was sealed.
In my opinion, the precise moment the game started to take a turn for the worse was when they first introduced cross server stuff. As soon as there was a scenario in which a player could be an asshole and get away with it, it was over. Then they introduced other asshole mechanisms such as paid name changes and server transfers and the games fate was sealed.
PHOENIXZERO
Member
I'd blame that more on developers/publishers who made MMOs with the primary goal of cashing on and getting a piece of the kind of money Blizzard was making and dumping way too much money in basically creating WoW clones that people got hyped for for a little while before losing interest, some might've had a few good ideas but it just wasn't sustainable because not many people are going to pay for multiple games and when you've already got so much time dedicated to one and there's where everyone is starting over from scratch might not be as appealing. Just as what happens with every other genre, they saturated the market with largely inferior products and people lost interest.
I got burned out badly and quit early into MoP but I'd also agree with this, it pretty much started at around the end of Wrath and went down hill from there in killing communities with the "looking for" stuff and the cross server nonsense because Blizzard refused to just merge aging, lower populated servers, probably due to it looking bad on their part. Name changes absolving assholes who earned a bad rep sucked, as did the transfer options though many weren't smart enough to hide it and they were easy to pick out from their "speech" patterns in trade chat. The LFD/LFR stuff and cross realm stuff (which by the time that was implemented I was gone) is akin to that GameFAQs/Gamespot merger IMO. I know on my real we developed a blacklist in a way of certain realms in our battle group because of the overwhelming cesspool of players that would come from them.
I got burned out badly and quit early into MoP but I'd also agree with this, it pretty much started at around the end of Wrath and went down hill from there in killing communities with the "looking for" stuff and the cross server nonsense because Blizzard refused to just merge aging, lower populated servers, probably due to it looking bad on their part. Name changes absolving assholes who earned a bad rep sucked, as did the transfer options though many weren't smart enough to hide it and they were easy to pick out from their "speech" patterns in trade chat. The LFD/LFR stuff and cross realm stuff (which by the time that was implemented I was gone) is akin to that GameFAQs/Gamespot merger IMO. I know on my real we developed a blacklist in a way of certain realms in our battle group because of the overwhelming cesspool of players that would come from them.
I think it has less to do with innovation and more to do with a limited natural base of players. There is a finite number of people who want a huge time sink, there are a finite number of people who want to 'RP', a finite group which want challenging raids, a finite group that want a theme park, and a finite group who want some economy.
WoW just managed to bring all those groups AND their friends in for a while. The reason why the genre stopped growing is because WoW pulled in more people than were actually interested in the genre and the pie could never grow past it because it's target audience was actually smaller than WoW's install base. Many WoW players aren't MMO players. They are friends of MMO players who got hooked on wow.
Vital Tundra
Member
I think they killed the idea of a popular sandbox MMO like Ultima. I pine for a new sandbox MmO with some major spotlight. A game that allows you to be a merchant and nothing else, or a bard, etc. I want to see that with modern tech but sadly because of WoW nothing like that can really take off.
The problem is you think any of those Action MMOs are doing anything differently than wow. marginally different combat mechanics when you bite everything else from wow isn't going to cut it. Those fall into the 'maybe do one thing better but 10 things worse' category. It invites the comparison when the game is basically the same, I'm sorry but 'action' combat isn't different enough at its core hwen you're still doing quests or grinding mobs.
I mean hell, in many ways even Secret World a game I tout as being different is a lot like wow, BUT its emphasis is so different that it works.
Storybricks sounded awesome as did the class system and near flat progression curve. The voxels and destructibility/minecraftness of it all seemed like a misstep though. I wanted to try it badly.
Rapscallion74
Banned
Yeah, I would absolutely love that, however today's MMO baby's would cry that it's too hard to maintain their 20+ alts
attitudes like this are gross. It's like playing civ and complaining that people who play Starcraft are babies - they're two different fucking genres. MMO is not a genre, or at least it shouldn't be looked at that way. There are games that you can play that let you do this shit, if you mean they're not super popular, then guess what they probably never will be, just like lots of other games will never be more popular than something like Call of Duty.
You can like a type of game without having to denigrate others, seems like the anti-wow crowd is one of the most incapable of doing that though. It's enough to say "I would like that type of game, I don't enjoy the more popular kind" or whatever.
Rapscallion74
Banned
Yeah, I suppose you are right, but grow a spine dude. I apologize if that makes you feel better.
