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

[InfiniteCharger]

The issue right now is that the mechanics MMOs use are, essentially, an emergent product of the interface and resultant gameplay, which WoW, particularly codified and reiterated, and which all games continue to follow because they use a similar interface and view.

Being able to play using a VR headset is not the same as game designed for one.

WoW, essentially, is about pressing hotbar buttons whilst selecting targets on the UI (for harm or healing) with a mouse and moving with keys. The reason you move is to avoid standing in the bad (or to prepare to avoid future bads), or, if you're the tank, to invoke certain behaviours in the simple-minded threat-following mobs.

For games like this to work you need:

1) A third-person perspective (as anyone who has tried to play such games at a serious level in first-person can attest!).

2) A big heavy UI with nameplates and party/raid frames and buttons for all your abilities, which will display cooldowns and resources and so on.

3) A keyboard or button-heavy gamepad to access all those abilities.

Neither of these is really compatible with proper VR design. In future (and most current) VR, you're going to be using some kind of controller in each hand, and have a headset on. You're going to need to be in first-person, or it's going to be fucking weird. You also don't want giant floating panels everywhere, lowering immersion and being weird, nor arrays of buttons.

So fundamentally, you have to approach how you design the game differently, if you actually want to succeed as a VR game, not to make a game which is merely "possible to play in VR". You need:

1) A first person-perspective.

2) As light a UI as you can handle - if you can get rid of a UI almost entirely, great. That's not to say you can't have stat/equipment/etc screens - they're fine - just not a ton of stuff up when you're actually acting.

3) An ability design which works around you using two single-hand-held controllers which can sense arm/body movement/position.

So you actually have a huge opportunity to make things more immersive, more exciting, and to really put the players in a world. And to do that you will have to dump the current MMO design model. Someone will, and someone will score big. Probably we'll see a single-player VR CRPG which does an amazing job first.

The only problem with that approach is that in order to play you have to have VR hardware. It makes the bar to entry a bit high.
I agree that many of the things you mention would make a MMO game very immersive in VR but the technology is too new and not enough people have it to justify making content that is pretty much exclusive to it.

[Halicia]

People always say they're sick of the same and want something new.

When something new comes along, they play it for a week then complain that its different.

Then they go back to something old because "its comfortable".

If you're tired of the "same formula" of a genre... TRY A DIFFERENT GENRE.

Genre's arent formed because they deviate from the mold, but because they follow it.

[Arcursis]

I don't think MMO's, and especially WoW, need to change. Have you ever considered that you've outgrown MMO's and now you've just got a strong case of memberberries?

[Nurvus]

Every other company just copies the already in place formula with a new setting/license and they are failling because of it.

You should try playing other MMOs. Maybe then you'll actually have an opinion.

It's true that those that clone WoW fail horribly.

But there's been plenty of MMOs introducing new elements.

I think the problem is that all attempts at doing things differently have been half-assed.
Rushed releases, chickening out halfway, etc.
GW2 wanted to give us "dynamic events". Instead we got X-minute loops with no real meaning or feeling of accomplishment.
Black Desert did lots of things differently, has potential, but the company is both greedy and stupid.

[ldev]

Just try to innovate and revolutionize the genre already. We are all waiting for the next Steve Jobs of MMO's. Where is him?
Blizzard i'm looking at you. You have the obligation to be the hero. To step in and change everything because...you are the number 1 after all.
It may not be safe for business to try and change the genre but we are all waiting.

Blizzard already proved they are the best at polishing and delivering the best interface and presentation possible. Legion is the best looking expansion ever.
Class Halls, Artifacts, World Quests, everything is polished and new but is just an illusion of new gameplay.

Every other company just copies the already in place formula with a new setting/license and they are failling because of it.

We need you Blizzard to be the dreamer, break walls, blow the minds of the people with something new never before seen.
Free your mind from the notions, pillars, walls you have created. It was revolutionary before but it was 12 years ago!

I love you Blizzard for being the father of MMO's but you are getting old!
Get some rejuvenation potion or ask for a bit of whatever Gandalf is smoking in his pipe to come up with new ideas to change the genre entirely.

May the force be with you

Calls for evolution, mentions steve jobs, who knows plagiarism and marketing - just sheeple things

[Segus1992]

VRMMOs are never going to happen with our current technology. It's far too cumbersome to be profitable, and we'd go back to the absolute basics of MMO gameplay.

It may be relevant in some 50 years, but right now it's never going to happen.

