Are people burned out on STOR or MMOs?

[Tintagel]

Personally MMO's in general

[Melacon]

MMO's for me. Having played UO, EQ, EQ2, WoW, SWG, etc., I've become really jaded. I'm still waiting for the MMO that breaks the mold and does everything differently, again. UO was the only one so far in the list that did things a bit differently. Skill based advancement rather than leveling, nearly full player-run economy, etc.

 

As a computer scientist and a current masters candidate in CS, I've been working up a thesis on MMO design, psychology etc. I'm more interested in the social and economic aspects though and how we simulate that or reproduce real-life performance in a video game and through code.

 

That said, SWTOR still isn't it. It's fun enough but at the end of the day it's not much more than a rehash of existing MMO best-practices and subscription retention ideas.

 

What will be THAT next MMO that will cause people's jaws to drop and lead them away from other MMO's and onto the next generation? Still working on the answer to that

 

Right on....we just need one developer to just bite the bullet and make an actual good game and be happy with 500k subs instead of this treadmill of crap being produced lately.

[illgot]

Yeah, I'm burned out on looking like crap in every MMO I play (exceptions are Champions Online, LoTR, and DCUO).

[DraonaiMimnov]

Not burned out yet. I'm counting on The Repopulation to be the next big MMO since they're heading in the direction of a sandbox MMO.

[Rodane]

No.

 

I enjoy mmos and I enjoy SWTOR.

 

When a company must accomadate millions of players, no one will get everything they want. Either live with that fact or avoid mainstream games. Because major companies like EA are not looking for a "niche" market. They want mainstream.

Edited March 19, 2012 by Rodane
Streamlined.

[Optimism]

MMO's in general. The hate train from disgruntled players from WoW keep trying to move onto other games and eventually migrate back into that game. Even then, I think the majority are playing the wrong type of game with people requesting cross realm LFG and so forth. If you want to play something that involves little to zero social interaction, Battlefield 3 is $60 and has no subscription fee.

 

I feel so bad for GW2 only because of the hate train heading that way and the majority trying to expect WoW out of GW2. The only difference with GW2 is that there's no subscription.

 

The hate train in general are trying to love an MMO they used to love and many newer MMO's are paying the price for that.

[Qukatt]

Im pretty burned out even after an mmo break of almost a year between wow and tor. I never raided or anything there (which is why i was sooooo bored of wow) and here i dunno, i just dont even want to alt anymore and im an altoholic (48 toons on city of heroes back in the day.. that includes 24 or the german and french servers where i had no idea what anything was saying)

 

i dunno..

 

 

I'm now waiting on

but i'll prolly play gw2 to pass the time

[MCAMCJ]

This is just my observation and opinion - and I'm not trying to attack players who are not having fun in the game. I also recognize there are some much needed patches and improvements in certain areas.

 

However, I do think part of the problem is people are blaming SWTOR when in reality they're done with MMOs. In my extended circle of guildmates and gaming friends, the people who are the most upset with SWTOR are the ones who play every new MMO at launch, or who spent several years as hardcore raiders in WOW. The ones who are having a lot of fun either took a long break from MMOs or played them casually enough to not get burned out.

 

There's nothing wrong with being burned out on a genre - I won't touch a modern or WW II shooter because I'm just done with that type of game. I am enjoying SWTOR a lot because I took a year break from playing MMOs after the first few months of Cataclysm.

 

Anyone else feel the same way?

 

I'm personally tired of the same old game in a different shell. My experience so far is this, swtor = wow in space with voice overs and cinematics.

 

And before anyone jumps in with the 'wow fanboi' nonsense... I hate wow and always have. I played it because there was unfortunately nothing better that actually has a healthy player base imho.

 

And I am so sick and tired of every damn game copying wow, trying to be like wow, and/or pretending they aren't trying to be like wow when in fact they are like wow.

 

I am desperately waiting for something new to come along that actually has some inkling of true combat mechanics and actual world pvp. I am so desperately tired of all the media hyped up nonsense that developers use these days just so they can hit x number of initial sales and subs.