EDIT: I don't consider myself to be in the anti-Wow crowd. More like the pro-vanilla WoW crowd. I think the game was better than, and not because of the content. There is definitely boatloads more content now then there was back then. Back then it was all about community.
"Grow a spine" lol. These are the kinds of threads that usually find me banned for telling people off, so I'll just laugh at that one. It adds nothing to the conversation to make a shitpost like you did, it just undermines any opinion you might try to bring forth. I don't give a flying fuck if you hate wow or hate anything I like, but if we're discussing the subject I expect you to at least bring a point of view to the table and back it up. My 'spine' has nothing to do with it.
I'm not interested in getting into a vanilla vs modern wow debate in this thread, it's out of place and I've made a billion posts on the subject elsewhere.
Stiler
Member
Nice personal attacks toward me for simply posting my opinion/asking a question, cause god forbid I have one.
I highlighted some points.
1. First you say WoW was not responsible, then you go on to say that because of WoW's success the devs changed the game which led to its failure...which is a contradiction. If WoW never came along and they didn't change SWG to meet those types of players then it wouldn't have went down the road that led it to fail, at least according to you.
2. Mmorpgs have gone in little direction to do with WoW? Did I somehow miss the majority of mmorpgs not being like WoW? Aside from a tiny few like Guild Wars 2 or Planetside the vast majority of mmorpgs to come onto the market from WoW until now have been very much like WoW in terms of overall game design structure. Where you have npc's standing around with some form of "!/?" above their heads waiting ot handout quest to go kill x number of enemies that lead you through a world made up of specific level zones driving you mostly toward end-game raiding/dungeons.
Also Warframe isn't an mmo, most "survival" games (IE Dayz/rust) are not mmo's either, they are missing the "Massive" and persistent part of the mmo genre. In an mmorpg you play on a server that supports generally thousands of other players all on that specific server.
3. Did you miss my point? In the first gen of mmo's most of them played quite differently, UO did not play like EQ which did not play like Asheron's Call., then you had ones following those like DAOC, Planetside, WWII Online, etc. In that age before WoW there was a lot of risk taking in terms of the game design of an mmo game. Everquest was the most successful at the time but not such a success that it drove the entire genre to copy it only. WoW however was such a huge success that dwarfed every other mmorpg that it drove the market and publishers toward it's style of play and led to a lot of games following its design.
at least that is what I experienced personally in my time playing mmorpgs.
Also I never once said WoW was a "bad" game or terrible, I was merely posting my opinion of how WoW shaped the genre and drove it into a direction that eventually led to the genre becoming stagnant.
KojiKnight
Member
The only MMO that ever really got the community right IMO was a little game called Star Wars Galaxies... Complete player run economy, you could play the entire game and never ONCE do a quest or kill a player or NPC. You could explore the galaxy if you liked, or you could just build a place and become the most known weapon/armor/gun smith... If you were good on your server, you were a legend. Everyone knew the top hunting parties on your server, everyone knew the best weapon and armor smiths.
Then they destroyed it by trying to turn it into a WoW clone...
Never played an MMO like it.... should really see how SWGEmu is doing these days...
Then they destroyed it by trying to turn it into a WoW clone...
Never played an MMO like it.... should really see how SWGEmu is doing these days...
Rapscallion74
Banned
Well using terms like "gross" and "denigrating others" when talking about video games seems like a bit much to me. You're clearly sensitive, and I will repeat that I conceded the point to you. You are correct in that sandbox MMO's and theme park MMO are different genre, and that I could have used a better term for MMO players.
I actually find this topic interesting and don't want to derail it.
SWG was a UO clone through and through. It wasn't anything new. Those kinds of games weren't as popular because they're flat out not as appealing to most players. To me the ultimate game would be one that lets you do all of that stuff, but ALSO has good pve style content, good pvp style content, etc. Balance would be the problem, how do you make crafting worthwhile when you're trying to make exciting and cool gear in raids? how do you make pvp balanced with all this going on, etc. So again, it just comes down to sandbox vs crafted experiences. Some people enjoy both, but I think it's fair to say that the sandbox crowd is very much smaller.
Whoever brought it up earlier hit the nail on the head about survival games and smaller games like minecraft: The sandbox style of play is virtually unaffected whether you have thousands of players or dozens or a hundred or so. It's often BETTER with a smaller playerbase, you only need eough other players to feel like you're playing an MMO, but beyond that having too many actively harms this style of game.
