MMORPG's do not survive in this era of gaming

[Gentlepenguin]

data mining requires data to mine, xiv only puts that data out on patch day with internal testing only, with 24 hours of down time. wow preloads future content and has a public test realm. so all the data mining for xiv is basically done during maintenance and it's very easy to avoid spoilers.

[Kittahsmash]

Isnt there like no datamining done for ffxiv? I havent played the game in a while, and I wasnt very serious about it when I did. But I seem to recall the only information people had about a patch before its release was teasers from the developers and the patch notes published like a day before.

If I remember correctly, then clearly its possible to keep things secret and to surprise the players. The wow secret finding community also proves this. It just comes down to blizzard allowing most of their content to be datamined, not that they can't stop it.

Hi, I'm one of the dataminers for XIV. Here's a small/truncated history lesson! There's always been datamining for FFXIV. Early on it was largely XIVDB (the equivalent of Wowhead) that did it, but not too long after launch other places started getting into it too. Datamining sites right now are still alive and well, though largely spearheaded by Teamcraft. XIVDB closed up because ZAM realized how much of an absolute nightmare it was to datamine in XIV so they wanted to "sunset" the site, but public backlash led to them giving the site back to the original admin...who then decided to shelve the site and move on to helping fansites by creating an API. He then had to move on to other things, so he gave the API to the Teamcraft admin who's been keeping track of it since then. Garland Tools was the next main DB site, but the admin of that decided to move on to other things outside of the game (after like 5 years of being in the community, and his site is still widely used!) so he gave it to the admin of Teamcraft (notice a pattern here? lol.) Other than that... Gamer Escape uses datamining in getting most of its info, but it's not a "true" database site. More of a hybrid between a wiki and a database. Teamcraft is the main database site now, and it's pretty damn good...

But yeah, public datamining is mooooostly done in Discord now because SE came down hard on a couple of dataminers last year and suspended them for "showcasing unreleased content" (which they likely did due to death threats towards 'world first' raiders and dataminers because the average moron doesn't know how datamining actually works.) It's still done, and people can still get info, but it's not nearly as showcased like it is on Wowhead or MMO Champion. Story spoilers have almost always been easy to avoid, unless someone's deliberately being an asshole. That's largely due to an understanding (of sorts) from within the community itself. From the very beginning of the game, Naoki Yoshida said he knows that datamining happens and it's almost impossible to stop, so he simply asked dataminers to not spoil anything with the story and we've all tried to do that as best we can. The disagreements from time to time come down to what exactly a "spoiler" is... Some stuff never gets brought up outside of the dataminers, because we don't want the community to catch on to something until it's time. The most recent thing I'm aware of like that, was the accidental including of a piece of literal concept art for the next expansion, which is in the files right now. With some conjecture about what exactly the details in it meant, it completely spoiled one of the surprise locations that was revealed last month. They're going to remove it soon but since they already revealed the location I don't know how urgent it is...

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You have a point OP and I 100% agree with you. Anyone knows if it's possible for games to prevent datamining?

It would only be possible to slow down datamining if they kept 100% of the files on their server, and you connected to it via a browser or something...but even then, people would still find a way.

It's impossible to completely stop datamining.

[Deferionus]

Datamining has existed as far back as TBC, if not back to vanilla proper.

We had Thottbot in vanilla. I used it while leveling before BC came out lol.

[shoc]

Every other game is a MMO now. When WoW came out, online games where you didn't need to host yourself, and could appreciate relatively stable company-run servers was still a novelty. Now your average Call of Duty game is a more complex MMORPG than WoW was at launch. We take online play for granted now and the fact that we didn't in the past was the reason WoW blew up to 10+ million players in the first place. Everquest was popular but not so much that it ever even ran TV ads.

[Ohvul]

You just have a choice now as to how you play. You can easily pace yourself solo /self teach everything in this game, and you'll be capable of killing mythic denathrius before the next patch.

Or you can read websites, bumrush dungeons and raids the first month of the expansion and be a few months ahead of the former group.

End of the day: NO ONE CARES WHAT YOUDO AS AN INDIVIDUAL

Feels like people think that because now there are options, and that they themself are a slut for not "wasting precious time" that the only option is the path of least resistance.

