The MMO Genre is Dying

Vlahkmaak@Nagafen wrote:

Never really addressed an issue directly at soloers. I thoroughly enjoyed soloing on my bard and necro. I just want grouping to be an easier route than soloing and seen that way through the developers eyes as it was in EQ1. Sure you could solo on almost any class like a necro but it took a great bit of dedication and skill versus just setting in a group and dotting as the mobs were pulled to you. Overall if you wanted more experience quicker you could group but soloing was still a viable option if you didn't have much time. Nowadays it's the opposite and there in lies my issue.

salty21db wrote:

Exactly ^
Everytime a game comes out, it's the best thing since sliced bread. Everyone plays it all day every day!!! ... for a few weeks. Every feature is omg amazing!!! ... for a few weeks. Nothing will ever touch the awesomeness of this new game!!! ... until the next one.
Making a blanket statement that X game has completely revolutionized the industry and is teh bestest game ever after only a few days is silly and premature.

Malleria wrote:

Yeah, but every time one of these "new shinies" come out, I notice a trend.

a) Some people don't care about the new shiney, and continue playing EQ2.
b) Some people go play the new shiney, decide the new game stinks, and come back to EQ2.
c) Some people go play the new shiney, decide the new game stinks, quit playing MMOs, or try a different one.
d) Some people go play the new shiney, decide the new game rocks, and play it for a reasonable duration.

Of course, that is not all encompassing, but that covers some of the main results.

As someone who was traditionally option (a), I notice almost all the other options putting a dent in the population of EQ2. Some games cause bigger hits than others. Each time, it becomes more notable that the outgoing rate is higher than the incoming rate. The games conversion to FTP was a very temporary bandaid. Now, talk of another round of server mergers are gaining momentum.

None the less... The MMO market is NOT dying. Quite the opposite. But instead of having a small handful of titles to choose from, we now have many.

gourdon wrote:

I think that Smokejumper's point is very valid, developers are training their players to do one thing, and that one thing is to not think, to not use their imagination. Some players are rebellious against this, which is why games like SWTOR and The Secret World were not the smashing success stories they were projected to be.
So, not only is lack of developer imagination a problem, developers have projected that problem outward, turning it into a playerbase problem also. The playerbase has been allowed to expect everything to be done for them.
The genre is trying to provide ALL the entertainment, just like television. Developers are looking to provide players with a scripted story, and Pavlov's Dogs type content. Developers think nothing of spending enormous sums on cut scenes and voice acting, only to find some players have been pre-trained to "space bar" through them to reach the "ring bell, get reward" content. Now developers are trying to retrain the players not to space bar (at the SWTOR cost of $150 million?), but it's not yet working. How much will it ultimately cost to retrain the playerbase? Is it worth it, or is it just better to "hit and run" on to the next hyped greatest thrill ride?
MMOs shouldn't be about handing players a scripted story. MMO players want to BE the story. They want the freedom to play through their own personal storyline the way THEY want to play through it. If they wanted to play through someone else's story, they would go out and buy a single player RPG game. Since they bought an MMO instead, guess what?
Hence the dissatisfaction with these games, and the threads that discuss the demise of the MMORPG genre.
Developers need to concentrate on presenting an interactive adventure environment, and quit scripting the actual adventure.
One of the things I love about EQ2 is I have an entire choice of options I can do, depending on how I feel. If I don't feel like combat, I can craft, harvest, gather shinies, explore, redecorate my house, change my appearance gear, or just run around Qeynos reading people's character biographies (not many have one, and raiders just cite accounting data).
If I only wanted to sit mindlessly behind a video screen and watch someone else's story with no risk and no challenge, I'd watch reality television.

The MMO Genre is not just Dying. It is already dead!