@ the weirdos that seem to believe VR MMOs will happen with the Oculus Rift and equipment for hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

[mhdoe]

Every time you see a headline claiming "The next MMO you have to play" or "This MMO is the future of gaming" it always fails.

[Kithelle]

I'm not, I don't want to suffer an idiotic community who worships some asshole who asks them 600$ every year for a computer with slightly more processing power and bigger screen.

Is that what you want in an MMO? No thanks. Are you fucking seriously claiming apple revolutionized anything?

Yes, we need a new formula, mainly in the combat and reward system: games should reward your skill, not your time spent grinding, but for the fucking love of christ don't put "steve jobs" and "revolutionizing" in the same sentence.

There are MMO's out there with more interesting, improved, and skill based combat out there...just aren't as popular as WoW...like it has been said already...lots of people invested lots of time in WoW...hard to give that up...plus said MMO's don't exactly push a whole lot beyond the combat.

The risks that need to be taken to revolutionize the MMO industry aren't worth it, like Ryzael said, Blizzard could afford to take the risks...but why should they when they still make millions off of the old ways?

[Deleted]

MMO's need to evolve = I'm tired of MMOs but i'm too lazy to explore genres.

Blizzard already proved they are the best at polishing and delivering the best interface and presentation possible.

Tahts why everybody uses default wow interface and have 0 addons. Oh wait...

[Deleted]

Calls for evolution, mentions steve jobs, who knows plagiarism and marketing - just sheeple things

Isn't it the other way around?
Bill Gates stole the idea of Apple's interface to create Windows OS?

[InfiniteCharger]

Looking at other MMOs it looks like the fundamental issue that there are fundamentally variations of game play that have become dominant:

1) Story driven campaign
2) Raiding and dungeons.

Most MMOs are somewhat a combination of both, with a somewhat linear campaign story mixed in with dungeon and raids for "hardcore" folks.

Not sure if that is Blizzards fault or just natural evolution based on what is popular. We know people like MOBAs so dungeons and raids kind of meet that need.
And the campaign mode gives one a sense of story and world building.

And now companies are just borrowing ideas from each other....

Dailies
Hard Modes
Group Finder
Story mode (ez mode dungeons)

Etc.

Not really much innovation going on in terms of dynamic spontaneous game play, with the notable exception of GW2.

polygon .com/2016/1/18/10776784/star-wars-old-republic-knights-fallen-empire-mmo-return

youtube .com/watch?v=JzRpgvPyY0k

[Lane]

Isn't it the other way around?
Bill Gates stole the idea of Apple's interface to create Windows OS?

As I recall, they both basically 'stole' the GUI from Xerox.

[anothdae]

Blizzard brought the MMO's into common households.

Before WoW MMO's were much more punishing. Vanilla WoW was the most casual MMO on the market at a time. By far the most casual.

Imagine if:

-Leveling up took even longer

So what?

Is there a difference in leveling up taking longer and leveling up faster, just to have to do the same daily quests over and over?

I am already sick of some of the dailies in Legion... I would much prefer having the leveling up take much longer.

[Eurhetemec]

The only problem with that approach is that in order to play you have to have VR hardware. It makes the bar to entry a bit high.
I agree that many of the things you mention would make a MMO game very immersive in VR but the technology is too new and not enough people have it to justify making content that is pretty much exclusive to it.

Well, yes, to make a game designed for VR you'd have to make a game designed for VR. Such games are being designed - but yeah they're mostly smaller-scale so far. I agree that this isn't going to happen right now, but in a few years? I don't think it's merely likely - it's a certainty - it's simply a matter of time and who does it first and then who does it best. Personally I think a really good, content-heavy VR MMORPG is at least a decade out. But not likely much more than that. A shitty VR MMORPG is probably going to hit in the next three years - but honestly even a rubbish one could have quite an impact on future development.

As for bars, well, when MMOs started, the bar was that you had to have a reasonably fast/good internet service - it was a pretty rare thing and potentially extremely expensive if you played an MMORPG (pretty sure I spent a lot more than the cost of VR setup on my first year of playing EverQuest). Not as rare as VR is now, for sure, but again, as rare as VR might be in five years? Maybe.

VRMMOs are never going to happen with our current technology. It's far too cumbersome to be profitable, and we'd go back to the absolute basics of MMO gameplay.

It may be relevant in some 50 years, but right now it's never going to happen.

@ the weirdos that seem to believe VR MMOs will happen with the Oculus Rift and equipment for hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

You'll really have to explain this one, because you're not making a lick of sense.