Find players that enjoy doing what you do and don't veer off that path. If you only want to raid... find a guild that only raids and doesn't care if people are running their 15 every week. NEVER EVER in this game has the community as a whole agreed on the purpose of playing, some people want to Google a rotation and mindlessly follow it whe staring at flashing lights. Others want to create the programs which teach others what buttons to press. Others want to rush content I the first month whilst writing guides for latter groups. Just because the process of discovery has been optimized by the player base does not mean an individual as a member of that player base has lost the potential to self explore.

[Kithelle]

Maybe learn what MMORPG means before you claim it isn't, because it still is and datamining isn't really doing much harm...all you have to do is ignore it! But people have a tendency to blame others for their mistakes...don't want things spoiled? Then don't read

[Dastreus]

Not all games are as porous as WoW. FFXIV for example, has very few datamining going on. That's intentional, by the devs. It's the code.

[Kithelle]

Most MMO's are just a standard copy of WoW at this point. They're too scared to innovate on MMORPG aspects.

I guess that's why most of the other larger mmos have action combat and player housing? They have both greater character and gear customization? They have more options?

Because they're all just WoW clones...have you even played another mmo besides WoW? WoW is incredibly simple compared to more modern mmos

[OokOok]

Right
That's why WoW,FFXIV,FFXI,ESO,SWTOR,BnS,BD:O,Runescape,Rift,Guild wars 2 and whatever else I missed has dead populations with no one playing. YUP

Go back to your garbage mobile app games and stop posting stupid shit

[Gadzooks]

Part of me agrees, but then, I witnessed two betas, and the number of bugs they stomp (and yes, lots more they don't) and there's simply no way to have effective beta tests with legally enforceable NDAs. Or to hire 1000 people to test internally at Blizzard, which isn't going to happen. It would be great to drop an expansion cold, with nobody knowing what they're walking into, but one, it would piss off most of the player base who are accustomed to full leaks and beta vids now (and high end guilds who get to practice the raid for the world first race), and two...it would be so buggy it would be unplayable, or take a considerably longer time to create, test, and release.

Overall, I don't think the genre is doomed, looking at Final Fantasy. I just think the genre needs new blood.

I also don't think Blizzard is conspiring to keep people from talking to each other, that's 100% on the player. There is nothing stopping you from talking in matchmade groups.

Wowhead? Eh. They're the unofficial World Of Warcraft manual, the devs have been leaning on that for a long time, I wouldn't hold your breath on it changing. Plus, while we didn't have Wowhead in vanilla, we did have Thottbot and Alakazam, online wikis for WoW content. Ironically, Thottbot ended up being owned by ZAM, who later bought WoWhead, and merged them. Thottbot was heavily involved with datamining the BC beta, I was in it, I remember poking around in the data to see what I might have missed.

[Cosmic Janitor]

While I think that dataminding has changed the way MMORPGs are played, they aren't the reason for the stagnation/decline of the genre. The genre is pretty much a live example of why infinite growth does not work as premise for a basic system. Unlike single player games or MP games with reoccuring releases, the genre is simply (over)saturated. Old releases rarely ever die completely nowadays because of the low server costs and the relative ease of having a skeleton crew maintain them. A few thousand people playing and paying are enough to wring some profit out of them, because of that the limited playerbase becomes more and more fractured. Add to that that people are prone to the sunk cost fallacy because they invested sometimes years of their lives into a single game, let alone 100s if not 1000s of bucks and the gaming industry trends having shifted to other games, therefore more people dropping out of that genre (due to time constraints for example) than being introduced to it - it's hardly surprising that the genre is in stagnation, if not decline.

Blaming datamining is laughable to that in comparison. Datamining has effected how MMORPG worlds are viewed and experienced, sure. But it is up to the user to find that information. And let's be honest here, even back in the late 90's people were already sharing how to find x, y and z in video games, that is hardly new. Heck, most people I know always bought the latest strategy guide when buying a new "massive" RPG game back in the day as well.

Hate to break it to you but MMOs have been dead for years. This take would have been relevant 10 years ago.

