The Elder Scrolls Online

[Nebu]

I guess it wouldn't be f13 if we didn't have to have the "but really what people want is open world" conversation around every game. Based on this discussion I assume you all backed Pathfinder.

I think open world fails miserably in the mass market.  Today's MMO consumers prefers a theme park that has the illusion of an open world.  I just don't think most of them know it.

[Stormwaltz]

(Meh, a tangent - voluntarily pulled. Carry on!)

[sam, an eggplant]

If players have to build adventures/worlds from scratch but with a bunch of already-made objects (or if building from scratch means doing a lot of coding), you get mostly crap (Spore Galactic Adventures or NWN).

Not a great example there. NWN had hundreds of high quality player-created modules. Dozens of those were even professional quality. Of course that was out of a pool of thousands, but if that scaled, imagine how player-created content might work a MMO with millions of players.

That said, yes, of course procedural content has a place in minimizing tedium. It's great for generating terrain, making trees look different, positioning boulders, etc. It makes excellent backdrops. It doesn't make for compelling content.

I don't like open worlds myself. What I really want is a themepark full of unique compelling lovingly crafted content where I can experience new stories and challenges every single time I log in. I want the modern WoW leveling experience to last forever.

[Wizgar]

Yeah. To act like the EQ1/WOW sub levels are the main marker of success and shearing that marker from all historical context is bonkers. It's not just that WOW was solid, it's that it came at a time before a lot of other time wasters and we were all 10 years younger.

It reminds me a bit of the days when pen and paper RPGs were big. We're arguably in a golden age of tabletop gaming but there's a ton of whining because it doesn't feel like the old days with million copy selling games and hobby stores on every corner. Well, no, but that's the wrong fucking comparison. People grew up, different things filled the space that 22 year olds used to fill with that particular strain of gaming, and that's okay. It's okay that Well-regarded Game X doesn't sell as much as AD&D 2nd when it launched because it's a totally different world.

And it's okay that LOTRO (since we need an example) doesn't sell as much as WOW or EQ1 or whatever. People are employed, content is created, the lights are one, people who enjoy it are enjoying it. Everything related to past successes is frankly off-topic of anything which matters.

First off, quit putting "EQ1/WoW" together like that as if they represent the same bar for success. EQ1 was something like 4% the size of WoW, prime-for-prime, and first came out in an era when only maybe half of Americans even owned a computer and even fewer actually had the fucking internet. The fact that nothing in the West, except for WoW, has been able to convincingly trounce it ever since is outrageously damning.

You want to make comparisons to PnP gaming? Cool. Let's imagine a world where absolutely nothing else can sustain even one-tenth one-twentieth the success of AD&D, and where almost everyone who tries ends up with their asshole blown inside out and a gigantic multimillion dollar hole drilled into their bank account. Let's imagine White Wolf going tits-up after VtM fails to outsell that first D&D set from the seventies, dumpsters full of Shadowrun boxes, a virtual holocaust where supporters of the genre have to go back in time seven years just to find an example of a mildly profitable PnP game that actually made it to a second book without the company being dismembered first.

Boy, that sounds like a healthy industry.

The last eight or so years of frantic high-dollar MMO development have been a reaction to World of Warcraft. Development in the future will be a reaction to the bloodbath of the last eight years. Make of that what you will.

[Draegan]

You type angry don't you?

[Threash]

You want to make comparisons to PnP gaming? Cool. Let's imagine a world where absolutely nothing else can sustain even one-tenth one-twentieth the success of AD&D, and where almost everyone who tries ends up with their asshole blown inside out and a gigantic multimillion dollar hole drilled into their bank account.

You keep claiming this when it is absolutely not true.  Just because there have been no WoW level successes doesn't mean every game was a huge financial failure.  Even the worst fuck ups like Warhammer online had something like 2 million box sales, almost if not enough to pay for the game by itself.  In fact the only game i can think off that was a huge financial wreck was probably APB. Everything else has been some flavor of "moderately profitable" to "at least we made our money back" as a worst case scenario, and while that certainly does not inspire a lot of confidence in future investors it also doesn't have them running scared like the non stop catastrophic failures you are implying would have.

[Paelos]

MMO development is only an unhealthy industry because money is slow to recognize iterative behavior even when it fails. Making the same thing as something successful, even when it's failed countless times to produce those results, is still considered a safe bet for years and years until the money machine finally turns. It's like a cruise liner.

