f13.net

What happened to the magic that was MMORPGs? I used to be excited to hear about new games coming out. I used to apply for beta's. This could not be further from how I currently view these games. There is no innovation. I remember playing Subspace and being completely addicted to it. 80 guys, all on the same map trying to kill each other? Fucking awesome. That game had no persistence, it reset your points after two weeks and you started over...but it was fun at its core. It took skill and teamwork. You could even lob bombs and get lucky, or fly the noob ship Terrier with double guns. The game was pretty much Asteroids...on, well, roids. And it kicked ass.

I was first in my city probably to have cable modem. I beta tested every damn game I could.

I was part of Neocron outpost battles. UO dread days. SB.exe sieges. Planetside all out war. EvE small gang actions/suicide ganks. I may be looking back with rose tinted glasses but these were my best experiences in any MMOs I have played. I played Wow for like 2+ years I frankly can't look back at my raiding as fun, though accomplishing shit like your first Nyx kill or UBRS run was pretty cool....as well as some of the massive Tarren Mill battles.

Frankly, I got pissed when I saw that Youtube link Ollie posted. I wasn't even looking forward to SWTOR that much, and now I really could give two shits. I thought, from the bars, that it was some crappy version of WoW.

WoW is the worst thing to have happened to our genre. Hell, I played it and was fairly obsessed with it. And now I'm bored of it. And now developers want to copy the same shit we are already bored of. It's all gear obsession, the problem is once you realize that the next game that you go to that is all about gear obsession is gonna be less fun. The examples above all had a unique hook. They weren't just "Level Up so you can get matching gear and raid!"

Innovate, motherfuckers, innovate. I come from Tandy 1000 and Commodore 64 times. You couldn't hide not being fun with a carrot on a stick. You had to make a FUN game. If you are going to steal, steal from the old school and add your twist.

Make an awesome Mechwarrior MMO

Make Red Baron fucking Online.

Make Syndicate Online

Make something besides WoW 0.91


or maybe I'm just getting old and jaded.

Sounds like this to me.

EDIT: You're primarily a PVP player, right? The innovation for you is all over in the FPS world. The number of people who want a PVP-centric MMO is really fairly low compared to the overall market, so it shouldn't really come as a surprise that it isn't being emphasized.

Planetside 2, the dream is still alive  :grin:

Maybe.

Innovation in FPS? You are joking right? I can destroy some buildings now, holy shit!!! No, it's the same crap.

Games like Mechwarrior Online could have very cool PVE missions. This isn't necessarily about PVP vrs. PVE, I just want something that does reek of "The money hats said make it like WoW"

Give me $100 million with no need to pay it back and no publisher or investor meddling.

I will return a few years later with a universe to satiate desires both subtle and gross.

EDIT: And probably a big swack of your money back. But it's best to budget conservatively.

Does an MMO truly need 100 million? How did EQ and UO get off the ground? Anyone know production costs? Yes, I know there is inflation but I find that 100 million line is a lame excuse. Guess you need a talented, motivated team with the same goals in mind with a good salesman up front.

Looking at inflation figures I can tell you that $100M in 2009 is equal to $73.5M in '97, so take that into account as well.

Considering that most of the MMOs come from giant corporations now, that $100m is probably more likely worth $10m.  So it's inflation and massive, systematic inefficiency.

Well, I edited it post-fact. My pet project won't have the same costs as, say, Aion.

IMO, costs have mushroomed because of the increasing consumer demand for audiovisual quality. Mass Effect 1 cost a lot more than previous BW games, because of the insane amount of detailed art it consumed (not just models and textures, but sound effects, cutscenes, and animations - nearly every line of dialogue in the game was hand-tweaked), not to mention the ridiculous amount of VO that had to be contracted and recorded. That's also why ME devoured gigs and gigs of HD space.

The days when your could be a success with UO's sprites or EQ's 16-poly models is long gone, my friend.

Good luck paying an 80-100 person team for 5 years with your $10 million. And then you need servers, and hosting, a rock-solid ISP, you have to license or design an engine, market the thing, and do 50 other things I didn't mention.

I mean yes, if you're setting out to make some small niche game then you don't need $100 million, but anything with even a pretension of being a 'name' game is going to need a lot of money.

No, most people just decided those things sucked.  There are a whole lot more people out there who would take your exact list and call it the absolutely worst times they've ever had in any MMO ever.  The only one of those i didn't experience was Neocron and i can honestly say i cannot imagine how someone can look back at those and go MOAR! and i fucking love pvp.  Some people get their jollies by having nails rammed into their nuts, most of them are at least smart enough to understand why the rest of us might not be so keen to experience it.

Did you play EQ? If so, you could have had the joy of feeling what you are several years earlier.

But don't worry, the apathy gets worse. Lately I feel the problem is not with MMOs, but with the sorry state of PC gaming in general. I remember fondly when PC games were these weighty, mature affairs, but that sort of thing doesn't play well with the console loving masses that seem to drive the industry's direction these days. Any serious title is released on as many platforms as possible, so those promising PC releases are hobbled by the console tie ins. So far the paradigm shifting console MMO has not appeared, though when it does, I doubt it will satisfy you or I. And in the mean time, those companies that lust after monthly subs (and have the capital to finish an MMO,) are not going to do anything but play it safe and copy previous successes.

I don't even mind that much anymore. I keep my ear to the ground looking for new prospects, I play what I like, and my tastes have had to adapt a little to what is available. I am hopeful something good will come down the pipe, but I no longer live the hype, and I view every promise with extreme scepticism. All forms of media evolve and change over time, and you often find those who prefer things 'the way they were.' My dad was the same way with the movies he enjoyed in his day.

Welcome to old age, gramps.

FWIW I've enjoyed the EMU's that are out there.  For SWG, EQ, ole UO shards -- they have at least 50+ people playing prime time and there's something going on.

Now if we could make one for DAoC without ToA...

I'll do it for 10 million.  Srsly.  Just give me the money.

Isn't that what the classic server is?  I haven't played it since ToA, but I did hear about it.

I wouldn't mind a WoW clone, provided that it actually duplicated the things that make WoW worth playing, but the problem is, the other MMOs don't seem to understand what it is that Blizzard does right.

The genre is now over a decade old.  These games haven't tried anything new, but have refined what's out there.  We're still in the first generation.  WOW hasn't done anything to the genre.  WOW has slowly gone from a more friendly EQ game to a very complex flash game for moms and dads and their kids.

I'm interested if Telara or GW2 will bring us something different.

What I thought when I saw the clip was "wow, they've seemingly taken the step back away from uncanny valley", and actually had to tip my hat to them for their design choice.

Probably.

Thanks for getting that first "Hurf durf I'm an idiot" icebreaker post out of the way.

Stop playing MMOs and get back to competitive games like League of Legends and other focused PvP games. It'll be healthy when you don't have to run around a game world, have a tight, focused experience designed for PvP, and can jump right into the action.

Thanks for adding to the conversation.

WoW did some new things, but they were tiny. For the most part, as someone else pointed out here and many people have pointed out across the internet, they refined an old formula to near perfection. The most they've done is created a much larger market for MMOs. Unfortunately that market is now dominated by companies trying to one up WoW and not with new ideas.

Moreover, the direction the market is going trends towards social networking, free-to-play, and other models that make MMOs appear obsolete if they *aren't* like WoW. And by "like WoW" I mean in terms of blockbuster scale and content delivery, which given the burnout for the genre felt by most who have played WoW throughly, means that you have to be something special to get them to sign up for your game and not have PTSD of what bothered them about WoW.

It's the old, world or game discussion, everyone is trying to recreate "the WoW" as it's the best game.   Innovation is dangerous as the first thing players do with a new idea is try to grief each other over the head with it.  Game design is stuck on a narrow path with all the risky turnings blocked off.  Sometimes I'd just like to play a fantasy game, avoid the monsters for a night and spend all evening playing cards with other players in a tavern.  The correct "accepted" version of game design would make card cheating, pick pocketing, propositioning a bar maid, bar fights (apart from scripted encounters), even harsh language, all impossible.  I'd be bored in an hour.

I'd like to see a fantasy novel written abiding by game "design" rules, it would be the blandest thing ever.  As for the "but it must be done a certain way argument", yeah I understand playing it safe because of the money involved, but consider for the "most popular" argument, running with the same analogy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_novel).

The genre is getting old and a bit dull. But really, I think it's that it's been 3 years since we had a game that was basically playable and fun. That was LOTRO, which wasn't all that, but compared to Champ or STO or War or STO, it was a Picasso.

The only bright spot recently I think was Free Realms. I can see something similar geared towards adults as a decently successful EQ3 or something.

You know, you're right.  It just took me a little while spawn camping the Lich King so I could mail a Frostmourne to my alt, only to die and get slapped with a three hour corpse run, because I have a hard time handling the shitty UI to realize it.

Seriously dude, if that doesn't qualify as "big", what does?  Injecting dopamine straight into your brain?

I'm the president of that club. The last mmorpg that I was really excited for (and applied to beta test) was Seed.  :uhrr:

If I didn't know for a fact your husband would beat me with a ban stick I'd have a new sig quote right now. Thanks for the chuckle.


The genre isn't old, it's us.  You've been doing the same thing, having the same conversations, dreaming the same dreams for over a decade now.  13 years if you started in UO.  Think on that for just a small moment of your time.  Perhaps it's time to enjoy the games as they are or simply move on.  The genre left you behind a long time ago.

Erm, yeah, that's kind of what I meant.  So-called triple A titles are made by ginormous companies who "need" to hire tons of people and take years and years.  It doesn't automatically make your game better (you could easily argue that it does a better job of limiting its potential), but it does make it cost a fortune.  In '97, that equivalent to a 100m today would go waaaaay farther.  That's all I'm saying.

If you try to make an MMO on the budget that UO and EQ did, you'd just simply make a game that looks like EQ and UO, with the same capabilities.  People want more now (better graphics, sound, physics, ect), which takes more money.  They might not make a fun game, but I'll guarantee nobody with a shoe string budget is going to be able to make an awesome, innovative working MMO.  Every idea I can think of would require a lot of man hours.  If somebody does create a new game changer MMO, its going to come from a "100 million" development house, not the indie makers.

