Anyone else get a chuckle out of this article?

Some leaders are only good "fixing" broken projects/departments/companies while others are good keeping it running once "fixed". From my understanding Jack help fix the game with ATs and powersets rather than a classless/skills based design which was too easy to cripple a character.

The problem with fixers is they will always look for things needing "fixing", even when there isn't a need.

If our own community is any indication, people will even complain about getting free stuff.

Rambling ahead.




In my non-expert opinion, the earliest MMOs are basically just graphical re-implementations of text-based Diku MUDs. "World of.." improved on that model somewhat, although not in extreme ways. MUDs themselves were based off of a barely concealed version of the Second Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons ruleset, which is where a number of abstractions came from:

• There are 6 stats (Strength, Constitution, Wisdom, etc), each stat builds to 18. Charisma is sometimes left out because seemingly no one could figure out what to do with the stat during that period of gaming history.
• Default classes are Rogue, Warrior, Cleric, Mage
• Spell names are near-direct lifts (although "Cure Light Wounds" was changed to "Cure Light", etc)
• The Cleric is the "D&D Cleric" who uses a mace (no bladed weapons) and heavy armor (an element not generally copied by most of the MMOs to follow)

People can forgive a lack of content at launch, if the game has polish. The monks in space game, it launched in 2011 with a U.I from 2004, by the time they finally got around to adding U.I customisability, they had lost over a million subs.

They've only just added an actual system to look for groups, more advanced than spamming general chat, but its too late, they are going free to play.

Funcoms game has great ideas, but you play it, you start to get into it, start to get drawn into the story of a zone and then....

Five of the quests in a row are bugged an can't be completed, they patch the game and claim they have fixed these quests, but nope they are still bugged, they add new content, and this too is bugged.

For example, one of the newest quests invovles translating latin phrases into demonic text and entering it into a magic circle. Great. Except the circle is bugged and may or may not recognise the correct answer as correct, depending on how it feels.

The one that made me quit was the defend this location, but after the first wave of enemies the allies start attacking you as well.

Some good replies in here.
Many of them represent, very well, the various reasons MMORPGs are successful and unsuccessful.
And the biggest factor in all of this is that these things have become so expensive to make. It's the Hollywood movie syndrome over and over. Budgets and expectations get bigger and bigger (and bigger and bigger!!!) and the investors, more and more, want their investments to be going into proven/sure things. Patterns of success are followed, formulas get introduced, innovation suffers, aspects of success and failure become polarized, poorly analyzed, misdiagnosed... Only there are not as many MMO customers as movie customers. And this is a relatively young platform/industry.
Ongoing, unending games will end up having a great variety of approaches if/when they get the green lights and enough financial backing. Budgets should be scaled back, but then that eats into customer expectations... and the whole thing gets ugly...
Arghh... on to replying:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agent White The MMO boom is just the latest fad. It's like 20 years ago with the Trading Card boom. One gets successful, spawns a thousand copycats, market gets oversaturated, the weakest/poorest/most mismanaged ones die out, the strongs ones kick around, the lesser ones try to re-strategize and then the process repeats til the pool whittles down and the next big fad comes along.

While this is somewhat true, it's also worth noting that MMORPGs are actually more along the lines of tabletop RPGs online. And that's not something that will just die out (but, I'm thinking you just meant the "fad" of it in the mainstream will die out... while, hopefully, studios with some money will still be able to kick out games for those who will always enjoy mmorpgs).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vox Populi MMOs are stagnating because they've barely evolved in the past ten years. They're extremely expensive to make, so studios are afraid to take risks. They stick to what has worked in the past, but eventually players get tired of the same old grinding-levels-and-loot routine. It's time for a fresh take.

This is also true. It's funny, but the switch of names from MMORPG to MMO speaks well of the direction that the genre has been taken down.
As with most everything taken up by the mainstream... it stops focusing on what the original intentions of those creations were and becomes focused on how it can be sold to the masses.
Full, detailed, complicated systems get moved aside for quicker, easier and, most importantly, the safe paths that have proven to work.
This goes for anything and everything, unfortunately... Most regretably when it comes to art forms...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blue Rabbit Fresh takes don't work... Funcom tried that with The Secret World and everyday on their forums there are people complaining about it being too different, lack of levelling system, no mounts, no classes, too easy, too hard, lack of content (which I find hilarious, the game is one month old, you can't expect years of content on the onset...) and so yawn and yawn. Most people are formatted to a particular model and don't want it to deviate even if it is in a totally different setting. TSW went with a subs only model and everyday there's someone crying for F2P and asking when it's going F2P. People don't seem to realize that F2P is anything BUT free! The amount you spend on micro-transactions compared to a monthly sub with ingame money only stores is ludicrous AND ridiculous. It's fleecing on epic proportions. Couple that with the sense of entitlement and the "I want it nao and I want it all" mentality and you have an ever growing abyssal maw you can never, ever come close to satisfying.

