Guild Wars 2 & the MMORPG Genre

[Deleted]

The only "stagnation" that we've really got is that nobody is making MMOs of any genre but RPG, like MMOFPS or something, but that's going to change soon enough. (I wonder if we could get MMORTS somehow?)

Isn't Age of Empires Online kind of like an MMORTS? Also, as far as MMOFPS goes, PlanetSide 2 is almost into its beta period and will probably be out next year or the year after. If you aren't familiar with PlanetSide, it's the most successful MMOFPS and really gave a severe sense of scale that no FPS has been able to recreate since.

[DrakeWurrum]

Ah. That just shows that even the most open-minded people can have a narrow focus that blocks out awareness of some things.

Was not aware that Planetside 2 was MMOFPS.

I wonder if there's a way to turn an MOBA into MMO form...

[Zipzo]

That's not saying much, and merely proves your narrow perspective. =\

That was only four years ago. Some MMOs have been around since the 90s.

I think it's a proper evaluation that you have very little to add to this conversation anymore aside from trying expose my credibility on the matter as an excuse for not having a real argument. You're highly presumptuous, fallacious, and well versed in deflection.

Of course I'm aware of MMORPGs from the 90s. I played them then as well. That was back when the basic formula was actually acceptable, because back in those days...the genre was evolving at a break neck pace. I remember playing Phantasy Star Online for Dreamcast (2001, that was more than 10 years ago pal) and thinking to myself just how shocking of an evolution it was for online RPGs.

Also...I could use the same roundabout argument techniques and point out that the fact you've never played or heard of an MMOFPS makes you narrow minded and lacking of any credibility to comment on the MMORPG genre at large.

[Fencers]

You'd be demonstrating the wrong thing by using market trends or the # of released MMORPGs as of late as your basis. In popularity or profitability? Sure, the MMORPG market is growing in terms of its presence as a competitor in the overall gaming community.

It is stagnating in terms of its concept.

That's not a shockingly narrow viewpoint. That's obvious. Why does a game like SWTOR which released almost a decade after WoW get called a WoW clone? Because it borrows almost pitch for pitch each and every gaming mechanic used in WoW. Why does a game released almost a decade later feel that its multi-million dollar investment can be saddled under a model that has been in existence for that long? Stagnation. Lack of innovation.

I understand you have an opinion on this matter. That's fine.

There is no quantifiable basis to continue this discussion when you are expressly saying popularity and profitability are not effective measures of the market.

Cheers.

[Deleted]

Thing is with MOBA, the mere name stops it from expanding into an MMO, being Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. I guess GW2 could kinda be considered a MOBA in WvWvW. You have a character with a set of abilities that is predetermined by weapon choice (could be equivalent to champion or hero choice) and are looking to push certain towers.

It's a long shot but I think that's about as close as an MMOBA would get.

[DrakeWurrum]

Thing is with MOBA, the mere name stops it from expanding into an MMO, being Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. I guess GW2 could kinda be considered a MOBA in WvWvW. You have a character with a set of abilities that is predetermined by weapon choice (could be equivalent to champion or hero choice) and are looking to push certain towers.

It's a long shot but I think that's about as close as an MMOBA would get.

That's a fair point indeed. An MOBA is kinda just a chopped piece of the MMORPG genre, in some ways.

---------- Post added 2012-08-19 at 01:26 PM ----------

I think it's a proper evaluation that you have very little to add to this conversation anymore aside from trying expose my credibility on the matter as an excuse for not having a real argument. You're highly presumptuous, fallacious, and well versed in deflection.

Of course I'm aware of MMORPGs from the 90s. I played them then as well. That was back when the basic formula was actually acceptable, because back in those days...the genre was evolving at a break neck pace. I remember playing Phantasy Star Online for Dreamcast (2001, that was more than 10 years ago pal) and thinking to myself just how shocking of an evolution it was for online RPGs.

Also...I could use the same roundabout argument techniques and point out that the fact you've never played or heard of an MMOFPS makes you narrow minded and lacking of any credibility to comment on the MMORPG genre at large.

Why are you getting so ridiculously hostile? I'm not trying to insult you, and yet you take it as insult.

I'm merely pointing out that your opinion is quite obviously formed from having too narrow an understanding of the industry as a whole, else you wouldn't believe there is stagnation. There's been lots of ideas and innovation over the years in this one small piece of the gaming industry, and GW2 is merely a continuation of that innovating trend - it's not making that huge a leap in regards to innovating, but it's different enough. Despite WoW being out, there's been several other MMOs in the market innovating on different ideas and concepts, and there's no point in me repeating them all over again, when they've been brought up in this thread numerous times, and you simply shrug them off as being unimportant.