The traditional MMO Genre has been replaced by simply online gaming and e-sport. MMORPGs used to be truely massive. By massive I mean they were whole complex interactive worlds. It just wasn't some little game of 6 people VS some mobs. It used to be a PvE competition with perhaps dozens of groups going after the same mobs. Think back to early days of Everquest 1 when all the deep rooms of some dungeon were camped and then using shout to find out if XYZ mob was being camped too. People actually helped each other even though they were competing. Online games today pretty much reward anti social behavior. There was a time when being kicked out of a community meant you were done. That spirit of competition and community is what originally got me interested in MMO gaming in the first place but for some reason it just doesn't exist anymore in any game. Eq2 used to have that spirit too but it is long gone now.

Many factors went into this decline such as the success of WoW in catering to the instant gratification crowd. Although WoW made billions of dollars it was like the McDonalds of MMOs. Imagine before eating at 5 star resturants and then McDonolds comes a long and becomes the most successful resturant of all time. Then outragously all the 5 star resturants try to compete with McDonalds and started serving burgers and fries. Suddenly you couldn't get a good Filet Minon to save your life. That has been the pretty much been the history of MMOs.

For other examples just look at Star Wars Galaxies NGE took away the sandbox world and replaced it with a themepark. Pre NGE it was possible to be anything and do anything in that game even if you just wanted to be an entertainer. If you wanted to be a Jedi you really had to work for it. SoE caved to instant gradification. There has been further devolution since then as the perverbial themepark has been reduced to just a single ride. The games of today feel like they are totally on rails. Players just go from A to B to C and when you are done you move onto the next game. I am sorry but following a trail of bread crumbs is NOT an MMO. The same pattern has happened to Eq2 cumulatively over a number of years where .

It has been a slow process of consolodate stats here and simplifiy a mechanic there. Nerf some feature elsewhere or in some cases completely remove core aspects of the game. Remember class quests where you had to pick your class at level 10 and then pick a sub class at level 20. Remember heroic oprotunites and how important they were at launch and now look how irrelvent they are. Or remember STR stat just wasn't for fighters. Scouts needed STR to hit harder and so did melee priests. Or remember when tanks needed AGI for avoidance and there was a large enough selection of side grades so a tank could actually make that decision.

The hardest part and actually the most fun part was tweeking out the gear you were wearing to get just a tiny little advantage. Remember when resist gear actually mattered and there were 8 different resists to ballance. It was fun trying to ballance out just the right amount a resists needed to live through the AoEs while bringing enough dps to actually kill the boss. Part of this decline in complexity is the players fault because everyone wanting instant gratification and constantly demanding huge upgrades. When stats and gear are so simple it just leads to endless power creep http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxszx60ZwGw which eventually shrinks and ultimately destroys the game.

Bottom line is MMOs were about FREEDOM. The current state of online gaming is when 'we' say jump you say how high sir or your character instantly explodes. It has become the total opposite of freedom. Everyone wears the same cookie cutter gear, same builds, and presses the buttons in the same order and if you try to do anything differently your character explodes. That is why I say MMOs representing real freedom, choice, competition, and community are dead. LONG dead. What we are left with is just hollow empty shells of games played by shallow anti social players. In the beginning MMOs were like sitting down with friends to play a round of D&D but instead of just a few people huddled arround the table there were thousands all in on the same game. It promised to be the best thing ever. But now look at what it has turned into. Paradice Lost.

Well said Novusod, well said indeed.
I also highly agree with Filament, one of the reasons I am disliking GW2 so far is just how linear it is. My story is all laid before me with cut scenes and voice acting. I do not want to watch the game, I want to play the game... same reason I gave up on the Final Fantasy line after 10.. I was watching more than I was playing

Novusod wrote:

Bravo indeed. First paragraph really hit home for me. I hope SJ is still reading lol.

The biggest reason why MMORPGS are dying is because they lack the RPG elements.

I just bought Guild Wars 2 and while it's fun, I don't consider it an MMORPG. More like a Massive Multiplayer Action Game In Chaos. Because that's what it is. In EQ2 you have some kind of control over the situations, whereas in that game and many others (like Perfect World) everything is just a mess of button mashing.

