Innovation in MMOs, WoW and Ghostcrawler's perspective on it

[Itori]

Gone are the days where we would log on to our favorite mmo, or even paid the subscription for the mmo to have fun.

The modern mmo feels like work. Log on level up for the endgame, get to the endgame and feel like you’re at work dealing with co workers so you can get paid. Then when you finally get paid its never enough so you work more and more to hopefully one day sit down and relax.

That is the modern mmo model. We no longer play to have fun. No longer log on just to chill in general chat and socialize. We no longer hop on and hang out with the guild because we look at guilds as a means to an end. We look at other players as competition or also a means to an end.

People say they want all of that back but when they’re presented with games like that they scowl and criticize because its not WoW.

[Miffinat0r]

I feel like what I read is he's trapped in this feedback loop. He thinks players will be the saviors of the game but says openly that they're going to go for optimization. That's the core issue of multiplayer games. Everyone is going to want to be the best least resistance class/job in the game that requires the minimum effort. I don't really see any thing revolutionary here. Actually I kind of feel that he's stuck in the past, like a lot of former WoW devs, they're just letting their moment in the sunshine from 2008-2016 go to their heads.

The innovative field for MMORPGs is going to be AI. It's going to be making a an AI serve as a DM over all of the land deciding on when events exist and how the change and it'll do it in an unpredictable manner that players can influence. Based on what he wrote there I just felt like he's trying to recapture the past successes he had with WoW. I don't think that's the way forward anymore.

I've said this a thousand times but I'll say it again: As much as he was the villain in EQ Jon Smedley was right. The current formula and trajectory of MMORPGs has hit it's limit. They'll still be profitable, on some level, but the train gave way to the car, and the plane much like the horse gave way to the train. What I think he's failing to grasp, and another poster wrote about this was that MMORPGs from 2000-2012 had a unique role in the internet. They served as a communication platform before social media grew into the animal it is now. Saying players will be our saviors makes sense if you're talking about a sandbox MMORPG where the players make the content, but if that's not the system you're using, then a themepark MMO is always going to boil into speedrunning and getting loot before the next patch cycle drops.

This is why I think AI is going to be the savior of the genre but we're about 15-20 years out from when it can have a massive impact. It's going to revolve around narratives that are unique to the players and not some on-the-rails story like Bioware tried to introduce with SWTOR. It's going to be an expansive AI that decides when world-changing unique events occur and it's going to pick players to help weave that story. What he said there in that letter is expect more of the same talking points that every MMORPG company has used since 2012.

[Jujudrood]

I mean, even though the game seems to be falling to the wayside, D4 did a decent job in one aspect; dungeons.
You can solo them all day if you want, but it's more efficient (and arguably more fun) to be in a party, especially if you can take divergent paths and complete objectives faster.
This is the level of social interaction that can flourish in today's gaming; it's there and it's good when it's good, but you don't need it.
Just from my perspective, it seems people want what *they* want, not necessarily what anyone else wants, and where social interaction occurs is when these desires intersect, and once the objective is completed, these people move on; you were a means to an end to someone else, just as they were a means to an end for you.

If he thinks making a game that is centered around "hanging out in-game while also doing things and stuff" will draw in the masses, well... probably not.
People want to hang out in Discord, and I do regularly with other people as we play different games, do different things, etc.
That's the social interaction platform, where we can talk and BS and have a good time while doing things, either together or separate.

Force social interaction, you will get a niche community while the majority will scoff at the notion and find another game to play, unless the game is just so fun and good, gameplay and/or story, that people feel compelled to deal with the social aspect of arranging either a friend group or dealing with randos for whatever the goal may be.

[Miffinat0r]

If he thinks making a game that is centered around "hanging out in-game while also doing things and stuff" will draw in the masses, well... probably not.
People want to hang out in Discord, and I do regularly with other people as we play different games, do different things, etc.
That's the social interaction platform, where we can talk and BS and have a good time while doing things, either together or separate.

Force social interaction, you will get a niche community while the majority will scoff at the notion and find another game to play, unless the game is just so fun and good, gameplay and/or story, that people feel compelled to deal with the social aspect of arranging either a friend group or dealing with randos for whatever the goal may be.

