One of the biggest problems for a current MMO: The People

[spacerobot]

I feel a huge part of the problem in this gen of MMO's are the people not necessarily the games. And I'm not slamming the people either I just think that they way people play games have changed affecting how MMO's are played and perceived.

 

There is an MMO herd that roams through the digital landscape like a plague looking to devour new games and content. People get overly hyped and psyched about a new MMO. The MMO launches, they move in and blow through content fast, get bored, rage quit, slam the game and look to the next product. I'm not saying people are right or wrong for doing this. I'm saying that gamers habits and tastes have changed.

 

I think this has come about due to the amount of games that are launching constantly. There are so many games in general releasing all the time, and specifically so many MMO's releasing that MMO's have turned into normal games that people play for a couple of weeks to a month then move to the next game.

 

Sometimes it is warranted though. Some MMO's have been very bad at launch. When I think of a bad MMO launch and just poor game mechanics in general I think of the Vanguard launch, FFXIV (I would consider that a failure), APB etc.

 

There have also been some great MMO's that have released that I know a lot of people blew through in a week, quit, uninstalled and will never go back. I put SWTOR, Tera, and Rift in that crowd. In my opinion they are nowhere near deserving a the tags "failure", and "suck".

 

GW2 is the next target. Everyone is hyping it up like crazy, the same way everyone hyped up SWTOR. The herd is going to move in, devour, quit and move on. A month after release people are going to be in the same boat talking about how GW2 and how it fell way short of the hype.

 

All this talk of losing subs, failure, F2P ruining the game etc, is part of the process of how a large portion of MMO players relate to games now since the majority of people do not want to play a game for more than a month no matter what it is. I think in no way that means that some of these great MMO's suck and are failures.

 

I'm a huge MMO fan. I always have been since the launch of EQ. I think SWTOR is a great game. Not perfect, but still great. I'm excited to see where they take the game and excited for the F2P crowd to jump in and start playing. It's all about building a product/franchise now after launch in the best way possible as opposed to having one shot at launch with succeed or failure states. I think F2P makes a lot of sense.

[DarthWoad]

Nope. Its the game. If the game is bad, people will leave.

[belizar]

reason why mmo fail is wow is turning the genre into fast food log in 10 mins get epics log out

 

i miss the times were u could spend time in a world and have fun not sit in a queue get loot and log out

next mmo should forget WoW and make and old skool mmo when mmo had a social element to them a sence of exploring a whole world feel gw2 will offer some of this but if that other mmo ES is to be good it needs to dump any element related to WoW and make its own version of MMO or it will be the next flop

[Briq]

you couldn't pay me enough to be a MMO developer.

 

that being said, this is about more than a bad game.. this is about a bad STAR WARS game. so the players are doubly disappointed

[Chikun]

I miss 40 man raids and DKP.

 

I miss castle sieges from Lineage 2 and player owned/run cities.

 

These things made games feel epic, not some snoozefest story or spamming rotations for loot pinatas.

Edited August 2, 2012 by Chikun

[spacerobot]

Nope. Its the game. If the game is bad, people will leave.

 

I disagree. I think people just want new multiplayer games on a regular basis. People are getting bored of games in general a lot faster now since there are so many out there.

[jediankh]

reason why mmo fail is wow is turning the genre into fast food log in 10 mins get epics log out

 

i miss the times were u could spend time in a world and have fun not sit in a queue get loot and log out

next mmo should forget WoW and make and old skool mmo when mmo had a social element to them a sence of exploring a whole world feel gw2 will offer some of this but if that other mmo ES is to be good it needs to dump any element related to WoW and make its own version of MMO or it will be the next flop

when you say that way WoW was so popular that it turned MMOs into a fad((facebook, twitter, etc.)) and cause other mmo's to fail, because they either copy wow, rush the game, or try something new but ultimate lose because WoW has became such a cancer to MMOs. so of course people will rush GW2 say "it F@#!%ing sux!" stay there and complain until they get fed up at were it's heading then they will move to Elder Scrolls Online and the cycle repeats.

[jediankh]

you couldn't pay me enough to be a MMO developer.

 

that being said, this is about more than a bad game.. this is about a bad STAR WARS game. so the players are doubly disappointed

 

Since when there was ever any good Star wars games these past years?