Not to forget the RPG elements. The reason why I like EQ2 and will forget about GW2 in a month or so, just like the first game after a week, is that it contains very shallow story and lore. In EQ2 you can read massive books, speak with tons of NPCs and so on, and they focus on a big story with small branches here and there and some side stories, whereas the other ones are trivial and only focus on something unrealistic and generic that you've already seen 100 times before. Bright and fluffy and not dark and more realistic like EQ2.

I hope that SoE kind of sticks to the EQ/EQ2 feeling in EQNext and makes it feel like a medieval online world with lots of story and content, and small details. It doesn't matter how many flashy events I see in GW2 for example, if the characters' lips don't even move as they speak, and they repeat the same voiceover 10 times in a minute. In EQ2 most of the NPCs have unique dialogues, even if not all are voiceovered.

If all games were like EQ2 I would be in pain. Because I wouldn't know what to play. For now I just enjoy GW2 for the novelty, but once that wears off I know it will be back to EQ2 to explore the massive content of which I have still about half to explore after 3 years in the game. And that's just playing a good char with one class...

Depth. That's what most modern MMOs lack, and what EQ2 has. Which is why I like it.

SmokeJumper wrote:

Well, the problem, too, is that even games that "try new things" such as TERA and GW2 aren't -really- trying anything that new. Tera? Still just quest grind to cap, yawn. GW2 has a lot more there, but it's still quest grind to cap, ultimately. Since the big-kid WoW made MMOs accessible and easily solo-able, that is the one-and-only acceptable path these days. In the early MMO times before a huge success was made and big bucks started to truly flow we had a lot more variety - similar concepts of kill monsters and gain xp, but the ideas were applied in radically different ways - EQ vs DAoC vs SWG vs AC2 etc.

But now MMOs are expected to be entirely solo-able to cap, it's not a matter of how but how fast. I remember seeing someone level 30 or 40 and being amazed, now I just scoff and shrug, 'cause anyone would basic motor skills can get there easily enough in most any game.

It's unfortunate, but it absolutely comes down to monetary risk. Games which are 'accessible' draw bigger crowds, at least at first, even if they don't always retain them. Until WoW dies down more and kicks it we will continue to have stagnation - we need new ideas in the genre, but new ideas means risk. Remember that snazzy sounding MMO that had permadeath, crazy races, and more? Totally never saw the light of day due to funding, too risky. Nobody wants permadeath, the end.

The same gumption and freedom of creativity that gave us PC games in the 80s and 90s that ranged from "Wizardry" and "Ultima," to "Planescape Torment," to "Sim Hospital," and even as far as to "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream," those same people that had an immensely wide-open world of possibilities not blocked by a suit with a check and profit targets are out there still and hopefully they can make us more games soon. I'm excited about EQNext, I like the EQ world, the races and all strike nostalgic with me, but all of us who played EQ back when on dial-up know we won't have that experience again. Any game that started and just dropped players into a world to fend for themselves and learn and explore would be gutted on reviews by "lol no map???" and other things that arguably can withdraw breadth from a game. But that said, even I have grown accustomed to the convenience, it's hard not to. If anything, the market as a whole is changing, not dying. Unfortunately it's growing away from some folks like myself who cherish Baldur's Gate, Planescape, NWN, EQ and others as the best of the best. True ComputerRPGs are few and far between these days.
In any case, until we can bust out of the mold of "quest/grind/whatever to cap," where people ignore and gloss over anything before the highest level where they can then mindlessly grind for gear so they can get better gear to grind for better gear ad nauseum, until we can start enjoying the journey as much or more than the level-cap destination, until we can inject some much-needed adventure back into MMOs, we're going to remain stale for a while. It's the nature of the beast as it stands for now. (Then again, it doesn't help that us older-school gamers aren't any more excited to be forced to group with all the foul-mouthed upstarts than they are with us. I swear the MMO community has lost dozens of IQ points and respect for one another since I started back in UO/EQ days. Yikes. PUG didn't used to be a dirty word!)

