The Elder Scrolls Online

[Draegan]

In my opinion, the way for the genre to move on is to get rid of two things: Levels and Quest-Treadmill based content.

The whole leveling process is fucking stupid from a resource point of view. As these games become more and more expensive to make (from a time and labor point of view) the leveling process is a waste of time. Think about it, you are building this game for the long haul, especially if it's subscription driven. Why would you spend all that time developing content and world maps to level ranges that only get a few hours of play in a game you want people to spend 100's of hours playing?

You need to remove levels because levels are essentially a cosmetic and artificial barrier of entry. Create other ways to measure player power and advancement. Make it achievement based or whatever.

The second one is the quest treadmill content. It's so exclusive and not inclusive to the population playing. It's also static and boring as fuck. Even games like GW2 which essentially another quest driven game, but all quests are publicly shared, is a fun game but ultimately it loses it's shine. The reason it's still relevant is because the development team is constantly updating the game.

You need to be able to make procedural content. The pixie dust EQN is tossing around is interesting to listen to. Trove might be something worth watching from a design choice point of view too.

I'll jump off my soapbox.

[Threash]

Yeah, every game that launches does the same thing.  If there are 30 zones you are lucky to get three end game zones, 27 are for leveling and completely barren about 3 months into the game.  Get rid of levels, give people options instead and start with 30 zones that will all be usable throughout the entire run of the game instead of throwing away extremely valuable content that's only good until characters reach max level.

[Mrbloodworth]

Levels and Quest-Treadmill based content.

Yep, it also makes it extreamly annoying to play with friends.

[Sir T]

Treadmill removal gets my vote. STO partially did this over a year ago by making the "leveling" really fast so you hit max in a few days of play, so you do most of the content with you at max level. They also have really good level scaling.

[Ingmar]

Yeah, every game that launches does the same thing.  If there are 30 zones you are lucky to get three end game zones, 27 are for leveling and completely barren about 3 months into the game.  Get rid of levels, give people options instead and start with 30 zones that will all be usable throughout the entire run of the game instead of throwing away extremely valuable content that's only good until characters reach max level.

Anecdotal, but 2 years on, SWTOR still has busy leveling zones. It's pretty unusual for there to be less than 2 of any given planet's instances going on my server during prime time/weekends, and I've seen 3+ in the busier ones. Also FWIW they get over a million unique players per month still, and they should be well past the break-even point by now income-wise. I know it doesn't fit the f13 narrative of OMG FAILURE but they're doing fine, meeting their content commitments, etc. It's more about the subscription model declining than the type of content people want, I think. There's plenty of demand for story/leveling narrative type content.

[Draegan]

Yeah, every game that launches does the same thing.  If there are 30 zones you are lucky to get three end game zones, 27 are for leveling and completely barren about 3 months into the game.  Get rid of levels, give people options instead and start with 30 zones that will all be usable throughout the entire run of the game instead of throwing away extremely valuable content that's only good until characters reach max level.

Even if you are glued to levels and typical design theory, there is no real need to have each zone married to one specific level range outside maybe your newbie zones. That 10-20 level area that hardly ever gets used over the long haul should have elements in it for a large range of players.

Treadmill removal gets my vote. STO partially did this over a year ago by making the "leveling" really fast so you hit max in a few days of play, so you do most of the content with you at max level. They also have really good level scaling.

I used to be an advocate of using the leveling system as a 20 minute to 1 hour tutorial and leave it at that. If your class system is so complex that a person can't learn how to play it proficiently enough in a few hours of play, then you're doing it wrong.

[Wizgar]

In my opinion, the way for the genre to move on is to get rid of two things: Levels and Quest-Treadmill based content.

I don't disagree with this, but at the same time I'm at least five years past thinking it will ever happen or being able to say it with a straight face. EQN is talking a good game right now, but in the end all I really see for the genre is an enormous tombstone that reads "WORLD OF WARCRAFT" towering over a nauseating mass grave of shitty failed DIKU clones.

The last eight or so years have just been a complete bloodbath. Millions of man hours and hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent across a dozen different companies, titanic intellectual properties like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings have been brought to bear, and all for absolutely nothing. Not only has no viable WoW competitor ever been crowned, but even basic success has eluded most of the would-be contenders.

You know why I think Blizzard pulled the plug on Titan? Because even they can read the writing on the wall. It's a dead genre. The money doesn't want to go near it. God knows EA isn't likely to keep throwing money down the same bottomless suckhole that gave them WAR and SWTOR.