The game doesn't have to be 100% original and different (which is impossible to begin with, mind you) in order to be innovating.

If you shrug off every innovating game in the industry/genre as being unimportant, then yes, we're stagnating. But then you're shrugging off quite a lot of media.

[Zipzo]

I understand you have an opinion on this matter. That's fine.

There is no quantifiable basis to continue this discussion when you are expressly saying popularity and profitability are not effective measures of the market.

Cheers.

I prefer not to relate popularity or profitability with the actual quality of a game, because even though you state them as though they are synonymous I believe them to be very different entities. I've already stated that if the basis for which you believe a new MMORPG to be successful or moving the genre forward is the number of subscribers, that's really just a contributing factor to the stagnation. It provides developers a reason to ignore creativity, in the pursuit of profit.

Why are you getting so ridiculously hostile? I'm not trying to insult you, and yet you take it as insult.

In what culture were you raised in where calling someone narrow minded is not insulting?

[rezoacken]

Isn't Age of Empires Online kind of like an MMORTS? Also, as far as MMOFPS goes, PlanetSide 2 is almost into its beta period and will probably be out next year or the year after. If you aren't familiar with PlanetSide, it's the most successful MMOFPS and really gave a severe sense of scale that no FPS has been able to recreate since.

AoE Online isn't really what I'd consider MMORTS :/ And as a side note, imo, the game is far from being an innovation... it just added grinding to the rts genre and is pretty much pay2win -.-
It has no persistent world where you actually play. When I imagine a mmorts I imagine having a persistent city and/or army. In AoEO you just have your "city"(profile) that is infact just your technology tree that other player can "visit" and send you items. The actual gameplay (which is like old AoE games) takes place in single games either against an Ai or another player... like any RTS game. The game introduces levels and items, when you complete mission you get levels and levels unlock the tech tree. You also get items with +% stats that gives you bonuses to your units when you build them. If you don't buy you cannot access the good items for your civ, and each civ is (was ?) 20$ each...
Levels and items are terribly grindy to get and pvp is a joke since you stomp lower level players and players that have not paid.

That game was such a fail (at least when I tried it)... where are the ages of AoE and AoK...

[DrakeWurrum]

I prefer not to relate popularity or profitability with the actual quality of a game, because even though you state them as though they are synonymous I believe them to be very different entities. I've already stated that if the basis for which you believe a new MMORPG to be successful or moving the genre forward is the number of subscribers, you're really just contributing to that stagnation.

Fencers is nowhere making the claim that quality and popularity/profitability are related. (though objectively speaking, it's often the case that they come hand in hand - how DO you measure quality, if not by the opinion of the masses, claiming that something is good?)

What's happening is that you're saying innovation cannot happen without incredible quality.

---------- Post added 2012-08-19 at 01:30 PM ----------

When I imagine a mmorts I imagine having a persistent city and/or army.

That's what I've imagined, as well. I think we've seen some online games based on this idea before in some fashion, but we've never really see someone go all out with it.

[Deleted]

AoE Online isn't really what I'd consider MMORTS :/ And as a side note, imo, the game is far from being an innovation... it just added grinding to the rts genre and is pretty much pay2win -.-
It has no persistent world where you actually play. When I imagine a mmorts I imagine having a persistent city and/or army. In AoEO you just have your city that is infact just your technology tree that other player can "visit" and send you items. The actual gameplay (which is like old AoE games) takes place in single games either against an Ai or another player... like any RTS game. The game introduces levels and items, when you complete mission you get levels and levels unlock the tech tree. You also get items with +% stats that gives you bonuses to your units when you build them. If you don't buy you cannot access the good items for your civ, and each civ is (was ?) 20$ each...
Levels and items are terribly grindy to get and pvp is a joke since you stomp lower level players and players that have not paid.

That game was such a fail (at least when I tried it)... where are the ages of AoE and AoK...

I imagine it'd be quite difficult to maintain a proper MMORTS. You'd get one really powerful friendship group who just destroy anyone who tries to start up new. The problem in some of the other online strategy games, some that I used to play absolutely ages ago (we're talking 8-9 years ago) was just people building massive cities and sending troops at others. Never really an active RTS. I'd very much like to see the genre properly done but I think it's incredibly difficult to balance.

[Zipzo]

Fencers is nowhere making the claim that quality and popularity/profitability are related. (though objectively speaking, it's often the case that they come hand in hand - how DO you measure quality, if not by the opinion of the masses, claiming that something is good?)

What's happening is that you're saying innovation cannot happen without incredible quality.