And, very sadly, this is also very true.
It is easy to forget the part that customers play in the foolish ways of marketing... and that they are generally filled with foolish people on both sides... as most people are rather foolish and so they populate every damn thing on any and all sides.

Most importantly, for MMORPGs, is that the target audience for these games became more and more the people that were not interested in MMORPGs. So, you have the majority of potential customers not wanting what the MMORPGs could best deliver. Long, unending, involved, complicated endeavors for the perpetual hobbyist/player. I'm not saying that these are the only aspects for MMORPGs, as they are not and things can be deviated from that basis, for certain... but all of those core aspects have been largely tossed aside for the non-mmorpg player.

Turning something bitter into something sweet... because there are more fans of sweet than there are bitter... tough luck for those looking for something bitter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blue Rabbit Also, one of the reasons why MMORPG are losing customers has to do with the economical crisis raging all over the world. With less jobs, more unemployment and job instability it's no surprise people are retracting from expenses they cannot justify when they need to worry about food, housing and, for those who have them, family. And then there's the jaded feeling: no matter what you come up with, no matter how innovative you think you are or can be, chances are you won't get enough player retainability to keep your game afloat, mainly because today's youth (and, regrettably, the 30 something crowd) have the attention span of a fruit fly gnat and are always on the lookout for the next big shiny thing which they then proceed to devour like a cloud of hungry locusts, leaving a wasteland of detritus behind while flocking to the next new horizon which will never quench their hunger. Rinse and repeat sweetlings, rinse and repeat...

Indeed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Molehill Take away the negatives that the colorful language implies, and you're describing non-mmo video games, books, movies... any other form of entertainment that has an ending. If someone spends 10 hours reading a book and moves on, I wouldn't say that they have an attention problem. If someone completes the main arc in a single player game in 10 hours but hasn't uncovered every last easter egg planted, same thing. But only spend 10 hours trying to cover what an mmo has to offer ... you can get the gist of the game but not its full depth and complexity (to whatever extent they exist). If entertainment needs to fit in that framework of time for a lot of people (say 30 min to an hour per session a few days a week) and provide a good return on time and money, then I think providing a F2P model works well. I wouldn't be out to call the whole genre a failure because of the failed expectations of a mismanaged project with a ginormous budget.

Agreed. And it is interesting (and speaks to what I was saying above) how regular video games basically catered to these needs... but now the genre that was catering to other desires are being turned into what already existed prior for those that already had what they desired through those already existing normal video games...
Putting aside all of the vocabulary options I have for this to simply say... It sucks!
Everything different must, eventually, be made the same in order to cater to the mainstream, because "that is where the real money is".

What the MMORPG needs is more approaches akin to the Mom and Pop store and less Worlds of Walmarts.

All this being said... City Of Heroes has long been a very cleverly (if not somewhat accidentally) a wonderful mix of these worlds. It has been run much like a small, intimate, caring ma and pa store and has been extremely casual friendly (you can play small amounts of time and not feel left behind, as one example) while it has kept a decent level of immersion and involved complexity, along with being the only representation of the super hero genre for so long, while it continued to expand, improve and invent.

CoH has a lot to be proud of, in my opinion.

And to say that WoW's success was a large part due to a perfect storm is almost an understatement.
It's a shame, really... there was another game that came out about a year or so beforehand... based in that same far away galaxy that this newish mmo is based in... and it was the extreme opposite of what WoW did (in some ways, in bad ways [buggy], but in many ways, in great ways [phenomenally involved and detailed... even beyond the all father UO - due to Raph Koster's designs]). And the shame of it is... both worlds should have continued and lived on... but the quick and easy and mass appeal won out... and the other facet died off (betrayed and murdered by the dark side).
There's plenty of room in this world for variety and the budgets and plans just have to be focused and reasonable about what is possible.
I suppose that is another reason for CoH's success. They've not over-stretched to reach too hard for far more. Some times we may think they haven't reached enough (this game has been so good, it should be even more popular than it has been), but it does seem like you just can't win over that many newer people with an older game. And I am certainly glad that they haven't sold the old game out for something that is a marketed "can't miss" clone.

Anyway... Yes. Umm... I mean... No. Wait... what was the question? Oh, right... What.

I'm also of the mindset that making MMOs increasingly easier is costing them commitement in the long run.

People tend to get more attached to things they had to work hard for. From everything to real-life money (I.E., they know the value of a dollar, are less likely to blow it/part from it easily) to video game characters.

Modern games, when compared to MMO's of years gone passed, basically have an "instant-50 button". Leveling becomes so easy, death becomes so meaningless, even godly items are easy to get. The end result is people gobbling everything up and just quitting because they have little emotional attachment to their character.

CoH avoids this due to its alt friendliness, and some people get quite attached to their characters through role playing.

