State of the genre

[Anery]

Peoples thought stuff on the subject seems to get scattered across several topics, so I thought I would crack open a thread and discuss.
The way I see it at the moment, any new mmo on the market goes up against some pretty strong competition, competition so strong that it is actually strangling the genre and unless a certain behemoth fucks off and dies we shall continue to see lacklustre games thrown out or good games which die due to lack of players. It also means that publishers are reluctant to enter the fray against this competition thus strengthening the grip.
On the other hand it does mean that several companies have rethought their payment plans and more games are now based on a micropayment scheme, this does mean that people are more likely to play but also more likely not to stay as they see this as unfair as people can buy their way to good gear.

What say you?

[friznit]

Rift not doing so well then?

Problem is noone's come up with a decent idea and actually invested enough in it to make it any good. They all go for the first 10 levels "wow the reviewer" impact (Conaids) and don't invest in the longevity of the game, so people race to the end game and find nothing there. It's no different to completing an average FPS with a loose coop mode. Your behemoth excels because when you get to level whatever the fuck it is now, there's actually shit to keep you occupied that makes it worth getting there.

[buzzmong]

It's the same problem with nearly all aspects of the industry though.

The big publishers who can afford to chuck out the dosh for a AAA title (I hate that term) are obviously putting quite a lot of cash at it so want to minimise the risk they take. Unfortunately this means that in order to statisfy the shareholders and make sure they return a profit (or break even), they have to create something similar to what's currently selling in order to maximise their chances of a return.

Same applies to MMO's, however unlike the SP and MP games where people buy the game, play it and complete it (or get bored of the same content in MP) before moving onto the next game, MMO's don't have that life cycle and aim to retain players. This creates a sort of demand void, where people aren't that interested in keeping with something else.

Hence why there's lots of WoW clones, but none which can challenge it or knock it off it's perch, and their fairly short lifespans. There's only really a few games that dare to be completely different (EvE springs to mind), but they're catering for specific niches and narf, they all seem to come from startups or small devs not from the big publishing houses.


I think however for the games industry in general, it's reaching its peak because publishers are realising they can't have their cake and eat it all the time, and are going to have to take a punt on new IP and game formulas or risk completely diluting their cash flows (I think what happened with Guitar Hero made some waves in the upper management circles, because it was a massively popular product that fell from grace extremely quickly due to overmilking).

That said, games *are* expensive to make these days. However the big problems eating up lots of cash in my view stems from the Marketing departments. Not only do they seem to need massive budgets to promote the games, but they seem to keep espousing "Look at our game, it's shinier than the others!!11!" which in turn pushes up development costs as everyone has to keep doing more graphical work to reach the higher bar. Reviewers don't help either, and console mags seem to make the biggest noise about graphics being the be all and end all.

[Anery]

Rift is pretty good, it has the end game content, unfortunately it suffers from lack of players.
However, accusations of not being polished or having too many bugs or even not enough end content were levelled at Blizzard at WoWs launch - somehow people forget that and use these arguments against other games and in defence of WoW. Don't get me wrong it is NOW a good game, I had shitloads of fun before I started working nights.

Conaids was bad though.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Conaids had a lot of promise, but it ran out of content, which was retarded, would easily have been fixed by dropping XP after the starting area by 20% and adjusting mob levels to account for it, (so you didn't get to 50 or whatever and run out of quests)

Rift suffered (for me at least) in the same way LOTRO did and to some degree whorewammer, it seemed fine, but was just too close to wow for me to care, same shit different game. I'm sure a lot of wow players feel the same way, no point starting a whole new game to do very similiar stuff that you already do, but less polished, bit of a busman's holiday if you like.

[spoodie]

Considering it's young age I'd say Rift is quite polished, although missing a few things, which are being added over time. I wonder what WoW was like 4 months after release, although that's probably not a fair comparison. Two of the things I really like about Rift, over WoW, is that leveling is less of a grind and there's much less distance running. It is very much the case of same shit, different game though.

