Why the MMORPG genre failed and how to fix it

[lawow74]

I was referring to all the fees, not just the sub. For most people it's not an issue. I'm sure they've done cost analysis on it plenty of times. Not just how many people are willing to pay, but what it takes to actually handle the services in question, how much they would be used at lower costs and how much that would affect their sub fees and other profits, zeroing in on their overall margin.

[jayeffkay]

I Unsubbed to FF14. I really enjoyed the game however, my biggest issue with them and memos in general is gated content. My job keeps me working solid for 7 days straight and its of course Tuesday to Tuesday. So I miss out on valor half of the month and I know I'm already behind in such a dps/gear dependent endgame. But on the Week off I can put a lot more time into the games and catchup but I'm gated again. Gate the no lifers not those trying to catchup.

[melodramocracy]

The genre hasn't failed by any means. It's built up unrealistic expectations, and underwent quite a bit of homogenization, sure. Failure? No.

But yeah, if you didn't get to play these games between '99 and 2005, you missed the boat.

[DeadmanWalking]

Casual killed the MMO.

Wildstar called, wants to know where all you hardcores were when they made a game for you.

All anyone has to do is mention WIldstar and your casual boogeyman you made up in your head disapates in a poof of logic and historical evidence.

People like to accuse wow of going casual ruining the game but the fact is during the life of WoD the raiders got copious amounts of content and the casual got a copy-pasta LFR so the Raider could keep getting raid content. They didn't make new dungeons, scenarios or new dailys that lead to cutscenes for casuals, they copy pasted raids into LFR code. The whole expansion the only things outside of LFR that casuals got to do was that they got a jungle they could run around for 2 weeks before getting bored. Raiders got 3 raids and 30 bosses. ANd yet they still blame casuals for getting catered to, what the fuck?

[melodramocracy]

ITT, we (once again) directly link Wildstars lack of popularity with its initial difficulty. Something something causation, etc.

[DeadmanWalking]

ITT, we (once again) directly link Wildstars lack of popularity with its initial difficulty. Something something causation, etc.

I'm not saying the game lost popularity because it was only hardcore, I'm saying the made a game which should of been a hardcore wet dream and the hardcores didn't show up. 40 man raids, hard dungeons, lots of raid gating keeping casuals out, it should of been hardcore porn to a 'hardcore' who blames casuals for everything.

They just want someone to blame and point at casuals because they are not very good at actually figuring out what the problem is.

[melodramocracy]

I'm not saying the game lost popularity because it was only hardcore, I'm saying the made a game which should of been a hardcore wet dream and the hardcores didn't show up. 40 man raids, hard dungeons, lots of raid gating keeping casuals out, it should of been hardcore porn to a 'hardcore' who blames casuals for everything.

They just want someone to blame and point at casuals because they are not very good at actually figuring out what the problem is.

I think some showed up. In the big picture, hardcore gamers within a single system or game will always be a minority. They are in WoW, and were in its predecessors as well. Expectations of millions of subscribers to a more demanding system are incredibly unrealistic, and given far too much importance in the first place.

I personally don't feel like most hardcore viewpoints are so much about keeping other people out of content, as it is maintaining a certain level of personal satisfaction with the content itself. Easy or quickly completed content is inherently less rewarding and memorable to conquer, despite being more accessible. Difficulty levels alleviate this of course, but implementing those in all facets of MMO's isn't an easy thing to do.

I'd have loved to be intrigued by Wildstar, but the overall finish / quality / artwork / setting sort of made me run away faster than any other MMO I've tried. But that's just me.

[lawow74]

Back more to the OP, the tools to 'fix' things are all in place. They just require more work than it seems most people are willing to put into it. With the rise of crowdfunding, it's completely possible to appeal directly to the audience that would play the old-school MMORPG for financial backing to make one in that same style. Unfortunately that means you also have to put together something for the crowd to fund in the first place.

[Khorm]

MMO's need to be more driven by storylines and developers willing to make real world changes to move the story on.

Factions are a disaster as they stall storylines as one side can't be seen to be winning over the other. We also get a sort of phoney war between them as they're supposed to be united against the big bad but we still kill them occasionally.

Having too many people in an area can kill immersion. Zones need to be phased more to only let a certain number in and guide the story more. I found the introduction in Tanaan one of the best zones in WoW as it was more akin to a single player game story wise with real changes taking place and it was better with less people than a swarm of masses.

To sum it up, I feel immersion is the thing that needs to be worked on the most as that will get me logging into the game more outside of raid hours while raiding is where I get my competitive fix.

[lawow74]

MMO's need to be more driven by storylines and developers willing to make real world changes to move the story on.

Factions are a disaster as they stall storylines as one side can't be seen to be winning over the other. We also get a sort of phoney war between them as they're supposed to be united against the big bad but we still kill them occasionally.

Having too many people in an area can kill immersion. Zones need to be phased more to only let a certain number in and guide the story more. I found the introduction in Tanaan one of the best zones in WoW as it was more akin to a single player game story wise with real changes taking place and it was better with less people than a swarm of masses.