[Kageru]

I think open world fails miserably in the mass market.  Today's MMO consumers prefers a theme park that has the illusion of an open world.  I just don't think most of them know it.

I agree, If you want a broad demographic you need a scripted / directed progression. The single-player part of the big name shooters is showing us that too. "Open World" is more for the veterans, dedicated and strange and that's not the big dollar market they're dreaming of.

I think GW2's event model is a small step forward. Have a designed world where the events flow and react on a large scale basis to generate PvE goals and things to do. And then have the progression being about achievements and resources. Tabula Rasa, Defiance, Warhammer all made some baby-steps in this direction but you ended up with a lot of levelling content and small little set-piece events and the question of how you scale these to a variable number of participants.

[Mrbloodworth]

MMO development is only an unhealthy industry because money is slow to recognize iterative behavior even when it fails. Making the same thing as something successful, even when it's failed countless times to produce those results, is still considered a safe bet for years and years until the money machine finally turns. It's like a cruise liner.

Yet, many on this very board turn your noses up at those who are doing something differently.  For all this talk on this forum, I am quite comfortable in saying, its all talk. Many here are the problem, and you want more "Wow clones". Anything that steps outside of "the same" you chastise with no abandon on one side of the mouth, and talk about "will someone make something different" on the other. While rushing to the next derivative thing.

[Modern Angel]

First off, quit putting "EQ1/WoW" together like that as if they represent the same bar for success. EQ1 was something like 4% the size of WoW, prime-for-prime, and first came out in an era when only maybe half of Americans even owned a computer and even fewer actually had the fucking internet. The fact that nothing in the West, except for WoW, has been able to convincingly trounce it ever since is outrageously damning.

You want to make comparisons to PnP gaming? Cool. Let's imagine a world where absolutely nothing else can sustain even one-tenth one-twentieth the success of AD&D, and where almost everyone who tries ends up with their asshole blown inside out and a gigantic multimillion dollar hole drilled into their bank account. Let's imagine White Wolf going tits-up after VtM fails to outsell that first D&D set from the seventies, dumpsters full of Shadowrun boxes, a virtual holocaust where supporters of the genre have to go back in time seven years just to find an example of a mildly profitable PnP game that actually made it to a second book without the company being dismembered first.

Boy, that sounds like a healthy industry.

The last eight or so years of frantic high-dollar MMO development have been a reaction to World of Warcraft. Development in the future will be a reaction to the bloodbath of the last eight years. Make of that what you will.

Jesus Christ, ace, I do not know how many times I have to keep repeating myself: WHAT YOU CARE ABOUT DOES NOT MATTER. IT DOES NOT MATTER HOW MANY SUBS LOTRO PULLED IN COMPARED TO EQ. IT DOES NOT MATTER HOW MANY BOX SALES WERE PULLED IN BY GW2 IN COMPARISON TO WOW. IT DOES NOT MATTER IT DOES NOT MATTER IT DOES NOT MATTER.

Your basic fucking premise, the thing you are fucking sperglording over, does not matter. There is not a world where success is measured by sub numbers compared to EQ1. IT DOES NOT MATTER STOP TALKING ABOUT IT SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP. Your definition of what a commercial success is in the MMO industry is wrong and bad and you should stop talking about it.

I'm not going to repeat what matters. It's been stated over and over.

To boot, MMO studios don't exist in some realm where they close at a more rapid clip than normal PC studios, at least not appreciably so. There's a problem with the entire industry, not just with MMOs in this cordoned off space, when it comes to studio closings and layoffs.

Also, White Wolf more or less closed down. You're living in that dystopian world you're talking about. Except that dystopian world offers a lot of creative freedom, a lot of creator control of IP and the means of production, and it's kind of rad. I'd like to talk about it with you if you can get off this fucking kick about subs versus EQ1 in this weird vacuum world you live in!

[Wizgar]

You keep claiming this when it is absolutely not true.  Just because there have been no WoW level successes doesn't mean every game was a huge financial failure.

Looking at the Western MMO industry and saying "their have been no WoW level successes" is like looking at a 400 pound man with no legs and saying he isn't an elite kickboxer. Sure it's technically true, but it sort of belies the scale of the difference at hand. Not only can no one pull off another WoW, no one seems able to pull off WoW minus ninety percent. When's the last time an MMO even grew in it's second year? LOTRO again?