Has there ever been an MMO worth playing that *didn't* take 5-ish years to make? Beyond that first generation, at least?

I'm sure initially a game changing MMO will be created by a small indie studio. However, the idea won't be fleshed out and perfected until a big studio copies it, leaving the indie studio in the dust.

Fact is, nobody wants to support a niche design/indie studio trying something different right now. For whatever reason, going big and failing (warhammer online) is a much better proposition than going small and being unpopular.

And going back to the 'good ol days' never worked. I tried it with DAoC multiple times. I honestly wish I never had. Now my recent memories of the game are tainted by the crappy experience I had a year ago, not really looked upon with a warm fuzz like the amazing experiences I had 7+ years ago

Dude, stop being difficult just for the sake of it.  No MMO really costs 100 million.  A huge portion of that is pure waste.  THAT IS WHAT BIG COMPANIES DO.

Slayerik, 2001 called, it wants its rant back  :geezer:

Seriously, MMOs are like sex. At first when you're a teen, its like all, "OMG PENIS IN VAGINA". 20 years later, you've boned every ho on the block; they take ages to orgasm and you're just content to spank the meat in CoD4 for 20 minutes.

what

It doesn't take a big company to spend $100 million dollars over 5 years, that is actually a pretty medium sized operation, maybe even small. I'm not deliberately being difficult, but I think you may not totally grasp how expensive even one employee is once you're paying for an office for him to sit in, machines for him to do his work on, a network for those machines to sit on, licensing for all the software he uses and the source control he's checking in and out of, health insurance and other benefits, etc.

Now maybe if you're doing things in an overseas sweatshop developer and using pirated dev software, things are different, but software development on levels even just a little bit above Dwarf Fortress neckbeard territory is not a cheap undertaking in the slightest.

I've seen estimates of $200 million+ for WHO, so we're talking about an operation only half the size of what produced that.

We moan a lot here about weaksauze design, but if providers could offer more nuanced, customizable games (i.e. rising and lowering the challenge, reward and personalization of content based on decisions/input from players) would they do it?  I doubt it.  I think we have the technology already, but people like MMO's mostly because they offer predictable, prolonged repetitive experiences.  You don't need a lot of innovation for that.

I don't think that's true. Aren't there more PvP servers in WoW than PvE? I think every recent "next big PvP game" been immensely popular for the first month as well.

I'd say people really want a good PvP MMO, but the only ones released have been endlessly flawed so far, so the initial player surge drops pretty quickly.

I mean what are they supposed to flock to? Darkfall? Mortal Online? Fallen Earth? A 12 year old UO? There's nothing for them out there. That's why it's kind of hard to claim that "most people" are not interested in a product that does not yet exist. (a good PvP MMO with wide range appeal)

The closest thing I can think of is EVE, but it lacks the wide-range appeal. However, as far as I know, it's one of, if not the strongest MMO in terms of active players next to WoW in the west...

/slamhead

You aren't getting the point I'm trying to make.  What I am saying is that these big ass companies making these supposedly big ass MMOs have TOO many employees.  And too many offices, too many machines, too many networks, too much licensing, too much insurance and benefits.  Most of the fictional 100 million budget we are talking about is pure wasted bureaucracy.  A smaller, more efficient company can make the exact same product (or better!) for far less.  So, I'm not saying that they don't use 100m.  I'm saying their product never really warranted it.  

I currently work in a company that has a big ass, multi-year project that is costing far more than the kind of money we are talking about here.  It's hysterically inefficient and wasteful.  It doesn't even remotely warrant the budget that it has.  This is common practice.

Every 'real' PVPer will tell you that WoW PVP servers aren't 'real' PvP.  They're looking for oldschool UO or Eve, where nowhere is truly safe from that one guy who just wants to gank the fuck out of you and is willing to take the consequences.  There's a level of thrill there I can appreciate, but know it's niche.

Also, the PvP servers were initially more popular because it was another way for the H4rdc0r3 PvErs to set themselves aside from 'teh unashed masses.'  The long-term pvp crews went to Ticondrius, IIRC.

It IS funny however, that every time it comes up there's always that one guy who stands up, flag in hand and yells. "NO, they will flock to a PvP game if only someone would create a good one!"  Never mind the litany of games that can't get funding, which is why they're so under polished and unpopulated.  Perhaps its a self-fulfilling cycle, but I'm not risking MY $100 mil on it not being the case.

Just saying, I have never played a modern PvP-centric MMO that did not also come with an enormous bag of shit with it. Shit unrelated to the "player vs player" aspect.

They've all just been poor indie projects so far.

Pretty much this is the premise of the book I'm writing. Old and jaded is part of it, but clearly the idea that people had of what MMORPG's/virtual worlds could be has not come to pass. And appears unlikely to come to pass. So in those cases, it always behooves the people who had that idea to tool it back into the shop and say, "Why did I think that"? When you're that wrong (I'm in the 'you'), it means the problem is with you, not the the thing that disappointed.

Maybe.

And I'm telling you you're dreaming if you think you'll ever get an awesome MMO for $10 million. You might get a neat indie wreck like Fallen Earth, with some interesting ideas but no polish and lots of bugs. (Although I think I read recently that Icarus had just downsized from 110 to 30 employees or so, so maybe even getting that costs more than $10 million.)

EDIT: I suppose I should amend "if you think you'll ever get an awesome MMO for $10 million" to "if you think you'll ever get an awesome MMO for $10 million ever again" since I know that some of the earlier ones cost that (or less) to develop (although I think these budgets sometimes fail to include the actual operating costs of just running the company so we can perhaps think of them as actually being higher.)

We've had quite a few people leave WoW PvP servers to join our guild. The general consensus being that open world PvP, at least in the context of WoW, was far more an annoyance factor than anything approaching fun.

WoW is doing quite a lot of innovation. Far more than anyone else in the industry. Going back and rejuvenating old content, non-level based progression, gear that shapes itself to your current character goal, raid hard-modes. Of course if you've got the blinkers on you miss it. Even in PvP Wintergrasp was interesting and arena throws up some lessons.

Either way I think it's a very hard argument to defend that WoW's success was the primary cause for Champions, Star Trek and most other releases simply being *bad*.

First, fuck you very much.

Second, WOW has done nothing to the old formula except refine what was already out there (and did an excellent job of it).  But what has WOW brought to the table that pushes it forward with innovation?  WOW just polished the shit out of the EQ/DIKU format.  Balanced it, and opened up the game so more and more people of different play styles could enjoy it.  They didn't invent anything though.  They didn't invent instancing.  I guess you can give them props for "phasing".  In the end they turned the EQ format into something a multitude of more people could enjoy and they did an amazing job of it.

But honestly, you're a dickbag.

Edit:
Just read your response about camping and corpse runs etc.  That's not innovation or anything else.  That's taking an existing model and just making it better or less shitty.

Actually, I'll give WOW one innovative thing, and that's their addon system.  But as far as gameplay, it's still the same shit.

And we're having discussions that are as old as WoW. Textbook arguments.

All Points Bulletin. Guild Wars 2. Those are my top pics for games that seem to be trying for something different; we'll see if they succeed. I was tempted to throw FFXIV on there but it's as yet unproven if it'll be more-of-the-same-with-slightly-better-combat or something that feels truly good to play. I have high hopes they don't make it extremely terrible to play.

FFXIV isn't bringing anything new to the table.  Just a new experience and a new world.  Hell you can't even jump in their game.

Two games that have the potential to move the genre forward are Telara and GW2.  And that's going by PR speak.  So until I see the games I'll just wait and see.

I'll throw this out there: WoW is the iPod of the MMO world. They may not have thought up the idea, but they have delivered it the best. There is innovation in that, but it isn't paradigm shifting innovation.

Thinking about it, two major factors work against MMO development: their long development time and their expected long existence. A MMO company is lucky to put out 1 MMO every 3-4 years and that's a long time between releases unless either your revenue is great and / or you slash development costs. In that time, you can easily be overrun by changing tastes and / or new big releases. With the number of MMOs coming out and are still around, there is a great chance that any MMO that doesn't get a flying start is headed into a death spiral - would EvE have survived if it was launched today given how poor it was at launch?

The second issue is that a MMO's long existence sees developers locked into one title for quite a while - they typically aren't taking their learnings from one MMO to another... and if they do, then there is a puzzle about why these developers seem to learn the wrong lessons. Perhaps they only take the most recent lessons, which don't work for launching games, I don't know. My rambling point is that unlike single player titles, where a developer can release one, see what worked and what didn't and get to improving those ideas in the next title, they can be locked into a MMO for several years post-release. They aren't innovating if it is 10+ years between the development of new titles.

The long development, long release life also sees these budgets blow out, with the expectation they'll make it up over the life of the game. MMO players say they want everything (see Arthur_Parker's card game example, where you can't just have a mini-game where you play cards, but need to have a lot of other mini-systems to supplement the main one and means it isn't a card game any more) and are, for good reason, reluctant to believe that something that isn't in launch is worth waiting for until it is patched in. So MMOs overpromise, underdeliver and incur massive debts that may never be paid back.

And this is in an industry where only 4% of projects that are started are profitable and only 20% of titles that appear on shelves are significantly profitable (http://kotaku.com/5098356/only-20-of-games-make-a-profit-+-eedar). If you are developing a MMO, the odds are against you.

I can agree with that.

Same, that sums up what WoW is. Thread is over. I can't stand the thought of 20 more pages of people arguing what WoW did/didn't do and what it is or isn't.

Moving along - there is an interesting mmo on the near horizon which is nothing like WoW and might not suck - APB.

What's different about it is that the two sides have different motivation.  Criminals commit crimes, Enforcers fight criminals.

It seems pretty innovative.  Whether it actually delivers on its promise is another matter.

You guys need to talk less about the Products and more about the Tools.  "Only THEN, will you find The Master."

That's a pretty good analogy.  I'd still point to the fact that the evolution of the iPod is still pretty much the biggest and most innovative thing to hit the media player market despite the fact that everything Apple does is iterative of previous versions.

