I think the next big MMORPG needs to have an AI living world

[Mehrunes]

I think what the current WoW players don't see is that the content is always there for everyone, it's the effort that isn't. There would be absolutely nothing wrong with there being a linear gear path like there was in Vanilla - WotLK when, guess what, this game had its biggest customer base. Take that method, change it to "everyone is invited at their own desires" like today, and guess what? Enjoy your constant fluctuating, small player base.

Wat? WotLK was the first expansion that had mass-scale catch up mechanics during its entire run. And they were introduced for the first time in late TBC.

Wildstar failed because it resembled a Korean grind mmo more then a challenging mmo. I speak of the lessons of vanilla and tbc WoW. Maybe a bit of Wrath if they can keep the badge system under control. That thing needs to be tiered not everyone gets the same.

The lessons of Vanilla and TBC were those of a grind... Grind bajillion consumables. Grind the same brainless bosses in MC for months to gear up your raid. Repeat that process in later tiers. Grind mats for resistance gear. Then there's the time consuming process of getting 40 players to raid in the first place. The difficulty of vanilla game from the constant gear checks that were overcome through grinding easier content. Today's 5 man dungeons have more varied and more challenging mechanics than the entirety of Naxx 40.

[primalmatter]

Wat? WotLK was the first expansion that had mass-scale catch up mechanics during its entire run. And they were introduced for the first time in late TBC.




The lessons of Vanilla and TBC were those of a grind... Grind bajillion consumables. Grind the same brainless bosses in MC for months to gear up your raid. Repeat that process in later tiers. Grind mats for resistance gear. Then there's the time consuming process of getting 40 players to raid in the first place. The difficulty of vanilla game from the constant gear checks that were overcome through grinding easier content. Today's 5 man dungeons have more varied and more challenging mechanics than the entirety of Naxx 40.

Really... can you tell me what dungeon has harder mechanics then the first and one of the easiest bosses in naxx?

What boss has you kiting a boss using aspect of the pack where if a tank makes a misstep the raid wipes?

What boss has a one shot aoe mechanic that once it kills a person will summon two elite adds that needs to be tanked for the entirety of the fight?

Keep in mind this was the easy mode go in and down it boss... It wasn't hard boss in the original naxx. Bosses now a days have more mechanics but outside of mythic it is a rarity they kill you.

I also never grinded much in vanilla or tbc. I simply bought my consumables like any sane person. You made more then enough playing the ah and running dungeons.

The game has remained challenging for mythic and arguably heroic raiders. Everything else was turning into a cake walk.

[Sansnom]

I Totally agree. thats exactly my point. After WoW people just "You know what? Fuck everything, i will just follow the WoW-Scheme to make this new MMORPG".

Well, the answer is right in front of your eyes. WoW worked. It was a success, so why not use that forumula? How successful were the other non-WOW MMOs?

Again, i love WoW, been playing it for 10 years or so, but it did changed MMORPG forever to a point that you either play WoW or something thats just too similar to WoW.

Yes, like i said. i agree. WoW is a great game, and it works well. My complain is merely at how every other company felt the Need of using the WoW-Formula.
WoW Killed the MMorpg Genre by making everyone else just do a new WoWinSpace, or WoWinAnotherFantasyLand. Some with some new

No. WoW did not kill MMO. WoW made it work. How many pre-WOW MMO has survived to this day? I can only think of one, EvE, and then EvE is not where WoW is right now. If it had not been for WoW, and maybe EQ which inspired it. WoW probably would still be that niche game with a million players at most.

Nobody likes to be Robbed, of course. But that wouldn't make it a Bad game. You would be safe in your City with your House/storage/watever.

I did not say it would be a bad game. I only said it was not a popular feature in the game. Look at WoW. There are even PvE and PvP servers. That itselfs tells you some people are there to play the game, do their own stuff with friends.

But when you are out in the road, anything can happen, you must be aware of the dangers and be prepared for it. You wouldn't want to go Alone out there. it's an MMO, it makes little sense doing all the content alone.

Right. And when was the last time you visited a dangerous neighbourhood just because. Or do you avoid those areas?

But then again, how can you say its not a popular feature, if theres no product with the feature? It really depends on how u wanna play the game. like i said, some people like it hard, thats why PUBG is popular now. what i suggest is basically a Survival MMORPG to a certain degree.

Because there are no produce with that feature? PK and player looting does exist. There are games with that feature. Compare that with the other games that does not.

But basically, i would think that it wouldn't be a problem as long as Robbery gets balanced to not be the optimal way of gettin gear and stuff in general.

I really doubt it can be balanced.