Think back to problems in both UO and SWG with finding plots of land to do what you wanted, how difficult it is to engage in trading when markets are flooded with items being made by hundreds of people, etc. How meaningless survival is when there are people EVERYWHERE and supplies are in abundance due to it - or on the flipside, when there are so many people that it's negatively impacting your own ability to get supplies. All of this shit is solved with smaller server populations.
KojiKnight
Member
And WoW was just an Everquest clone... I never said it was new, only that I never personally experienced anything like it.
Stiler
Member
The Secret World is great in terms of its setting and storylines. It borrows a lot from adventure game design (thanks to the developers being from games like The Longest journey and such). You'll come across quests that actually need some thinking behind them, finding clues, puzzles, etc. This however isn't all quests, there are still plenty of mmo type "Go fetch/kill x number" quest.
However it's core world design/goal is a lot like WoW in terms of the theme park style of world.
The character building is nice, you aren't forced into classes and the game encourages mix/matching of skills to make your own type of character (IE you generally want two weapon types because you use one to "build up" the other in combat).
Combat itself however is well it's a bit repetitive, much like hotkey based combat you follow a specific formula usually that leads to building up a meter to do a more powerful attack.
Overall it's a generally more divisive mmo game, the setting/storylines are a nice change of pace , especially if you 're a horror fan (it's world/stories take a lot of inspiration from horror themes, from old horror movies/books , Lovecraft, Stephen King, movies like Nightmare on Elm Street and even monster squad has some obvious nods to them in the game).
Rapscallion74
Banned
Yeah, I completely missed the boat on that one, which is too bad because from what I read, it sounded right up my alley.
Camelot Unchained isn't remotely that though, it's DAoC frontiers without the non-frontier parts.
While that sounds awesome, DAoC frontiers were a blast, I don't think it's fair to compare it to UO at all.
My opinion on what has killed MMOs (although they're not truly dead and probably never will be):
- Players are no longer satisfied with only an elite few being able to see all the content a game has to offer. Back in EQ days, it was notable just to hit the level cap, and an extremely few people ever got to even see raid bosses. Players generally don't tolerate that any more. So now players generally chew through content at a much faster rate than developers can possibly create it.
- The vast improvement of information sharing across the internet with Wikis and data mining leads to content being completed even faster.
- Massive competition from f2p games, whether mmos or not.
- World of Warcraft is very feature-rich. A new MMO will find it an extra uphill battle to launch without major features WoW has had the benefit of spending years developing. Auction Houses, Heirlooms, Mounts, Dungeon Finders, Instances, Cross-Realm interaction, in-game dungeon guides, add-on support, etc. WoW has had a decade to add those in and improve them and any newcomer has to have as much of that as possible right out of the gate.
- Players are no longer satisfied with only an elite few being able to see all the content a game has to offer. Back in EQ days, it was notable just to hit the level cap, and an extremely few people ever got to even see raid bosses. Players generally don't tolerate that any more. So now players generally chew through content at a much faster rate than developers can possibly create it.
- The vast improvement of information sharing across the internet with Wikis and data mining leads to content being completed even faster.
- Massive competition from f2p games, whether mmos or not.
- World of Warcraft is very feature-rich. A new MMO will find it an extra uphill battle to launch without major features WoW has had the benefit of spending years developing. Auction Houses, Heirlooms, Mounts, Dungeon Finders, Instances, Cross-Realm interaction, in-game dungeon guides, add-on support, etc. WoW has had a decade to add those in and improve them and any newcomer has to have as much of that as possible right out of the gate.
TDLink
Member
I would argue that even if you don't consider this and just look at the amount of content Vanilla WoW had prior to any expansions...it had much more than any other modern MMO I can think of, at launch. No other MMO has such a large amount of areas/zones or dungeons. Pretty much every other MMO doesn't even seamlessly connect them...they have loads between them.
Even if you take something like FFXIV and consider both all of the ARR content plus all the Heavensward Expansion content...it pales in comparison to what Vanilla WoW had save for the quality of the endgame encounters.
It was just a crazy amount of content. A crazy large interconnected world. And people were actually forced to be out in the world. The dungeons themselves were huge and often confusing. There was no hallway with 3 bosses standard design. And even to go to a dungeon, you actually had to find a group of people and have a couple people physically walk there to summon the rest of the party. This kind of stuff is lost with modern conveniences of queuing for dungeons.