And yes Draegan, I know I'm a dick, thanks for pointing that out.


All it needs is a "taxpayer" faction to create an Ouroboros.


Blizzard owns and doesn't license all the tools worth having at the moment.  The remaining tools are ones like Paul Barnett.

Witty, but wrong.  Maybe you misunderstood me.

You are talking SDK's.  The only company I'd put money on having a completely functional and easy SDK is Blizzard.

So, I made an off the cuff remark early in the thread about Planetside 2, but I definitely relate to this topic and I wanted to write something a little more substantial, so here goes.

I basically got to the point where I was very meh about MMOs about a year ago, well, a little more than a year ago at this point.   At first, I sort of grasped at straws and tried a bunch of different F2P MMOs, none of which I stuck with for more than a few weeks.  I didn't game at all over the summer, as I spent it abroad, but came back and decided to reactivate my WoW account, which I did for about a month.  Then I tried EVE again, which I did for a few months.  Around that time Champions Online also came out, which I didn't have huge hopes for, but I will admit to liking for a while.  But it too passed rather quickly.  Then I went back to World War 2 Online for a while.   Then took some time off from MMOs for the most part, and recently hit the ground running in WoW again to see what I can see before Cataclysm hits.

All this time I've never felt the way I used to about these games, but I do feel the urge to game and the long story short is that I keep going back to the games where I have an established community.  EVE, WoW and WW2O are all places I can reasonably seamlessly reintegrate myself back into the communities I was in before, and pick right up with the game.  That seems to be the draw at this point.   I'm really not interested to start from scratch, knowing noone or almost noone, build up characters, wealth, and contacts, join a guild, and all the leg work that is required to really get the most out of an MMO.  That seems to be the biggest issue with me and new MMOs, and aside from a community I am currently involved with getting majorly involved in a new MMO, I can't see that changing much the more I think about it.

There are definitely MMO projects out there that still pique my interest, don't get me wrong.  End of Nations looks neat, Planetside 2, when we actually find out anything about it, will be something I watch closely.  I'm more into PvP than I used to be, though what exactly PvP means, and in what context I like it I can't really say.  Do I like EVE, yes, but I also like shooters, and competitive RTS games, so there is a wide variety there.   At the moment, I like the format of WW2O for PvP.  There is tactical and strategic gameplay, winning and losing seems vitally important as it happens, but everything resets once the map is over (anywhere from a few weeks to a few months per map).  There is progression in terms of what you can use (in infantry, vehicles, air, and navy), but there isn't hit points, or new spells, or anything.  

But when I see, ooh boy Star Wars TOR, or even something I thought might be neat like Rift (read: Heroes of Telara),  I just no longer care all that much, it seems like we are largely stuck in the past, or maybe its just me.  I mean seriously, WoW, EVE and WW2O as three potential MMOs I could want to play at any given time, thats nothing in the last *half decade* maybe WoW just barely.  

I've gone through dozens of other games in that time period, and those genres seem to be going places that are at least decent (Dawn of War 2 is a good place for the RTS genre to be, TF2 has been a very solid shooter for a few years now, you can even argue Dragon Age was solid while it lasted).  But the MMO genre is just stuck in some sort of mire and it can't get out.  Somewhere in the mess of virtual worlds, persistent progression, monthly payments, net code, promised features, and everything else, their has to be a few decent games waiting to be made,  but the problem is, as I mentioned before, its not just that.  At this point, for me to seriously get into a new MMO long term I am going to need a community AND a great game, and thats problematic for anyone trying to sell me an MMO.

Did they? You are basically saying I'm broken, but if you didn't enjoy the examples there then you don't 'fuckin' love PvP'. Sorry, you just don't.

I'm not saying these games were exceptional, but the experiences were awesome and innovating in their own right. With SB, AoC poorly tried to go with the siege warfare route. These days, Eve can be the only example to compare to UO...which frankly is sad. PS had balls, and I had more fun being part of 50+ man raids in that game than I probably ever will again (barring PS2 hopefully).

Anyway, the fork in the road for the genre was EQ/UO. One thrives today, unfortunately my horse was shot after breaking a leg. There is more to MMO than Diku.

I'm going to err on the side of caution. APB is just another attempt to put an MMO wrapper around twitch gameplay. Which is met by the twitch games adding MMO elements like progression schemes and social networks. APB, like Crimecraft and Global agenda is going to have to prove it can compete with FPS games and have enough people willing to buy into their payment schemes. I'm dubious on both.

It would be very interesting to know what Blizzard are planning as their next MMO. WoW is pretty old now, and stupidly successful, which disallows them redesigning the core gameplay. The next game will be where they try to incorporate the lessons they've learned and new ideas. Of course if they come out with WoW2:reskinned I'll join the ranks of the disappointed.

I think an important factor that's lost in all this is user creep from one MMO to another.  Planetside is the perfect example as it was wildly popular until SWG came out.  That didnt mean PS was a bad game, just that people like trying new things.  So, once they left PS and went to SWG they then went to WoW.  And on and on.  Each game suffered due to sub. losses; in SWG's case it prompted a near total redesign that made things even worse.  In Planetside's case they couldnt push the model along (to combat this inate player boredom) due to lack of funding from sub. losses... and the game became crickets, which really doesnt work in a massive PvP game.

WoW's success was only partly due to design.  It was also smart release timing relative to the competition and the simple fact they succeeded in marrying people to the game just long enough to keep them grounded to it. 

Increasing demand from consumers or invented demand from developers?

I think if you look at what actually sells the demand for ever higher AV quality among consumers doesn't come close to actually matching what developers are pumping out. I would also point out that AV quality can do a lot to veneer over a lousy game and is thus attractive to developers for that reason as well.

Most of the best selling games of last year were fairly modest presentation wise. There is a huge echo-chamber effect when you read "hardcore" forums instead of sales charts.

I didn't come up with the analogy - I think it was Cuppycake, but I can't find her original post on it.

Another side effect of MMOs having a long-term life expectancy: they look like failures when they just hang around. Planetside is the example here - did fantastically for a MMOFPS for much longer than anyone expected (especially as a sub-based FPS) but now looks like an embarrassment to SOE.

Past a certain point MMOs need to have a big closing down event and close down in triumph, rather than a 'going out of business sale'.

If someone will give me that $100m Signe is asking for, my MMO will only last for 5 years and be planned with a defined beginning, middle and end. That concept alone will see me earn $200m in my first year, guaranteed*.

* not a guarantee.

UnSub, that might be about as popular as DRM.

I'll throw that back as: Would it have survived if they had tried to launch it fully finished? (also read: Developed/marketed/budgeted thinking it would be fully finished)

What I'm thinking is EvE and to an extent WoW (as well as many other less important examples) underwent rather 'slow' launches, they didn't launch like "this is the NEW WoW" or "this game is everything to all people, so GO BUY IT RIGHT NOW!".
They actually changed/tweaked a lot well after launch and were in part able to craft themselves while they were out there, considering the input of paying customers. Of course they didn't do this by choice as much as because they didn't know any better and the MMO-world was far more naïve back then.

But what if they could do this by choice? What if exactly because of the complexities/life-cycle of an MMO they developed it allowing for heavy retooling post-launch?
I don't simply mean the tools, but the marketing/budgeting as well, so you don't have to appeal to the entire horde of jaded malcontents from the get go, screaming: "it isn't finished!!" or "it doesn't have all those ground-breaking things it promised!!", seeing your subs plummet and getting filed under 'another failure' about 30-60 days post-launch.
I'm just wondering which MMO that launched thinking they would compete with the big boys from launch actually did?
To a certain extent LoTRO I s'pose, but I'm pretty sure even they didn't hit the long-term targets they had envisioned.

Or maybe the only reason that worked was because we were all more naïve back then and wouldn't have the patience or accept such amateurism any more now that the business should have supposedly matured  :oh_i_see:.

Eve launched with the promise of doing exactly that, and all credit to CCP for keeping their word and releasing regular, significant free updates just as they promised. I don't see why a new game couldn't launch today with the same promise, as long as people had confidence in the business behind it.

As for competing with the big boys, there's really only one big boy in terms of subs for a subscription-based game. I think the determination to be the next WoW is a huge part of the problem - it's like every new restaurant chain tries to be the next MacDonalds. Couldn't an innovative MMO could be financially succesful, and give investors a good return on their money, with far fewer subs than WoW has? It's not like people expect every single player game to match the sales of The Sims, but for some reason they have unrealistic expectations for MMOs.

Since we're on the point of demand for AV quality ... that works up to a point, and then you fall into the uncanny valley. Of course this can be circumvented by just making everything except the people as realistic as possible, but for me, as long as it keeps a certain minimum quality, I'm fine. I'm much more about the gameplay than the graphics. Hell, no-one will ever claim that serious sam 2 (http://img.metaboli.fr/products/SeriousSam2/screenshot2.jpg) is a good-looking game compared to today's games, but it's sufficient and I would have absolutely no problems playing it.

Hell, I just played SS2 for 3 hours yesterday, and it still felt like it took 15 minutes.

People have been trotting this one out for over a decade.  I'm not sure it was ever more than some crazy bullshit that some asshole who took a philosophy course once spouted.

No, the original quote is quite correct. Like I said read forums less and sales data more.

The uncanny valley is only a theory about how people relate to robotics. As long as it looks robotic they feel comfortable with it. If a robot looks sufficiently human, people get uncomfortable around it. The only actual study I have found in a cursory overview finds that this is MOSTLY true for introverts and those low on emotional stability.

Somewhere along the line it was converted into a theory of MMO design because someone was overfond of verbal masturbation and couldn't just say "I find the artistic direction of this product aestheticly displeasing." And with credentials like that, of course it's a pile of shit.

Edit: In the course of some research, I did find this photo though, the right side of which is  :drill:

(http://i737.photobucket.com/albums/xx11/dtrain858/mistake.jpg)

If you're calling the "uncanny valley" line bullshit, then I'm going to go with "um, no, read the sentence I wrote after that". Faces is one of the things that ruin immersion the most for me, because they try too hard to get AV realism in. It's hard to do that realistically, so while MGS2 has faces which move, they're not trying to be TOO realistic/hi-def so at least I don't get caught up on the mistakes made in the facial simulation.