[Radaney]

We basically need a better Runescape, which has a lot to do outside of Dungeons and Raids.

[Lord Pebbleton]

There won't be any next big MMORPG.

[Deavane]

What are you talking about? What other content has ever existed outside raiding that you had to form a group to do?

Dungeons, questing. I think this conversation also references times before LFG and LFR (Not saying these features need to go). I'm just amazed that we went from a time where social connections were a requirement to now I can hop on everyday, que up for anything I want (with the exception of high-end rated PVP or rogression Mythic raiding (because these require coordination/a guild)) and be successful in the game. There's really no need for you to ever talk to another player. For me that's sad.

- - - Updated - - -

That's because WoW had to evolve to get with the changing times. The playerbase no longer has the time nor patience to sit around waiting to group up to do anything of substance.

So blame the playerbase for that not the designers.

That's true. I was just explaining what I thought he/she was trying to say. IT is a bit sad for me given what is available in WoW. Playing the game alone or guildless just isn't all that fun in my opinion.

[Deleted]

There was progression beyond raiding. Hell getting your classes dungeon tier and later it upgraded used to be a pretty big deal.

More importantly it gave a real sense of progression and improvement. There was investment in characters. Now... yes your ilv goes up and you gain ap but unless you are really pushing content it all feels pretty hollow I imagine. Has anyone cheered when a lfr boss died? Have there been any close calld and victories won by the skin of your teeth in lfd?

I dare say people enjoy being challenged. It would explain the succes of games like league of legends. I understand the desire to making games accessible but like communism I think it only works well on paper.

When my guild killed M Guldan, noone cheered. Only relief. Think age of cheering passed by. Game is too old, we cheered too many times.
My wife and me dont cheer anymore after good sex. Probably, we would with different partners.

[Kryos]

The problem with such a world is, that you would miss so much stuff since it would not happen the moment you arrive. It's more like reality. If you don't visit the carnival in Rio, it's over for a full year. No "please start again, I just arrived". That makes those persistent worlds with their own life cycles pretty boring for most players.

[Deleted]

I think the next big mmorpg needs to have a living AI world that grows and changes an artificially creates its own lore and history depending on the interactions taken by players.

Welcome to Hell then.

[Nevcairiel]

Irrelevant. A different difficulty doesn't make it new content and everyone can hop in with little to no effort. You can buy gear off of a vendor for next to no actual play time, hop into LFR, and literally stand in a corner and see all the content today. Sure, it's not on a toggled artificially harder difficulty, but the content has still been seen and experienced without lifting a finger to actually play, progress, and experience the game

That argument doesn't really hold up, even if it gets repeated every other week. By that logic, you might as well watch a video and call that "experiencing the content", because thats about the same amount of interaction you describe. Raids and dungeons aren't about "seeing" the fights, its about doing the fights.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Lol.

Delusions are real I see. The only way you'll achieve such "AI" and self-writing lore, is if you leave your computer and go outside.

[arandomuser]

I wish we had any rpg where ur actions matter, like for example lets say you do a quest and you collect stolen supplies to repair a bridge, whhy not make it so the bridge gets fixed and that unlocks a new zone or something, or if you liberate a town/outpost enemy npcs disapear and friendly ones appear feel like thats something lacking in mmos

[ro9ue]

I think the next big mmorpg needs to have a living AI world that grows and changes an artificially creates its own lore and history depending on the interactions taken by players.

How the fuck do you expect that to work?

[Deleted]

From a technological point of view, we are very far away from an actual AI that can properly drive story and world development.
AI today can't even really handle language freely (not talking about a Siri kind of NLP that works in very confined borders), let alone use it to create story archs, and fill and balance out the world properly. My best guess is we're decades away from something like that.

Having said that, there's a lot designers could do to make the world feel interactive and evolving, even without any real AI. Dark Age of Camelot is still a fairly good example to me - the pure setup of the world and game mechanis craeted a huge faction identity, and you should have seen the community thrive in huge PVP realm vs realm battles to e.g. secure entrance to PVE dungeons (Darkness Falls) and/or other advantages for your faction.

This is the way to go imho. Create huge, server-based events, whose outcome have a noticeable impact on the world. Kind of what we had with Ahn'Quiraj opening, or to a much lesser extent, Onyxia buffs.

Now if you want to get real fancy, you could employ 2-3 game masters per server - maybe even community members who do that voluntarily - who create mini story archs tailored to the server. Doesn't have to be some sort of tier-gear yielding raid, just some nice server-specific sideline quests that bring the community together, and that span an entire expansion or even multiple expansions to create identity.