Not really, 10 years ago the list of new (promising) MMO projects was still rather long, today that is different. While MMOs are still released and in development the scope has definitely changed. Though it has become quite fascinating to see people still try their luck at MMOs despite it being public knowledge (for more than 6 years) that most games never really get off the ground anymore while costing disproportional amounts of dev time. While it's true that you can relatively easily milk an MMO once you have a MVP, the way to get there is still thorny and even in the days of influencers marketing isn't entirely free.

[cparle87]

Bro we definitely had a database with all of the information lol. Sure, not on day 1 but Thottbot was up and running pretty quickly

Remember Allakhazam?

[WowIsDead64]

WoW is no longer an MMORPG technically, it's more a glorified lobby with instanced content to do. Matchmaking is almost fully automated. No doubt that in the future, more stuff will get automated matchmaking. Such as arena and perhaps normal to heroic raid difficulty.

And the other MMORPG's that come out, are too scared to innovate or adress the elephant in the room:

Datamining.

You see, the reason why World of Warcraft felt so beloved in our hearts was because we didn't have much information about the game during that time. We had to explore, we didn't have a wiki to say which areas were useful to go into. We just saw a cool tower and we felt the need to explore.
Right now, tons and tons of people just datamine every little bit of information available in the game before it can even reach live at some point and putting that all into a wiki. Theorycrafting it to death as a result. It's impossible for a game to have any secrets that the community has to work towards discovering.
MMORPG's are community driven, or atleast they should be. Nowadays, Blizzard artificially creates group content. Most of the players we encounter, we won't see again. Everything's phased or instanced. "WORLD" of warcraft, but most of the shit is phased/instanced, ironically.

Blizzard does not want the community to ever interact with eachother, unless it's at a high end level. Like mythic raiding. Most of the game is easily soloable thanks to automatic matchmaking, or the content being nihil or easy to complete that you don't need a group for it. (looking at you old raids)

And yes, a part of it is to blame with Blizzard still catering to E-sports and mythic raiders.
There is literally no reason to venture out into the world if you don't care about "MOUNTS, MOGS AND CHEEVOS". Once you get past a certain point of Ilvl, WQs become obsolete to do. Aswell as profession gear and the rest of the "world content".

Because ofcourse, if you had to go out and farm rep, let's say for an enchant on your gear that would boost your powerlevel, Mythic or high end players would complain they had to do said content and it would get datamined and put up on WoWhead for all to see anyway. So what's the point of adding such stuff in the first place?

Blizzard let WoWhead have too much influence on the game. There's no adventure or sense of exploration. No myths or legends. It's all datamined and put up on WoWhead. Player's don't need to interact with eachother anymore. They no longer need to ask eachother for help.

MMORPG's are just doomed to fail at this point.

MMORPGs are essentially hardcore time-killers. Hardcore means, that they require discipline and long solid gaming sessions. Only kids can have such amount of free time to do it. But kids shift their focus towards mobile games today.

[kukkamies]

I think OP wanted to say sandbox mmos, not mmos whole but maybe didn't know the word? All the current ones are more and more theme parks instead of good old sandboxes.

MMORPGs are essentially hardcore time-killers. Hardcore means, that they require discipline and long solid gaming sessions. Only kids can have such amount of free time to do it. But kids shift their focus towards mobile games today.

There's still some games with that but not too many. Runescape, EU4 achievements + some other Paradox games, I wanna be the guy games. Factorio, Dyson Sphere and such builders. It's all pretty niche but few do have big fanbases. I would say most of these are more towards adults, and only one of them is an MMO... Maybe one day we'll get more again when the popularity shifts once more.

[VinceVega]

WoW is no longer an MMORPG technically, it's more a glorified lobby with instanced content to do. Matchmaking is almost fully automated. No doubt that in the future, more stuff will get automated matchmaking. Such as arena and perhaps normal to heroic raid difficulty.

And the other MMORPG's that come out, are too scared to innovate or adress the elephant in the room:

Datamining.