Edited August 2, 2012 by jediankh

[DarthWoad]

I disagree. I think people just want new multiplayer games on a regular basis. People are getting bored of games in general a lot faster now since there are so many out there.

 

So youre saying that these other games are attracting the players from swtor?

 

Thats because these "other games" are more interesting.

[Briq]

Since when there was ever any good Star wars games these past years?

 

I agree.. but the Star Wars franchise carries it's own set of fans on top of your standard MMO player base.

 

a prime example of what I'm talking about is the movie "The People vs George Lucas". it's on Netflix, check it out.

[spacerobot]

when you say that way WoW was so popular that it turned MMOs into a fad((facebook, twitter, etc.)) and cause other mmo's to fail, because they either copy wow, rush the game, or try something new but ultimate lose because WoW has became such a cancer to MMOs. so of course people will rush GW2 say "it F@#!%ing sux!" stay there and complain until they get fed up at were it's heading then they will move to Elder Scrolls Online and the cycle repeats.

 

Yeah it's a tough situation. If you are too much like WOW you suck because all you did was copy WOW. If you try to be too unique and non standard (FFXIV) then you suck because you are not like WOW and you don't have standard features.

[Diktat]

I feel a huge part of the problem in this gen of MMO's are the people not necessarily the games. And I'm not slamming the people either I just think that they way people play games have changed affecting how MMO's are played and perceived.

 

There is an MMO herd that roams through the digital landscape like a plague looking to devour new games and content. People get overly hyped and psyched about a new MMO. The MMO launches, they move in and blow through content fast, get bored, rage quit, slam the game and look to the next product. I'm not saying people are right or wrong for doing this. I'm saying that gamers habits and tastes have changed.

 

I think this has come about due to the amount of games that are launching constantly. There are so many games in general releasing all the time, and specifically so many MMO's releasing that MMO's have turned into normal games that people play for a couple of weeks to a month then move to the next game.

 

Sometimes it is warranted though. Some MMO's have been very bad at launch. When I think of a bad MMO launch and just poor game mechanics in general I think of the Vanguard launch, FFXIV (I would consider that a failure), APB etc.

 

There have also been some great MMO's that have released that I know a lot of people blew through in a week, quit, uninstalled and will never go back. I put SWTOR, Tera, and Rift in that crowd. In my opinion they are nowhere near deserving a the tags "failure", and "suck".

 

GW2 is the next target. Everyone is hyping it up like crazy, the same way everyone hyped up SWTOR. The herd is going to move in, devour, quit and move on. A month after release people are going to be in the same boat talking about how GW2 and how it fell way short of the hype.

 

All this talk of losing subs, failure, F2P ruining the game etc, is part of the process of how a large portion of MMO players relate to games now since the majority of people do not want to play a game for more than a month no matter what it is. I think in no way that means that some of these great MMO's suck and are failures.

 

I'm a huge MMO fan. I always have been since the launch of EQ. I think SWTOR is a great game. Not perfect, but still great. I'm excited to see where they take the game and excited for the F2P crowd to jump in and start playing. It's all about building a product/franchise now after launch in the best way possible as opposed to having one shot at launch with succeed or failure states. I think F2P makes a lot of sense.

If all this is true then explain why EVE-Online has a stable community around 350K-400K subscribers for 8 years.

And exception to the rule is not an answer.

[spacerobot]

So youre saying that these other games are attracting the players from swtor?

 

Thats because these "other games" are more interesting.

 

I think it's more "hey lets play something tonight". Let's play SWTOR? Nah I'm bored. Let's try something new. How about Gotham City Imposters. It's supposed to be pretty cool.

 

Then Gotham City Imposters is the new game for a few days. Then after that it's back to battlefield 3. Gotham City was played out, people got bored and moved on, BUT it was left at being a cool game that people got their kicks off of for a few days or a week, got bored (without doing everything you could do in the game) and moved on. The game wasn't a failure, the game didn't suck, people just got bored of it and moved on to the next.

[spacerobot]

If all this is true then explain why EVE-Online has a stable community around 350K-400K subscribers for 8 years.

And exception to the rule is not an answer.

