MMO's, Where did it all go wrong? (long)

[Tohrazer]

hi guys, first of all i'll be drawing several parallels, i want to state that i do NOT play wow, i havent done for years and i will never be reinstalling it, but i will be taking a few examples from there (some good, some bad - timeline dependant)

 

(and no im not quitting, i still enjoy the PVE raiding but im already seeing alot of friends and guildies leaving, which naturally is not much fun)

 

so here we are, Launch month of Swtor, its all shiny, new - many of us have been waiting for it for 4 years, so we're thrilled right? - actually no, many of us are not thrilled, and here is why:

 

MMO's These days give everything away for nothing, nobody is special, theres no "sweet loot" you can really earn, the rakata gear (the only gear in the game that could take even a small bit of skill) is in many cases WORSE than its columi equivalent (the tier below) and where its better, its VERY margainal, theres no such thing as a L50 that isnt bristling with epics anymore, even playing semi casually you can experience all the game has to show in a couple of months (excluding rerolling alts, but really - no matter what bioware says, thats not a viable endgame model)

 

theres nothing to devote effort to, nothing to keep you logging in, yesterday i reached battlemaster (valor rank 60) and i did it well over 2 weeks later than many people, i've completed all the hard mode raid content (honestly it was very easy) and from what i've heard NMM isnt much of a step up

 

do you guys remember mmo's of a bygone age? where we were able to create our own content (daoc, swg) or where gear was something you could pride yourself on(WoW), when you NEEDED to grind all your blue set out before you could even look at a raid, you had to EARN the right to go and wipe for a week or two on each new boss, it felt epic - it had an amazing community, the whole atmosphere was on another level entirely, those lucky enough to get some coveted purple items would be gazed at wonderously by scores of people stood around the capital cities, everyone knew which guilds had killed what, which players had what item

 

and here we are now, where you can wander into a hard mode flashpoint and gain a tier 2 epic piece in 30 minutes, where gear is handed out so freely, that Tier 1 epics are actually completely skipped, where the stats are barely differentiable from one another tier to tier, and dont even get me started on the PVP stat

 

now i hear many of you saying "wow has all that stuff now, its fine, stop complaining", what you guys dont realise is that, yes, whilst wow did destroy much of what made their game great, splintering communities with cross server bg's, breaking server first interest by implementing cross server transfers, ruining immersion by being able to "queue" for an instance, and now even raids - wow did it AFTER it had already attracted and retained many millions of people, after it had implemented a whole host of great features complex and simple that swtor lacks (from simple things like the humble macro, guild banks, ui customisation, addons) to larger things such as Arenas, guild achievements + many others

 

who remembers running around a zone looking for crafting mats to make the right consumables for a given boss? i sure do, in Swtor we simply send our companions out, whilst we continue to run circles round the republic fleet (or imperial fleet) - thats another matter entirely, a capital "city" devoid of charm of personality, where you can simply run to the "mission deck" and enter any and all flashpoints/raid instances/warzones etc (our capital city feels like an instance, not part of a living breathing world, imps cant raid it, etc, its all wrong, wrong wrong wrong)

 

so now we have a game where everyone has the same gear more or less, theres nothing hard to earn (again, rakata is the only gear that could possibly take some small bit of skill or teamwork) and its WORSE or at the best incremental upgrades from easily obtainable columi/pvp gear

 

guys, WE CANT EVEN queue for warzones as a full group (basic functionality for any mmo!!), why is the game stopping me from having any kind of fun when i login? im FORCED to play with randoms, right now my day is: login, do 2 dailys, logoff - log back in if its a pve raid day and everything isnt cleared already, what is "fun" to do in the meantime? get zerged by imps on ilum? warzone with groups of complete randoms? opening RNG bags where people can get great rewards with little effort, or have the complete opposite happen?

 

I AM NOT ALLOWED TO CHOOSE WHICH WZ I WANT TO PLAY, im SICK of alderaan and voidstar, i get like 2 huttballs all day even if i queue like 20 times

 

i've already noticed a huge drop off in activity on my server, all the top guilds are struggling with activity/recruiting etc

 

i know alot of people will tell me "lol you rushed to 50, we're still enjoying alderaan!" and all that other stuff you love to say, i put this to you: what happens when you hit 50 and most of the other L50's already quit? when there is no tangible community at level cap to join? or are at the least less active, when guilds have already been destroyed by entropy, when players have left the game because theres basically little or no fun to be had (the one thing i get to enjoy in swtor is raiding atm, pvp is awful without full premades)

 

then theres all the other stuff (more bugs we all know about that i dont care to BEGIN listing) especially things like pressing an ability and it just doesnt work (what on earth?)

