The Themepark-MMO Endgame Focus is the death of this genre. And Blizzard invented it.

[Thornquist]

EDIT:
Well, color me stupid. While I thought "Themepark MMOs" meant the sort of endgame content we have today, it seems it only means guiding players on reels. Let the mockery commence.
My point was more along the lines of WoWs endgame focus, and that in trying to do many things, It does nothing well. I think this type of thinking particularly among new MMOs is what is killing this genre.

If there is one thing that dawned on me with Warlords of Draenor, it is how much I cant stand the idea of theme-park MMOs.
With this new expansion, I think this disastrous design-philosophy has finally reached the breaking-point;

Gone is the Everquest-inspired progression type of MMORPG that WoW was inspired from, it has finally been completely replaced by the idea of a theme-park. A park where everyone can pick their own merry ride. What follows are my thoughts on why I despise this type of game, and why I think it has ruined WoW - and a huge part of the MMO genre.


1. Vanilla was never a Theme-Park MMO.

Not at release anyway. Most people’s first experience with this game was a journey of progression. It usually lasted months, if not years, and there were no rides to be taken at all. There was one way; forward. Level and get gear. If you wanted to pvp, there was only the chaos of World-PvP, with all the imbalances that existed. Raiding was just an upscaling from instances - there were no intricate boss strategies, no special rules in raids - It was just the ultimate culimination of progress: Band together and defeat the biggest bosses.

People didnt raid because they found the gameplay "interesting". They wanted that phat loot. They didnt care that bosses had mechanics made by a 3-year old, or that they had to buff every 5 minutes - because the game so expertly managed to give the feeling of true progression. A new badass sword, a new level, a new raid to experience.

If Vanilla was a holy trinity of design principles, they would be the following: 1. Progression 2. Community 3. A persistent online world

2. Modern MMOs fail because they dont adopt this.

They dont entice the players so expertly with progression like Vanilla did. They try to isolate players with phased story-telling. They cut up the world in loading screens and let players fast travel instantly. Most of the MMOs I have tried after WoW couldnt even hold my attention for weeks. They failed to envoke progression and a feeling of a persistent merciless world, they gave me no reason to group up.
They keep throwing bloated cinematics and story in our faces, and of course - they try to be another themepark. Stop saying Wildstar was an attempt to copy Vanilla. The devs on that game stressed the importance of endgame - Vanilla released with no endgame.


3. Theme-park is the very definition of "jack of all trades"

It tries to do fun leveling, but it cant force players too long, because some may want to start pvping.
It tries to create balanced pvp, but it can never seem to get a fair battlefield, because the classes are also designed for raiding.
It tries to do engaging raiding, but could probably do better if it ditched pvp and leveling completely.
It gets it ass beaten in pvp by MOBAS, it gets its ass beaten in the leveling aspect by true RPG'S, and gets its ass beaten in pet batteling by Pokemon.

4. WoW made it work by becoming a phenomenon.

WoW was something special. It was a great product - at the right time & place. Not only for MMOs, but online gaming in general. Blizzard could bloat the game with new things because it became so huge. But that strategy came after, and it was not what made WoW a massive success.


5. This no longer works.

The time of domination is over. MOBAS came and took most of the PvP community. RPGs came and took those who liked to immerse themselves. It only has raiding down easy because no other genre quite scratches that itch (but I imagine a game 100% tailored to this aspect would do a better job than WoW aswell).

Its also a gargantuan task that takes enormous resources. You need to tailor the game for everything and everyone, and its impossible to justify unless you have millions of players that are ready to throw money at you. Blizzard may surf on the legacy of WoW for a while(and believe me, thats ALL they are doing right now), for anyone else its a hopeless task.


But most importantly for me; it makes for a poor MMORPG.

TL;DR
Themepark MMOs suck because reasons.

[Azshara]

We need more sandbox titles, ala SWG.

[unbound]

Overall, no.

Vanilla / BC / Wrath were successful not because of the "phat loot" but because there was a sense of progression overall and enough content to do something besides follow the one path of raiding only.

And, as for the your primary concept, WoW is the very definition of a themepark MMO. Always has been.

[The Stormbringer]

The question is, once people reach 'the peak' and they have all the gear, gold, mounts, titles, and everything else they could possibly hope for in your 'Vanilla' model... what's there to keep them around? You need updates. You need fresh content. The only way to keep people playing for YEARS is to have 'the themepark'.

I guarantee you that most of the players who heard about The Burning Crusade were excited and happy to get something new. Yes, there were still guilds struggling with Naxx, but overall the idea of something fresh to do was positively accepted.