 

I would ask are they taking on new subs and growing or is that the amount they settled with after launch? 8 Years from now would SWTOR be sitting at 350K - 400K subs? There is definitely a good chance of it.

[mangarrage]

The answer is completely and totally apparent to me.

Make a game that you can't blow through everything in a month

Really its that simple

 

I was in GS in rift within the first week the game was out, and ofc the one end game raid in that game was bugged

Aion the guild I was in had 30 50s in the first couple weeks and were doing fortresses and there was no endgame at all and lag central usa

Vanguard lol no raids whatsoever random named mobs in which you would fall through the world on the way to most of the time

Warhammer 2 hugely OP classes, completely bugged city raids which we did in the first month of that game

 

I could go on and on but the one theme that runs through all these games is 1-"endgame" is such a short period. In addition it takes up alot of manpower and budget to create all those zones, which some people spend literally hours in total.

 

Now in contrast you take a game like EQ which was huge, you learned to play characters well or you died and it took longer to level, you learned teamwork and socializing because alot of content was group based, you worked through expansions, getting keyed or flagged in order to even do the initial raids. You were always working toward something and when you were finally done an expansion. You look back and feel you accomplished something. Not to mention like 3 months after you did all that another expansion was coming out

 

Within the 1st month of this game some guilds were done and many more were done reg mode, which in all honesty was all you had to do because the gear was the same

 

Easy simple games that people can blow through arent the answer and will never be the answer. Unfortunately we have seen game after game where everything was put into the levelling, which is done in a matter of days to weeks and nothing is put into endgame

 

That is the problem period

 

I know alot of people like to say no matter what you put into a game people will blow through it. It just simply isnt true. It is true because the content isnt enough. In these modern games I have blown through everything alot of guilds have because it is simple and not enough

[jediankh]

I think it's more "hey lets play something tonight". Let's play SWTOR? Nah I'm bored. Let's try something new. How about Gotham City Imposters. It's supposed to be pretty cool.

 

Then Gotham City Imposters is the new game for a few days. Then after that it's back to battlefield 3. Gotham City was played out, people got bored and moved on, BUT it was left at being a cool game that people got their kicks off of for a few days or a week, got bored (without doing everything you could do in the game) and moved on. The game wasn't a failure, the game didn't suck, people just got bored of it and moved on to the next.

Which some of the reasons why i'm not proud to be a gamer anymore. don't believe me? here: http://www.cracked.com/article_18571_5-reasons-its-still-not-cool-to-admit-youre-gamer.html

[Briq]

8 Years from now would SWTOR be sitting at 350K - 400K subs? There is definitely a good chance of it.

 

with the current business climate coming from EA, I'll be utterly shocked if the servers are still on for this game in 8 years

[dandamanno]

The bar has been raised for mmo's. There is a lot of choice for people. If the game is not as fun as others that are out there, if it lacks features that other have, people will leave.

 

It is unreasonable to ask people to wait for a game to be good while paying for a subscription when there are so many other option available to them. That's not how the free market works.

[jediankh]

with the current business climate coming from EA, I'll be utterly shocked if the servers are still on for this game in 8 years

and i'll be shock when gaming stop being a fad by then.

[kevlarto]

I feel a huge part of the problem in this gen of MMO's are the people not necessarily the games. And I'm not slamming the people either I just think that they way people play games have changed affecting how MMO's are played and perceived.

 

There is an MMO herd that roams through the digital landscape like a plague looking to devour new games and content. People get overly hyped and psyched about a new MMO. The MMO launches, they move in and blow through content fast, get bored, rage quit, slam the game and look to the next product. I'm not saying people are right or wrong for doing this. I'm saying that gamers habits and tastes have changed.

 

I think this has come about due to the amount of games that are launching constantly. There are so many games in general releasing all the time, and specifically so many MMO's releasing that MMO's have turned into normal games that people play for a couple of weeks to a month then move to the next game.

 

Sometimes it is warranted though. Some MMO's have been very bad at launch. When I think of a bad MMO launch and just poor game mechanics in general I think of the Vanguard launch, FFXIV (I would consider that a failure), APB etc.

 

There have also been some great MMO's that have released that I know a lot of people blew through in a week, quit, uninstalled and will never go back. I put SWTOR, Tera, and Rift in that crowd. In my opinion they are nowhere near deserving a the tags "failure", and "suck".