Silresa2 wrote:

The lack of qualityof gamers within the MMOs is directly a result of the MMOs themselves. As you spoke of "accessibility." The word itself, when used in terms of gaming, makes me cringe. It is what destroyed the community. There doesn't have to be a "community" in an MMO anymore to achieve cap, etc. as you said. Versus back in the day where you HAD to interact and do things to progress at a certain rate or do certain things. If you were a jerk the server/community knew it. You don't have that these days. Nobody has to rely on any kind of interaction to achieve most goals in the game therefore there is no reason to act civil. That goes for almost all online games atm.
Simple conclusion. Make a game that requires community interaction and the community will sort itself.

Malleria wrote:

Yeah I got tired of the next best thing in MMO's and to be honest was not expecting a whole lot from GW2 (I hated GW1, it felt too isolating). I've beta tested at least a dozen or more different MMO's and got that "oh this is new" feeling from each of them, only to be bored once my toons entered their 20s .. you knew once you hit your 20s that the rest of the game would be .. well, less than fulfilling.
But I haven't gotten this from GW2. And yes, it's only been out a week or so, but as a player, you recognize something that feels like the real deal after having jumped from one "next best thing" to the other over the years. GW2 is honestly the first game since EQ2 launch that I've been excited about and wanted to play into the wee hours of the morning. And I was a loyal subber of EQ2 for nearly 8 years. But maybe it's just me and how I feel. It may not be THE game for everyone. But from all that I'm seeing, and I'm taking my time levelling up my toon to explore all facets of the game -- from crafting, to the various racial zones, to personal storyline ... well, for me at least, it just has staying power. I guess only time will tell if it remains so for me, but I honestly think it will.

Depends on how YOU play the game generally. I like to come online and maybe do 2 - 3 quests, some derping and then log off. I'm not hardcore, even if the game encourages it, it highly depends on the person. Do I level up fast? No. Do I get fast AA's? No. I have read posts about people maxing characters in 24 hours and honestly I have been playing for 6+ months and i'm still level 52 I like to keep following a questline then giving up, exploring then coming back.

SmokeJumper wrote:

If you really mean that, you should give us back the open versions of the suburbs and, at least for Freeport, make an instanced version to the old city. For example with a chronomaging quest (or four, one for each main district) that goes back in time to when Freeport lay in ruins. But with other quests and heroic content. Would have been so awesome to be able to visit the old freeport again, but in another form with perhaps some scripted events explaining Lucan's Decision to revamp the city to something new. Seeing guards lashing slaves that rebuild the city with parts of the new towers and walls scattered about. You've still got to have the old layout stored somewhere...

The concept of chronomancers and their time travel magic is really appealing and I think it's a shame that EQ2 doesn't allow you to travel more in time than it does. I would have loved to travel in time to The Enchanted Lands or Zek for example, but see how it looked before all the chaos started there and before the Orcs ruined the later. Kind of like the Shard of Love event, but permanent and instanced with combat. Or open, doesn't matter. I loved the event when we could see the Shard of Love in a different style. To see the world changing, like in the raid version of the noob island, Darathar's Flight. I love that zone too.

And it wouldn't hurt with some kind of troubadour in Freeport/Qeynos that let you play the old themes again.
As for the catacombs beneath Qeynos, I think at least one of the three should have the old music left. While I really enjoy the newer songs much more in Qeynos and they are certainly more beautiful than the old, it's a thing about nostalgia. Especially in the last one "Crypt of Betrayal", the old music fitted better since it was dark and gloomy and that place is just that.

And the music files are in the music folder of the game anyway so it should be easy to fix.

I do like when new things arrive in games that add gameplay and new features and so on, but I really do not like to get content taken away. A lot of people miss the old Freeport because it was so dark and gritty and felt so evil. And no new players can experience that atmosphere as it now stands...