 

i WANT this game to succeed, we ALL do, i know so many people that are sick to the teeth of wow/other games/etc and really want a new home - im NOT asking for more and more content, what im asking for is functionality, it is FUN to logon and play in a full premade pvp group, it is FUN to play arena with some friends, its FUN to feel like my time invested is going to actually improve my character, rather than "maybe earn a sidegrade that everyone else already has with minimal effort anyway"

 

theres more stuff that i can think of which i wont go in to, because im sure someone has already said most of it before, i really wish i could be a fly on the wall @ developer meetings sometimes, i dont understand how these people think, players and community consistently have better ideas/vision/foresight than the people payed to make these games

 

edit: alot of people dont realise how much keeping the so called "hardcore" brings to a game and the community, additionally id like to point out that the time sinks are COMPLETELY wrong in this game, i would LOVE to have to opportunity to "sink" my time into full premade wz's, instead i have to sink my time into 5 loading screens when swapping planets

 

kind regards,

Edited January 30, 2012 by Tohrazer

[Ntranced]

Have to say I agree whole heartedly with the first half dozen paragraphs. The problem with all MMOs is WoW. Despite it being a pile of dog turd it happened to attract millions of players and every MMO to ever be launched will secretly be hoping to emulate that level of subs. The last two I played were Warhammer and Aion. WAR had a chance but was shot in both knees by the PVP development team. Oh for the days of DAoC when every single game I was playing had people quitting in droves to go play it.

 

So what you get now is a watered down MMO. The fact so many people are running around level 60 valor in full Battlemaster gear this soon after launch is frankly laughable. Exploits sure but the hardcore basement dwellers should be taking much longer too. In the "old" days after 6 months everyone would be talking of the first guy on x server to be valor 60.

 

PVE isn't much better either. With a guild mate of mine we 2 manned the Kaon under siege flashpoint with our pets, and we don't have great gear. I quite like that, in fact I really think Bioware should think about 2 man FP versions in their model, less drops and less quality drops of course. The vast majority of players don't want to devote 24 hours a week to raiding, even if a hardcore guild would let them try I certainly don't want to now that I no longer live in a basement but I still want to see the content.

 

I hate crafting but as ever with MMOs (think WAR again) crafting seems like a last minute add-on by some part of the dev team who had nothing else to do (or were interns lol). The pet doing all the work is one thing to 400 but after that it should be damn hard, take a long time, take super rare mats that can be got not just by hard mode FPs and make gear (on rare occasions) that actually has some value (other than the obvious biochem every one is taking).

 

So in summary we pay the price of Bioware chasing the mass market. There are some nice side benefits along the way (awesome single player, voice acting, blah blah). But underneath it all is just another WoW clone.

[Tohrazer]

Have to say I agree whole heartedly with the first half dozen paragraphs. The problem with all MMOs is WoW. Despite it being a pile of dog turd it happened to attract millions of players and every MMO to ever be launched will secretly be hoping to emulate that level of subs. The last two I played were Warhammer and Aion. WAR had a chance but was shot in both knees by the PVP development team. Oh for the days of DAoC when every single game I was playing had people quitting in droves to go play it.

 

So what you get now is a watered down MMO. The fact so many people are running around level 60 valor in full Battlemaster gear this soon after launch is frankly laughable. Exploits sure but the hardcore basement dwellers should be taking much longer too. In the "old" days after 6 months everyone would be talking of the first guy on x server to be valor 60.

 

PVE isn't much better either. With a guild mate of mine we 2 manned the Kaon under siege flashpoint with our pets, and we don't have great gear. I quite like that, in fact I really think Bioware should think about 2 man FP versions in their model, less drops and less quality drops of course. The vast majority of players don't want to devote 24 hours a week to raiding, even if a hardcore guild would let them try I certainly don't want to now that I no longer live in a basement but I still want to see the content.

 

I hate crafting but as ever with MMOs (think WAR again) crafting seems like a last minute add-on by some part of the dev team who had nothing else to do (or were interns lol). The pet doing all the work is one thing to 400 but after that it should be damn hard, take a long time, take super rare mats that can be got not just by hard mode FPs and make gear (on rare occasions) that actually has some value (other than the obvious biochem every one is taking).

 

So in summary we pay the price of Bioware chasing the mass market. There are some nice side benefits along the way (awesome single player, voice acting, blah blah). But underneath it all is just another WoW clone.