Even the worst fuck ups like Warhammer online had something like 2 million box sales, almost if not enough to pay for the game by itself.  In fact the only game i can think off that was a huge financial wreck was probably APB. Everything else has been some flavor of "moderately profitable" to "at least we made our money back" as a worst case scenario, and while that certainly does not inspire a lot of confidence in future investors it also doesn't have them running scared like the non stop catastrophic failures you are implying would have.

Spending a hundred million dollars and only just breaking even when your product launches years later IS a huge financial failure, and will absolutely send investors running for the hills when they finally figure out that it's about the best they can expect. Or to put it another way, if you have to lay half the company off, you probably didn't break even enough.

[Modern Angel]

That is not endemic to the MMO portion of the industry.

[Wizgar]

Jesus Christ, ace, I do not know how many times I have to keep repeating myself: WHAT YOU CARE ABOUT DOES NOT MATTER. IT DOES NOT MATTER HOW MANY SUBS LOTRO PULLED IN COMPARED TO EQ. IT DOES NOT MATTER HOW MANY BOX SALES WERE PULLED IN BY GW2 IN COMPARISON TO WOW. IT DOES NOT MATTER IT DOES NOT MATTER IT DOES NOT MATTER.

Sorry asshole, but the fact that none of these games CAN CONVINCE ANYONE TO ACTUALLY PAY ANY GOD DAMN MONEY TO PLAY THEM fucking MATTERS. The fact that they compare unfavorably in that regard to a game that was objectively awful and came out when half of everyone didn't have a computer or the internet yet is just a really handy way of pointing out how great the failure is.

No, champ, the problem isn't that there are no successes on the scale of WoW. You can quit saying that, because it makes you sound like a fucking moron. The problem is that if you set aside WoW, this is a genre that fucking peaked a decade ago and hasn't done anything but generate headlines about spectacular trainwrecks in years.

But hey, when this Elder Scrolls shit comes out and it's just a horrible fucking disastrous failure, and when Wildstar comes out and nobody gives a shit about that either, just hug your knees and tell yourself what a healthy and thriving genre this is, even though it hasn't produced a game anyone gives a fucking shit about since Bush was in office.

[Threash]

My god you are dense.  Just because they are not getting WoW numbers doesn't mean they are not making sizable profits.  GW2 has content patches every 2 god damn weeks, I'm sure they are just flushing money down the toilet.  EQ2  LOTRO and SWTOR are still shitting out expansions.  RIFT by all accounts was highly successful and doing even better as F2P.  Your "not WoW = massive failure" claim has absolutely no basis in fact.

[Modern Angel]

Let me back up just a second because in my rush to shit on you I missed something.

Spending a hundred million dollars and only just breaking even when your product launches years later IS a huge financial failure,

So what you're saying is that the measure of success isn't in raw subs or subs vs past successes but... SUBS VS COST?!?!?!?!

WELL GODDAMN, BREAK OUT THE CHAMPAGNE AND SHUT IT DOWN! WHAT A FUCKING UNIQUE INSIGHT!

You don't know what you're even arguing. You're just really mad that there's this thing you like and you wish it was better but you don't know how and you sort of want to define success by comparing it to this thing that happened and even though LOTRO, the repeated example, is doing just fucking fine for a ten year old sub game it's apparently really a gigantic failure because FAAAARRRTTTT.

Real quick: given that the layoff rate in the video game industry as a whole is twice the national average, do you think the Funcom team doing TSW/AOC work, which has had the same core for nearly ten years now (I can speak to this both because I worked there and because I still know lots of people there) despite layoffs, considers their games more of a failure than the folks who worked at THQ? Which studio has left more money on the table? Which studio laid more people off in the years 2001-2012?

[Mithas]

If you think about it isn't the measure of whether or not an MMO is a success or failure is the gulf between what was promised and what was delivered? Sub numbers and profitability obviously matter, but when people on this board say "it was a failure" don't they mean "it was supposed to be the next big thing and ended up not doing much"?

[Modern Angel]

If you think about it isn't the measure of whether or not an MMO is a success or failure is the gulf between what was promised and what was delivered? Sub numbers and profitability obviously matter, but when people on this board say "it was a failure" don't they mean "it was supposed to be the next big thing and ended up not doing much"?

