Originally Posted by
Lobosan
I find it somewhat pathetic that people are taking delight in the lesser magnitude of successes of MMO's outside WoW. It's the same juvenile mentality that gets people into fights over sports teams, as though supporting one uncaring brand is somehow superior to the other. Blizzard doesn't care if you wave its banner and piss on WIldstar/ESO/etc, so act a bit more mature already and realize that ANY competition is good for a gaming market.
Games themselves are what you make of them--there's some kind of fun to be had in most, and few if any are what we'd call perfect experiences. Games like Bioshock or The Last of Us come to mind as being pretty close to perfect in terms of immersion and gameplay, but then again, these weren't MMO's. And perhaps, therein, lies the problem. Every MMO that has come out for a decade now uses WoW as a metric to compare itself to, for sub numbers, revenue, gameplay style, etc. I feel that the MMO market would be better served by individuals who realize that good money comes, not from cheap gimmicks and trite repetitive mechanics, but from GOOD GAMES. It's not about trying to please every single person's tastes (and in the process, pleasing no one). It's not about "innovating" by taking things that work and trying to break them for the sake of banality masquerading as creativity. It's about taking what already works great, and improving on it if possible. It's about creating a beautiful, interactive world that feels REAL, both as a setting and as a vessel for the storytelling that should always be put at the forefront. It's about empowering the players through fun, dynamic combat, meaningful questing, and opportunities to feel unique.
In short, a good game is meant to sell you an experience, an opportunity few get in real life--the chance to be an important hero (or villain!) in a world where your actions have deep and far-ranging consequences. I brought up The Last of Us earlier because it did all of the things I described--it created a beautiful, haunting, and realistic world, with a compelling story that made you actually care about your role and the lives of the characters around you. It didn't innovate on combat--point and shoot was still point and shoot, with a fairly standard cover mechanic. But it didn't need to, because the combat system already worked. It didn't try too hard to create a ridiculous backstory--zombies, check, post-apocalypse, check. But what it did within the boundaries of an otherwise conventional set-up was draw you in and make you feel like you were right there in the action.
WoW, ESO, WIldstar--none of these really do that. When's the last time you actually CARED about someone "dying" in WoW? How much more interesting would it be if you actually got to know characters, on a personal level, with some becoming traveling companions who actually affected your story? How much longer would you play if, instead of being forced into mindless fetch quests, each new task you were sent on had genuinely high stakes for you and the story, where failure was an actual possibility with consequences for you and your partners? How much more time would you spend in a game world that looked and felt like it could actually exist, where turning the wrong corner in a dark forest could uncover new mysteries or perils entirely by accident? How accomplished would you feel if, instead of arbitrary numbers on gear, your progress was measured by the number of scars on your character, the way NPC's react to him or her, the amount of responsibility they have (newbies won't get sent to kill dragons after all, but veteran fighters might) or the way his or her gear changes in relation to their status, job, and purpose within the world they occupy?
Just food for thought. I don't think any MMO can succeed by trying to beat WoW, not be WoW, or be WoW without changing. We need a developer willing to create a game that gets back to the roots of what makes a fun, immersive experience, without worrying about the buzz words of the day or the identities established by those brands which came before.
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Or we can all go back to fetching coyote teeth off the many (apparently) toothless coyotes, while simultaneously complaining about how there's no good games out there and continuing to support the ones that fail to evolve. To each their own.
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