I played FFXI back when the game first launched in the US. It was tough, it was grueling, you couldn't solo, there was very little quest direction, no one knew what anything did, making money could be a chore, you could de-level from dying, you were "level locked" every 5 levels after 60 (up to 75) and had to do tough quests to unlock the following 5 levels, leveling up weapon skills could take days, crafting took months... Sounds like hell to a modern MMO gamer.. But you know what? We toughed it out, we hit the level cap, we played the same toon for years on end all because we got super attached to it. Formed great communities full of helpful people who would be willing to take a few hours out of their day to help you complete your AF or some other quest.

Go ask someone in WoW, or [insert new MMO here] to help you with a quest that could take upwards of a few hours, and even potentially cause them death and de-leveling.. Odds are you'd be laughed at and mocked, hell even your 'friends' might whine a bit and make an excuse.. Yet completely random people, some who couldn't even speak English would agree to help you in that game.

It was tough for me to quit, I felt like I was deserting my character, a part of me that I had worked on for years. I have never experienced that feeling in an MMO again.

The whole thing with WoW's success reminds me of an excerpt I read from Malcom Gladwell's Outliers, about how the a dozen or so of the richest people in the world were all born in a very specific 10 year span in a very specific place.

I find it funny that the article poses the question of whether or not MMOs are dying, then summarily answers the question a few paragraphs in with a resounding NO. I actually tried to post up a rather lengthy checklist of the reasons why it is the subscription model is dying/why it is that WoW will continue to be played for a very long time, but unfortunately the comment section deleted it and I never saved a copy . Here is a redone version:


#1: Time investment. With so many factors of MMOs coming down to gaining wealth, grinding, and economic treadmills of some kind, people are less likely to switch MMOs because a new MMO makes people start from scratch. Starting from scratch = losing everything you worked for in the previous game, and such an immense loss is too much to bear for players at large. Because of this, they will continue to play the same game they have been playing prior because they don't want to invest all that time just to get back to where they previously were in the last game.

#2: Community. An MMO's ability to function is dependent on how large the community of the game is, with a larger game functioning better. Through a growing economy, through accumulating rare drops, a larger community makes it more likely that you'll eventually buy the rare item you want, find people you want to play with, find people of the appropriate levels, so on and so forth. Smaller MMOs don't have that advantage, and because of this players will flock to the MMOs that are already successful.

A second part of the community comes in how good it is. While massive communities can let you find niches within them, smaller games can't. If a bad group of players decides to play the game, they can run off everyone who would be interested with their antics. This makes the MMO turn into a niche game for a niche genre for a niche population, ever dwindling how well it functions.

#3: Availability. The subscription model ultimately discriminates against potential players, and does so in two tiers. First, the person who can't afford a subscription and doesn't think it is worth it. Often times, these players can contribute to the game in other important matters (see #2), and so excluding these players will harm the game ultimately. The second is a person who can't afford multiple subscriptions to multiple games. Subscriptions are purchased time on the game, and if someone doesn't spend all of that time playing the game they are losing out on their investment. Basically a subscription model punishes players who don't have a lot of free time to play the game. Having multiple subscriptions means that you're doubling your investment for half the return, and logically people just don't do that. This causes isolation in the markets, making it so people only play one subscription MMO at any one time, and are reluctant to move away from it or play a smaller game.

#4: Aging. The biggest problem with the MMO playerbase for the current games is that they are getting older. The MMO appeals largely to people who have a lot of free time (the unemployed, the youth, the retired, ect). The problem is that as time goes on, these people have less and less free time. As the youth get older, they develop more responsibilities that require more time devotion, and thus don't have the time to bother with a monthly fee for a game. The unemployed are constantly seeking employment, and once they have it their devotion to the game goes away. The retired... generally die within 5 years of retiring. With the youth and the retired there is a generational effect of around 5 to 7 years where the player base leaves, and new players have to come in. Unfortunately these MMOs are on aging technology as well, leaving other people to flock to newer shinies than to play older games. Free to play rectifies this situation by making it costless to not play a game, but the subscription model enhances this problem.

The gorilla MMO does do a number of things well, I think. What I will give them credit for is realizing early on that they were essentially building a virtual theme park. The zone design emphasizes previews of what's to come--you are constantly walking through one area and seeing huge representations of the next thing you will encounter. It's actually laid out similarly to how an amusement park places its thrill rides, where you see reveals of the ride as you approach it.

(Side note: Did you know that roller coasters are actually specifically engineered to create the "roaring" sounds that are associated with them? It is very possible to design roller coasters that are "quiet" (with the exception of the riders) but most rides are fitted with hollow rails and washers or sound makers in the wheels to make it louder. When a major park invests in a roller coaster, the ride is designed not just for the riders, but to enhance the atmosphere of the park itself, and give guests a sense of thrills even if they are too afraid to actually ride themselves.

The gorilla MMO is similarly self-aware. It implements many situations where lower level players have an opportunity to witness an area far beyond their current skill, or observe the activities of much higher level players. There is also often a "center piece" for each zone that frames the area or showcases where a big raid/dungeon might exist.)

Don't worry about Jack. He's virtually invisible at the other [visually softer superhero mmo] because he's stroking that [game based on an rpg ruleset that is slated for an unceremonial killoff.]