 

I am so sick and tired of game companies doing absolutely nothing original.

 

I am so sick of gaming companies that think just because certain things made wow successful, those same things will make them successful.

 

Also, I am so sick of Mythic, Bioware, Bioware Mythic or w/e you want to call them now having great concepts for games and yet failing to actually put those concepts into anything other than advertising. I played DAoC from the very beginning and stuck with it for 8 years on and off (less some time I couldn't play due to military obligations)... 8 years of watching them constantly destroying an absolutely amazing game mechanic, design and concept.

 

I seriously hoped they would have learned by now, and yet, 11 years later and more than $5,000 total invested in this company, we're watching the same old nonsense once again. The same nonsense that essentially began with Trials of Atlantis and have haunted this company ever since.. up to and including Warhammer Online and now SWTOR... That's somewhere around 9 years of continuous nonsense.

 

So now it's time I move on. Maybe one day they'll figure out that at the end of the day, the customers know what they want much more than the arrogant devs think they know what the customers want.

 

And I can promise you one thing... we want something NEW. I think I can speak for every WoW player as well when I say this... people do NOT want yet another clone of an old, tired game.

Edited March 19, 2012 by MCAMCJ

[Kozor]

This is just my observation and opinion - and I'm not trying to attack players who are not having fun in the game. I also recognize there are some much needed patches and improvements in certain areas.

 

However, I do think part of the problem is people are blaming SWTOR when in reality they're done with MMOs. In my extended circle of guildmates and gaming friends, the people who are the most upset with SWTOR are the ones who play every new MMO at launch, or who spent several years as hardcore raiders in WOW. The ones who are having a lot of fun either took a long break from MMOs or played them casually enough to not get burned out.

 

There's nothing wrong with being burned out on a genre - I won't touch a modern or WW II shooter because I'm just done with that type of game. I am enjoying SWTOR a lot because I took a year break from playing MMOs after the first few months of Cataclysm.

 

Anyone else feel the same way?

 

People are burned out on WoW/EQ clones, not MMOs. Which is why SWTOR is losing subcribers. Almost zero innovation.

 

But yeah for people who can't think outside the box MMO genre = WoW I guess, so they are burned out on MMOs in a way.

Edited March 19, 2012 by Kozor

[Cernow]

WoW burned me out for that particular type of MMO design - the gear treadmill, daily grind, repetitive PVP grind and so on. So any game that tries to be a WoW clone is going to burn me out pretty quick. What has been keeping me going in SWTOR is the storylines and the fact that levelling is fun. But at 50 it turns into a subpar WoW clone. I knew this when I joined the game, I entered with my eyes open. But once I've had my fun levelling some alts and seeing some different storylines I'm most likely off. I won't do a WoW style grind ever again in any MMO.

 

I know some people will say "well you just don't like MMOs anymore". But these are usually people who only know MMOs post WoW. WoW made the genre mass market, which is fine, but it also got the money men, the investors, the shareholders involved. When vast sums of money are invested into the development of a game like SWTOR it is only understandable that the investors want their money back and then their profits. And currently the only way how they know how to do this is by making their MMO follow the WoW model.

 

Perhaps someone will be brave enough to break the mold soon. I think what needs to happen is for some smaller studios to make some MMOs again and get away from the WoW model. Big budget doesn't necessarily mean best. Sometimes a huge project can stumble where a smaller more focused project can succeed.

Edited March 19, 2012 by Cernow

[Karikma]

Since the beginning of January, I dont even play this game. It was somewhere on Alderaan, flying on a sky elephant, where i started thinking, "This game is BS." I expected innovation on the level of BF3 over CoD but it's not truly innovative on any level. just offering up a few tricks like delayed crafting and companions, to make you think it is. Creature handler in SWG was forty times better than SWTOR companions. This day and age they should have stepped it up a bit and really gave us a next level SW experience. I'll still be waiting on the true WoW killer and once SW Kinect comes out i don't think ill ever play this game again.

