[Rant] MMO's need to evolve. I'm getting tired of the same formula for 12 years.

[Lane]

there are tons of MMOS that try to innovate
tera or wildstar come to mind

Wildstar didn't feel very innovative to me. It felt like it was trying to re-capture vanilla WoW just with a space cowboy theme (and somehow managed to feel a lot more grindy in the process). Tera on the surface is actually quite fun. All of the classes and the combat was enjoyable, unfortunately the quests are basic kill/collect from start to finish (and if there was a story I never found it).

GW2 has its pros and cons. The combat is sort of love it or hate it. The lack of storytelling made the game feel like more of a sandbox. When things happened you weren't sure why you were supposed to care. I liked the level scaling and the boss events. Their PvP system was also fun.

As much as Rift was ridiculed for being a 'WoW clone', they had some great features I always wished Blizzard would 'borrow' like Chronicles (1-3 player versions of raid content). Not to mention dynamic events. At this point, I believe WoW may be one of the only MMOs that doesn't have dynamic events.

ESO's single-handedly the best MMO on the market right now if you're a quester. Sadly, I have great difficulty running it on my (old) PC.

[MoanaLisa]

Well you know WoW also had the backstory/ Lore / Iconic Villan Backlog/ places/ Playerbase.

Every other MMO is new meaning no 20 years of grounded story which usually ends up being a really bad story where you give zero shits about the heroes and Villans.

How would you feel if the leads werent Sylvanas / Genn/ Kil'Jaeden / Illidan / Gul'Dan/ Khadgar or iconic Order Champions.

Just random coolname dude #54

Iconic Villans/Anti-Heroes/Heroes invoke huge amounts of Feels from me.

Kerrigan, Arthas, Dagoth Ur, Sarevok, Irenicus, Sylvanas.

Some names that have some real weight behind them.

There is a lot of truth to this. I enjoy story though in an MMO and if it's any good I'll get involved with it. Rift, GW2, and others, for all of their good and bad qualities, never had a story that resonated with me.

[Shadowspire]

Closet thing to innovative for an mmo I saw was Archeage.

Honestly the only thing left to innovate in mmos is, and I know is going to corny as hell, is to find a way to copy the features u see in the last two big mmo animes....let players affect the world they play in, permanently. That's King od it, the well on bright ideas for mmos otherwise is gone and dried up, you can't really change the current formula, just choose what goes into a mmo.

[Coffeh]

The mmo genre needs a polished, high quality sandbox.

[Armourboy]

The mmo genre needs a polished, high quality sandbox.

I'd love to see it, especially without forced PvP ( yet to figure out why lots of sandboxes keep wanting to do this). Thing is, I'm not sure it's something that would ever bring a large audience. There are just too many players that like to be spoonfed gear and quests for that to happen I'm afraid.

If I could get Pre-CU SWG with WoW's combat systems and stability, and some of the instance systems, I would be a happy man. Best crafting system ever to be put into an MMO, and no one has come remotely close to it since. That was done nearly 15 years ago at this point, and heck I haven't even seen a spawn from that system really.

[slaise1]

I'm sure it's something more complicated anyone here could think of. I don't think vanilla WoW in all it's form would do well at all if it came again today.

Dont underestimate millions of people not playing the current game

[Coffeh]

I'd love to see it, especially without forced PvP ( yet to figure out why lots of sandboxes keep wanting to do this). Thing is, I'm not sure it's something that would ever bring a large audience. There are just too many players that like to be spoonfed gear and quests for that to happen I'm afraid.

If I could get Pre-CU SWG with WoW's combat systems and stability, and some of the instance systems, I would be a happy man. Best crafting system ever to be put into an MMO, and no one has come remotely close to it since. That was done nearly 15 years ago at this point, and heck I haven't even seen a spawn from that system really.

It saddens me I missed out on SWG. A game like that, but much better polished, would be a great.

Anyway, I can only speak for myself but I'm so bored of themepark mmos. Legion isn't a bad expansion, but I guess I just need something besides running the same dungeons and raids over and over. After 12 years it just doesn't do it for me anymore. I want an online world to explore, make my own adventures. I know there's a few out there, but they don't tend to be very high quality, or they're f2p (aka: pay 2 win). I was very interested in a game called Revival, but it fell apart. Maybe you're right and I'm the odd man out and most of the mmo playerbase just want WoW type games.

[Armourboy]

It saddens me I missed out on SWG. A game like that, but much better polished, would be a great.

Anyway, I can only speak for myself but I'm so bored of themepark mmos. Legion isn't a bad expansion, but I guess I just need something besides running the same dungeons and raids over and over. After 12 years it just doesn't do it for me anymore. I want an online world to explore, make my own adventures. I know there's a few out there, but they don't tend to be very high quality, or they're f2p (aka: pay 2 win). I was very interested in a game called Revival, but it fell apart. Maybe you're right and I'm the odd man out and most of the mmo playerbase just want WoW type games.