To sum it up, I feel immersion is the thing that needs to be worked on the most as that will get me logging into the game more outside of raid hours while raiding is where I get my competitive fix.

Sadly, single player games do this better, IMO. I like a lot of the design aesthetic of the MMO worlds, but my enjoyment quickly gets ruined by half a dozen idiots with ridiculous character names and appearances running around like five-year-olds on crack getting in the way of the same things I'm trying to do. I'm hopeful for projects like Shards Online and Shroud of the Avatar, which want to make the game both Online AND Offline, providing the experience you choose to have instead of forcing you into only one way to play it.

[May90]

MMO's need to be more driven by storylines and developers willing to make real world changes to move the story on.

Factions are a disaster as they stall storylines as one side can't be seen to be winning over the other. We also get a sort of phoney war between them as they're supposed to be united against the big bad but we still kill them occasionally.

Having too many people in an area can kill immersion. Zones need to be phased more to only let a certain number in and guide the story more. I found the introduction in Tanaan one of the best zones in WoW as it was more akin to a single player game story wise with real changes taking place and it was better with less people than a swarm of masses.

To sum it up, I feel immersion is the thing that needs to be worked on the most as that will get me logging into the game more outside of raid hours while raiding is where I get my competitive fix.

My biggest immersion breaker in MMOs (and the main reason I quit them) is lack of changes in the world following your actions. In single player RPGs, you often clear some area, and it gets inhabited by new people, friendly to you, offering some things for sale. Or, at the very least, the killed boss is dead forever, and you can see NPCs often mentioning that kill.
In MMOs, you clear the area, then return to it a day later and see the same enemies respawned and being cleared by a dozen other players. No matter what you do, everything is back the way it was, often in just a few minutes. In fact, in some MMOs you can even physically see enemies respawning right before you.

I wish MMOs featured more dynamic worlds, where players could really affect the world. Say, the players cleared some area and took it under control. Then, a few days later the developers decide that this area should pick an interest of some tribe of centaurs, and they assault the area, trying to take it over, with the players defending it.
Guild Wars 2 tried to do something like this, but it was very clunky. You would clear and win an area, and just in a few minutes it would be attacked by someone again. There was no feel of world changes, only of repeated events triggered over and over.

[Marakesh]

Just to echo the last few posts here - single player rpg's are in a renaissance, and do story and world building much better than any of the mmo's I've played in recent years. Even if they didn't cost way more and have gimmicky payment models to work through, the fun level is much lower for the casual style leveling they all have compared to all the good options in action rpg's and single player rpg's out right now. What does WoW, the gold standard in mmo's still, have that they don't? Random instances with strangers for super easy runs you need to grind? Maybe if I was still into raiding I could see the point of all these theme park mmo's, without that, quality is clearly better in the single player space, not to mention cost.

[Ratyrel]

My biggest immersion breaker in MMOs (and the main reason I quit them) is lack of changes in the world following your actions. In single player RPGs, you often clear some area, and it gets inhabited by new people, friendly to you, offering some things for sale. Or, at the very least, the killed boss is dead forever, and you can see NPCs often mentioning that kill.
In MMOs, you clear the area, then return to it a day later and see the same enemies respawned and being cleared by a dozen other players. No matter what you do, everything is back the way it was, often in just a few minutes. In fact, in some MMOs you can even physically see enemies respawning right before you.

I wish MMOs featured more dynamic worlds, where players could really affect the world. Say, the players cleared some area and took it under control. Then, a few days later the developers decide that this area should pick an interest of some tribe of centaurs, and they assault the area, trying to take it over, with the players defending it.
Guild Wars 2 tried to do something like this, but it was very clunky. You would clear and win an area, and just in a few minutes it would be attacked by someone again. There was no feel of world changes, only of repeated events triggered over and over.

That's what Everquest Next is planning to do, but we haven't seen any of it yet - besides a terribly optimised voxel engine.

The main argument here is in favour of emergent gameplay, either by players, or by the game systems itself. It's simply the case that emergent game-play is hard to do in an MMO, a) because it either all has to be pre-built, or it's just event RNG and people don't like RNG, b) because the tech is complicated, requiring masses of content to be loaded dynamically, c) because people gravitate towards the best rewards and those rewards are not found in the world (since Everquest), but in instanced content.

Imo the players have broken this kind of thing by complaining, which has caused developers to stop making MMOs as immersive RPGs, and more about a kind of breathless getting-the-game-done dynamic (so you can charge through the next game in your huge backlog of games). Case in point: I picked up SWTOR recently, started playing, joined a dungeon through the LFG tool, group proceeded to charge through the dungeon in 10 minutes, skipping every cutscene. I had only the faintest idea why I was there and the entire experience was a breathless dps-race, not immersion. The alternative is doing the dungeons in solo mode, but why should I, I can play Skyrim or KotoR or Jedi Knight.

[Shinzai]

MMORPGs haven't failed. 2010 wants its thread back.

[Echocho]

Having played a lot of fallout the last couple of days I was pleasantly reminded how fun RPGs can truly be if done right. These are the pieces missing from most mmorpgs sadly