[Frostvein]

People are bored with the treadmill... but not exercise itself.

 

The problem with MMOs today, as other have pointed out, is that they follow a streamlined, simplistic and utterly shallow format. WoW did a lot of things new in 2004, but it also dumbed down the 'oldschool' MMO formula into a laughable playground. People who would find vanilla WoW's content "challenging" by today's standards would be absolutely lost when fighting the unforgiving worlds of EQ or UO. In sacrificing difficulty for accessibility, WoW broadened the market significantly. Suddenly the 'weekend gamer' and the 'casual' had a real chance to compete in these games. Nobody intelligent should ever argue that that move was a mistake, given the unbelievable financial success that WoW has been.

 

Having said that, in the past few years Blizzard has pushed the envelope to even further, and the result has led to the degradation of not only their game, but the genre as a whole. The innate idea behind the MMORPG was of creating a massive, multiplayer universe, and the part of that formula that requires players to work together is actually reliant on a certain degree of difficulty. To put that in layman's terms: the easier you make this ****, the less people want to work with each other to get it done.

 

The problem with the market it today is that it is A) enamored of Blizzard's creation (and, from a design perspective, convinced that WoW's path to success must be the only navigable route), and B) unfathomably easy. You know what things I remember in MMOs? Things that hurt. Like when my town had a base in SWG and it got blown up; or my guild wiped for months on a boss. The more facerollable and forgiving you make content, the more idiots your product attracts. That might be good in a short term business sense, but it accomplishes nothing in your longterm objective of building a core group of subscribers who will support your product for a decade or longer (and who will work together without constantly undermining another in an endless stream of oneupsmanship).

 

One need only look at EVE Online to see a product that has taken the complete opposite design approach of everything out there and has carved a wonderful little niche for itself. I find EVE bland and tiresome, but there's a healthy chunk of people who really enjoy its frosty, unforgiving emptiness. What's more, they, and the developers, absolutely revel in the fact that the game isn't for everyone; that the product is geared towards a certain, specific crowd of hardcore gamers, and that the only people welcome into the fold are the ones who will either sink or swim when plunged into their shark-infested waters. And, even more remarkably, EVE remains a small-budget operation -- choosing to eschew massive subscriber numbers in favor of a low monetary ceiling. To say EVE is anything other than a refreshing oasis in today's market would be incredibly short-sighted.

 

The problem with TOR is that it has fallen into both of the aforementioned traps (it is too easy and too close to WoW), and has the added albatross around its neck of being an extremely clunky product. Animations aren't seamless, skill bloat is everywhere, and the game's engine -- like it or not -- can't seem to handle the title that has been built on its back. Yes, the problems with TOR are systematic to the larger genre as a whole... but make no mistake that this game would be an absolute ghost town right now if it wasn't for the license behind it. If it wasn't Star Wars, it would already be F2P. That is the only thing that is keeping this below-average game from sinking beneath the waves.

 

This post is pretty spot on.

 

The thing you missed is, alot of people left WoW looking for something a bit different. But SWToR didn't manage to copy over enough of what made WoW successful, thus creating an inferior product.

 

From a PvP standpoint, what does SWToR offer over or do better then WoW?

From a PvE standpoint, what does SWToR offer over or do better then WoW?

 

Really, the only thing ToR does better then WoW is the leveling experience.

 

I like this game but the only reason I left WoW was because of developer incompetence and laziness. Since Cata launched they released 2 new tiers with a total of what, 15 bosses? ULD had nearly that much. Class Balance? Non-existent, number changes rarely take place. If your preferred spec sucks at the beginning of the expansion, chances are its going to blow for at least half of it, if not the rest of it. The game just wasn't worth it to me anymore.

 

ToR isn't shaping up to be much different, either. I'm still hopeful they get things smoothed out, but for now it feels like I'm stuck in this weird place where I'm playing a game that isn't as good as the one that I left, but I dislike the old game enough to stay here till something better comes along.