You see, the reason why World of Warcraft felt so beloved in our hearts was because we didn't have much information about the game during that time. We had to explore, we didn't have a wiki to say which areas were useful to go into. We just saw a cool tower and we felt the need to explore.
Right now, tons and tons of people just datamine every little bit of information available in the game before it can even reach live at some point and putting that all into a wiki. Theorycrafting it to death as a result. It's impossible for a game to have any secrets that the community has to work towards discovering.
MMORPG's are community driven, or atleast they should be. Nowadays, Blizzard artificially creates group content. Most of the players we encounter, we won't see again. Everything's phased or instanced. "WORLD" of warcraft, but most of the shit is phased/instanced, ironically.

Blizzard does not want the community to ever interact with eachother, unless it's at a high end level. Like mythic raiding. Most of the game is easily soloable thanks to automatic matchmaking, or the content being nihil or easy to complete that you don't need a group for it. (looking at you old raids)

And yes, a part of it is to blame with Blizzard still catering to E-sports and mythic raiders.
There is literally no reason to venture out into the world if you don't care about "MOUNTS, MOGS AND CHEEVOS". Once you get past a certain point of Ilvl, WQs become obsolete to do. Aswell as profession gear and the rest of the "world content".

Because ofcourse, if you had to go out and farm rep, let's say for an enchant on your gear that would boost your powerlevel, Mythic or high end players would complain they had to do said content and it would get datamined and put up on WoWhead for all to see anyway. So what's the point of adding such stuff in the first place?

Blizzard let WoWhead have too much influence on the game. There's no adventure or sense of exploration. No myths or legends. It's all datamined and put up on WoWhead. Player's don't need to interact with eachother anymore. They no longer need to ask eachother for help.

MMORPG's are just doomed to fail at this point.

Don't think that is true. It is YOUR choice to play with people you will never see again. I for one don't do that in any content except leveling.
I have my guild and a few others here and there i like to play with.
Some i met through PvP Arena Groupfinder and added to my list.

Theorycrafting yeah... really? Who really did that? There are more mythic raider who finished the raid than people seriously invested in Theroycraft which btw still exists.
People don't do content if there is nothing in it for them like "MOUNTS, MOGS AND CHEEVOS". That has absolutly nothing to do with mythic raiders at all who get a slightly adjusted raid nothign else. Litterally everything else is for everyone.

World content never gave you really good gear and should not give you really good gear. Games that are TOO easy loose players really fast ro turn into mobile gatcha games.

Mythic raiders most of the time don't even complain, they just do it because they KNOW they have to do more than the average to gete up there.
If you don't like stuff being up on wowhead don't go there or use the freaking filter.

Datamining is in every game. There will never be a game anymore that does not have it. Hell Cyberpunk had a full wiki day one and many entries even earlier.

MMORPGs don't fail. You fail to go with the times or current reality.

The ONLY thing i would say they do really wrng in that regard is open world stories. Main story should be finished with raids. But there should be more storylines that give you a reason to go into the world and not just click away the talking head of WQ 10000

[Bozey17]

As someone who doesn't play MMOs anymore I feel like I can share my perspective and reasons for why I don't play them anymore.

I would say MMOs are dying because too many of them rely on instanced based group content, locking the best items behind finding the right group to play with, rather than just playing the game itself. Ultimately, I felt like I spent way too much time trying to find people to play with, rather than playing the game. I'm not a social person and I've never been interested in making friends online, but I like the idea of being somebody in a shared world and being able to influence it.

In the modern gaming landscape there are too many options available for me to waste my time after work finding a m+ group, or raid group. Not to mention raiding means I now have to play the game on a schedule which is annoying.

I think a lot of ex-MMO players have moved on to ARPGs for this very reason, and if you think about it, the resurgence of ARPGs coincides with the decline of MMOs. Both genres have a lot of overlap in their design around grinding for exp and loot, but ARPGs are a superior genre in my opinion because ARPGs allows you to play multiplayer AND singleplayer. Whereas in MMOs you will eventually reach a point where singleplayer is no longer an option. And for me that is a deal breaker and why I can't take MMOs seriously anymore.

[WowIsDead64]

There's still some games with that but not too many. Runescape, EU4 achievements + some other Paradox games, I wanna be the guy games. Factorio, Dyson Sphere and such builders. It's all pretty niche but few do have big fanbases. I would say most of these are more towards adults, and only one of them is an MMO... Maybe one day we'll get more again when the popularity shifts once more.