Pixiewrath@The Bazaar wrote:

EQ2 is one of the dying, almost dead games. It gets enough CPR to bring in a few bucks. And when the bucks slow up, we get double station cash desperation weekends from marketing.
SOE is only using it as a cash grab to finance PS2, which will be a cash grab to finance EQ Next. The problem is F2P revenue is less predictable than P2P revenue.
Smokejumper, et al, use EQ2 to test concepts for EQ Next, introducing new stuff and breaking old content. To show their level of commitment, the developers never go back and fix the broken content, but just continue dumping new stuff like dungeonfinder, mercenaries, dungeon creator, and facial expressions into the broken game. Dungeon creator is their novel way to make their customers develope new content, while selling them the crap they will need from the cash shop.
Take itemization, for example. One of my pet peeves, because, contrary to the SOE mantra, I can no longer play two of my characters the way I want to play them. Itemization has been broken for over a year, with no fix on the horizon. SOE believes it is unnnecessary to go back and fix stuff, because they are encouraging the race to endgame to sell more expansions and equipment/spell unlockers, or for players to pay $15/month to use that neat raidgear. Like Smokejumper said, they are training their playerbase to "ring bell, get reward", and tapping into that conduct to make money.
EQ2 is no longer about the ride (adventure), it's about the end game gear grind hamster wheel. SOE continues to kill off the adventure by eliminating lower end content. There is alot of unnecessary lower end content (too much in SOE's opinion) that gets in the way of the "ring bell, get reward" hamster wheel of end game raiding revenue. SOE wants to discourage players to turn off experience and stay around to enjoy the ride. Low end content gives players too many options of sticking around and playing at a level that SOE doesn't make money on.
That's why lower end content will never get fixed. Players are not encouraged to stay in the lower end content because SOE doesn't make any money there. Lower end content is a cost sink. SOE needs players to speed through that content for them to make any money.
SOE doesn't want players wasting time exploring, they don't need to craft, they don't need to gather, and they don't need to collect "shinies". Heck, as far as I can tell, they even eliminated the guy in Qeynos that collection quests are turned in at!
Which is why we have easy leveling combined with double experience weekends to get the playerbase to the content they will have to pay for. That's why leveling is so easy that any brain dead hamster can do it.
SOE's real mantra is that you can play EQ2 any way you like, as long as that way involves racing through content, getting to endgame, and raiding ad nauseum for uber loot that requires either a subscription, or unlockers.
And SOE is no different from any other MMORPG developer. Content is a waste of developer time, just race the players through the game and cash in by selling "boxes" at $60 each. Games either make their developement costs back, plus some profits, in 30 days, or collapse.
That's how F2P ruins games, they take away the fun and adventure to concentrate on selling you the crap they make money on.

Filament wrote:

He's hiding inside of a building in Qeynos Harbour .. next to the big inn I think ... just open the door Mervos is lurking there.

Jayne@Kithicor wrote:

Thanks, I'll check there.
I thought eliminating him was just another typical SOE screwup, at least, scheduled to maybe be fixed one day. However, now I am left wondering why they redesign Qeynos to reduce zoning, then move him from North Qeynos to the Harbor, thereby requiring the player to zone to reach a destination character.
One would think they would want destination characters to be in a zoning free area. After all, why consolidate zones then reposition destination characters to require players to zone?
Maybe they figure that without him there, nobody would ever go to the Harbor. In which case, maybe they should have included the Harbor as a zoning free area along with North and South Qeynos?
SOE developer logic......means lack of critical thinking skills.

Filament wrote:

Not sure I understand hon .. Mervos was in North Qeynos, which was a zoned area .. and now combines with SQ in the new rebuild. He's now in Qeynos Harbour, which is another zoned area, and now combines with Eldarr ... to me, at least, it's just one zone over another, not much has changed zoning-wise.

Filament wrote:

I made this thread as a constructive criticism to every current MMO developers....not as a hate thread toward SoE or as a bash thread. Please refrain from doing so in this thread. A lot of your points are way off base as well such as the "cash in by selling boxes" yet for the last 2 years content has been every quarter and for free since AoD was just features and not "needed." Also about rushing to end to make money yet they sell experience pots?
I think out of all current MMOs, EQ2 is the best on the market. Is it where I want it to be? No, but it is the best. If you have such a pure hatred for it...why are you here?