[FatherJack]

I recently filled in a questionnaire regarding my WoW satifaction, or lack of and there were a few questions that hinted at stuff. Not quite as blatant as the semi-recent Sims one, which all but announced Sims Medieval six months in advance, but there were shades of more not-so-microtransactions and tailored content-possibly-to-order. I don't think we'll see a move to Free2Play anytime soon unless it's very restrictive, given I've played on and off for six years and probably not seen anywhere approaching half the content.

F2P with real money stores is working well for some, and those less reactionary or short-sighted amongst the existing player bases generally see it as a good thing - stopping games dying, populating the servers and funding future content expansions. The basic model is actually super-effective, as things like Farmville demonstrate quite spectacularly, but implementations differ quite radically. It's also a huge growth area - I'm aware of at least six new F2P MMOs which have launched in the couple of weeks since I posted that I was planning a roundup review of the existing ones. (which I still haven't started, btw)

Trial accounts are another good way of getting the servers active and hooking new punters, but it's sadly either overlooked or a massively watered-down experience in the majority of cases. While I can understand why they block access to global chat channels and in-game currency trading to avoid spamming and inflation, I really don't see why they deem it neccessary to introduce so many other, seemingly arbitrary restrictions on level limits, skills and access to content. The fucking restriction is that you can only play for a week - at least let people see in that brief time what the game can offer you and let them have a taste of the best bits. If your game is good enough, it will sell itself - if you only show them a bit of thigh, they'll either go to another game that's getting its tits out, or just assume the game is all thigh and no fanny.

Market saturation is an issue of course. I have 25 MMOs installed, and it's a time-sink merely keeping them up-to-date, never mind finding the hours to play them. As berk noted, the CBA-factor of not being arsed to start over with a new character in a new game and learn it's nuances/foilbles squares over the time you've invested in existing characters in titles you're familiar with - and WoW is the corned beef hash or pineapple and cheese on sticks of the MMO world: you never forget how to do it, it's easy, comforting and like all guilty pleasures feels good. Just not every day, ever.

It's rare that a new game comes along and makes you genuinely excited about building a new character, particularly over its first few levels - but even rarer still is one that maintains that excitement right through mid- and high-levels to endgame content. So quite apart the time you might have banked in a preexisting character in another game - there's often the nagging doubt that you're wasting your time in a new title, which may or may not deliver the good stuff after you've put the hours in.

[HereComesPete]

Oh conaids, sweet broken aids. If funcom had invested more time into levelling and added the guild village and whatnot later it would have bored me a lot faster, but if they had gone for supreme levelling and nothing else I would have given up. If only they had had the balls to hold off and really make something of both prts they would still have me playing now.

The combat was different enough to keep me entertained, the scenery was varied and the graphics were lovely, but when I got to 50-55 I had to grind it, then again at 60-65 and again at 70+. I gave in at that point, plus they nerfed a lot of classes due to overly vocal minorities which made every update a task to re-learn what all your skills did. I didn't mind the tweaking but the wholesale changes fucked me right off.

Rift - nothing wrong with it, enjoy the invasions and ensuing madness but it just wasn't good enough to justify after the free month was up.

I need something very different. Here's hoping someone stumps the money.

[Anery]

There desperately needs to be other variations other than swords and spells, fantasy is starting to bore the colour out of my hair. I hear fallen earth is going f2p so I may give that a shot and some fresh thinking of mechanics would be nice, I'm looking to GW2 to inspire some forward thinking from the rest of the world. Looking forward to see what Blizzard have up their sleeve for their next mmo, they do say it will be removed from the warcraft universe, though that is still no promise of a ray gun.
Things I would like to see an mmo of:

Necromunda
Fallout (rumoured)
Mass Effect
Star Fox
The laundry series of books

[buzzmong]

Fallout (rumoured)

Not a rumour, possibly vapourware though. Despite Interplay working it, having a website and posting a couple of screenies, seems Interplay are in the financial shit again so I expect them to crumble and the game to either not come out, or Bethsoft to put it on a shelf somewhere in their offices.