 

i remember being the noob dazzled by the amazing gear of the epic raiders on my server, and hoping i could be like that one day, and the painstaking transition to becoming that well geared was long but rewarding,

 

you know how in wow theres like areas to farm things? like elemental fire or something, people would compete over spawns and gank eachother etc, it felt alive - something about swtor is creepy, the worlds feel ... i cant even explain it, lifeless, plastic, like they still have the wrapping on

 

its not a living breathing world, its weird :/ but all that aside.. id be happy with some simple functionality, group wz's, longer gear grind, macros, etc - but i wish people would stop trying to emulate wow, no game will EVER do wow as well as wow does wow, stop trying and start making good games already

[mangarrage]

It is called simply lack of wanting to earn

gimme now

 

It sad but that is mmo now because they want to attract people to something that everyone can do, and can do with minimal effort

 

That unfortunately is the way to make money in mmos today and every company will release the same reskinned, rethemed game until they all fail then someone will roll the dice

 

Basically a company isnt going to make a game to attract 200000 people even though I think that would be a nice number, plain and simply they want millions and more millions, investors are greedy, developers are rushed, players are spoiled and basically this is one of those products

 

I dont blame them really they arent alone. I would respect a creator who takes the chance and makes a real game, no frills, just content, and challenging content

[Tohrazer]

It is called simply lack of wanting to earn

gimme now

 

It sad but that is mmo now because they want to attract people to something that everyone can do, and can do with minimal effort

 

That unfortunately is the way to make money in mmos today and every company will release the same reskinned, rethemed game until they all fail then someone will roll the dice

 

Basically a company isnt going to make a game to attract 200000 people even though I think that would be a nice number, plain and simply they want millions and more millions, investors are greedy, developers are rushed, players are spoiled and basically this is one of those products

 

I dont blame them really they arent alone. I would respect a creator who takes the chance and makes a real game, no frills, just content, and challenging content

 

but its counter productive, it leaks subs left right and centre - any any half experienced mmo player with a bit of foresight could have told the devs as much before the game was even released

[Erosith]

but its counter productive, it leaks subs left right and centre - any any half experienced mmo player with a bit of foresight could have told the devs as much before the game was even released

 

wow is also leaking subs all over because of the panda crysis and before that even cata lost alot of subs

 

there is not way to make everyone happy

 

it all comes down to if you like the game then sub if you dont like it then go play something else

 

every company that has ever made an mmo have this issue

other then the ones that closed there servers down lol

 

fact remains BW dont want to copy wow

they want to learn on there own

[Gwarok]

Lotta good points. I just started by every game I play is basically compared to EQ. That game was a serious grind, too serious actually, but since it was the first MMO I played my perspective allowed me to get through it. Still, end game is really tough to get right. I don't have much expectations for Bioware getting it right out of the gate but what the hell, its Star Wars! They had my $60 as soon as I had time to get it. Lets hope they make enough to recoup the $200m dev costs and can get some talent that knows how to tune end game MMO's. Sounds like this game at present is far to easy for the hardcore players, and thats a shame. Fortunately I'm not one of them anymore, so this will work for me.

[SkateOnTrees]

but its counter productive, it leaks subs left right and centre - any any half experienced mmo player with a bit of foresight could have told the devs as much before the game was even released

 

doesn't really matter how many people join and leave

 

it's all about the money and whichever model generates more capital wins

 

theme parks are far more successful than sandboxes this is clear

[Apocalypsezero]

If I had to hazard a guess as to where it all went wrong, I would say it was when MMO's went mainstream and showed that they could be profitable. Doing such meant having to make MMO's appeal to the largest audience possible.

[archifikoss]

I appreciate the effort OP put in his post. Much better than the more common whines and trolling, and with a few good points but...

 

TOR was never meant to be the MMO experience OP and many others were obviously looking for. From quite early on we had indications that it would be heavily theme park, catering more to casuals like me, and generally be a very different game to SWG, a game many people seem to swear by (for good reason I'm sure).

 

Personally I'm having a lot of fun in the game. It has a lot of issues, most of which seem to be on bioware's to-do list. And content is constantly being added. However I feel that the game is meant to be played very casually. The slower you take it, the more fun it is. At least I'm enjoying playing in very short stints and generally with a laid back attitude.

 

Maybe I was able to manage my expectations, maybe they were more in line with what the game actually is.

 

I will say this: Enjoy the game for what it is rather than gloss over what it isn't If you cannot achieve this, I guess this isn't the game you're looking for - and I don't mean this in a patronizing or uppity way. Not all games appeal to all people - I should know!

[knightblaster]

Basically a company isnt going to make a game to attract 200000 people even though I think that would be a nice number, plain and simply they want millions and more millions, investors are greedy, developers are rushed, players are spoiled and basically this is one of those products

 

Oh those games will be made, but not by a AAA front-line Broadway/Hollywood developer/publisher like Activision or EA. Indie developers will make such games, but they won't have AAA bling.