YOU WOULD THINK!

But apparently it's "subs" and "beating EQ1" or something.

[KallDrexx]

Regardless of how many subs = success or failure (which no one on this board is qualified to answer), the fact of the matter is that it is extremely hard for a company to justify putting out an MMO that actually pushes the envelope in a meaningful way because it costs WAY too much to make an MMO.  SOE is only able to justify it with EQN because they have a plethora of normal MMOs and need something new to actually gain back marketshare instead of cannabalizing their existing products.  Most companies don't have that luxery and can't risk blowing all their investment capital on trying out new MMO ideas.  It can easily bankrupt a company (and it has several times).

[Paelos]

MMO development is only an unhealthy industry because money is slow to recognize iterative behavior even when it fails. Making the same thing as something successful, even when it's failed countless times to produce those results, is still considered a safe bet for years and years until the money machine finally turns. It's like a cruise liner.

Yet, many on this very board turn your noses up at those who are doing something differently.  For all this talk on this forum, I am quite comfortable in saying, its all talk. Many here are the problem, and you want more "Wow clones". Anything that steps outside of "the same" you chastise with no abandon on one side of the mouth, and talk about "will someone make something different" on the other. While rushing to the next derivative thing.

No, you're projecting because your special snowflake project is getting plowed.

Also, nobody is rushing to this project. Or Wildstar. If you can't read between the lines on that, I'm not sure what to tell you.

[Sjofn]

Also "different" does not necessarily mean "something good" or even "something any given person would enjoy." I know my tastes well enough that some innovations floated would probably not please me. That doesn't mean I'm sneering at people doing different shit, it just means the game isn't for me. Oh no.

[Threash]

Yeah, you don't get a pat on the head just for being different.  Your game also has to actually be good.

[Sir T]

Or at least good enough that enough people are willing to buy it and pay X amount of revenue towards it, enough to be profitable.

[Merusk]

Yeah, you don't get a pat on the head just for being different.  Your game also has to actually be good.

Oh you and your unreasonable expectations of gameplay instead of pretty pictures and feature lists for the future.

EQ Next got a lot of love here for the promise of something new and different, then we woke-up and said, "Well, let's see what they deliver first."

Plenty of games that have tried something different or even slightly off the WoW-clone track have gotten our attention but then just flopped because most MMO game devs appear to fall into two flavors.  Moronic manchildren who can't run a project competently or passionate guys who can't figure out how to make their game entertaining long-term.

Also, Bloodworth, you're misreading the signal:noise here.  Those not interested in a game tend to drop the thread or forum early on when it's obvious it's not interesting to them.  TSW got a lot of love from a small portion of the population here, as did GW2 but it was still "just a DIKU" to many who dropped out early because they want the next UO.  Which hasn't been peeked at in over a decade and a half at this point.  They'll talk about what they want all day long, realize the game doesn't have it and move on.   

So in that many are backing-up their words quite well.  Meanwhile I'm a theme park player, I like my MMOs wow-like and full of point of interest and quest hubs.  I only care about 'on rails' if I can't hop around a zone, not about breadcrumbs and 'handholding' like "!"   What kills things for me are time investment or cutting off access to parts because "you're not h@rdc0r3 enuff!"   SWG was fun until the endgame, but had a few too many buttons for my liking.  GW2 is fun once or twice a week now that I'm maxed.  TSW is boring to me because the zones take too damn long and I want something simpler than "figure out your own class from this skill list. If you suck it's your fault!"  Nope, no time for that bullshit, thanks.

So when some of us say "we want something different" we're always thinking of specifics to our own tastes.  Quelle surprise!

[Falconeer]

but the fact that none of these games CAN CONVINCE ANYONE TO ACTUALLY PAY ANY GOD DAMN MONEY TO PLAY THEM

Stop typing stupid things.

[Miasma]

Didn't get into the beta weekend.

So what if I were to pretend this wasn't an MMO and just play it as a single player elder scrolls game, would I still be disappointed?  It would have to be worse than Oblivion for me to be disappointed btw.

[Falconeer]

That's a good question Miasma, and my answer is yes you would be majorly disappointed.

[Threash]

You'd be disappointed even harder.