[Joose]

Mass Effect

That can actually be given a rumour tag too. The main design dood has said in interviews that the main storyline is strictly a trilogy, there will be no Mass Effect 4. He then said that they were definately going to do more games in that universe, just a different story with different characters. Then the interviewer asked if there were any plans for an MMO. I cant remember the exact quote, and cant be arsed to look for it, but it was along the lines of "That would be the most logical choice".

[Dog Pants]

Ah, MMOs. Such a mess. Nobody's said anything here I disagree with, but it seems the people making the games don't share our opinions. I'm currently playing Rift because I enjoyed Warcraft and it's more or less like Warcraft but with some nice gimmicks (and less end game content presumably). I expect I'll stop playing once I hit max level and get bored of trying to find 5punkers to play with. The only gamer I ever played which I thought had any possibility of keeping me indefinately was Eve, but unfortunately other people get in the way there. I think Rift, given the opportunity to expand to Warcraft's level of polish, could have been the pinnacle of the generation of MMORPGs - it has ideas that Warcraft has refused to impliment for years. But I think this generation of MMORPGs is dead, at least as far as the Warcraft clones go. Warcraft was the champion, Rift will be the polished but hopeless contender, SWOR will be the last big effort. Guild Wars 2 will, in my opinion, change the way people make this kind of game by breaking the mould. I don't know if it will succeed or not (although with no sub it stands a good chance), but from what has been said abaout it it'll reject so many of the old steadfast ideas that there'll be no point rehashing the old WoW formula. That said, I think ultimately it takes at least some sandbox element to keep people playing, because the devs simply can't produce content fast enough to sate the playing masses.

[Killavodka]

^ this, ^ this and ^ this. The genre, in my opinion, has simply become too generic, everybody is trying to use the same recipe with a few little ideas of their own sprinkled on the top. I'd love to see a come back of the "open world" MMO RPG where you simply get thrown in to a world and your quest is to survive, and the storyline is whatever you want it to be.

Old school Star Wars Galaxies is a prime example, I remember spending the first 2 or 3 months becoming a Rifleman Ranger, not through quests but through my own imagination and wandering the countryside shooting animals in the face for meat, bones and hide and then coming back to the guild town to sit in the cantina to drink brandy and talk with the other people who had been out making their own stories.

Of course you need content, places to venture into, good guys and bad guys. But I don't see why there has to be a set path with the unfolding of a story as you walk along it.

[Anery]

i forgot something i really want made into a perpetual world, but it will never happen and even if the moon should witness porcine flying machines it will probably done wrong...

Mechwarrior

[Dog Pants]

I nearly launched into a huge rant about what would/should/could be done in an MMO, but it was late so I didn't. Maybe later, once I've had a drink. However I think the rise of builder games might have an interesting effect, hopefully producing more games like Wyrm (but, y'know, good).

[Roman Totale]

I nearly launched into a huge rant about what would/should/could be done in an MMO, but it was late so I didn't. Maybe later, once I've had a drink.

I seem to remember Rift the other Friday turning into a huge "how MMOs should be made" debate. I also remember being so drunk I forgot the point halfway through a sentence.

When I win the lottery, I will commission 5punkers to make SLAMMO

[Joose]

... hopefully producing more games like Wyrm (but, y'know, good).

I like the idea of Wyrm so much I gave it a full days try once. Absolutely hated every minute of it, but only because the interface seemed to be made intentionally bastard confusing. Plus, it looked like a dogs arse.

But still, the idea itself is fricking awesome, and I think the popularity of the game (despite almost causing physical pain to play) shows how well it could do it a Blizzard like level of polish was given to it.

[Joose]

SLAMMO

If it ever gets made, it *must* be named that.

[deject]

SLAMMO

If it ever gets made, it *must* be named that.

QFT

[Dog Pants]

I nearly launched into a huge rant about what would/should/could be done in an MMO, but it was late so I didn't. Maybe later, once I've had a drink.

I seem to remember Rift the other Friday turning into a huge "how MMOs should be made" debate. I also remember being so drunk I forgot the point halfway through a sentence.

When I win the lottery, I will commission 5punkers to make SLAMMO

And you kept me up until about 3:30am you bastard.