Maybe something will come along, some quirky little game that does things differently and is modestly rewarded from it, some tiny mammal running amidst the bones of all the dead dinosaurs, but it won't be like the old days. Everyone that used to fund all these flop wannabe WoW clones will be funding flop wannabe LoL clones, and the era of the big money MMORPG will have run from the late nineties to the middle of the twenty-tens before having come to an ignominous end.

[Draegan]

Anecdotal, but 2 years on, SWTOR still has busy leveling zones. It's pretty unusual for there to be less than 2 of any given planet's instances going on my server during prime time/weekends, and I've seen 3+ in the busier ones. Also FWIW they get over a million unique players per month still, and they should be well past the break-even point by now income-wise. I know it doesn't fit the f13 narrative of OMG FAILURE but they're doing fine, meeting their content commitments, etc. It's more about the subscription model declining than the type of content people want, I think. There's plenty of demand for story/leveling narrative type content.

I think that has to do more with Star Wars and Free to play than anything else. I see no problem with story based advancement in online games. You don't need levels in between though. That just makes it fucking dull.

I would really enjoy playing SWTOR if all I had to do was the planet storyline and the class storyline. Unfortunately I'm collect a lot of ewok asses along the way.

[Draegan]

In my opinion, the way for the genre to move on is to get rid of two things: Levels and Quest-Treadmill based content.

I don't disagree with this, but at the same time I'm at least five years past thinking it will ever happen or being able to say it with a straight face. EQN is talking a good game right now, but in the end all I really see for the genre is an enormous tombstone that reads "WORLD OF WARCRAFT" towering over a nauseating mass grave of shitty failed DIKU clones.

The last eight or so years have just been a complete bloodbath. Millions of man hours and hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent across a dozen different companies, titanic intellectual properties like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings have been brought to bear, and all for absolutely nothing. Not only has no viable WoW competitor ever been crowned, but even basic success has eluded most of the would-be contenders.

You know why I think Blizzard pulled the plug on Titan? Because even they can read the writing on the wall. It's a dead genre. The money doesn't want to go near it. God knows EA isn't likely to keep throwing money down the same bottomless suckhole that gave them WAR and SWTOR.

Maybe something will come along, some quirky little game that does things differently and is modestly rewarded from it, some tiny mammal running amidst the bones of all the dead dinosaurs, but it won't be like the old days. Everyone that used to fund all these flop wannabe WoW clones will be funding flop wannabe LoL clones, and the era of the big money MMORPG will have run from the late nineties to the middle of the twenty-tens before having come to an ignominous end.

I think saying that is as naive as saying that no MMORPG can top 500k subscribers back in 2002-4. Blizzard pulled the plug on Titan because the game probably sucked. Just look at Diablo. I don't have faith in Blizzard as many people used too.

The genre isn't dead, it's growing to absorb a lot of space. It's not longer unique to play videos games on the internet with other people in a shared space anymore. And all those failed games that you point to are profitable games to say the least, but they aren't smashing successes that they wanted to be. Out of all the big ones, only WAR has shut down.

[Hoax]

I can't imagine a world where SWTOR is doing well. Nobody I know has been able to play it for a solid month, its just so boring and shitty. Even people who like it admit its hilariously bad in many many ways and places. If SWTOR is surviving despite being such a piece of shit either the money morons were right about the value of established ip's all along or this genre can't be dead since enough people are so desperate for something to play that they'll play SWTOR.

[Mrbloodworth]

You may not have realized this, but f13 is not the center of the world.

[Kageru]

Yeah, every game that launches does the same thing.  If there are 30 zones you are lucky to get three end game zones, 27 are for leveling and completely barren about 3 months into the game. 

GW2 has mostly solved this though. The last world event happend in a 15-25 zone which remains challenging (higher levels scale down). So you have the story provided by levelling to unlock the zones (and XP comes in quickly and from everything) and all of them are useful at end level.

I'm messing with Defiance at the moment which has mostly flat progression and people sort of hate the fact that their level 500 (they're not quite levels) gun can be inferior to the noob weapon they got soon after starting. It means there's no feeling of progression and that can be one of the draws to an MMO... you start out weak and scared and grow over time to become a seasoned adventurer.

[Draegan]

GW2 kind of solved it, but they constantly have to develop content and put it in whatever place on the world map. However people aren't coming back for the constructed combat, they are coming back because there happens to be a new shiny in the zone. Otherwise, they would be there at all.