Diss it all you like, I've noticed how I'm being more and more preoccupied with the faults they keep making with character's faces as they try to up the ante on AV realism in that aspect. Literally every other improvement has been, to me, an improvement.

I don't think anyone is saying they like bad art assets. The term itself has been coopted and used incorrectly. Bad art is bad art, if it has 20 polys or 200. Of course it gets easier to screw it up as it gets more complicated, but that isn't the uncanny valley - that's something else entirely. A creepy looking robot is a creepy looking robot, and THAT effect is what the term should describe. Consider the examples in the image from my last post. THAT is the uncanny valley.

Uncanny valley is easy to find in MMO's. The "plastic people" of CO that just don't quite work right and as such look weirder and less organic than wow's well animated, low poly, caricatures.

In regards to WoW having a slow launch. The game had an extended open beta and word of mouth was massively favorable (It was up against EQ and original EQ2 though). It certainly launched with mature combat systems a lot more end-game content than most releases since it. Their main release fault being nobody believed there was a market that large.

What in the world are you guys talking about?

If you make something clearly a representation, like an 8-bit mario sprite, nobody is going to look at it and say "I dunno, his eyes are too glassy." Mario's sprite is not supposed to model a real human. However Uncharted 2 character models are not representational, they are supposed to be realistic looking, which is why you hear all sorts of complains about their crazy eyes.

This is just common sense. The more familiar you are with something the more you can find fault in attempted recreations. It's why CG cars and dinosaurs always look better than CG humans, or why CG humans are the hardest things to animate. Nobody knows what a T-Rex looks like exactly so if it's a little off it's no big deal. Everyone knows exactly what a human face looks like and how humans move so even the slightest problems are easily perceptible.

I'm not saying anything that isn't common knowledge to anyone that does any sort of CG work.


It has nothing to do with "complicated" and everything to do with familiar. Humans are great at recognizing faces and other humans and are thus great at detecting when an attempt to recreate a human face or movement is off. Human movement isn't any more complicated than any other animal, complication is not the reason human animations will look off where animal animations look acceptable.

Whether or not you want to call that the "uncanny valley" or something else it's a very real phenomenon and it makes perfect sense. When it comes to the human forms other humans are experts. Robots from cybertron not so much.

Hush, I'm reeling in investors as we speak!  :grin:

It's just the way I think that "story" needs to be dealt with - have a beginning, middle and end. I'm not sure anyone would actually invest in it, since a major strength for a MMO is a multi-year lifespan that sees the dollars roll in off the long-tail, but there is a price you pay for being open-ended. Having a fixed end-point has some issues related to a business structure, but they aren't insurmountable.

But that's the thing - if you want revolution in innovation, you need to have stuff that is different and tries new things. For $100m, no-one is going to do that.

As for graphics: they matter. They are your link to the entire video game world. For a new MMO, they have to be at least as good as the single player games just to be noticed on the shelf. "Good" is a relative term, of course, depending what your customers are looking for, but given the number of old MMOs who get facelifts it is something that is important to keep bringing in new players. 

So you're writing a book about how a lot of people had wildly unrealistic expectations for MMO's, and that they're starting to realize that nobody is ever going to spend millions of dollars developing a game catering specifically to their vague armchair designing, which undoubtedly would result in a game that is the everlasting gobstopper of fun if only someone would just have the courage to make it?

Sounds like a compelling read.

A lot of this stuff just sounds like being demoralized, and not jaded per se. A cure can be found in stuff like this: http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=113&Itemid=93

Also, regarding the magic of MMOs, I don't think it can happen very often for anyone. After a thousand hours of gameplay, even the bestest game ever will get boring. And then you have to wait until someone figures out something just as exciting but all new. Not at all easy, so the logical thing to do is to wait it out and explore different genres.

Just to keep going with the imagery, robotinho was somewhat up there on the :ye_gods: reaction scale, but nothing trumps this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLXGS0J52co) That's some serious :ye_gods: reaction right there. It's much less pronounced in games, as they're better than the last two examples, but if I were to watch Halo or Heavy Rain, chances are I'll be much less creeped out by a guy talking in a helmet you can't see through, than the characters which are so close, yet so far. But enough on this subject from me I think.

Isn't that exactly what SWTOR is trying to do? Obviously it'll have a fair bit of catassery just to give bioware time to crank out more content, but I thought one of the main selling points were supposed to be lots of stories with a beginning, middle and end. It's the sole reason I'm actually sort of hoping the game'll not suck, as I've been waiting for KOTOR3 for a few years.

I don't think I said graphics didn't matter, but in case I was misunderstood, I agree that they do matter, at least to make the sale. The problem is, as long as you maintain a certain minimum level (which for me is far below farcry2/crysis etc level), then it gradually goes over into "it doesn't matter". Nobody'll say games like SoaSE have "great graphics" (but then again, that's not quite what sells that type of game), but neither does games like Serious Sam 2. SS2 won't sell to the gaming crowd that absolutely demands "flashy graphics", but I'm having an absolute blast revisiting it, and I never notice that there's no bumpmapping or whatever some gamers demand these days.

Hell, I run EVE with the graphics all the way down unless I'm taking screenshots, and I was one of the guys who thought the graphics update was a bit wasted compared to whatever else they could've been spending their time on. That was before I got involved in fleet fights, at which point graphics fidelity mattered even more :why_so_serious: (I hardly ever see anything other than brackets, the overview, and my modules).

Vanity presses have ruined the world.

I don't know. I hope games keep evolving when it comes to realistic faces. I loved Half-Life 2 and its episodes for this reason. It came out 6 years ago but I haven't seen another FPS with emotive faces like that. Most games are just absolutely horrible in the facial animation department, and many others barely seem to try.

Facial animation is something that's in the works right now.  You saw glimpses of it in "The Incredible Hulk" and "Avatar."  Those systems have yet to make it into a game though, but the tech. is definitely out there and ready for sale.  Cameron's facial mo-cap system isnt proprietary, so if one has the coin they can buy a rig.

Matter of fact, body mo-cap-wise there are now extremely cheap consumer rigs you can buy for under $1000... for all you lazy animators, or folks that harp the Uncanny Valley.

As I was saying, the tools are making things a lot easier these days.  Especially so for smaller non-MMO games.   The main issue still resides in the right people having the money to produce said game, and the fact is most people with good designs or skills just dont have the money or have to work like normal people do.  Once they retire, perhaps they dabble in some projects, but by that time their training and tools are obsolete... and as for now, we're dealing with Baby Boomers (tech. ignorant) trying to do this since the Gen-Xers (monetarily broke) are still working.

Graphics glitz takes way too much of a priority.  Here's a crazy idea: Make a fun game first, then make it look pretty.  I'll be over here holding my breath while I wait. 

I wish more developers understood this.  I don't mind playing EQ style graphics provided the game is fun.  Hell, I *still* play good NES games because they were fun, not because they were pretty. 

The art department don't make the design decisions about fun, but they can certainly hurt how immersive players find the world.

Tgr, SWOR is indeed taking the story angle, but it still will be open ended (and probably episodic). EA BioWare would love SWOR to run for as long or even longer than UO. Regarding graphics, I was making a general point. If you skimp on graphics you will end up with a niche audience before you even get to game play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdsRINKNkoM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOO6Vv-i04Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkvC-blS9Y8

The technology is definitely there, but games haven't quite gotten them yet. Games like heavy rain would definitely benefit from them, but most normal games would probably benefit from taking a few steps back on the art side, just to keep the costs down. Last I checked, the gaming experience was the big deal about playing games, not spending money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cdwZwF_rcE
Just found this. Pity there's no sound, it would be interesting to see just how well they synced the lips up. I fear they haven't quite gotten that bit down yet, even though everything else looked pretty good (albeit overexposed, probably to hide tech deficiencies). Getting it absolutely right is hard, as it doesn't take much to ruin the whole thing.

They understand it perfectly.  Games with older looking graphics don't sell.

Looking pretty is a huge barrier to entrance.  I play a lot of games and often find myself going back and playing them again well after their graphical heyday.  I love dwarf fortress and that almost nothing going for it asthetically (although dwarves burning to death because you fucking up a pumping mechanism is a thing of beauty).  However, none of these games I went into without having been there before or without heavy recommendation from those that have already made the jump.  Only ugly games I buy are SRPGs, because well... most of them are ugly.  

I'd like to think I'm above the graphical snobbery, but when looking at the Q2 releases, I was dismissing games out of hand that looked terrible.  Nier is one of these games.  Without ffc, I don't I'd even have looked twice at the game due to how last gen it looked.  Now I'm actually considering buying it because of unique and interesting it sounds.  Ffc also successfully convinced me to play Resonance of Fate, another game that looked pretty bad in action.  (I'm thinking we should give him a monthly column so I know what to buy.)  :awesome_for_real:  I've actually stopped playing games in the past just because they were too ugly to live (Arcanum being the most stellar example of this).

I imagine most developers would rather get their sales right away rather than allow word of mouth to push users past a game that looks dated.  They've got bills to pay.  Hell, even putting together a Wii, DS or independent title isn't cheap in regards to art.  You're still going to be pushing for everything you can get in order to get fewer people to dismiss your game with a wave of the eye.

edit: And I can't help but think this is even harder for MMO development.  You've got to accomplish the following things: look good in 5 years (or however how long it is until you start pimping gameplay videos), look good in relation to other games for as long as you want it to run, have your game run on a very diverse range of system specs and have it run as well as WoW (targetting low end while looking good can't be easy), create an immense amount of character/armor/weapon art so everyone can feel special and unique, etc.  This is one area where I feel certain studios keep fucking up.  You don't push the poly count in the MMO space or you're going to niche yourself into a small subset of users than can run the newest version of Crysis.

WAR and AOC really crushed my ability to care about MMORPGs anymore.  I think they touched me in a bad place.  Oh well, it's not like losing that ability is a big deal.  There's plenty of better ways to spend your time, gaming or non.