[Thetruth1400]

That argument doesn't really hold up, even if it gets repeated every other week. By that logic, you might as well watch a video and call that "experiencing the content", because thats about the same amount of interaction you describe. Raids and dungeons aren't about "seeing" the fights, its about doing the fights.

Okay then, you can literally log in, have no idea what kind of mechanics are in the fights, and still 99% of the time one shot everything. Better description there? It's exactly what LFR is.

Wat? WotLK was the first expansion that had mass-scale catch up mechanics during its entire run. And they were introduced for the first time in late TBC.

Are you talking of the Badge of Justice that was introduced late into TBC? The ones where you could get a few pieces of gear, but not nearly an entire set? Sure, that's technically a catch up mechanic, but not even close to the full sets with no effort like today. They also cost a ton of badges, making them basically bad luck protection, not really catch up gear. Also, I remember Blizzard doing quite the opposite of just handing everything out where they stood firm on their decision to make attunments character based, not account based.

As for WotLK, they added in dungeons with higher ilvls throughout the expansion and continues with the Badges of Justice. Again though, they didn't offer full sets of gear. Also, and this is the big point you're missing; You actually had to run heroic dungeons and normal (read actually a challenge) raids to get those badges. 1 badge per boss in dungeons and 2 per boss in raids. Items again cost quite a few badges per item.

When all is said and done, to call what was in TBC and WotLK even close to today is just downright ignorant. Today, you can literally get a full set from a vendor by having your followers do a single mission. If you think that's the same as having to go and kill 70 heroic level dungeon bosses at a time when heroics were actually a challenge, just to get one piece of gear, then the argument is over; No matter what I say, you'll stick firm to your guns of "It's always been like that!" Even if they did exist, which I'll be willing to admit they did, they were in no way like they are today. If anything, I'd say they used to be closer to what the bad luck protection on legendary items is today; eventually you'll get something, IF you actually put in some time towards achieving it.

[DeuZWw]

Right. And when was the last time you visited a dangerous neighbourhood just because. Or do you avoid those areas?

don't compare real life with an MMORPG. if there were dragons out there, nobody would want to go on an adventure with the danger of being killed. It's a game, we take risks in the game because there are no real life risks. Because its fun. And if i was immortal or Batman, i would go out and try to beat up the bad people on a dangerous neighbourhood.

When i said that WoW Killed the MMO-Genre, is because he did make it work in its own way. and everybody else suddenly stopped trying different stuff. Everything is a wow-formula based. No Diversity in the market is one of the reasons WoW keeps being the best MMO out there for all those years.

Anyway, Ragnarok had a great playerbase and is still somewhat alive even today. there are some others but hardly anything that can top WoW level.

well, i won't further take this discussion, you have some solid opinions and i don't think i can change it, and thats fine. i still think WoW hurt the market diversity by making everything the same.

[Sansnom]

don't compare real life with an MMORPG. if there were dragons out there, nobody would want to go on an adventure with the danger of being killed. It's a game, we take risks in the game because there are no real life risks. Because its fun. And if i was immortal or Batman, i would go out and try to beat up the bad people on a dangerous neighbourhood.

And that is exactly my point. There is no danger. There is no lost. So you would go out because there is no danger.

Losing items that people invested time into is not fun. Even look at WoW. Look at the complains about people "stealing" mining nodes is an example that people do not like to lose items.

When i said that WoW Killed the MMO-Genre, is because he did make it work in its own way. and everybody else suddenly stopped trying different stuff. Everything is a wow-formula based. No Diversity in the market is one of the reasons WoW keeps being the best MMO out there for all those years.

As I said. WoW made MMO work. There were diversity before. WoW was not the first MMO to the market. There had been others before WoW.

well, i won't further take this discussion, you have some solid opinions and i don't think i can change it, and thats fine. i still think WoW hurt the market diversity by making everything the same.

A bad concept is a bad concept. You cannot always blame that giant as the cause. If the idea was good, people would accept it. EQ was the big MMO until WoW came along.

[Deleted]

its not about having more to do always more so than the quality of what you are doing. I'd rather do one or two things while Im online that are meaningful and fun than do a million that are mediocre and boring

This.
There is always something to do in Legion.
Always some brainwrecking WQ for a chance a legiondary, some resources to keep the garrison milling (because your Class Order, apparently consisting of large numbers of people of your class, will quickly come to a screeching halt if you, the illustrious leader, don't keep on mass-killing falcosaurs in the middle of nowhere).
Always that one extra point in Concordance you might want to get to finally get over dps threshold for Mythic Bulbasaur or whatchamacallit.
Always that one tiny, meaningless thing to do which also consumes enough time to keep the sub up.

Good thing I can still persuade my GF to roll a new toon and have some actual fun in the game.