[Kozor]

For those who are bored with WoW-like design I recommend checking out these projects:

 

-The Secret World

-Archeage

-Guild Wars 2 obviously

- TERA if you like asian grindfests (I know I don't)

Edited March 19, 2012 by Kozor

[thominoh]

MMO's used to be art. Someone's idea and passion brought to life in an Online Universe for others to explore and enjoy simultaneously (UO/EQ days)

 

Today, MMO's are about making the most money off of us.

 

That's pretty much the answer to everyone's complaints.

 

So true.. so true.. I"m just burned out on this theme park ride genre.. I love the story line quest, but I HATE all the others.. It's so predictable, that I avoid it after my 2nd alt, which really slows down the game some.. I miss the ole days of "camping" with a group.. This to me was much more enjoyable because due to the simple variable of what roles were in the group.. I miss the dynamic zones, such as the Giant that walks around at any given time or other mobs.. SURPRISE .. run.. run away.. Death needs to sting more.. I miss pulling, crowd control and support.. Bring it all back......

[MCAMCJ]

For those who are bored with WoW-like design I recommend checking out these projects:

 

-The Secret World

-Archeage

-Guild Wars 2 obviously

- TERA if you like asian grindfests (I know I don't)

 

Does no one else find it sad - from a pvp point of view anyway - that GW2 seems to be using more concepts from DAoC and warhammer than the actual owners/maintainers of said games are?

 

Now, I haven't actually played GW2 yet so don't hold me to the above, but from what i've seen so far, it's using a lot of things that made DAoC great (pvp wise) and could have made warhammer great if it had the right set of devs.

[MCAMCJ]

So true.. so true.. I"m just burned out on this theme park ride genre.. I love the story line quest, but I HATE all the others.. It's so predictable, that I avoid it after my 2nd alt, which really slows down the game some.. I miss the ole days of "camping" with a group.. This to me was much more enjoyable because due to the simple variable of what roles were in the group.. I miss the dynamic zones, such as the Giant that walks around at any given time or other mobs.. SURPRISE .. run.. run away.. Death needs to sting more.. I miss pulling, crowd control and support.. Bring it all back......

 

So very true...

 

I also miss the general adult nature of players back then. There was actually a great community across variou different game genres... but then came along that other game in all it's cartoony glory that brought all the immature people with it. And what we're left with is a 'community' of sociopaths.

 

These days, asking a question or asking for help etc will do nothing but get you flamed, *****ed at and otherwise trolled because for some unknown reason, people in MMORPG's these days have absolutely no idea of how to interact with other people.

 

I never did understand why people with absolutely no social skills whatsoever end up playing MMORPG's...

[NoxiousAlby]

This is just my observation and opinion - and I'm not trying to attack players who are not having fun in the game. I also recognize there are some much needed patches and improvements in certain areas.

 

However, I do think part of the problem is people are blaming SWTOR when in reality they're done with MMOs. In my extended circle of guildmates and gaming friends, the people who are the most upset with SWTOR are the ones who play every new MMO at launch, or who spent several years as hardcore raiders in WOW. The ones who are having a lot of fun either took a long break from MMOs or played them casually enough to not get burned out.

 

There's nothing wrong with being burned out on a genre - I won't touch a modern or WW II shooter because I'm just done with that type of game. I am enjoying SWTOR a lot because I took a year break from playing MMOs after the first few months of Cataclysm.

 

Anyone else feel the same way?

 

For me it's not that i'm done with MMO's what i've had my fill of is the "Holy Trinity" system and this constant hamster wheel that we can never seem to get off.

 

MMO's are great, the opportunity to play along side and interact in a world with other people makes it feel alive, it's just 15yrs of the "Holy Trinity" has left me burned out..

Edited March 19, 2012 by NoxiousAlby

[Akash]

This is just my observation and opinion - and I'm not trying to attack players who are not having fun in the game. I also recognize there are some much needed patches and improvements in certain areas.