But I will admit...that little broken part of me still wants that polished, exciting, community based experience.  Wasn't Fallen Earth an attempt at something different that wasn't too bad?  And of course Eve exists, inpenetrable to most (including me). 

I wonder if the next big thing could be Eve done right.  A streamlined and less brutal Eve but with the same fundamentals of territorial, community-created content.  EQ : Wow :: Eve : what devs should be making.

Regarding graphics, I personally could play a game with EQ graphics if everything else was polished and perfect.  I mean modern gameplay, UI, etc.  Those are the issues that I find unforgivable when it comes to smaller budget games, not graphics.

Some of this conversation makes me cringe. Of course I am biased.

I would like to add, be careful comparing single or multi-player game "Graphics" to MMO ones. As you all should know, SP games are a lot easier to control the overhead and any given viewpoint than MMO's, so in many cases, the comparison just doesn't apply.

Facial animation alone could easily be 15 more mobs on the screen. Choose one.

As far as faces in general, first helmet negates most of that work.   :sad_panda:

I think they touched investors in a bad place, too. Really, besides Star Wars (which was in development before those two launched and crashed), what's the triple A title with the huge marketing budget? There's nothing on the horizon claiming to be the next WoW. There's no madcap asshole developer screaming about steak versus hamburgers and no, Serek Dmart doesn't count. Maybe I'm missing something but it seems that after the WAR/AOC fiascoes the noise surrounding the entire enterprise shifted. GW2 is coming a little close but it feels different than what we used to get out of the MMO machine.

I think these two killed my remaining wide-eyed optimism and forgiveness for "MMOs being MMOs".  I don't even beta a game now if I have doubts. Two consecutive titles where I didn't make it out of the first month.  Fuck, I didn't even make it to level 18 in WAR and IMO that's worse than my stint in COH (didn't even make it to travel powers).

AOC also made me feel bad about my PC.  Which I should (it's not great), but it still didn't feel good having a MMO bring your rig to its knees.

Regarding graphics, I really think TF2 won me over on stylized graphics for good.  Graphics designed to be fairly easy to run, age nicely, and offer distinctive easy to see/parse characters.   WoW looks dated now, but playing it I never really care that it doesn't look more like lotro or something.  Similarly, Torchlight looks very nice, even with pretty low poly counts.  On the flip side, something like Bad Company 2 looks awesome, but I don't really know that if its that much better in the big picture.  With so many particle effects flying around the screen, and all the models looking pretty similar, half the time I can't tell what I'm looking at.

Granted, this is coming from a guy that doesn't own a 360 or ps3, but does own a wii.  

Flashy graphics might pique my interest in something, or say "wow what a cool video" but I'm certainly not going to buy a box based on them, let alone pick an MMO to play that way.  Sure, I don't necessarily want to go back to UO  in terms of graphics, but at the same time, if a game played exceedingly well, I defintiely wouldn't rule it out.

Apparently I am in the minority- I don't give a shit about graphics. In the past 12-18 months I have played and enjoyed:

Diablo II (800x600 and fugly)
Wizard's Crown (from the 1980s and still fun)
AutoDuel (1980s)
Darklands (early 90s)
XCom (mid 90s)

Actually, the only thing keeping me from playing these more often is the terrible UIs, and in some cases DOSBox (which I haven't tried on my Win7 box yet). Hell, I play Dark Wind for several hours a week, and its graphics are definitely nothing to write home about. If the gameplay is interesting, my imagination will fill in the details just fine. Ideally a company would put together a great GAME, and then maybe add in pretty art and voice overs and what not as an expansion/update.

Which one of these are you playing for the first time?

This is actually a pretty good point, a game with 90s graphics isn't bad when you played it, know you like it, and have lots of nostalgia to keep you going.  Now consider that the target audience of new games were in some cases not even alive yet when some of those were release, or maybe 3-5 years old.  To them, PS2 is probably the lowest end graphics they ever saw in a "new" game, so it'd be hard to win them over on older types of graphics.

Still, I think that graphics don't need to be flashy and amazing, but they do need to be functional and do their job.  I'll mention TF2 again, if you listen to the commentary tracks about why they made design choices they did with the character models, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Well, I'm playing League of Legends pretty much exclusively right now and it has WC3-like graphics. It's not pretty, but it's fun.  I like their art style and GAMEPLAY motherfuckers.....gameplay. Not sure this has anything to do with anything, just sayin'.


EDIT: I guess what I am saying is if you bring fun and something new to the table, you can be plenty dated with graphics and get away with it. See Planetside and massive battles.

Partly what I'm writing about is the history of ideas about crossing into "other worlds", which I think is sort of the cultural pre-history of a lot of ideas about 'the virtual' after 1980 or so. The argument is that desire for 'virtual worlds' (and also I think 'artificial societies' among social scientists working with simulations) was produced by a much deeper history that many people looking for virtual worlds were unaware of and yet profoundly influenced by. But I am also discussing the question of what exactly makes it difficult to make a 'virtual world' of the kind that some players (and academics) eagerly anticipated or desired (a question that's been talked to death round these parts).

I definitely agree.   I think we are almost having 2 separate discussions now though

1) Do graphics matter

and

2) What can your art department do that isn't cutting edge and won't destroy your budget that still makes your game visually appealing. 

My answer to number one is clearly "yes" but not mean "they need to be cutting edge" they just need to be approriate for what you are trying to accomplish.  Which ties into 2, in that I think a stylized, easy to parse graphical style is the best choice over all.

Give Mr Bloodworth that $10mil to sink into wurm and I bet they could come up with something awesome. They'd need to ignore a lot of their hardcore players though (as would any inde game)

Some of those titles set the bar for its age.


I am not that good, but I can outsource with the best of them and can identify talent.

It's difficult because nobody but those six academics and a few shut-in Star Trek holodeck nerds really want it.  Everybody else is perfectly happy pwning noobs.

---

Can somebody tell me why immersion really matters?  I get pretty tired of that getting tossed around like it's a given. 

Then you can tell me why we point to graphic engine demos and wonder where the game is, then in the same breath declare that if not for graphics the game won't sell.

Also, I want to punch this thread in the cock.

It isn't that we're old, age is irrelevant, its just overexposure to a genre that when it initially was conceived made many gamers dreamers of how amazing the virtual worlds and gameplay would become in MMO's that hasn't happened.  Instead the current best MMO is the retarded stepchild that took the simplest least imaginative parts, removed the virtual world and added almost nothing and certainly nothing exciting just increased accessibility and casual friendliness.

If we wanted to put our money where our mouths are we could get 20+ of us from this thread together and go play Fallen Earth for a month, if I could get the game for cheap I'd be down never tried it at launch.

I think another harsh reality people are forgetting is that many of us don't have the time to invest even if there was the next hardcore things happen while your offline losing punishes the loser game.  I know I don't and that really means that the Devs are smart to pour money in WoW look alikes.  We're agitating for something that would frustrate us if it came out because only high school students and unemployed losers could play enough to dominate.

Also, play more League of Legends you know its the best use of your gaming time out there.

This. The variation in battles and short, tight encounters leads for much fun.

Can we define immersion first?  No, seriously.  What exactly do you mean.  That you should forget you're playing a game? That you feel compelled to act in character?  That the game world feels internally consistent?  That game mechanics are hidden enough so as to hide the mechanical side of the game?  Some combination there of?

Or are we just using it as a catchall term to mean "a game that *feels* good" which is nice, but basically utterly meaningless.

That's what I'm assuming you'd do. And hire some graphic artists to finish the animations damn it.

Wait, WHAT?

I stopped playing LoL because it simply WASN'T!  It takes me 10 minutes to even get TO the action because of the searching, countdowns, load, game start delay, moving to positions...


Now, starcraft on the other hand, that's how you do it. 1m and you're in the game, another minute and you're fighting, games can last 5-30m.

That's not a problem of lack people to animate. Long story.

I spent more time in LoL trying to figure out what shit I had to buy in what order.  Then dieing a lot.

LOL is hours of fun, but I would't go quite so far as to say it's the best thing you can do with your spare gaming time.

For one thing the community sucks. Personally, I don't relish playing a game with someone who blames me because they want to charge 5 prepared people by themselves, and they expect your squishy twitch to back them up. And it seems like I get something similar in every game I play.

For another thing, the game crys out for some sort of a ranked ladder. The learning curve is just too steep to throw everyone together the way it does.

The momentum of the match is too hard to turn around for the time investment of 30 minutes to 1 hour.

It needs more maps.

Some characters are very good in comparison, while others are more of a detriment to their teams. Certain characters have mad synergy together, which is fine except for the total exploitability vs. less skilled players that the game loves to match you against.

But I guess it's a backhanded compliment, because in spite of all that, I still have to play at least a couple matches each day.

I'm hoping End of Nations will include some of that quick to get started RTS gameplay in an MMO setting.  My hope is that they'll have a larger meta game of territory conquest by faction, but have the ability to get in and deploy to a battle very quickly.  Now, hopefully the battles will go on for a while, with players able to enter and leave pretty easily, so it'll be a bit different that SC or LoL, but that is what I am hoping for at least.

I haven't played an Infinity Engine game until last year.  I've got a lot of catch-up.  I probably wouldn't have bothered except, you know, them being legendary.

Your sentence is a bit chronologically challenged.   :awesome_for_real: Easy to find mods to make the resolutions on those a bit more bearable. 

What I'm getting at is that no matter how you use it, it's still utterly meaningless since nobody really cares about it in any way.  I know there are a few people on the fringe who claim to care about it, but I don't think they do - at least if they're honest.  Also, the last thing I want is a 'let's define it' derail.  I'll define it if you can tell me why it's even remotely close to as  important as how the game works.  And before you get lost in explaining how immersion is part and parcel to the overall experience of fun one can enjoy while playing a video game, I'd like to inform you that you're speaking with someone who was really fucking good at Ms. Pac Man.

I think you're projecting.  It's very important to me and often determines if I stick with a game for any length of time.