Quite the opposite, actually. I'm going to bring to light the word "polish". If I were in the mindset that you are insinuating, I would be obsessed with this word. Only caring about polishing what I feel is a turd in this day and age.

I do not measure the quality of a movie based on its box office performance (which is a definitive gauge of its success). Do movies that score these shocking box office numbers generally do anything for film or its genre? Rarely! They are usually cash ins on age old cliches. Same logic applies. Success is 9 times out of 10 referring to financial success. Success for the genre? Hardly, and rarely.

How do I measure quality? The same way anyone else does, by actually playing the game for a valid amount of time and making my own verdict, since it's a completely subjective thing to decide. I think you're midirecting slightly, I don't think the overall quality of a game is relevant here. If there was definitively bad game with an amazingly new innovative concept, I would likely praise it for having that concept. I likely wouldn't play it, since it's a bad game, but that its efforts would not go unnoticed.

[Deleted]

Quite the opposite, actually. I'm going to bring to light the word "polish". If I were in the mindset that you are insinuating, I would be obsessed with this word. Only caring about polishing what I feel is a turd in this day and age.

I do not measure the quality of a movie based on its box office performance (which is a definitive gauge of its success). Do movies that score these shocking box office numbers generally do anything for film or its genre? Rarely! They are usually cash ins on age old cliches. Same logic applies. Success is 9 times out of 10 referring to financial success. Success for the genre? Hardly, and rarely.

How do I measure quality? The same way anyone else does, by actually playing the game for a valid amount of time and making my own verdict, since it's a completely subjective thing to decide.

So how does one gauge innovation if one's views are admittedly subjective? Is innovation therefore quantified? How can it be if everyone thinks differently?

[DanBowie]

I feel like MMOs are starting to be different then wow. SWTOR has great in game voice acting and no other mmo has done that yet. Guild wars 2 has a few new angles their working, I hope they pan out. Elder scrolls new MMO pvp endgame looks epic and different then what other games have done.

[rezoacken]

I imagine it'd be quite difficult to maintain a proper MMORTS. You'd get one really powerful friendship group who just destroy anyone who tries to start up new. That was a problem in some of the other online strategy games, some that I used to play absolutely ages ago (we're talking 8-9 years ago) were just people building massive cities and sending troops at others. Never really an active RTS. I'd very much like to see the genre properly done but I think it's incredibly difficult to balance.

Well sure, I'm not sure the RTS genre as a future as an MMO. Turn based game have a better chance (or real time turn based games like Crusader Kings, EU etc). But I don't think the RTS genre need an mmo variant, it is by essence a 1v1 or Team v Team game and therefore is already aimed for online play but I think you cannot really put an idea of persistence in it. It's like wanting a mmo version of chess. I just wanted to point out that AoEO is not good at all imo, it added the worst of mmorpgs (grindy levels, gear imbalances, pay2win) and added it into a fundamentaly competitive genre... stupid.

[DrakeWurrum]

How do I measure quality? The same way anyone else does, by actually playing the game for a valid amount of time and making my own verdict, since it's a completely subjective thing to decide.

And I have to ask, how does anybody else measure quality? Plenty of people will play a game, and then decide "Hey, this is pretty good."

As more and more people are saying that, what you start getting is popularity.

[Zipzo]

So how does one gauge innovation if one's views are admittedly subjective? Is innovation therefore quantified? How can it be if everyone thinks differently?

I think innovation is easily quantifiable in the face of judging whether a game is good or bad.

First, let's also get out on the table that "quality" is also somewhat quantifiable in relation to production value, lack of glitches/bugs, and support from the development team assuming it's an MMO. Quality in my opinion, is invariably different from the words "good" or "bad".

Innovation is quantifiable because you can cross reference a games features with all of the games of its genre from the past, and see what is new and what isn't, then you can see what worked and what didn't. If any of the things that worked are things that haven't yet been done or perfected...that's innovation.

[melodramocracy]

I prefer not to relate popularity or profitability with the actual quality of a game, because even though you state them as though they are synonymous I believe them to be very different entities. I've already stated that if the basis for which you believe a new MMORPG to be successful or moving the genre forward is the number of subscribers, that's really just a contributing factor to the stagnation. It provides developers a reason to ignore creativity, in the pursuit of profit.

I'd agree with that stance as well, but for you to say that the MMO scene is stagnating, and stick to your guns despite numerical evidence to the contrary isn't helping.

Definitely so. Why do you think the blatantly negative term "WoW clone" exists? I'm guessing you can maybe count on one hand the number of successful creative challenges different developers have taken on order to break away from the now basic World of Warcraft mold.