[Dark_MadMax]

From watching the videos, my response was: "This would have been a great game.... six years ago."

 i dunno about "great" part but it would definitely be a better one then. But TESO reminds me of AoC for some reason and that thing wasn't exactly amazing success 6 years ago either

[Threash]

Predictions are not NDA breaking right? because i'm going to go with "complete failure, shuts down within the first year".

[ajax34i]

I can't imagine a world where SWTOR is doing well. Nobody I know has been able to play it for a solid month, its just so boring and shitty. Even people who like it admit its hilariously bad in many many ways and places. If SWTOR is surviving despite being such a piece of shit either the money morons were right about the value of established ip's all along or this genre can't be dead since enough people are so desperate for something to play that they'll play SWTOR.

It's got 8 US servers and 9 EU servers, with, as mentioned earlier, most zones split into 2-3 instanced copies to handle whatever crowds.  It has the cartel market to let people pay for instant gratification shiny (saber crystals, mounts, whatever), and I would guess that a lot of their income comes from that (rather than from subscriptions).

Also, it's about the class and planet quest lines, and once you get a character to 55 and your legacy to 15 or so, the XP boosts stack so much that it is entirely possible to just do those quests and none of the Ewok ass ones, and level any other characters to 50 or whatever from just those.

[Falconeer]

I think SWTOR having over a million players is along the lines of Wizard 101 or that other even older piece of shit being among the most succesful MMORPGs ever.

[Venkman]

GW2 is really interesting as they have it in their buisness model that people pay their cash up front. So they don't run into the same problems that "continuing money stream" games do.

Well no, because:

GW2 kind of solved it, but they constantly have to develop content and put it in whatever place on the world map. However people aren't coming back for the constructed combat, they are coming back because there happens to be a new shiny in the zone. Otherwise, they would be there at all.

So they partially solved it in a f2p sorta way, where the masses get to play because the really interested minority are enough to keep it funded for us all.

It's a dead genre.

Well kinda, but think of it more as a dead medium. The idea of a massively multiplayer shared space experience started dying a decade or so ago as more games compartmentalized experiences into more manageable (read: less experimental) chunks. This is because the experimental ones were too niche to emulate outside of the visionaries who created those niche experiences being granted a second opportunity to do so. Unfortunately this resulted in an affirmation of why certain things are niche.

People kept saying they wanted to interact with thousands of people at once. But what they actually did was romp through contrived game-able D&D-style modules with their friends or with select people who had enough experience having already done so, leaving the only "massive" as the server-wide auction house. People wanted gaming in manageable chunks. They'd pay a fee and accept a lower threshold of quality, but ultimately they didn't care about the "MMO". They cared about the "RPG".

MMOs basically haven't been "MM" in a long time. Eve is the only actual MMO I can think of. But it's so wierd there ain't anyone outside its playerbase and CCP who can even explain it, much less explain why anyone else should try and make that game again.

Big money doesn't always follow success. However, the big money always follows precedent.

So the big money moved on to f2p Asian imports, then social networking activities, and now apps. Then maybe apps for augmented reality Glass/Occulus type things. Or back out to pharmaceuticals 

[Wizgar]

I think saying that is as naive as saying that no MMORPG can top 500k subscribers back in 2002-4. Blizzard pulled the plug on Titan because the game probably sucked. Just look at Diablo. I don't have faith in Blizzard as many people used too.

The genre isn't dead, it's growing to absorb a lot of space. It's not longer unique to play videos games on the internet with other people in a shared space anymore. And all those failed games that you point to are profitable games to say the least, but they aren't smashing successes that they wanted to be. Out of all the big ones, only WAR has shut down.

The fact that the disgraced carcass of SWTOR is still allowed to occupy a meathook somewhere while an EA skeleton crew scrapes out the marrow and charges people for hotbars is apropos of nothing. No one considers it a success, no one will spend money in hopes of emulating it. No one with a project on the drawing board dreams of having the next SWTOR. It's an evolutionary dead end.

It's the same with Conan, Warhammer, Matrix, Tabula Rasa, Vanguard, Auto Assault, Lord of the Rings, and all the rest of them. Sure not all of them have actually had to shutter their servers, sure the ones that still exist have probably earned more than their initial budget in total profit over years of bumbling around as F2P zombies, but so what? No one is excited by them. No one is writing positive headlines about them. No one with a hundred million dollars to invest wants to hear that he can be in on the ground floor of the next Rifts.