Immersion to me is when time passes much too quickly. How that arises is hard to pin down, it's much easier to pin down what breaks it. Things like controls sucking ass (hi console fpses), shitty story, characters that act weirdly or even when their facial expressions almost make sense, yet they don't.

I've been very immersed in simple games like pacman, I've been very immersed in MGS2. I've gotten immersed in the rambo 1-4 series a few times lately, whereas quite a lot of the normal "action movies" make me roll my eyes over some of the scenes.

Immersion to me is when I was playing Mechwarrior or Tribes online, and instinctively ducked when a missile flew over my head in game.

"One more turn" followed by "What, its 6 AM?!?!?"

So in summary, everybody has a different definition of what immersion means.

Haven't you played WoW on and off for years?  Not exactly the pinnacle of immersion.  Now Vanguard had some immersion.  What's that?  You would have played Vanguard if the game didn't suck?  Ohhhhh.

Also, I totally made this thread worse.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/963220/ms-pac-man.gif)

NO ANTI ALIASING WTF?

I've always wondered why a company like SOE doesn't open up an EQ2 server that has player made content on it. Rent out the space like people do with TF2 servers. Charge per month for it until subs are enough to supplement its existence. And if it turns a profit, give a small percentage to those making the content. Player written maps and mods are what really drives FPS shooters on the PC, and I could the same sort of thing happening in MMOs. They just need a background scripting system ala Neverwinter nights (which I'm sure they already have) and they're off to the races.

There's a really good doctoral dissertation on immersion as a concept that was written a few years back. Basically, the author argued that immersion is not really just an idea confined to games, but an idea we've had about cultural experiences for a long time--that some culture asks you to situate yourself "inside" of the text (say, a cinematic view that puts you inside the head of a character, looking out through his eyes, or a first-person perspective of a sort of 'everyman' character in fiction) and that the idea that immersion is unique or special to games is wrong. I basically agree with this point: that immersion is a cultural technique and a mindset that we've long associated with certain kinds of cultural experiences. So the question is then really more interesting: why do we want it? And if and when we want it, what produces it?

and discover that you actually suck at video games? I don't think so, I need my open world pvp to prove how awesome i am when there is no skill involved.

MMO developers are going to have a hell of a time moving forward trying to sate the masses - those that haven't been raised on WoW have had Runescape or Club Penguin or a range of other titles to see all the basics and aren't impressed by gameplay that doesn't improve on those standards. However, there really is only so far you can go within individual sub-genres - the MMORPG, MMOFPS, MMORTS, the mini-game MMO, virtual world - to actually change them. What we are seeing is elements from the different sub-genres bleed into each other (evolution) rather than some paradigm shifting new title coming out (revolution). But MMOs are probably the main revenue future of PC games.

I guess this is why MMO gets slapped on a lot of titles these days - studios want the persistent money that comes with persistent worlds.

As for me, the thrill isn't gone - I'm on my last legs for CoH/V (GoRo is make-or-break, but it has been six years) but I still enjoy trialling a MMO and seeing what it contains.

Which really doesn't fix the graphics.  Or Imoen.

As with any complex anthropological phenomenon, the answers are as varied as the scientific disciplines that define them.

Ask a neuroscientist, and he will talk about the biological foundation of human consciousness and how engaging in specific activity, such as gaming or reading a book, alters the way our nervous system functions on a systemic level to produce various physiological states. A cognitive psychologist will agree and go on to talk about how sensory input drives our mental processes, and how attention theory views those altered physiological states as a re-allocation of resources within the mind's cognitive architecture, which allows us to better respond to outside stimuli.

A cultural anthropologist will point out the socially shared aspect of immersion and its prevalence in art, myths and social ceremony throughout the ages. He will cite its common occurrence across various cultures as an example of how social interaction can generate strategies that enable individuals to better adapt to their surroundings. A linguist / semiotic will pipe in that all cultural phenomena possess a communicative dimension, and since human communication is dependent on assigning meaning to the world through signs and symbols, immersion can be viewed as an enhanced learning mechanism that seeks to aid us in formulating a grammar of a given situation.

Finally, a moderator will take one look at my post and say, "Not in this thread, motherfucker."  ;D

I always used to calculate my immersion by how long it took my eyes to readjust to the sunlight after a run at the mall arcade.

side note: it seems they do not exist anymore either...

I think you guys are over thinking it.

Immersion in games is the act of "keeping someone in the zone". Be it through visuals, game play, or story.  If you have people forgetting what time it is, you did it. if you have people with complaints about boars having panties, you missed.

Dude, you are too smart for this POS thread. I did, however, enjoy the analysis.

A spliff of strong indica goes a long way to enhancing immersion, imo. I don't get anywhere near as immersed in games as I used to.

Agreed, that was actually thought provoking.

It's not you, it's me. I got carried away by the sound of my own voice, and I apologise. Poor judgement on my part. Anyway, let's not dwell on me. This thread was about how we will all eventually wake up in a nursing home with a broken colostomy bag, or something.

You just figured it out for me, Sky.

I quit smoking da herb and ever since games just aren't what they used to be! :)

...and still playing WoW.  :awesome_for_real:

I don't believe any of you have ever smoked any herb because if you had, you wouldn't all seem so weird!

Weird? This is the mellowest board on the entire internet.  :awesome_for_real:


Looking at upcoming MMOGs and judging by how alive and well the Diku seems to be, you're most likely right. I'd laugh if it wasn't so soul-crushingly sad.

We're not weird, we're just peculiar.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pretty sure "immersion" is a completely subjective thing unique to each individual.  For me, it's being able to do a thing and look back at visible progress that I consider makes a difference which becomes a higher bar to meet as that progress has less of a social impact.  Even the most banal of online tasks becomes less so when you do it with a solid group of people with whom you enjoy socializing.  And even the most kick ass progress isn't going to mean much when there's no one around to show it off to.  When I play Final Fantasy and I get the ultimate weapon for some character, that's cool and all, but it's never going to compare with finally decking your toon out with some god weapon off whatever primal deity possesses it this expansion.

This is probably the most useful definition, if there is one.

On a similar note, I was thinking about this in the shower this morning (yea, I need to get a life, sue me), and it occured to me that part of it is probably the divide between people who think about the game in terms of them playing a game just like they would play poker, or monopoly, or whatever and those who tend to be more in-character.  I don't mean RP per se, or walking around and refusing to meta game, or talk OOC, or something, but its just that little bit of something that, for instance, compels me to choose the "Guardian of Cenarius" title on my druid in WoW  even when I have ones that are more prestigious in terms of the achievement meta game.   Why? Because the character is a druid, and it just FEELS like he would go by that title rather than the others.   The divide between "I have full tier 10" and "My character has full tier 10"  even.  Perhaps subtle, but I think that is why the "immersion" discussion is so hard to pin down sometimes.

I start talking in a Russian accent when I've been playing GTA IV.

Yeah, but that is just so you can talk about beeg Amereecan Tittays without getting slapped.

Any excuse to talk about beeg Amereecan teetees, is good excuse, no?

I think we're mostly in agreement on how you can measure immersion, it's just how you get there that's up for debate.

Consistency is one key.

In my opinion a big draw is giving the players a sense of belonging is key.  Or perhaps it's providing them a "presence."  Player housing is one avenue though limitations mitigate it.  Instanced player housing is generally less effective than player housing that takes and occupies actual real estate.  It gives the player a place to say, "this is mine" and others can see it an say "that is his."  Even without player housing you see this taking place.  Most servers on EQ had that notable merchant type.  On Lanys it was Malden in the EC tunnel.  When the bazaar opened up, many people would typically set up shop in the same place.  They chalked out an area they, perhaps subconsciously, labeled as "theirs."

Even in WoW you see this as people congregate in the city, doing nothing but chatting and perhaps sitting on their most prominent mount or displaying their hardest-earned gear.

EQ used to say "You're in our world now,"  but we kept trying to make it "our world."

Starcraft doesn't come close, within each champion and each team composition and each fight and each item build there is so much variation.  Starcraft will never ever ever match the amount of possible gameplay.  Also Starcraft is too fucking intense, too focused and too neurotic I'd rather watch it than play it.  Its possible that the editor will do some amazing shit and I'll probably buy it but LoL's core game > SC2 core game for enjoying your spare time.

We get it man, if League of Legends had a mouth, you would kiss it and marry it.

But I do agree about your reasons for not liking StarCraft, and I feel much the same about RTS in general. Funny thing is that I used to love them. Then I started to get too busy for the requisite time investment to capture even a moderately competitive framework for the games. I played Rise of Nations, and really appreciated the efforts to reduce that element of the process. And then Kohan II went the rest of the way towards convincing me that the standard "ClickClickClickClick" micromanaging RTS format is something I no longer enjoy.

I do wish there were more games like Anno and Settlers... without ass-tastic DRM.

I can Bronze in 12 minutes!   :awesome_for_real:

Generation X will be first to retire and want to play video games all the time.  But right now we are sandwiched between people that wouldn't know a good game if it bit them in the ass.  The good news is we have all the power and money.

I take it you mean the original Dynamix Mechwarrior straight out of hippieville USA (Eugene, OR)?  With the Locust circle strafing machine gun fire to take out the Battlemaster's leg ftw?  Or having and using jumpjets actually meaning something?  I take it you aren't gonna subup on Villagers & Heroes (bonus points for honesty in the title.  Very Sierra styling).

I thought the Crescent's Hawk games were good ones, cyan-lime-magenta and everything.  Sandbox RPG "over 4 million locations" might as well make it an MMO.  But no, that's the same sad story  - the same story on the frontpage of this site this very day (Infinity Ward).

Wtf, stream of consciousness posting?

Urg, no, just editor wigging out on me.  The 4 million quote is from the back of the box on mobygames.  One of the founders of that company is now running GarageGames?  Dunno if that means sandbox, perfectly balanced comparative advantage and first RTS ever translated over 20 years later, or if this is Infinity Ward's story 20 years from now, as I don't personally know any of those guys or even seen em on the internet.

Dead Space totally ripped off Mechwarrior's "destroy the limbs" mechanic.