[Deleted]

Stopped at "they wanted that phat loot". Seriously, I don't understand people who's only purpose is to get better loot. IMO, better loot is just a way to be able to progress through more content, which is essentially what progression is for me.

[Antilurker77]

Vanilla was a themepark.

WoW did not invent the concept, and neither did EQ. This thread is dumb.

[Thornquist]

Vanilla was a themepark.

WoW is the very definition of a themepark MMO. Always has been.

Please tell me what aspect of WoW - at release - was a themepark. I challenge you.

[Jibjub]

While I agree that WoW, in general, did more bad to the genre than good, I am not buying completely what you are selling. WoW is an old game and I think the players of video games have changed more than anything else ... and MMOs just can't keep up (and, by trying, they've made things worse). The landscape is just different -- Blizzard, perhaps similar to the Video Rental Store, is creating a product that fewer and fewer NEW customers even want. Sure there are plenty of old folk out there who reminisce about the days of going to the store and seeing a wall of movies, but those customers are either dying or adopting newer philosophies. So instead of clinging to those loyal customers for as long as possible, the dying Video Store and Blizzard, attempt to appeal to the new consumers. They make all sorts of policy changes and change everything that made them a Video Store (or a great MMORPG) until they no longer resemble anything like a Video Store (or a great MMORPG). But the problem is, they aren't really the "new" thing new consumers want either. They are somewhere in between ... a product that the old don't recognize and the new never wanted.

Design-wise the game is a mess. But story-wise, too, Blizzard made the same mistakes most Hollywood sequels make. In trying to make every new expansion bigger and better, they've made the world feel smaller, more predictable and trite. And I think that has been even worse than the questionable design choices. I posted this on Blizzard Watch last week but I'll throw it here as well...

It's been said in other posts, but what you miss is just being small guy/girl in a big world ... happening upon other small guys/girls in the same world at any given time. We weren't the commander of armies. No one saluted us. No one knew our name. We were a stranger in a strange land ... we could help a goblin get a giant egg from a tree or we could not. We could help a Tauren search for his wife out in a desert or we could not. We saved small villages and villagers from small threats. We didn't save the all the world for all the people -- we saved the world for a single person or single family.

Now we are too big and the world too small.


Thanks for putting up with my metaphors...

- - - Updated - - -

We need more sandbox titles, ala SWG.

This. Would LOVE a sandbox WoW 2.0 ... but, as I stated above, the landscape of gaming wouldn't allow it. imo

[Feel The Power]

Ah, another "something isn't the same as it was almost 12 years ago" thread. We get it man, we got it back in BC when people were crying the game was killed, and we got it during the coarse of every other expansion with multiple threads crying about how the game is ruined and garbage and ruined all other MMO's. I just don't understand why people have this need to make such a big deal about not liking a game...it's just a game, if you don't like it or what it's become then you simply stop playing it. How many people stay exactly the same over the coarse of a decade? How many relationships make it that long? It just baffles me that people chose to make some big deal full of rehashed upon rehashed points they know damn well everyone has heard a million times before...over something they don't like. Newsflash pal, WoW isn't going to change into something you like, seriously get the hell over it. Oh and perhaps you could give your new and refreshing view on how lfr, lfd, or the cash shop ended the whole entire world, I think we might only have 1,300 threads about that too. See you next expansion!

[melodramocracy]

I can't disagree. A race of content consumption is ultimately a recipe for failure in a game like this. Other players are ultimately the draw.

[Flutterguy]

The thing about the old days is, they the old days.

[Armourboy]

Please tell me what aspect of WoW - at release - was a themepark. I challenge you.

The fact it had questing to level made it a theme park from the start. Prior to this in the more Sandbox era of MMO's they dropped you in a location and you did whatever you could find to do to get XP. The leveling experience alone put the game on rails from the start.

It may have had more of a sandbox feel to it in Vanilla than it does today, but I can tell you coming from SWG one of the things that kept me from coming to WoW at the start was that it was a " theme park". There has been little that hasn't been theme park about this game from the get go. You may have had blinders on, or they disguised it better, but I can tell you that coming from the sandbox land of MMO's, WoW has always been a theme park ride.

[Deleted]

WoW was a themepark MMORPG from start. And Blizzard did not invent themepark MMORPGs, that was actually Origin. WoW is mainly based on Everquests concept, with the exception to adress a broad audience and not just nerds.

[Jibjub]

with the exception to address a broad audience and not just nerds.

Sorry. It's still nerds.

[vulena]

Yes, the reason WoW is failing is because it's not like Vanilla.

No, I'm not being sarcastic at all.