The 'WoW clone' phrase exists because of blissfully unaware folks who didn't play anything that existed prior in the genre. If we're limiting this discussion to MMORPG's only, then sure, there's a certain criteria that most of the games do adhere to (all established prior to wow). But there's plenty more out there aside from the RPG thing.

[Lugor]

One question I have is if the MMO market is growing at all. What mean by that is that companies are either trying to expand the overall customer base of the market, or trying to carve out their own little piece of the existing market. If you divide the market in WoW players, ex-WoW players, and everyone else, I think the current push is toward the ex-WoW player slice.

I don't believe the average consumer can stomach the monetary and time commitment of two sub based MMOs. What I don't know is if they can take the time commitment of two MMOs if money isn't an issue. If they can't, I think the consumer will fall back to the one that they have the most time invested in.

Where I think GW2 shines is that I can play for a month, switch back to WoW once pandas and pokemon comes out, and then come back to GW2 without having to re-up a sub or pay any more money. The danger I see in GW2 is that I might treat it as a single player game, get through the content, and then not log back on until the next expansion. I say that as someone who dabbles in PvP, but doesn't care for it enough to be the sole reason to log on.

[lordjust]

I don't think that GW2 will revolutionize the MMORPG sector even if it is a very good game. It does a lot of thing different and is designed to be perfect in competitive gametypes like PVP or PVE where you can really show how good you are but not all people will agree that's a good idea. Some people will like it and some will hate it because they want a MMORPG where they can play just for fun and be successful even if they aren't so good in the game.

That's the reason why WoW is so successful. Everyone can achieve a lot and there are some challenges in the game like the heroic achievements or arena PVP wise. I know a lot of people will disagree and say that's a bad thing that both exists in one game.

In addition I don't think that the MMORPG sector is stagnating but more like evolving in sub genres. It all started with hardcore games and it evolved into easier versions like Everquest or WoW that featured both. Content for hardcore players and content for casual players and is still the only one that features both in a very good quality. After WoW there came a lot of other MMOs that concentrated on different things like Warhammer on accessible large scale PVP, Age of Conan on very good graphics and a completely new active melee combat or LotRO that concentrated on roleplaying and story.

The genre is still evolving with lots of new game with a very good quality. Even games like SWToR that are considered a failure are a good game that suits its audience perfectly with the only problem, that the audience is too small to cover the development.

Subscription numbers are declining but not because there are too many bad games but because there are too many good games that suit the interests of the player better than another game. In the past there just weren't enough games to choose from so that a lot of people chose WoW because it featured something of everything.

Also take a look on all the other new MMORPGs that are coming out or are already released like The Secret World which is very good game with a completely new approach on the MMORPG genre with a very heavy emphasis on story and skill builds or look at Wild Star which has a heavy emphasis on combat and exploration or Tera which has a very heavy emphasis on combat. Or look at games like Fallen Earth (it's F2P) that has a very strong Fallout and DayZ feeling.

[Zipzo]

I'd agree with that stance as well, but for you to say that the MMO scene is stagnating, and stick to your guns despite numerical evidence to the contrary isn't helping.



The 'WoW clone' phrase exists because of blissfully unaware folks who didn't play anything that existed prior in the genre. If we're limiting this discussion to MMORPG's only, then sure, there's a certain criteria that most of the games do adhere to (all established prior to wow). But there's plenty more out there aside from the RPG thing.

I won't deny that World of Warcraft falls squarely in the sights of what I'm describing, but I feel that WoW itself gets a bit of a pass because it came during a time where it was simply aiming for polish on all of these concepts. These concepts weren't yet tired and old. People weren't bored with it, so WoW was simply a "better everquest".

I consider WoW the turning point because that was where perfection was achieved with these concepts, and that in my opinion is why it has remained at the top.

If World of Warcraft re-released today in its current form...do you think it would build it's way back up to over 9 million subscribers?

And what numerical evidence exactly proves that the genre isn't stagnating, and not evolving? The only clause for which I sill submit to popularity, is that the innovation must garner wide appeal in order for it to catch on to the genre at all.

Combat in TERA is honestly not innovative, it's been done, and many of you like to forget other MMO's before it that did the same thing (if not better in some regards)...is it because Vindictus or Dragon Nest are F2P games? That they are not considered triple AAA, or seen in the scope of the public? In this case, I am not giving credit to TERA for action combat, I will give the credit to games long before it that employed action combat when tab targeting was still the main mechanic of MMOs.

Everyone has their method of cherry picking, but let's be honest, if we're going to address innovation, let's have a rounded knowledge of who did what first, shall we?