I don't understand why Mythic did not simply make DAOC v.2, and Cryptic did not make COH v.2 - instead we get Warhammer and Champs Online. 

I guess for the same reason UO v.2 never got made?

Which I still cannot fathom.

WoW is why.  Both Mythic and Cryptic tried to incorporate a WoW style quest grind into their game, and it sucked, just like it does in WoW.  The difference in that in WoW the rest of the game makes it tolerable, and in WAR and Champs, you just end up quitting.  Listen, I know WoW did questing and that was a big deal, and it was a big change from Everquest being able to quest to max level, but that alone doesn't make for a good leveling experience, or a good game.  I've said it before and I say it again though I realize a lot of people will say I'm probably just looking at the past through the lens of nostalgia, but as bad as "grinding" can be, at least you can choose what you want to kill and go where you want to go.   With the quest grind em ups lately, you may as well be playing a linear RPG instead of a game that ostensibly has this big open world to explore.

I liked the questing in WOW, it was a fun experience the few times I did it.  But I'm assuming that's not what you mean, and you really mean that WOW's mechanics overall were fun where the other games were not.

I dont know if the thrill is gone for me for all MMO's, but clearly i am a bit over the DIKU and typical combat systems.

Questing doesn't preclude you from doing this, any more than having viable solo rewards doesn't stop people from raiding.

Turns out people like to have directed solo play while still being able to interact with other people when they want to. Resistance is futile and high in saturated fats.

I think the key thing is that combat needs to be more interactive and fun. If combat was more like God of War or Streetfighter, people wouldn't mind just wandering around killing stuff and seeing things. The reason questing caught on in WoW was because the combat in EQ was so stale that WoW's "run five minutes, mash 123 five minutes, run five minutes" quest system was slightly less tedious.

In other words, it precludes it completely. People go where the easiet rewards are. If exploration only gives a quarter of the xp of questing, 99% of the players will spend 99% of their time questing. Exact same thing happened in War, with people complaining that everybody spent all their time in scenarios.

I think it really is all about the polish.  If you examine the quests in vanilla WoW, you'll find they ask you to do the most inane and boring things.  Kill X these, Kill till you get Y of those, ferry this thing to that person.  That's pretty much the extent of quests in WoW, or any MMO for that matter.  If you can fall under the illusion that what you are doing is fun, it's not so bad.  Once I started playing enough MMO's and began to see behind the curtain of quest objectives, however, they became horrendously tedious and boring.

See gaming 20 years ago wasn't like that.  You got your thrill from things like Locust vs Battlemaster and finally picking up the trail to the quest arc after exploring the entire map.  That's from memory.  What will people remember about WoW 20 years from now?  Dinging level 37?  Probably more like to be less about mechanics and more about the people you played with.  Which is cool but why can't we have good mechanics in a virtual world?  It must be too risky and hard and impossible.

How dare people play the way they enjoy! Where's the accomplishment?

Yeah yeah, we keep saying this, and yet, I can't think of a single case in which an inefficient mode of play has been popular in an MMO because its more fun.  You can just write if off as "MMO players are just broken" or whatever, but its a legitimate issue.

When your game is just a treadmill and sliding scale where everyone perceives "the game" starts at the end, sure.

Cryptic did try to make CoH v2. They just did a mediocre job and only half committed to the action concept.

UO2 got made. It's called SWG. Plus another set of devs made Eve.

As for Mythic, yeah, don't know wtf was going on there.

Criticizing WoW's very popular quest based progression puts some onus to come up with something better that is practical.

Superior quests with more interaction and better writing? You'd better have a massive budget behind you, and we'll see how well that works out for Bioware. Sure single player games are more interactive and adrenal but most of those are insanely short because that sort of content is expensive.

Exploring? You must be joking. Any middling popular MMO will have maps and content databases soon after launch. Getting drawn into a "hide the content" match with the players is just a losing proposition. There's a lot more of them! and if you succeed then you've got content so concealed and randomized only a small fraction of the player base ever experiences it. That's just not a good use of developer dollars.

I really enjoyed WoW for exploration.  When I first played it, once I leveled up enough not to easily get one shotted, I spent days just running around the world, seeing what I could find.  I had a really good time, as WoW was the first game I played that had some very good atmosphere between the zones, and cool geography.  It also helped that it was a pre-existing world, so there was a lot of lore and history that was cool to see in the flesh (so to speak).  Of course, once you've checked everything out, you can't explore again, but that's kind of unavoidable.  I'm thinking about playing LOTRO for this same reason.  I've always been an explorer at heart in MMO's, so that one seems like it might be nice.  Anybody know if its worth it or not?

I liked questing in WoW.  I felt the quests (at least in vanilla) did a good job of moving you around the world and making you explore a bit.  There were plenty of quest givers whom you could only find if you were exploring to begin with.  Except for a few quests, I never felt like I was "grinding".  I don't think anybody has done a better job of making a fun MMO than Blizzard to date.

Other than the fact that it is a nicely polished MMO (with all the good and bad that entails), the think LOTRO has going for it, for me, is the world itself.  Seeing their interpretation of Weathertop, the Barrows, the Shire, Tom Bombadil and the Great Willow,etc....all those things make for an interesting world and atmosphere.  If you really like exploration and cool geography, and have some sort of feelings for LOTR lore, then I think you should give it a try.  I think the game is better than WoW by a good margin simply because of the world.

I like Lotro for its classes, housing, and character customization.  I also think the world is much prettier and more immersive.  Still, I can't get myself to stick with it due to the shitty core game play.  

It's still a typical MMO with all the same mechanics as can be expected.  Just a more polished than average version with a better world.

I agree.  I'm hoping that we'll get to see games in the future with persistence and character building that won't rely so heavily on the interface for core mechanics.  I want to watch my avatar do things and react to the behaviors of my enemy without having to constantly stare at bars, meters, and cooldowns. 

Well, for what it's worth, giving LotRO a go has my vote. I've played on and off since launch, and the game's world design is easily up there with the best of them. There's lots to see and do for the explorer-minded player.

As Cyrrex pointed out, LotRO is still a Diku at heart, even though it does a pretty good job of hiding it at times. The combat is a bit of an opinion divider even after the Mirkwood revamp, but you'll quickly see if it turns you off or not. Some people don't like the lack of immediacy. It's nowhere near as muddy as it was at launch, though.

Go on, you know you want to.  ;D

I still say LOTRO has more going for it for all its side advancements than any other MMO out there. Really, combat isn't everything. I mean, did you know they almost have a complete farming game now? Game is wider than it is tall.

For some reason, that actually makes me want to play LOTRO. Maybe when I get a new computer. I tried a demo of it, and the hamsters powering my PC went on strike.

The fastest advancement back in vanilla WoW was avoiding quests and just grinding mobs. The travel times were huge time sinks, which is something Burning Crusade and WotLK improved on. But I know only a handful of people who just grinded mobs back then. Even now, dungeons are the path of least resistance, but people are still questing.

Its of course my personal experiences and evaluation, and I do think I am biased for that title, its still progress bars and what not, but its currently so expansive (like many other things) it breaks the barrier of "mini-game" for me, and by "mini-game" I mean in some circles it would hold its own.

If you ever see a level 6 hobbit asking for help killing a boar in the trollshaws, my point has been proven.

I also am trying to coin the phrase: Game is wider than it is tall. Because its my own personal design philosophy.

Better trademark that or it'll be fodder for Dmart.  :why_so_serious:

Mrbloodworth - is wider than he is tall.

And it is no longer harder to get off your horse than it is to buy a house!

Ah, cool, I'll give it a whirl then.  I don't care if its standard derivative combat (thats what I figured).  I just want an MMO that has a nice world to go explore, and this sounds like a good one (I'm a big lotr fan as well, so that should help).  Not really planning on playing longer than the first month.

Hide the content is obviously not gonna work.  But imagine a game with only 1 quest, broken in thirds with sandbox economy in between.  You might think it was goofy, and it probably was, but it was a huge hit.  And it actually is WoW's ancestor by 5 generations and a couple of sequels, bred with those strong EQ genes that will eventually die off.  Just bummed it'll be another 5 years when the shit was stale 5 years ago.

Farmville is very free.

When you get pst the fact that Guild Wars isn't WoW, it has possibly the best PvP experience in the MMO worlds. Blizzard copied the Arena setup of GW yet got it wrong, a rarity for Blizzard. Of the MMOs I'd rate GW and Eve as possibly the best with WoW a not-so-close 4th after LotRO. I'd like to see GW2 have open PvP, not just instanced and not the Aion rubbish.

That would be one hell of a width, i'm 6.1.  :oh_i_see:

I always want to play Guild Wars, not having played it since it came out (for more than an afternoon), but I can never get around to it and I miss when everything is sold on steam for cheap.

This. LOTRO has a some interesting quest goals that have nothing to do with fighting. Take the postal runs, where you have to deliver mail on time and avoid various others. Or the horse race to get your steed. Or exploring out-of-the-way parts of zones and monuments. They have the times down to a science so you have to shave some off by figuring out one or more tricks or shortcuts.

Traits, deeds accumulation are linked to stat bufs you can mix and match, which is a lot more motivation than just gettign a title (which they have plenty of too).

They just seem to have more variety of "quest types" than most games.

And I find the scope of Middle Earth to be jaw-dropping even at this stage with Mirkwood. If you have not played LOTRO or seen Moria yet, you will not fucking believe how far they took it. In most games, it would be a continent.

As pointed out, some people see ChampO as CoH 2. Personally I see them as different games, but Cryptic was criticised for not taking ChampO far enough away from CoH/V.

As for why devs don't just build MMO sequels:

1) Because they've just spent 5+ years being told by players everything they did was wrong. Everything. And in often contradictory ways e.g. Assassins are both overpowered and underpowered - plz fix. And they now have a different dev team, with the original development team often wandering off to start their own MMO studio / join someone else's, so the lessons learned during development are scattered (and maybe even outdated). 

2) Because they remember all the stuff they wanted to put into that first title but didn't have the time to. But now they know better, so let's add in a lot more systems that sound good on paper but create a whole raft of new problems.