Filament wrote:

Your logic is flawed....when you bell into Qeynos where does it put you? So they moved it closer to where the majority come into Qeynos...derp.

salty21db wrote:

You misunderstand, I am agreeing with Smokejumper that SOE, like all the other developers, has trained their playerbase to do one thing, race through content to endagme.
Each of the examples I posted is an example of SOE enabling the race to endgame player philosophy, get loot, and pay for unlockers. That is the F2P revenue model, get your playerbase into the paying content as fast as possible. EQ2 has morphed into this model. Experience potions are just another way to raise revenue racing the playerbase to the purchasable end game content. The idea is to enable your playerbase to level quickly because the content they have to pay for is at the higher levels. F2P revolves around the cash shop, not the content. Understand?
EQ2 has alot of lower level adventure content because it was developed as a P2P game. When the revenue model is monthly subscription based the developers DON'T want the playerbase running through content, they want them taking as much time as possible within the content. More time equals more monthly subscriptions. Which is why, at launch, this game kicked a players butt.
That is why P2P games are harder to level in. Which is why SWTOR and TSW have problems, they are a subscription based game that allowed players to level too fast. Many players burned through the content within 30 days, and didn't need to sub. That is the difference between F2P and P2P, you can't have a fast leveling P2P game because your playerbase will quickly outgrow it, and you can't have a slow leveling F2P game because you need to make your revenue on the higher end content. Understand?
The same thing is occuring in GW2, though that revenue model is "selling boxes". I am not off base, as you say, the "selling boxes" approach has been used quite successfully for years by Electronic Arts, just look at The Sims game franchise, expansions every four months. The same with strategy games such as the Civilization series, always sell a basic bare bones game and later sell the additional content, either as a "box", or digital downloadable content. The important thing is to make money by selling content.
SOE would be foolish not to "sell boxes" to recover their developement costs, and historically they have done that with expansions. For you to say these prior expansions were free is just plain false. MMORPGs are now all about marketing budget and "selling boxes", not about recovering costs through subscriptions, and not about recovering costs through cash shops. Why should a developer wait years for subscription revenue or cash shop revenue when they can sell 1 million units at $60 and make $60 million at release? Digital release through their own download service gives them that.
The fact of the matter, what players really take exception to, is my statement that the EQ2 lower end content developed under P2P stagnates the F2P revenue model, and therefore it doesn't get the resources needed to address any problems. SOE doesn't want to spend time and money to fix low level content, they want you to just blow through the problems and hit the higher end content so they can make money on. If you believe my saying that makes me a hater, okay, I'm a hater. But the lower end content is not going to be fixed anytime soon as it's a cost sink.
The one thing I disagree with Smokejumper on is retraining the playerbase. The bad habit has been learned, the cost to unlearn the bad habit is going to be steep. SWTOR cost at least $150 million to retrain players to pay attention to story content and failed. TSW developement costs were not recouped, which is why 50% of Funcom employees have been laid off. Why should a developer blow through millions in cash trying to unlearn a playerbase learned behavior?
Smokejumper is promising EQ Next will be entirely different. Entirely different then what, the current EQ2 F2P model, or the original EQ2 P2P model? Is SOE willing to gamble tens of millions of dollars retraining their playerbase? I don't know the answer to that one.
As to my hating on EQ2, once again, you misunderstand. The discussion is on the death of MMORPGs, EQ2 is an example of what is going on in the market. I am using EQ2 as an example, though I have briefly touched on SWTOR and TSW, as well as EA's business model, because this IS the EQ2 forums.
I didn't think you meant to discuss why MMORPGs are dying WITHOUT including SOE and EQ2 as part of the problem.
You wanted to just talk about the effect of Hello Kitty Online on the genre?