 

The issue is that MMO gamers are getting jaded, and want the AAA bling MMOs to actually be new and innovative or challenging -- all of which goes against making a mass market game, and the AAA is always going to be aimed at the mass market now that Acti-Blizz have shown that MMOs *can* be mass market.

 

The "recursion to the mean" for MMOs is 200-300k, perhaps 500k for a very popular one. WoW is an outlier. We, the players, all know this. But the gaming business community is going to keep trying to siphon WoW's market, because it's so big and lucrative.

 

We're only going to see creative/innovative/challenging MMOs from indie developers, and we're going to have to hold our noses at the lack of bling. AAA games are all going to be chasing WoW's market, in one way or another, as long as it is there to be chased. Futile, yes, but don't tell that to the salmon attempting to spawn.

Edited January 30, 2012 by knightblaster

[Awarkle]

The problem is old school MMOS were group oriented they had classes that required grouping and god help you if you wernt the right class for the group.

 

I played a primary support class and basically didnt have to worry i broadcast LFG and that was it 10 seconds later was in a group. BUt there were other classes that said LFG and the response was a cold wind.

 

Then someone came up with the idea that everyone should be able to solo effectively, which basically killed off the whole group mechanic of MMO's they made it faster and more efficient to quest your way to end game THEN find a guild / group to do all the raidy stuff.

 

This i feel was a really really bad move yeah you had to find a group to do some levelling or even efficient leveling. BUT it made you talk to the other players and down time allowed you to get to know the rest of the realm.

 

I remember in DAOC i used to know at least 50% of the players on my server yeah it wasnt the highest population but i knew most people by name and knew of them from dungeon runs and from actually levelling up.

 

Most MMOs i can go from start to end and never group, when i do group its normally for 30 mins then we all go back to solo grind to end game. Its such that its ruined the dynamic

 

The whole Healer / DPS / tank trinity maybe old hat but at least it made you group.

[Lithomed]

Raids are killing this genre, not easy to get epics. MMO's have turned into nothing more than hamster wheels with combat mechanics tacked on. Even this game has shallow, uninteresting content when compared with great cRPG games of late, like Deus Ex and Mass Effect.

 

The good ole days of UO, SWG and DaoC are dead, EQ and WoW killed them.

[Malpracticex]

It is called simply lack of wanting to earn

gimme now

 

 

couldnt have said it better myself +1

[SithZigg]

So, basically, you want the return of time sinks. But here is the thing, time sinks =/= harder, just that it takes longer, and that is it. Just because you had to run around in circles, looking for crafting materials, did not make crafting harder to do, it just took longer to get things done. Time sinks do not add challenge, just padding.

[Arkerus]

I don't disagree with eveything the OP said...

 

BUT the ever long grind for gear to feel special was a poor game mechanic years ago and it would be a poor game mechanic now. Barriers to entry and lack of choice will always make for poor gameplay. That may have worked in SWG, EQ and early WoW, but that doesn't work for the current generation of games. MMOs are a lot more mainstream now and mainstream players don't want false barriers to entry.

 

The only reason people ask for this is because they don't have anything else to do and they want something to show for it. I'm sorry you don't leave the computer room but the rest of us do. Bioware hit a really sweet spot with this game where I don't have tons of barriers to gear.

 

Look...right now you can do a ton of content I can't even see yet. Why don't you go get all that gear or beat the hard modes?

 

How about farming magenta crystals and world bosses to make gear no one else can get?

 

//I wasted hours of my life spamming group chat in FFXI a few years back. I will never get those hours back. That game had so many barriers it might as well not even been a game.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Arkerus

[Dreossk]

It went wrong when the genre got dumbed down for the masses by games like WoW and when all you could do was fighting and nothing else.

[MajesticBeast]

Swtor is a joke for everyone that played mmo's before wow or when it was still Vanilla. Hm isnt even hard its below the difficulty of most other mmo's normal mode.

[Vitellius]

There is too much competition these days for people's time. The target market is the casual gamer, and they need immediate results or they will go watch youtube or play Xbox or load TF2 or download a rifftrax, etc.

 

Things need to be easily accessible and the goal line needs to be within site or they just up and quit. So, you either lose subs from the hard core that burns through it all or you loose subs from the casual who can't be bothered to spend all night in a raid but still thinks they deserve epic gear. It's not that they don't know what is going on. On the contrary, they know EXACTLY what is going on. They have the numbers. They see them everyday.