To be perfectly frank here I agree with your overall sentiment but I would also go even further; I don't want to hang out with people in discord either. I'm 35 and honestly I want to hang out with people I know in real life. I'd 100% would rather go to a bar and be with people I know than log on any video game for a night to play with people. The only times I do want to stay in and play are where there's a game I want to explore in a single player game for narrative purposes. There's very rarely any game I want to do so with others in lieu of being around people in real life.

I think this all goes back to what myself and few others have said about MMORPGs they existed in a time when the platform was the experience and we (collectively referring to millennials) at an age where going out after a certain hour typically wasn't allowed, so playing games with each other made sense. I can hardly think of anyone I've ever met in real life who would opt to play video games with people over hanging out in person with them while drinking. (Putting non-drinkers aside here, but even they would more likely opt to go to a BBQ, resturant, hiking, ect...)

Problem I think GC has and a lot of the gaming community has is that they think that their games and their community trump actual in person exchanges but we're humans and we're a social species that actually likes being around each other. It's been a thing since the Romans, doubt some pixels will change our collective minds there.

[Biomega]

Gone are the days where we would log on to our favorite mmo, or even paid the subscription for the mmo to have fun.

The modern mmo feels like work. Log on level up for the endgame, get to the endgame and feel like you’re at work dealing with co workers so you can get paid. Then when you finally get paid its never enough so you work more and more to hopefully one day sit down and relax.

There's two reasons for this.

1. You're playing with other people, and cooperative activities tend to roughly follow the same general dynamics so it's no coincidence that running with a party in an MMO might feel a little like working in a group at your place of employment. Because both are cooperative activities that tend to kind of operate in similar ways.

2. Players tend to go hard when they're playing MMOs. And once you go hard, the game goes hard on you, too - it has to, in order to be able to moderate its content delivery in ways that aren't exhausted within a few days of going hard. That's where chores and gating etc. are employed to throttle your pace, so you don't just crash through the finish line and then go "okay so now what do I do?" quite so soon. People who don't go hard have a much different experience - if you played for, say, only 3-4 hours a week you wouldn't hit those parts for a long time. The problem is... many people play that much PER DAY, especially in MMOs. People have learned to expect that from MMOs, and companies really have little choice other than to pull on the throttle because no one could keep up with content delivery at that pace. That being said, companies ALSO regularly fuck up their expectations and planning in that regard, like how SWTOR devs apparently believed no one would hit max level for weeks if not months. People hit it in a day or two. Because of course they did.

There really isn't a solution to this until we get AI churning out content, as many people (including GC) have mentioned. When that'll happen who knows, but quality content likely won't be produced like that for years. Whether it's 5 years or 10 or 15 who knows. Until then, the blasters will just have to live with the fact that they're ripping through content at an ungodly speed and no developer on the planet is ever going to be able to manually satiate that beast. So you have to either throttle, or find a way of making repeatable content fun enough - neither is a perfect or easily successful solution.

[Jujudrood]

To be perfectly frank here I agree with your overall sentiment but I would also go even further; I don't want to hang out with people in discord either. I'm 35 and honestly I want to hang out with people I know in real life. I'd 100% would rather go to a bar and be with people I know than log on any video game for a night to play with people. The only times I do want to stay in and play are where there's a game I want to explore in a single player game for narrative purposes. There's very rarely any game I want to do so with others in lieu of being around people in real life.

I think this all goes back to what myself and few others have said about MMORPGs they existed in a time when the platform was the experience and we (collectively referring to millennials) at an age where going out after a certain hour typically wasn't allowed, so playing games with each other made sense. I can hardly think of anyone I've ever met in real life who would opt to play video games with people over hanging out in person with them while drinking. (Putting non-drinkers aside here, but even they would more likely opt to go to a BBQ, resturant, hiking, ect...)

Problem I think GC has and a lot of the gaming community has is that they think that their games and their community trump actual in person exchanges but we're humans and we're a social species that actually likes being around each other. It's been a thing since the Romans, doubt some pixels will change our collective minds there.