ScatheZombie
Member
This is also a good comparison because the EVE team did something that WoW-clones don't - they have a relatively small team based out of Iceland. They don't have the same costs and overheard as, say, a traditional 200+ person MMO team out of LA or the Bay Area. With significantly lower costs, you can have significantly lower ARPU and MAU are still turn a tidy profit.
When the company accepts that you aren't chasing WoW-success and WoW-numbers, they can accept that they are making a niche product for a niche market and plan the budget and headcount accordingly. Instead of struggling to keep your MAU above 250k since anything below that means you are bankrupt because your development costs exceed your actual audience.
I don't thing the games killed the genre - I think the demographic behind it killed it, almost like a life cycle.
I've always regarded the MMORPG genre like a small window that was opened in the information age, and it's starting to close. Let me explain...
So we know the large scale MMORPG scene was largely birthed when AC, UO and EQ were prominent. These games came out when computers (capable of running them) and internet access were becoming prevalent and established in more and more households in the mid to late 90s. So the largest consumer base were people born in the late 70s and early 80s; these people were in junior/senior highschool and college. This was a huge development, both in all-encompassing entertainment and access to information. It had a huge following because it was so new and so readily available to millions of people. We had access to cheaper and cheaper technology and a plethora of time to waste.
WoW was so successful because it siphoned off players who had already invested 5+ years (like myself) into EQ and the others looking for something fresh and new; to instill that first experience in an open world with no idea what to do. This worked for a while because it was such a polar opposite to EQ in terms of difficulty, loot, etc. People relished in it.
So WoW was quite successful for quite sometime until two inevitable things: the age of its demographic and the nature of the human brain. The people who were completely absorbed in this era are now into their mid to late 30s to 40s. Their concept of time has changed from sitting in a raid for hours to managing a household and family; there simply isn't the time or will to do it anymore. And the brain is wired to simply 'change the channel' to see what else is on. It needs something new.
So coupled with those inevitabilities and the complete explosion and saturation of social media, smaller devices and other nuances to entertainment, people are simply inundated with choice now. And they will go with instant gratification over a long-term reward.
I've always regarded the MMORPG genre like a small window that was opened in the information age, and it's starting to close. Let me explain...
So we know the large scale MMORPG scene was largely birthed when AC, UO and EQ were prominent. These games came out when computers (capable of running them) and internet access were becoming prevalent and established in more and more households in the mid to late 90s. So the largest consumer base were people born in the late 70s and early 80s; these people were in junior/senior highschool and college. This was a huge development, both in all-encompassing entertainment and access to information. It had a huge following because it was so new and so readily available to millions of people. We had access to cheaper and cheaper technology and a plethora of time to waste.
WoW was so successful because it siphoned off players who had already invested 5+ years (like myself) into EQ and the others looking for something fresh and new; to instill that first experience in an open world with no idea what to do. This worked for a while because it was such a polar opposite to EQ in terms of difficulty, loot, etc. People relished in it.
So WoW was quite successful for quite sometime until two inevitable things: the age of its demographic and the nature of the human brain. The people who were completely absorbed in this era are now into their mid to late 30s to 40s. Their concept of time has changed from sitting in a raid for hours to managing a household and family; there simply isn't the time or will to do it anymore. And the brain is wired to simply 'change the channel' to see what else is on. It needs something new.
So coupled with those inevitabilities and the complete explosion and saturation of social media, smaller devices and other nuances to entertainment, people are simply inundated with choice now. And they will go with instant gratification over a long-term reward.
The thing that has always disappointed me with modern MMO is the lack of meaningful communities. They always feel like over glorified chat rooms. Asherons call was one of the only MMO I've played that generated meaningful communities. It did this by establishing direct relationships with other players via the monarchy / patron - vassal system. Patrons would provide assistance to their vassals, and vassals would provide XP pass up. Ok nvm I need to go to a meeting. But yeah, I wish MMO went the path of AC instead of WoW.
I would say that WoW rocketed the genre to a ceiling that no other MMO can ever hope to get to. The small space afforded by the genre prior to WoW still exists.
If anything killed something though, FFXI killed Square. They got way too involved in it and neglected everything else for years and years.
If anything killed something though, FFXI killed Square. They got way too involved in it and neglected everything else for years and years.