Advice to future MMOs out there ...

[Deleted]

We're bored of WoW.

We're bored of WoW clones.

We're bored of poor WoW clones.

We're bored of multi-million poor WoW clones.

We're bored of multi-million flawed poor WoW clones.

We're bored of multi-million flawed and failed poor WoW clones.

...

10 million people still play WoW because there aren't any better choices out there. Yes, after seven years and after the childish WoW's graphics and gameplay there aren't any better choices.

We want something different. Without the stupid trinity system. Without 'kill ten, grab five, walk 200 meters and return quest' systems. Without grinding for hours, days, weeks and months for stupid rewards that get outdated the following months. Without stupid limitations. We want a real MMO, where our decisions, acts and behavior modifies substantially the world that we walk. We want to truly INTERACT with the world and not to speak with a couple of pixels that doesn't give a shit if we murder a whole town or not, that forgets our actions after a couple of minutes.

We want to feel emotions with our characters, to lead the way with them. We don't want hours of flat cutscenes and empty quicktime events. We want to live a story, to feel part of it. We want to be heard on forums and not feel like a carcass with a wallet attached to it that pays an amount per month religiously. We want our advice and opinions are taken into account and not dispatched with 'good-fucking-intentions'.

And the most important, we want that future MMOs really learn from other's mistakes.

...

Are there any company, with enough balls, to accomplish it?.

[Profyrion]

What is the point of this thread? You're not going to reach any MMO developers here.

[Einzweidrei]

We want a real MMO, where our decisions, acts and behavior modifies substantially the world that we walk.

This is what I've wanted for years now.

I am positive that no MMO will be a smash hit ever again until someone does something revolutionary, until someone changes the foundation upon which 99% of MMOs are currently based. The levelviaquests+gear+raid/pvp treadmill, the extreme focus on competitive PvE and/or esport PvP, etc., it's all been overdone. MOST people are only drawn to even attempt new MMOs that are still focused on this stuff because, like was said above, there are no other options.

Cliche as it sounds, someone needs to make an MMO that is about the journey again (think of oldschool everquest, where you would spend months leveling up before you ever hit max level and had fun doing it, where a lot of players didn't even care if they never hit max level because the game was just as fun at level 10 as it was at level 20 as it was at max level, etc.), rather than about some narrowly-focused (though, I admit, deep) destination.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Who is this "we" you keep speaking about? Who can you possibly be speaking for other than yourself?

[Velthy]

I dont agree. I dont want anything different. WoW is almost perfect, well, used to be before. Thats why im interested in trying RIFT.

[jaymzkerten]

Who is this "we" you keep speaking about? Who can you possibly be speaking for other than yourself?

^ this, I don't recall going to some anti-WoW convention where I stated that I'm tired of WoW and WoW-clones.

[Vespian]

Who is this "we" you keep speaking about? Who can you possibly be speaking for other than yourself?

*Raises hand*

Obviously there's a lot of people that think that way GW2 is a step in the right direction, but, still not there for the oooooh awesome moments.

[Deleted]

Everquest clonefest, the MMO scene is.

[cityguy193]

Of course there is a chunk of Wow's player base that only plays it because there are no better mmo alternatives yet. But I suspect that the majority of wow players enjoy it because of wow.

As time goes by, and the subscription model falls more and more out of favor, we will see more varied mmos pop up, or we will see the collapse of the genre as a whole. A sub acts as a way for a game to hold onto its users, who will think that the time and money spent on the game should not be gone to waste, and so they will not move on. With more F2P and B2P games coming out, I suspect that in the future, there will be several big games who own the genre

[Serpenth]

MMO's fail cause they release with less features than WoW. You can't release a smartphone in 2012 and say well you can't text on this phone but when the first cell phone came out it didn't have texting! So we will just add it in a future operation system update! Fan bases will accept the lack of features and reassure themselves and others that it will be ok because "Vanilla WoW didn't have it". Guess what? Vanilla WoW came out in 2004. If SWTOR came out in 2004 it would have competed with WoW. Whether you like them or not Blizzard continues to add features that players want and that are innovative. They are packing a ton in MoP and really raising the bar but people are sadly overlooking MoPs monster potential because of the Pandaren.

I simply call it the "Vanilla WoW theory". Nostalgic people and people who listen to the nostalgic posters will toss around the idea that new MMO will be in it's "Vanilla" stage. Yet when they play the game, they realize that "Vanilla" stage actually is lackluster and disappointing. Therefore they return to a product with much more content. While players may not specifically mention "it will be like Vanilla", the idea floats around in the cloud. And we know this because people say "Well Vanilla WoW didn't have X, so they can just add in an expansion". Yeah, good luck releasing a cell phone with no camera or text messaging and expect to compete with the iPhone.

[Vespian]

Some of you really miss the point in the OP's story. It's not about what WoW has, but what all it's [edited] successors fail to improve. Vanilla WoW had the same elements and gameplay as WoW has today. From some perspectives WoW Vanilla was harsher and harder and thus was more addictive. What's being suggested in the OP, is that WoW will forever and rightfully so, be the king of the hill, as long as new opponents do not improve rigorously on the MMO concept. They don't need to launch with WoW features, they need to step away from WoW entirely.

[Boogums]

I still play wow 'cause it's fun.

[Faroth]

Sony is working on EverQuest Next, which is a reimagining of the original EverQuest. They've said they are taking some of the things that work in modern MMO design, but taking a bit of a step back towards the traditions established in original EQ as trying to embody the spirit of the tabletop RPG.