 

However, I do think part of the problem is people are blaming SWTOR when in reality they're done with MMOs. In my extended circle of guildmates and gaming friends, the people who are the most upset with SWTOR are the ones who play every new MMO at launch, or who spent several years as hardcore raiders in WOW. The ones who are having a lot of fun either took a long break from MMOs or played them casually enough to not get burned out.

 

There's nothing wrong with being burned out on a genre - I won't touch a modern or WW II shooter because I'm just done with that type of game. I am enjoying SWTOR a lot because I took a year break from playing MMOs after the first few months of Cataclysm.

 

Anyone else feel the same way?

 

I think people were hoping for something revolutionary and extraordinary with SWTOR, considering its cost and time of development. We didn't get that. We got a bare-bones rehash of what we've already done.

[Panzerbase]

People are bored with the treadmill... but not exercise itself.

 

The problem with MMOs today, as other have pointed out, is that they follow a streamlined, simplistic and utterly shallow format. WoW did a lot of things new in 2004, but it also dumbed down the 'oldschool' MMO formula into a laughable playground. People who would find vanilla WoW's content "challenging" by today's standards would be absolutely lost when fighting the unforgiving worlds of EQ or UO. In sacrificing difficulty for accessibility, WoW broadened the market significantly. Suddenly the 'weekend gamer' and the 'casual' had a real chance to compete in these games. Nobody intelligent should ever argue that that move was a mistake, given the unbelievable financial success that WoW has been.

 

Having said that, in the past few years Blizzard has pushed the envelope to even further, and the result has led to the degradation of not only their game, but the genre as a whole. The innate idea behind the MMORPG was of creating a massive, multiplayer universe, and the part of that formula that requires players to work together is actually reliant on a certain degree of difficulty. To put that in layman's terms: the easier you make this ****, the less people want to work with each other to get it done.

 

The problem with the market it today is that it is A) enamored of Blizzard's creation (and, from a design perspective, convinced that WoW's path to success must be the only navigable route), and B) unfathomably easy. You know what things I remember in MMOs? Things that hurt. Like when my town had a base in SWG and it got blown up; or my guild wiped for months on a boss. The more facerollable and forgiving you make content, the more idiots your product attracts. That might be good in a short term business sense, but it accomplishes nothing in your longterm objective of building a core group of subscribers who will support your product for a decade or longer (and who will work together without constantly undermining another in an endless stream of oneupsmanship).

 

One need only look at EVE Online to see a product that has taken the complete opposite design approach of everything out there and has carved a wonderful little niche for itself. I find EVE bland and tiresome, but there's a healthy chunk of people who really enjoy its frosty, unforgiving emptiness. What's more, they, and the developers, absolutely revel in the fact that the game isn't for everyone; that the product is geared towards a certain, specific crowd of hardcore gamers, and that the only people welcome into the fold are the ones who will either sink or swim when plunged into their shark-infested waters. And, even more remarkably, EVE remains a small-budget operation -- choosing to eschew massive subscriber numbers in favor of a low monetary ceiling. To say EVE is anything other than a refreshing oasis in today's market would be incredibly short-sighted.

 

The problem with TOR is that it has fallen into both of the aforementioned traps (it is too easy and too close to WoW), and has the added albatross around its neck of being an extremely clunky product. Animations aren't seamless, skill bloat is everywhere, and the game's engine -- like it or not -- can't seem to handle the title that has been built on its back. Yes, the problems with TOR are systematic to the larger genre as a whole... but make no mistake that this game would be an absolute ghost town right now if it wasn't for the license behind it. If it wasn't Star Wars, it would already be F2P. That is the only thing that is keeping this below-average game from sinking beneath the waves.

 

Exactly, that sums it up, very well said. Just another WoW clone produced for a population that has moved beyond WoW.

[Jederix]

Its a fine line, go too far or too little either way and it wont achieve anything, and with gaming being a big business it will likely see little risk, Thats why year after year we are now seeing the same games pumped out, just updated from the year before.