Not.

At.

All.

[BananaHandsB]

That philosophy may have worked in Vanilla when WoW was still new, but 10 years down the line, the game would die if loot was still the end-all-be-all of WoW.

[Deleted]

Sorry. It's still nerds.

Not really. It's a broad audience MMORPG. A nerd-only MMORPG would be targeted at highly engaged gamers only.

[Pua]

There's some truth in the OPs statement, but I think it's unfair to blame Blizzard. Has World of Warcraft stunted innovation and true evolution of the MMORPG genre? Well, yes, it probably has. But, ultimately, that's why the game was so successful in the first place; it wasn't a traditional MMORPG, because traditional MMORPGs were traditionally very unpopular.

In the end, people bought into the adventure of the earlier game. The most important character in the game up until Cataclysm was the world itself and, as the world has shrunk, so has the investment players are willing to put in. Building communities and friendships was the social glue that bound players together and encouraged them to be part of the world... But be part of the world together. As queues have taken over and effectively gutted the exploration side of the game, players have found less reason to be involved, they'd made less friends, and that means there have been less ties to the game when content ran out. Now, because said content is consumed at breakneck speed by design, the loss of an immersive world has ended up all the more keenly felt.

The designers have repeatedly said that they're not willing to take the risk that would reverse all of the "quality of life" fixes that went into the game. No matter how important we think these fixes are, they would be a risk. A huge one. To an overwhelmingly lucrative game for its shareholders, I think the designers are in something of an innovation straitjacket that many of them probably want to break out of themselves. It's funny how Greg Street was just about starting to grasp the issues when he decided to move to Riot; players want to have something to do that's meaningful, even if it's only for a couple of short play periods a week.

When I first started playing, that meant levelling up my character and making friends along the way.

Our goals were to ding a couple of times, or maybe complete a dungeon as we did so.

That was adventuring, and that was the "World" of Warcraft.

Now, there's no world. And sadly, Warcraft isn't good enough to stand on its own.

Ocarina of Time still stands as number one for me. But, damn it, World of Warcraft came so close.

So close.

[Thornquist]

There's some truth in the OPs statement, but I think it's unfair to blame Blizzard. Has World of Warcraft stunted innovation and true evolution of the MMORPG genre? Well, yes, it probably has. But, ultimately, that's why the game was so successful in the first place; it wasn't a traditional MMORPG, because traditional MMORPGs were traditionally very unpopular.

In the end, people bought into the adventure of the earlier game. The most important character in the game up until Cataclysm was the world itself and, as the world has shrunk, so has the investment players are willing to put in. Building communities and friendships was the social glue that bound players together and encouraged them to be part of the world... But be part of the world together. As queues have taken over and effectively gutted the exploration side of the game, players have found less reason to be involved, they'd made less friends, and that means there have been less ties to the game when content ran out. Now, because said content is consumed at breakneck speed by design, the loss of an immersive world has ended up all the more keenly felt.

The designers have repeatedly said that they're not willing to take the risk that would reverse all of the "quality of life" fixes that went into the game. No matter how important we think these fixes are, they would be a risk. A huge one. To an overwhelmingly lucrative game for its shareholders, I think the designers are in something of an innovation straitjacket that many of them probably want to break out of themselves. It's funny how Greg Street was just about starting to grasp the issues when he decided to move to Riot; players want to have something to do that's meaningful, even if it's only for a couple of short play periods a week.

When I first started playing, that meant levelling up my character and making friends along the way.

Our goals were to ding a couple of times, or maybe complete a dungeon as we did so.

That was adventuring, and that was the "World" of Warcraft.

Now, there's no world. And sadly, Warcraft isn't good enough to stand on its own.

Ocarina of Time still stands as number one for me. But, damn it, World of Warcraft came so close.

So close.

I agree with everything you just said. Thanks for not going straight to the "rose-colored glasses" accusation.

[Gamevizier]

The only way to have a "true sandbox" game is to drop levels and level requirements from everything. WoW was a themepark from the start, i couldnt go and do redridge quests when i was still at elwyn.

What you mean perhaps, is that WoW's questing was not so linear as it is atm. The game didnt point to where i have to go and the quests were scattered in a zone...sometimes i would meet a questgiver for the first time on my like...third alt and i would then just realize that this NPC existed because there was no dev putting an arrow pointing towards the dude and yell YOU HAVE TO DO THIS! DO THIS FOR LEVELING! (looks at heroes board and several other NPCs)

Questing has to lose its linear nature in order for zones to have more mystery, to allow players to explore the zone and discover it for themselves. I think the treasure system was a start.