Do you think a "VR MMO" has to be some sort of full-body Lawnmower Man nonsense? Because I specifically pointed out that it doesn't, and indeed, it will not be. A VR MMO is absolutely 100% possible with today's technology. What it isn't is financially viable with such a tiny market (less than 0.3% of PC gamers have a VR setup, maybe a LOT less). Technology is absolutely not the issue. The market penetration of that technology is.

We've never really left the basics of MMORPG play, which is what this thread is about. Back in EverQuest, as a result of unintentional emergent gameplay, you got the "holy trinity" of tank, damage-dealer and healer emerging (EQ's intended roles were vastly more complex, but made irrelevant by unintended synergies which elevated certain classes and play-styles, together with player support for those synergies which convinced devs to push them rather than acting against them - indeed Jeffrey Kaplan - Tigole of WoW - was one of the leaders of the players trying, and succeeding, in forcing EQ's devs to do this), with mobs superglued to the tank with threat, CC increasingly irrelevant (already) and you got the beginning of the "hotbar" mode of play. That's pretty much exactly where we still are, just way more refined, responsive and complex. Nothing is fundamentally different, though.

So I'm not sure how you think we'd be "going back to the basics". We'd actually have to take another route entirely - one which realistically could not be hotbars or holy-trinity-based, and which would be unlikely to have the same mindless threat tables and so on.

So what?

Is there a difference in leveling up taking longer and leveling up faster, just to have to do the same daily quests over and over?

I am already sick of some of the dailies in Legion... I would much prefer having the leveling up take much longer.

I think an MMO which was really majorly focused on leveling rather than "ENDGAEM!!!!!" perhaps with no hard level cap (it's been done) could have a lot of potential, but it'd need to be really carefully designed. The problem is, no insult, but I'm pretty sure people like you would just being writing angry posts about how long the leveling took and how they just wanted to be at endgame already, instead of about how they didn't like Dailies or WQs or whatever. I mean, how would you propose extending leveling? If you make each quest and so on worth less, then you need more quests, more content - that means more development time, more pressure on the developers.

A better option might be to remove leveling in the conventional sense entirely, and just spend ALL dev resources on developing a sort of endless endgame. Yeah, some people would hate it, but I'm pretty sure they're the same people who hate all endgames.

[dextersmith]

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

Wasn't the father of MMO's.

[Deleted]

Wasn't the father of MMO's.

Fixed it.
It's more the prodigy child of MMO's. You are right ^_^

[Strawberry]

The problem is, MMO's TRIED to evolve.

Funcom started first with Age of Conan. It was way different than any traditional MMO.
Then they continued with The Secret World. Holy crap that game was good. But both games are too different. Gamers are used to WoW forumla. Both AoC and TSW were amazing games, but never really got accepted because they were too different.
There's a rant here or there about "games needing to evolve". The problem is, 99% of players don't want to swap to games they don't feel comfortable with.
But then again, WoW clones fail as well (Wildstar for example).
I feel sorry for the guys from Funcom. They really tried making something different, and they made something Amazing. But their games were unsuccessful because players don't want anything different.

[Deleted]

Players just remain in WoW because they are afraid to let go of their wasted 1000+ hours in the game chasing after pointless gear for an illusory sense of accomplishment that amounts to nothing in real life. Its more of an ego issue than a matter of game quality. That is why people on other genres of games (console, fps, adventure, RTS,RPG) tend to let go more easily and navigate from game to game. And that is not because every other game on the market is bad compared to WoW (that is what deluded fanboys believe when they are just ignorant to gaming in general) its because MMO grinding is by nature something that creates a tunnel vision for gamers. It requires so much time investment that people start to believe that they are actually doing something more worthy than any other type of game while in fact its just a psychological defense to avoid realizing that their game achievements are just as pointless as any game.

Current MMOs have wasted their great potential to just focus on mindless grinding for the purpose of the competitive "endgame" retarded mantra that makes these games barely different from any random lobby game with linear levels (raids/dungeons) for a precious carrot. Just play MMOs like you play diablo or any hack n slash, beat em up. No need for an immersive experience, player agency, choice and consequences, role playing (like...RPG you know),etc... just focus on mindless endless combat on a treadmill. Solid job there guys!

Thats game design at its poorest and people are content with it because mindless gaming is more popular than ever before (just by looking at the most popular games on the market). We can thank Blizzard, the latest versions of everquest and all the studios wanting to have "a piece of the WoW cake" by jumping into the same pool of mediocrity.