No game will ever inherit the throne of WoW the way WoW usurped EverQuest. That lineage is for all intents and purposes over. WoW will simply rule over a dying empire until everyone eventually just sort of stops talking about it. It's already been nine years; imagine a world where it's 2006 and no MMORPG has yet surpassed (or even managed to compete with) Ultima Online.

You're right, it is no longer unique to play games online with other people. And without that hook, that novelty, what else does the MMO genre have left? Nothing but warmed-over mechanics and cockblocks meant to keep you playing way past when you're done having fun.

[tazelbain]

No game will ever inherit the throne of WoW the way WoW usurped EverQuest.

No one will until they do and it will seem obvious to us the same way EQ and WoW seem obvious to us now even though at time things were very cloudy.

[Ingmar]

I think saying that is as naive as saying that no MMORPG can top 500k subscribers back in 2002-4. Blizzard pulled the plug on Titan because the game probably sucked. Just look at Diablo. I don't have faith in Blizzard as many people used too.

The genre isn't dead, it's growing to absorb a lot of space. It's not longer unique to play videos games on the internet with other people in a shared space anymore. And all those failed games that you point to are profitable games to say the least, but they aren't smashing successes that they wanted to be. Out of all the big ones, only WAR has shut down.

The fact that the disgraced carcass of SWTOR is still allowed to occupy a meathook somewhere while an EA skeleton crew scrapes out the marrow and charges people for hotbars is apropos of nothing. No one considers it a success, no one will spend money in hopes of emulating it. No one with a project on the drawing board dreams of having the next SWTOR. It's an evolutionary dead end.

It's the same with Conan, Warhammer, Matrix, Tabula Rasa, Vanguard, Auto Assault, Lord of the Rings, and all the rest of them. Sure not all of them have actually had to shutter their servers, sure the ones that still exist have probably earned more than their initial budget in total profit over years of bumbling around as F2P zombies, but so what? No one is excited by them. No one is writing positive headlines about them. No one with a hundred million dollars to invest wants to hear that he can be in on the ground floor of the next Rifts.

No game will ever inherit the throne of WoW the way WoW usurped EverQuest. That lineage is for all intents and purposes over. WoW will simply rule over a dying empire until everyone eventually just sort of stops talking about it. It's already been nine years; imagine a world where it's 2006 and no MMORPG has yet surpassed (or even managed to compete with) Ultima Online.

You're right, it is no longer unique to play games online with other people. And without that hook, that novelty, what else does the MMO genre have left? Nothing but warmed-over mechanics and cockblocks meant to keep you playing way past when you're done having fun.

What a load of nonsense. By no metric in the world can a game like LotRO be considered a failure, unless the bar is literally "you must equal WoW." Which is just stupid. The market for MMOs is still bigger today than it was when WoW launched. That it is spread across more games is not a bad thing nor does it make those games failures because their players are numbered in the mere 500k-1million range.

[Paelos]

I still think Mount and Blade combat in an MMO setting would fly off the shelves.

And if it already exists, it needs better marketing.

[Wizgar]

What a load of nonsense. By no metric in the world can a game like LotRO be considered a failure, unless the bar is literally "you must equal WoW." Which is just stupid. The market for MMOs is still bigger today than it was when WoW launched. That it is spread across more games is not a bad thing nor does it make those games failures because their players are numbered in the mere 500k-1million range.

"Do a solid functional WoW clone with the most golden IP in fantasy attached and you too can underperform EQ1!"

[Ingmar]

What a load of nonsense. By no metric in the world can a game like LotRO be considered a failure, unless the bar is literally "you must equal WoW." Which is just stupid. The market for MMOs is still bigger today than it was when WoW launched. That it is spread across more games is not a bad thing nor does it make those games failures because their players are numbered in the mere 500k-1million range.

"Do a solid functional WoW clone with the most golden IP in fantasy attached and you too can underperform EQ1!"

[citation needed]

[Wizgar]

So you don't remember the publisher talking shit about wanting to do a million sustained and how if anything could compete with WoW it would be that sweet sweet Lord of the Rings license? You don't remember Turbine's CEO being quietly shitcanned six months after launch?

Hey, whatever, great success I guess.

[Ingmar]

So you don't have anything to show that it was less successful than EQ1, is what I'm getting. Thought so.

[sam, an eggplant]

In my opinion, the way for the genre to move on is to get rid of two things: Levels and Quest-Treadmill based content.