Time-killers just don't have to be hardcore. For example I play Terraria. It's essentially time killer, because you need to dig that kilometers of tunnels there. At least I play it sandboxish way and not rush towards killing bosses or try to time-run it. And game allows me to play it this way. But it's not hardcore. Only annoying thing there - is dealing with tons of reagents in your inventory. Otherwise you would be able to just port to your house and stop playing at any moment.

Ahh. And about datamining. Only cloud gaming can fix it. I guess, it's future of gaming. Yeah, it has it's cons. Nobody have beaten speed of light yet and therefore ping problem is still there. Only possible solution - is so called cell-servers (analog of cell-phones tech), i.e. placing small distributed servers near players. But such game would have many pros: no hardware arms race issues, no client size problems, no RAM and bandwith problems (all data will be shared between clients), no performance issues due to too many players playing at the same time (see above, no need to load data in real time, as it's shared between clients and whole game can possibly be constantly in RAM), therefore no problems with character customization (it's very limited in Wow exactly due to hardware limitations), no patches needed, no datamining, no cheating, bots are possible, but they will have to be at AI level to be able to analyze images in real time. I don't even talk about potentially unlimited possibilities, like having potentially unlimited worlds.

Problem is - game developers don't even try to do it. Nobody says, that they should start from top AAA games. They can start from something much easier. From 2D games for example. Such as Terraria.

[mbit]

Time-killers just don't have to be hardcore. For example I play Terraria. It's essentially time killer, because you need to dig that kilometers of tunnels there. At least I play it sandboxish way and not rush towards killing bosses or try to time-run it. And game allows me to play it this way. But it's not hardcore. Only annoying thing there - is dealing with tons of reagents in your inventory. Otherwise you would be able to just port to your house and stop playing at any moment.

Ahh. And about datamining. Only cloud gaming can fix it. I guess, it's future of gaming. Yeah, it has it's cons. Nobody have beaten speed of light yet and therefore ping problem is still there. Only possible solution - is so called cell-servers (analog of cell-phones tech), i.e. placing small distributed servers near players. But such game would have many pros: no hardware arms race issues, no client size problems, no RAM and bandwith problems (all data will be shared between clients), no performance issues due to too many players playing at the same time (see above, no need to load data in real time, as it's shared between clients and whole game can possibly be constantly in RAM), therefore no problems with character customization (it's very limited in Wow exactly due to hardware limitations), no datamining, no cheating, bots are possible, but they will have to be at AI level to be able to analyze images in real time. I don't even talk about potentially unlimited possibilities, like having potentially unlimited worlds.

Problem is - game developers don't even try to do it. Nobody says, that they should start from top AAA games. They can start from something much easier. From 2D games for example. Such as Terraria.

hardcore here means extreme amounts of time wasted, not m+20 difficulty. As for data mining you just need encryption for files. Cloud gaming wont fix it beyond that because content creators make money of sharing secrets to generate more views.

[WowIsDead64]

hardcore here means extreme amounts of time wasted, not m+20 difficulty. As for data mining you just need encryption for files. Cloud gaming wont fix it beyond that because content creators make money of sharing secrets to generate more views.

For me hardcore - is combination of time and difficulty. Because even Tetris was considered to be time-killer back in old times.

Encryption won't help here. Because you still need to decrypt things to run game. And Beta testing is still required. Yeah, Cloud games require testing too, but certain things can still be made to be 100% surprise there.

[mbit]

For me hardcore - is combination of time and difficulty. Because even Tetris was considered to be time-killer back in old times.

Encryption won't help here. Because you still need to decrypt things to run game. And Beta testing is still required. Yeah, Cloud games require testing too, but certain things can still be made to be 100% surprise there.

The key for encryption would come from the server only when the event/quest is triggered, you dont need to decrypt everything to run the game. Makes it safe against mining until a player actually already plays the content. As for beta testing do you really need to test new content that runs on same engine? They should just release some of only tested internally.

If you consider beta testing leaks then you already suffer again from streamers & co releasing information ahead. They will create a meta regardless of cloud or not before its even out.