If they can find the right balance of play and scope and breadth of world without being too grindy, it could work. I really wanted Vanguard: Saga of Heroes to succeed because I'd like a fantasy MMO that gets back to the idea of adventurers adventuring and your actions determining your standing in the world rather than pre-set notion of side A vs side B.

I still love WoW and I'm very excited for MoP, but if a true "go live in this fantasy world" MMO came out focused more on just experiencing life in this fantastical world rather than "Grind, grind, raid" method, I'd definitely give it a shot.

[checking facts]

I play WoW because I like WoW. when I'm bored I take a short break, when I unbore I come back. even if there were choices, I'd stick with WoW

[jearle]

We want something different. Without the stupid trinity system. Without 'kill ten, grab five, walk 200 meters and return quest' systems. Without grinding for hours, days, weeks and months for stupid rewards that get outdated the following months. Without stupid limitations. We want a real MMO, where our decisions, acts and behavior modifies substantially the world that we walk. We want to truly INTERACT with the world and not to speak with a couple of pixels that doesn't give a shit if we murder a whole town or not, that forgets our actions after a couple of minutes.

We want to feel emotions with our characters, to lead the way with them. We don't want hours of flat cutscenes and empty quicktime events. We want to live a story, to feel part of it. We want to be heard on forums and not feel like a carcass with a wallet attached to it that pays an amount per month religiously. We want our advice and opinions are taken into account and not dispatched with 'good-fucking-intentions'.

The main problem is that what you list here is not what the majority of the MMO player population wants. The typical MMOer does not pay their 15 bucks a month to feel as if their actions changed the world around them. The typical MMOer wants to run around killing and performing tasks in order to get more powerful and be able to kill bigger and badder enemies to become even more powerful and the typical MMOer wants to be able to do this with other people involved, oh yeah and they want it to be a reasonable challenge based upon their personal skill level. They also want to be able to do this and be entertained for hundreds of hours, and some typical MMOers will consume these hundreds of hours in weeks time.

The idea sounds great and would be a great niche MMO, but it would never be a blockbuster due to the majority of the population that play this genre now. I have played MMOs for 13 years now since the Kunark days in EQ and the typical people playing this genre have turned into a never satisfied, overexpectant mob of whiners that game devs listen too because the majority is where the money is at.

[Tomana]

What I really would like to see is a real space MMORPG (like EVE Online, but requiring less play time)

[dapperedodo]

Where are those wow clones ur talking about? I only know mmorpgs that follow the classic rules of an mmorpg just like wow does. And keep in mind WoW is an mmorpg not an mmo cause mmo only stands for massively multiplayer online. U can attach about every genre to it like mmofps and stuff like that. And on that the rpg scene is old and barely changed so I doubt a very different game then the current ones we have. If u got bored of wow, swtor etc u just need 2 invent a new genre that fits u.

The only thing the current mmorpgs can improve on is the interaction and make the world more dynamic but the thing with this is that it requires a shit ton of resources with the current technologie.

[Shockzilla]

What you mean to say is that YOU want those things, you do not speak for me. Please stop making it sound like every MMO style game that came out after WOW was an attempt to be a better WOW, and please try to use a little better grammar.

[Anjerith]

The fact that WoW continues to thrive speaks to how bored people are of it.


What people are ACTUALLY bored of is the fact that no developers have made any true attempt to tackle WoW by creating a game that does what WoW does while improving on it's winning formula.


There are a ton of MMO's out there that try to be different from WoW. Age of Conan was a notable one. Once upon a time, Everquest II was another. The problem (if it's really a problem at all) is that Blizzard hit every aspect of what makes an MMO fun out of the ballpark when it released WoW. Its accessible, runs well on even cheap computers, looks aesthetically pleasing (to most people) and has many addictive elements that allow even the most casual player to feel like they can accomplish something.

The problem with these alternative MMO's is that they are not really trying to be different, they are just trying to not be WoW. This means they are going to the other old standy-by of Everquest. Everquest, while fun at the time, had huge QoL issues among it's other problems. People fled it to get on the WoWboat.

Some of these people forgot over time what made them leave EQ and that is what we see with some of the sub fluctuation in WoW during lulls in content. They go try other things and they see that WoW is really the best Compromise available. This can either frustrate them to the point that they simply drop MMO's altogether or they will go back to WoW slowly, perhaps trying a few other games along the way.

What these developers of alternative MMO's see is people leaving and going back to WoW, or WoW getting more subs through other means. They decide that they NEED to make decisions to get these WoW-minded people back. So they adopt just enough components of Blizzards game to say "Hey look what we have but we are still different!". This sometimes works for a small amount of time, but ultimately the games are labelled as "Bad WoW Clones".

The thing we really need at this point in the cycle of the MMO genre is perspective. That is something that comes with time and, following the fall of SWToR, we may just get that time. Publishers are going to again assume the role of frightened rabbits, unwilling to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a game genre dominated by the same title for the last 10 years.

By attaining this perspective, we can hope that a developer has an idea in the next two-three years and then we can start to pray that they approach a Publisher that is willing to give them a chance to devote the time and energy into creating something that could truly be a new alternative to WoW, rather than a game that will look great when it's free and suddenly dry up and blow away when that month is over.

[Kathandira]

Who is this "we" you keep speaking about? Who can you possibly be speaking for other than yourself?

He sure speaks for me. His words are my thoughts exactly.