The effort for something new and different is not as important and something big, succesfull and constant.

I feel the way the new batch of MMOs are, (TOR/GW2 etc) are solid games caught between players wanting different, but no one knowing what different is, plus other factors like living on the ghosts of MMOs past.

Its a step in the right direction. but for many a step not big enough, or a step too far for others.

 

"Different" is just too much of a risk to get wrong.

 

Too often, "different" means "I want another EQ where everyone is forced to group and build an online community" when the playerbase as a whole does not want that experience.

 

Innovative is not going back 10 years to redo an old, obsolete formula, as some would like to think it does.

[Meldwyn]

Yes

 

/char

[MCAMCJ]

Too often, "different" means "I want another EQ where everyone is forced to group and build an online community" when the playerbase as a whole does not want that experience.

 

Innovative is not going back 10 years to redo an old, obsolete formula, as some would like to think it does.

 

Actually, given MMOs of the past 6+ years, bringing something like challenging game play back would be pretty damn innovative.

 

These days it's about about getting the max level with the best gear as fast as possible without actually having to work for or earn any of it.

 

So yes, bringing some 'old' concepts back to a genre who has been spoon fed for more than half a decade would break the current mold and would be quite innovative.

Edited March 19, 2012 by MCAMCJ

[AHChrist]

Does no one else find it sad - from a pvp point of view anyway - that GW2 seems to be using more concepts from DAoC and warhammer than the actual owners/maintainers of said games are?

 

Now, I haven't actually played GW2 yet so don't hold me to the above, but from what i've seen so far, it's using a lot of things that made DAoC great (pvp wise) and could have made warhammer great if it had the right set of devs.

 

Yeah...Warhammer messed up so bad that I figured when I bought this game they would have learned. I have concluded, they just don't care. They don't want to make a dynamic MMO. They just want to have a project, make enough money to make it profitable, move on. It is like the music industry. Keep doing the same crappy music because they will buy it.

[wifeaggro]

This is just my observation and opinion - and I'm not trying to attack players who are not having fun in the game. I also recognize there are some much needed patches and improvements in certain areas.

 

However, I do think part of the problem is people are blaming SWTOR when in reality they're done with MMOs. In my extended circle of guildmates and gaming friends, the people who are the most upset with SWTOR are the ones who play every new MMO at launch, or who spent several years as hardcore raiders in WOW. The ones who are having a lot of fun either took a long break from MMOs or played them casually enough to not get burned out.

 

There's nothing wrong with being burned out on a genre - I won't touch a modern or WW II shooter because I'm just done with that type of game. I am enjoying SWTOR a lot because I took a year break from playing MMOs after the first few months of Cataclysm.

 

Anyone else feel the same way?

People are burned out on pure theme park MMO'speriod. and the lack of creative content. TOR is very rudimentary in design i think the MMO genre is stagnant creating quite a vaccum to nothing. if they were burned out they would not be spending their time on the forums complaining and demanding a better product.

[Rohke]

I actualy went back to WoW last week and I still enjoy it. Enjoyed my time on it more than TOR. However I never played WoW solid for months and months I always played a bit of WoW and then switched to another mmo for a while and then back to WoW.

 

The mmo i miss the most is FFXI because as someone mentioned before you can log on and not really do much but still have fun. The community was by far the best ive ever played with. You had to work together to level and advance and everyone was always helpful. It had deep systems like crafting and nations could take over territory giving benefits.

 

The game was also difficult and combat was not something you could easily learn to be most effective.

 

Mabye we need some big developer to come and make an mmo of old and see how it does but nobody will fund such a project due to risk factor. So you have to rely on small indie companies and they dont do so good or they make something awesome but for facebook lol.

 

Strangely I rate runescape back when it was a 2d masterpiece higher than TOR. It might have looked crap but it was deeper and the quests were really varied and not all combat based. If i wanted i could just bake or make wine.