There just aren't that many people that want to make there own game play, and to be honest, I'm not sure I could put the kind of time and effort into doing what I did on that game today. So much work by a handful of people on each server that pretty much gave everyone else something to do other than grind mobs or gear. Most of it was balanced around PvP though.

TBH though, most of us that played it before they killed it with the NGE miss two things, the social nature of it and the crafting system, oh well and the space combat. Outside of that most of the systems needed some pretty big work, tbh the game in general needed some serious work. Ultimately they destroyed the games on economy by trying to tap into the WoW crowd, when they would have probably have been far better off had they shored up its weaknesses and built on its strength. In the end they did the exact opposite and what following they had pretty much all went to WoW.

[Hampius]

You guys want a new era in MMO genre? Want innovations? Want freedom? Want PvP with consequences? Want to build your own stuff and hell, even fly using it?
Check DUAL UNIVERSE - btw, it has the running kickstarter campaign at the moment.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

And yet there's an almost 1500 page cryfest about going back in time..

MMO's are fine, you can't innovate much when they are the way they are for a reason.

Time travel isn't innovative, it is a shitty story-telling gimmick that results in a completely meaningless story.

[Deleted]

I love you Blizzard for being the father of MMO's but you are getting old!

sry, but u r wrong:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD#Early_history

[Sanguinerd]

Time travel isn't innovative, it is a shitty story-telling gimmick that results in a completely meaningless story.

I was hinting at the vanilla server thread

[Deleted]

I love the rant: You aren't innovating enough for me. But i don't know what i want! Surprise me!

Yeah... this is fine. Action based mmo's are fun but they aren't nearly as popular. When you screw the formula trying innovate you end up like Guild wars 2. Alot of praise, but no money and no players.

[Deleted]

WoW is a strange game because in other games people come back purely because of the gameplay.
Games like League of Legends, people are addicted only to the gameplay.
But in WoW is a bit more complicated. DPS rotations are not exactly the strong point of the game.
I think people come back to WoW for the RPG factor but there is little left of it.

So maybe try new stuff to increase the RPG feels and streamline the game less?

[Taeldorian]

Wait for VR stuff to further develop.

I dont really think that will have a gigantic affect on the MMO market (at least mmorpgs}. At least not in the way you seem to think it will.

First, saying wait for VR stuff to further develop is a bit of a stretch mainly because it might not even be that developed within 30+ years. Just think of what it will take to have over 1 million people connecting to the same server (or a few different ones maybe, but this will be insanely expensive} through VR tech. Its too late right now so I cant describe everything correctly, but it takes a lot more than it seems.

Im not saying it isnt possible because I absolutely want it to be, but Im not too convinced. Maybe in 40 or 50 years yeah, but then saying wait for VR tech to further develop is a complete stretch.


On topic- WoW would have to die first in order for the Mmorpg genre to move forward. It might move backwards if that happens, or a lot of new and innovative games could start popping up. Either way though, as long as WoW is successful and dominates the current market like it does now and has for the last 10 or so years, I dont see anything changing.

[Kokolums]

If anything WoW is less and less Everquest-like and less and less MMO-like. Vanilla and TBC was the pinnacle of MMO's, it's been a casual fest since then.
Someone said Vanilla wouldn't fit well today, well Nostalrius proved that wrong for being an extremely popular Vanilla server and it sure was refreshing to play a real mmo while it lasted.

IMO WoW need to change his route and come back to it's root.

Nost was a social MMO

1. a basic, simple global chat
2. no LFR, no phasing, no sharding
3. one realm so it actually had an in-game community where people actually knew each other and socialized

Surprise! It started growing like CRAZY to the point Blizzard basically stepped in and shut it down and offered them a tour of Blizzard HQ.

[dexx]

none of the mend up being successful due to how polished wow is

I imagine the "Wow killer" will be the new MMO which hits on just the right balance of features/gameplay/environment. Some of those things probably havent even been thought of yet or we would have seen a successor by now.

[mysticx]

I think WoW is the Nintendo Wii of MMORPGs, in the sense that WoW brought in a lot of people with no prior interest in MMOs (Due to accessible nature), and once people are done with WoW/Wii for whatever reason they're not jumping onto the next big thing, but leaving the genre altogether again...

That's why i think the WoW-killers died out: they were fighting for the 10 million subs WoW had, but only a small portion of those are interested in MMOs in general, the rest just like WoW and will abandon MMOs outright when they unsub from WoW, which leaves preciously little for all those ambitious new MMOs to fight over.

[Calfredd]

"needs a steve jobs" - We have Peter Molyneux already

Didn't Steve Jobs actually deliver in the end?

[Deleted]

People tried.

Over and over and over and over and over again.

Seems like you are stuck with Warcraft. Or quitting. But thats obviously up to you.