[Ghambit]

Didn't get into the beta weekend.

So what if I were to pretend this wasn't an MMO and just play it as a single player elder scrolls game, would I still be disappointed?  It would have to be worse than Oblivion for me to be disappointed btw.

What if you were to pretend it wasn't a single-player game and try to play it like an MMO?   Yup, still disappointed.   

[ajax34i]

So what if I were to pretend this wasn't an MMO and just play it as a single player elder scrolls game, would I still be disappointed?  It would have to be worse than Oblivion for me to be disappointed btw.

I don't have access to NDA-restricted info, beta, or anything like that.  But from the info posted so far on the official site, and the features described here, I would guess that you CANNOT play this as a single player Elder Scrolls game.  Not just because Elder Scrolls games require mods (their combat, spellcasting, inventory, and UI systems have been crap in every game and had to be modded to be playable/usable) and there are no mods for this game, but also because you can't free-form explore as in the single player game because it's a damn MMO with levels, level-based zones, level-based monster agro radii, and PVP once you're out of the newbie area.

[Paelos]

You'd be disappointed even harder.

 

[Miasma]

Okay, well, that ruins my plan.  I knew it was going to be a terrible mmo but still hoped some fun could be had in the content if I pretended it was single player.

[UnSub]

Why in the world do raw sub numbers matter at all?

Because people got excited about the 'massively' part of MMOs.

Unfortunately that doesn't work anymore. Other players are stupid / malicious / incompetent and the dream of having large groups of people play together in a shared world was shattered by clouds of flying penises.

On top of which in order to reach the base set of MMO features - the ones that players say you can't launch a game without - costs even more every year and against ever growing numbers of competing titles. So the MMO development budgets get bigger while the chance of having a financial success (and not one based on firing everyone in the company to keep the game afloat) grows smaller. Which is why MMOs aren't being made in significant numbers by Western developers any more and the two titles about to launch in TESO and Wildstar started development 7 or so years ago.

Raw sub numbers are representations of a title's performance in an industry where nearly all financial and non-financial markers  of a game's success is hidden. Of course, it's been diluted by having more titles to play, so that where EQ1 was up against only a small number of competitors, EQN is facing down dozens, including EQ1.

Thumbs up, new guy. We used to be angry like you but time has wearied us. F13 is where forum warriors come to die.

I should go to bed.

[Venkman]

Raw sub numbers mean dickall. They're just one of the models, including the 2-3 other models each individual game gets now. Even back in the day subs were a fun thing to banter about, but each company's requirements are different. One company's million subs failure is another company's 100k success. Only the press release and forum warrior crowd made the comparisons in simple-to-argue terms.

You don't know what you're even arguing. You're just really mad that there's this thing you like and you wish it was better but you don't know how and you sort of want to define success by comparing it to this thing that happened and even though LOTRO, the repeated example, is doing just fucking fine for a ten year old sub game it's apparently really a gigantic failure because FAAAARRRTTTT.

This. But come on, every so often we need a Wizgar to come in and make all the old arguments we've long since forgotten about 

[Simond]

The killer ap that I honestly think would be a huge hit would be:

a) extremely large procedurally-generated world.
b) world filled with tons of miniplots, quests, NPC factions, and autonomous-agent AI NPCs with a constant flow of DLC adding new stuff on a monthly basis, seeded into existing worlds or into new ones.
c) intended for groups of trusted friends between 5-50 people or so to participate in a single persistent iteration of such a world.
d) maybe allow for the initiating 'host' of a given generated world to hand-edit, customize and otherwise mod a world.

And I think it's possible. But getting even close to this requires forgetting every MMO that has ever existed, and it requires abandoning the idea of thousands of strangers playing together in a given world.

So you're basically saying that the last, best hope for MMO development is...SOE?

 

Why in the world do raw sub numbers matter at all?

Because people got excited about the 'massively' part of MMOs.

Unfortunately that doesn't work anymore. Other players are stupid / malicious / incompetent and the dream of having large groups of people play together in a shared world was shattered by clouds of flying penises.

Goon Squad says hello, friend!

[ashrik]

Okay, well, that ruins my plan.  I knew it was going to be a terrible mmo but still hoped some fun could be had in the content if I pretended it was single player.

That's possibly the only way to be more disappointed than going in for the MMO