True enough, and I'm sure there's quite a few in your camp of "I'd rather be in person".
Nothing wrong with that (I'm in the camp, too), but what that means is the game he is making isn't really targeted to your group of people.
Nothing wrong with that, either, but given that group of people is on the same side of the fence as the "solo MMO" people, and many other groups that would otherwise be ostracized by a "forced social interaction" type of game, it seems he wants to make something for a small niche community.
That's fine, too, but I hope they don't expect an MMO to change the world, unless ofc the game/gameplay/story/etc is just so fun and good that people are compelled to play it, even if it's not their thing (see: BG3).

I don't think he can capture that lightning in a bottle, and that's where I feel his premise is very pie in the sky and not grounded in reality.
People do want in-person social interactions, yes, but I feel today's gamer also wants what *they* want and they want instant gratification, something that an MMO and a social environment doesn't offer very well in gaming.

[Itisamuh]

*cough* Diablo 2 is still being playing today despite having practically no new content for decades. Only earlier this year, did I get my first Ber rune. I've still never gotten a Zod. It's not needed to play the game, but the fact that there are enticing extremely rare drops out there keeps the game infinitely replayable.


If you build a game right, it can last just as long as any MMO, if not longer. This isn't a 'Singleplayer vs MMO' thing, it's all about the quality of evergreen content.


Take this into consideration - If WoW stopped all its new content and only existed as Classic WoW, people would still be playing it.

I suppose I should have specified, though it seemed unnecessary, that no single player game will have that type of replayability for me, and I was answering why someone who likes playing mostly solo (like me) might be drawn to MMOs. If a game stops getting new content, I will get bored and move on, simple as that. Gear means less than nothing to me too, so chasing gear in games like Diablo and PoE would do nothing for me if the content and gameplay was never really updated. And the season format of Diablo is terrible to me anyway, zero interest in having to start over every few months. WoW and games like it are always moving forward, though the focus on Classic versions and this goofy hardcore trend are worrying signs that they are running out of ideas.

[Triceron]

I suppose I should have specified, though it seemed unnecessary, that no single player game will have that type of replayability for me, and I was answering why someone who likes playing mostly solo (like me) might be drawn to MMOs. If a game stops getting new content, I will get bored and move on, simple as that. Gear means less than nothing to me too, so chasing gear in games like Diablo and PoE would do nothing for me if the content and gameplay was never really updated. And the season format of Diablo is terrible to me anyway, zero interest in having to start over every few months. WoW and games like it are always moving forward, though the focus on Classic versions and this goofy hardcore trend are worrying signs that they are running out of ideas.

I think that's completely fair, and I respect that opinion

[Floot]

What people enjoy in games or MMOs changes with time. Group content just isn't very hot popular right now.

[Relapses]

What people enjoy in games or MMOs changes with time. Group content just isn't very hot popular right now.

What are you basing this observation on?

[NineSpine]

I think the problem is that the line between looters and MMORPGs has been so blurred. WoW has slowly turned into more of a looter and shed the vast majority of what made it an MMORPG. It is closer in design to a game like Destiny 2 than a game like Vanilla WoW in a lot of very important, core ways.

[Tyris Flare]

Gone are the days where we would log on to our favorite mmo, or even paid the subscription for the mmo to have fun.

The modern mmo feels like work. Log on level up for the endgame, get to the endgame and feel like you’re at work dealing with co workers so you can get paid. Then when you finally get paid its never enough so you work more and more to hopefully one day sit down and relax.

That is the modern mmo model. We no longer play to have fun. No longer log on just to chill in general chat and socialize. We no longer hop on and hang out with the guild because we look at guilds as a means to an end. We look at other players as competition or also a means to an end.

People say they want all of that back but when they’re presented with games like that they scowl and criticize because its not WoW.

It's not 2005. Almost everyone's attention span has measurably deteriorated thanks to various technologies. You can get the same social experience from a million other things that you only got from MMOs a long time ago. Even classic isn't really like vanilla for all the same reasons, no matter how much people want it to be.