 

The hardcores are both a minority and difficult to please. Their demands are always much higher than the casual, and they chew up the content so fast, it is almost not even worth it to cater to them.

[SkateOnTrees]

I don't disagree with eveything the OP said...

 

BUT the ever long grind for gear to feel special was a poor game mechanic years ago and it would be a poor game mechanic now. Barriers to entry and lack of choice will always make for poor gameplay. That may have worked in SWG, EQ and early WoW, but that doesn't work for the current generation of games. MMOs are a lot more mainstream now and mainstream players don't want false barriers to entry.

 

The only reason people ask for this is because they don't have anything else to do and they want something to show for it. I'm sorry you don't leave the computer room but the rest of us do. Bioware hit a really sweet spot with this game where I don't have tons of barriers to gear.

 

Look...right now you can do a ton of content I can't even see yet. Why don't you go get all that gear or beat the hard modes?

 

How about farming magenta crystals and world bosses to make gear no one else can get?

 

//I wasted hours of my life spamming group chat in FFXI a few years back. I will never get those hours back. That game had so many barriers it might as well not even been a game.

 

sorry you didn't have the skill to play a real mmo

 

it was a good one (until abyssea)

[HalusW]

chasing the mass market

 

Bingo.

 

I don't think that you could find funding to develope a MMO if you said you weren't going to clone WoW. All the blame rests on WoW's epic subscription numbers.

[drogpac]

i'd take eq's group/solo mechanics over any other mmo out there.

 

 

daoc and shadowbane are my love childs as well, but the eq group/solo mechanics were still tops to me.

[Draylore]

there is not way to make everyone happy

 

 

 

 

I think when designers started trying to make everyone happy is when MMOs started down the wrong path. While it may seem a valid model from business point of view..........from a quality one I seriously question it. Its just not possible to do when you consider the vast diversity of playstyles you can end up with in a large scale MMO.

 

 

Also, we cannot ignore the fact that just as the MMO genre has changed so has the playerbase. Today's younger people are used to a more instant gratification society and thus will expect that in their MMOs.

 

I agree with alot of what the OP said........but I think its just a matter of some of us outgrowing the genre. While I may miss the days of 72 person 24 hour raids where one person maybe got an upgrade....I seriously doubt most of the people playing MMOs today could even imagine such a thing.

[Moondragon]

If I had to hazard a guess as to where it all went wrong, I would say it was when MMO's went mainstream and showed that they could be profitable. Doing such meant having to make MMO's appeal to the largest audience possible.

 

Wasn't this WoW? I'm not trolling. Serious question. For myself, the longest MMOs I ever played were SWG > FFXI > CoH. FFXI was by far my longest MMO and I loved that game except for the fact that it really had NO single player content. Yeah, there were other tweaks that needed to be made to it, but there was also a GREAT deal of solid concepts. Played a few other MMO's such as Ragnarok, AoC, LotR, D&D, etc...but even through all of those it seemed like "MMORPG's" weren't really "the thing"...until WoW hit. Then, people I would have NEVER pegged to play an MMO...started playing MMO's.

 

On topic with this game, I've been playing this game pretty consistently since pre-launch, and the fact that I'm 4 levels away from 50...makes me kinda sad actually. At the same time though, I've been having fun the entire way. Yes, I'm disappointed that they "dumbed things down" from some of the beta (probably because too many people thought it was "too hard"...bah) and yes, I understand their decisions from a business standpoint...but I absolutely hate that games have been geared to the "lowest common denominator" with "Instant Gratification" and the forefront.

 

No...I don't necessarily want a level "grind-fest" as far as FFXI pushed it or a 24-hour raid (don't know what game that is) but I do want that nice healthy mid-ground. I do have to admit that when I hit 75 with my Paladin in FFXI it was a "oooooh SH&% SON!" event where I felt like I REALLY did accomplish something...but at the same time it wasn't as enjoyable as this. I do realize that this title is probably "easy" because they want you to play 7 OTHER stories as well and yes, they're going after the mass market but still...I miss that sense of accomplishment that I would get after some hard work and great group coordination and tactics in just PvE alone.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Moondragon

[Arkerus]

sorry you didn't have the skill to play a real mmo

 

it was a good one (until abyssea)

 

Insulting me is hardly a good arguing tactic.

I don't even know what you're getting at.

 

I played for years. I also look back at that time and realize the game had too many barriers. It had nothing to do with skill.

 

Having tons of "gated" content only slows progression. I played a hell of a red mage but it just got boring and grindy. There is nothing about spamming chat looking for a group that requires skill. What skill is required in grinding out 100s of hours of monsters? You're comment is hardly appropriate.

 

Edited January 30, 2012 by Arkerus