 

GW2 is the next target. Everyone is hyping it up like crazy, the same way everyone hyped up SWTOR. The herd is going to move in, devour, quit and move on. A month after release people are going to be in the same boat talking about how GW2 and how it fell way short of the hype.

 

All this talk of losing subs, failure, F2P ruining the game etc, is part of the process of how a large portion of MMO players relate to games now since the majority of people do not want to play a game for more than a month no matter what it is. I think in no way that means that some of these great MMO's suck and are failures.

 

I'm a huge MMO fan. I always have been since the launch of EQ. I think SWTOR is a great game. Not perfect, but still great. I'm excited to see where they take the game and excited for the F2P crowd to jump in and start playing. It's all about building a product/franchise now after launch in the best way possible as opposed to having one shot at launch with succeed or failure states. I think F2P makes a lot of sense.

 

I agree, there are so many games out there today and players have become very transient, there has always been a group of players that buy the box and play the game like it's the end of the world in the first 30 days, then unsub, before the first payment, allot of people treat mmo's like a standard console game. People just over hype themselves these days like crazy, it's not just games, its every form of entertainment.

 

If the level of the player base now would have been around back when EQ or UO launched , we would not have any mmo's today, all the problems those pioneer games had, and tons of patches and hot fixes and bugs, the instant gratification generation of today would have not lasted in those games and they would have failed instead of still being around years later. Plus when you add free to something or the b2p like the gw games, people seem to be more tolerant of issues in the game because they are not paying a sub, just soemthing I have noticed over the years.

 

It's not always the people poor game design, small companies with little operating capital to keep the games going and repaired, also add to it, it takes two to tango in the game world players and dev's and one can't be stepping on the toes all the time..

Edited August 2, 2012 by kevlarto

[DarthWoad]

I think it's more "hey lets play something tonight". Let's play SWTOR? Nah I'm bored. Let's try something new. How about Gotham City Imposters. It's supposed to be pretty cool.

 

Then Gotham City Imposters is the new game for a few days. Then after that it's back to battlefield 3. Gotham City was played out, people got bored and moved on, BUT it was left at being a cool game that people got their kicks off of for a few days or a week, got bored (without doing everything you could do in the game) and moved on. The game wasn't a failure, the game didn't suck, people just got bored of it and moved on to the next.

 

People leave a game because they are bored of it yes. They go and play other games because they are bored of the one they are playing now. This is because the game itself is boring.

 

This game is an MMO, not a single player game/shooter. We pay a subscription for it, which means we expect to get new content all the time. This has not happened with this game. Therefore the game gets boring. It is the games fault. Not the players. Its the games job to keep us attached to the game. This hasnt happened, therefore hundreds and thousansd of subscribers leave.

Edited August 2, 2012 by DarthWoad

[ZionHalcyon]

So youre saying that these other games are attracting the players from swtor?

 

Thats because these "other games" are more interesting.

 

People left for Diablo III, and then a month later many came back.

 

Its hardly that other games really are more interesting - its that people nowadays have the intelligence of a cat and when something new comes out, they say "oooh shiny!" and chase after it, only to find out its not as good as they thought it was going to be.

 

GW2 will be next in line for that one.

[jediankh]

I say we need another video game crash like in 83.

[Briq]

People left for Diablo III, and then a month later many came back.

 

Its hardly that other games really are more interesting - its that people nowadays have the intelligence of a cat and when something new comes out, they say "oooh shiny!" and chase after it, only to find out its not as good as they thought it was going to be.

 

GW2 will be next in line for that one.

 

other games aren't drawing people away from this game.. this game is pushing people to other games.

 

HUGE difference

[WickedDjinn]

The problem is a lack of introspection all around. An unwillingness to objectively look at this very unique genre to see exactly why certain games worked in the context of their time.

 

Just as an example, one aspect of the genre that developers and some players ignore is that unlike any other type of game, most MMO players only play ONE title at a time. This alone accounts for a large part of the problem.

 

Most of that nasty roaming MMO horde are just gamers sick of the WoW model, and though they might complain... They still do their part. They still invest their money and give it a shot. Yet over and over again, what do they find? WoW with a different skin and too little content to sustain a themepark model. Of course they move on.