[NineSpine]

It's not 2005. Almost everyone's attention span has measurably deteriorated thanks to various technologies. You can get the same social experience from a million other things that you only got from MMOs a long time ago. Even classic isn't really like vanilla for all the same reasons, no matter how much people want it to be.

Obviously, things change over time, but I think the extent to which they change is quite overstated. MMOs that deliver a strong sense of community still have respectable audiences and are quite successful. What seems to be floundering is the MMO-looter hybrid genre.

[Tyris Flare]

WoW remains far more successful than any "game with a strong sense of community", whatever that means.

And before you bring up Classic (which is not the same atmosphere as vanilla, at all) that sub money still feeds retail.

Seems like, in fact, Blizzard found the perfect way to monetize hate for their modern product by convincing people to pay for the old one in perpetuity.

[Biomega]

What people enjoy in games or MMOs changes with time. Group content just isn't very hot popular right now.

Seems like a bold statement considering most of the currently most popular games are, in fact, multiplayer games.

Single-player stand-out gems like BG3 absolutely exist and there's big audiences for it, no question - but multiplayer games are still absolutely massive.

People don't want their MMOs to be ACTUAL single-player games - the term "single-player MMO" is a euphemism for a playstyle that while unequivocally part of a multiplayer game experience emphasizes different ways of engaging with other players: ways that put the individual player in the center more, and treat the cooperative multiplayer experience as a largely automated, ancillary part of that single player's individual gameplay. Another way to put it (tongue-in-cheek) would be that people by and large want to treat other players as NPCs as much as possible - they don't want there to be no other players, they just want them to not demand anything or have any real agency or will in ways that that infringe upon what that individual player wants.

[NineSpine]

WoW remains far more successful than any "game with a strong sense of community", whatever that means.

And before you bring up Classic (which is not the same atmosphere as vanilla, at all) that sub money still feeds retail.

Seems like, in fact, Blizzard found the perfect way to monetize hate for their modern product by convincing people to pay for the old one in perpetuity.

Sure, every other game that has ever been released is a failure and WoW has 40 billion subs. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

[Tyris Flare]

Sure, every other game that has ever been released is a failure and WoW has 40 billion subs. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

You said that, I did not.

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

[NineSpine]

You said that, I did not.

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

I'm just not interested in the kind of weird, overly defensive nonsense that leads people to start blurting out how WoW is more successful than every game that has a strong sense of community... and then somehow turning around and claiming that classic success should be credited to retail for some reason? And that people only play classic because they hate retail? It's all creepy nonsense from a person clearly disinterested in seriously discussing the issue. You sound like a seven-year-old whose mommy got insulted.

[Tyris Flare]

And i didn't do any of that - you are projecting.

I am no apologist for Blizzard. Activision sucks. Many of the modern devs suck. The game has problems.

You (along with many people here) just offer solutions that are either 1) so obvious they barely need to be spoken or 2) so stupid and vapid they barely need to be discussed.

It's all really creepy nonsense from a person clearly disinterested in seriously discussing the issue. You sound like a seven-year-old whose mommy got insulted.

[NineSpine]

And i didn't do any of that - you are projecting.

I am no apologist for Blizzard. Activision sucks. Many of the modern devs suck. The game has problems.

You (along with many people here) just offer solutions that are either 1) so obvious they barely need to be spoken or 2) so stupid and vapid they barely need to be discussed.

It's all really creepy nonsense from a person clearly disinterested in seriously discussing the issue. You sound like a seven-year-old whose mommy got insulted.

"WoW remains far more successful than any "game with a strong sense of community", whatever that means."

- I nearly directly quoted you. If you didn't mean what your direct quote says, you need to communicate better.

"And before you bring up Classic (which is not the same atmosphere as vanilla, at all) that sub money still feeds retail."

- This is you deflecting praise for classic by saying that the sub money goes to retail anyway.

"Seems like, in fact, Blizzard found the perfect way to monetize hate for their modern product by convincing people to pay for the old one in perpetuity."

- This is you saying that people play classic because they hate retail.

If you don't mean what you say, then that is a communication issue you need to work on.