Leveling is indeed content that will only be consumed a couple of times, you're right. But that doesn't matter. Let me put it this way. Back in the early 2000s there were a bunch of multiplayer-only shooters, like Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament, a bunch of Battlefields, Quake Wars, etc. None of them were particularly successful. They did OK, but nothing like Modern Warfare, Battlefield, etc, do today.

That high quality quickly consumed content is the hook that gets people in the door. It's what gets them to buy an expansion, or a new entry in your franchise every year. Multiplayer Call of Duty: Ghosts isn't particularly different from the last CoD. So why did CoD:Ghosts sell through so many copies? It's a known recipe for success. If you tried to release a MMO that was only the endgame, you'd face a similar challenge. The cost of entry is so much higher for MMOs that nobody can take the chance.

There's more to it too; the leveling portion is usually the best part of the game. I buy each WoW expansion as it comes out, level up my guys to max, do a couple dungeons, then quit until the next expansion or patch comes out with new content. That's how I consume MMOs-- it is what I believe to be the healthiest way.

And lastly, procedural content is fucking boring.  Everquest Next is not relying on procedural content; it's the exact opposite. They're relying upon player-created content. And that is the right answer. Whether EQN will execute on its promise is another question entirely.

[Paelos]

So you don't have anything to show that it was less successful than EQ1, is what I'm getting. Thought so.

Was it more successful? Do you have that info?

[Ingmar]

I don't - Turbine has never to my knowledge given exact subscriber numbers, anecdotally I've heard they peaked a bit over 500k (higher than EQ) - and who knows now, its impossible to untangle things post F2P.

[Wizgar]

Was it more successful? Do you have that info?

As far as I know LOTRO studiously avoided ever releasing any hard subscriber numbers, but the scuttlebutt always put them somewhere north of 300k but lower than 500k. That one particularly infamous chart does have them briefly squeaking just a little higher than peak EQ, but then it also has them underperforming it markedly over most of its lifetime.

Honestly, I wasn't aware that LOTRO being smaller than EQ was in its prime was some sort of controversial opinion. Lots of games have gone with the old "As long as we don't specify subscriber numbers you can't prove anything!" routine, but in the long term it's never fooled anyone who wasn't a fanboy looking to be fooled.

[Ingmar]

Holy shit, SirBruce is still plugging away?

EDIT: Hmm, no, a mysterious new guy.

EDIT 2: LOL

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[Rendakor]

As far as I know LOTRO studiously avoided ever releasing any hard subscriber numbers, but the scuttlebutt always put them somewhere north of 300k but lower than 500k. That one particularly infamous chart does have them briefly squeaking just a little higher than peak EQ, but then it also has them underperforming it markedly over most of its lifetime.

Honestly, I wasn't aware that LOTRO being smaller than EQ was in its prime was some sort of controversial opinion. Lots of games have gone with the old "As long as we don't specify subscriber numbers you can't prove anything!" routine, but in the long term it's never fooled anyone who wasn't a fanboy looking to be fooled.

Posting vague rumor bullshit as fact is "some sort of controversial opinion".

[Modern Angel]

Who gives a shit? I mean, seriously, are we dialing back the clock six years to before the time when we all collectively figured out the real thing that matters is (box sales + subs) - (development costs + ongoing maintenance) >= (INSERT HIGHLY INDIVIDUALIZED INTERNAL CORPORATE TARGET NUMBER) is a success?

LOTRO is perfectly successful on the only terms which actually matter: their own internals. Any comparisons to WoW or GW2 (and any comparisons between those two games) on raw numbers is dumb and annoying.

[kildorn]

Quite frankly any level of subscriber number based success bar also needs to be published along side development costs and ongoing costs. Things like SWTOR being financially disappointing on launch aren't due to the player counts, it's due to the massive development pricetag compared to the player counts.

The main failure of the last gen of MMOs was looking at EQ -> WoW's sub increase and developing against that happening every time. The actual games with a sane budget are profitable as all hell, which is why it takes so long for them to actually shut down.

edit: hah, MA beat me while I was typing.

[Wizgar]

LOTRO is perfectly successful on the only terms which actually matter: their own internals. Any comparisons to WoW or GW2 (and any comparisons between those two games) on raw numbers is dumb and annoying.

Excuse me, but we're going to need citations of Turbine's internal targets for LOTRO. Posting vague rumor bullshit as fact is a controversial opinion, I'm told.