3) WoW plus another 4 or so years of advancement in the MMO market (assuming at least two for MMO development).

4) Because the 'good' MMOs are often happy accidents. No-one at Blizzard set out to make a MMO that had 11.5m players spread all over the world - they thought they might get lucky with 1m players or so. Sometimes it is a whole heap of little design mistakes that actually end up in making the game better (CoH/V, perhaps DAoC). Also, game developers have typically shown themselves to have poor judgement of how players will act in-game, so who they design for isn't usually who ends up playing.

The history of MMO sequels is that MMO v2 will not be what the people who played MMO v1 want. That can work, assuming that MMO v2 can bring in a whole new set of players to the game.

Cryptic was had also sold CoH to fund development of champions which forced their design away from CoH frameworks somewhat. Though their desire to have a console friendly action RPG was another element. Ultimately CO is not a good example of MMO design because their business model (Pump and dump) is intrinsically opposed to quality games.

The best example of second system effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_system_effect) would have to be EQ2. The dominant MMO of the time leading to a sequel carefully designed to fix all the perceived design holes of the original that somehow lost the "fun" along the way.

I think we need to keep in mind that EQ was about as fun, game-wise, as smashing yourself in the nuts with a hammer.  What made EQ "fun" was the novelty coupled to the community, not the game mechanics.  EQ2 was a sound improvement over EQ in gameplay but blew it in terms of the graphics and a lack of polish and/or innovation.

EQ was considered by many to be more fun than EQ2. Though both got stomped on by Blizzard.

I know my EQ guild of about 100 gamers (hey, 80 person raids remember!) was horrified by what they'd done to it. Though the question of "was EQ actually fun?" other than novelty and nostalgia is an interesting question. I can't really remember though I still think that early EQ had a sense of "place" because the designers were free to just implement whatever vision they had. Later EQ and subsequent game development was more controlled in terms of the expected return from a developer hour. I mean some of the EQ dungeons were (like Dalnir) were a hopeless use of resources since most players would never use it, had unacceptable risks (trains, fall through pits) and threat (XP and corpse loss) that no sane designer would dare release these days. I mean I really respect what Blizzard did with WoW but like most modern MMO's it's a carefully controlled theme park ride rather than a world. Which is no doubt the correct call, I'm sure they gather a lot of metrics on what the "average" player actually means and it is terrifying, but it's also a shame.

"Was it fun" is the wrong question to be asking, as is "is it fun" is the wrong question to be asking about new games.  The question is "Was/Is it enjoyable?" that matters.  Then you can ask why it was enjoyable if it was.  Fun is an all to used catchall term that I view as basically meaningless, especially in this context.

I think entertaining is a better word than enjoyable.

I don't, for instance, I find mining in EVE to be enjoyable, but not particularly entertaining.

Dudes, trim the neckbeard back a little.  Fun, enjoyable, and entertaining mean the same thing.  There is no distinction there.  The word you want is exciting, which entails a sense of immediacy or impending portentous events.

Cue EQ love-in.  If I see a Qeynos to Freeport story, I'm going to start shooting people.

You never forget the MMO that popped your cherry. For those of you who wax poetic around here about EQ, maybe you blew UO behind the roller rink, but it was EQ that brought the Zimas over when your parents left town.

Sojourn > EQ

I still remember having to make sure my alignment stayed Good or higher so my +25HP Scarlet Rings didn't zap off me, or the late night raids into the Fire Plane and killing Tiamat.

I am kinda glad I was in a cocaine and MDMA haze while EQ was breaking ground. Planetside was my first "MMO" with FFXI being my first MMORPG. I stopped chasing the dragon soon after.

I used to really enjoy camping items in EQ. I used to hang out at my buddy's house and smoke a ton of pot, drink a few beers, listen to some good music and shoot the shit while my necro and his wizard sat around waiting for the area of lower guk to respawn on a half hour (!) timer.

But really, it was more about everything but EQ that made it fun.

Strong genes like the HIV.

Didn't we order a console fighting game MMO years ago?  What's the delay?  Or even a Tony Hawk MMO. 

The accessibility thing's done already.  Good job on winning the race to the bottom.

We'll see two mainstream electric cars before this video game industry pulls its head out of its ass.  If it ever does.  I think two major players might need to go belly up first and that's an awful lot o market cap.

Tempting, but I don't know enough about EQ to fake it. :sad:

Hope the new guy doesn't find his meds any time soon.

I do, but I'm trying this new homeopathic thing where I learn to let go of the past, and build towards a bright, positive future. Apparently it should start working any minute now.  ;D

Speaking of EQ, sometimes it's nice to reminisce about the days when just the thought of playing with dozens of concurrent users from around the world was mind-boggling, never mind the fact that the games themselves were sadistic torture devices. It's understandable to feel nostalgia, cathartic to shed a few tears, and healthy to move on – too bad there's just so very little to move on to. I think it was Haemish who said that MMOG developers couldn't break new ground with a truck full of dynamite, and on most days it sure seems like he was right.

Oh, and regarding the new guy: His shorthand is a tad cryptic, but as a non-native speaker, I shouldn't judge. People in glass houses and all that.

schild needs to get his company to remake Flash Tele-Arena.  wtf schild?

I think this is it. My brother and I would play Ultima 7 and say 'now how cool would this be if -friend living in Chicago- could play with us!' I remember beta testing Ultima Online practically in awe of the possibilities. I played these games not caring about bugs, being ganked, or uber loots. I just wanted to see the endgame and fight people.

Now I look back well over a decade later and the mainstream, successful MMO doesn't even have fucking housing. I think I'm just going to be permanently bitter that the EQ spawn made it to the big leagues, and the PVP sandbox died. OoooOoO OooOoOO. To be fair, Eve is the spawn of UO...but it has so many holes, it is a shame. Sucks when your horse breaks a leg. Here's to me hoping for a fantasy sandbox territorial conquest MMO, with item looting.

Pardon me for assuming here, but I bet you don't have the time to play the game you describe. Just sayin, I definitely don't.

I'm also guessing he was one of the wolves and not one of the sheep.

Not trying to start up the old UO thing, but I was an Anti-PK. I'd kill greys and shit though. I never had a red that didn't get that way from killing a red's blue healer. We had a guild of guys that worked on training cool people to help us fight the guys. Used ICQ for comms, and eventually Roger Wilco.

And Blood you are probably right, though one thing us old school MMO'ers can do is make absolutely efficient use of our time. We've grinded so much, we just haul ass from A to B.

This is one of those things that a discussion like this always comes back to.  Now, avoiding the question of whether or not any of us, specifically, have the time to play a game like this, the question remains important.   I think a lot of us hold a secret (or not so secret) desire to check out of real life and be able to live in a fantasy (generic use of the term here, not necessarily high fantasy swords + sorcery) world.   We love the idea of a video game that emulates this, but its sort of an ideal game for an ideal time when we could devote ourselves to it.   When it comes down to it, being able to spend 10 hours in a fantasy world per day, despite the ideal, is just plain not as good a choice as being able to log on to WoW, queue up for a dungeon, and be done 30 minutes later.

Thats, I think, why I like something like World War 2 Online, actually.  Its persistent, the game world is constantly changing in terms of who owns what towns, and so and so forth.  However, I can still log on and play for anywhere 15 minutes and just contribute to defending any given town for few minutes, or I can spend all afternoon working on some major operation that takes lots of planning, getting into position, and so forth.   The fact that there aren't player levels, loot, etc,  plays a big part of this.   Or, to put it another way, I think the way to reconcile these two things is MMO games, but not MMORPG games.

I wasn't trying to derail, just saying for myself, I get all reminiscent about the times I spent hours on SWG , or 10 hours on PS. Then I stand up, and remember I don't have time for that anymore.

You won't believe how much my stack of games I want to play is stacking up right now next to my PS3 and computer, what with all my side projects. I sometimes try to play a game, then think, "I could be making something right now".

Anyway, yeah, time. It's a bitch.

Doesn't make you less of a wolf.  My guild did the same thing for a while, but in a time without grays.  So instead we determined who was gray to us.  Thief? Kill him.  Enemy guild? Kill him.  Suspected PK or PK alt? Kill him.  Guy that looked at me sideways or gave me lip? KEEEEL HEEEM.  Wolves weren't just reds.  

Pretty soon we just dropped the charade, switched servers when they first added new ones, and killed the shit out of everyone.  Turned the decision tree into a binary option.

I'd absolutely love for WoW to put in some damn housing.  LOTRO and EQ2 just don't do it for me.

This is why I'm glad I was there for UO from beta through launch. It won't happen like that again, and if it did, I won't be there.

Hell, I look at my Steam library and get depressed at my backlog of really good games.

Noto-killers were worse than honest pk. More exploiter (hey, it's within the rules..) than outright pvp players. The biggest douchebags had the highest rep because they'd game the system, where honest red pks were usually fun guys to hang out with...even if they'd kill you at the drop of the hat. Then again, I played a skilled thief, and most thieves were shitty bank or gank thieves.

Like Shadowbane?

UO had it's share of progeny - they just happened to be a little sickly. EQ had it's share of dud imitators before Blizzard came along and got it right. They were really the only games to use as reference back then, hence the clear lineage. But that's not to get your hopes up.

I don't anticipate anything that we will consider to be "new and exciting" appearing on the scene for quite some time. Like it or not, WoW is the model that is going to be used, even as it begins to wane in popularity. The success of WoW compared to it's competitors is so much more pronounced than the situation before it's launch, so if anything there is going to be even less innovation in mass market MMO titles.

I kind of feel like there is a 3rd DAOC path in there, but that has dead-ended pretty hard so far too.

All this is not very different to how I feel about shooters, which I played extensively during the same period, even competed in a few (Quake 2, mostly.)

The thing about it though is that it isn't the games themselves I miss, but the innocence of the the genre's community. You can't release Quake today and expect people to enjoy it, simply because people expect a more balanced game than Quake ever was. I'm betting the same is true for EverQuest and other early MMOs. It's no longer a case of making some half-shoddy, unbalanced content and sticking it in there and have people go "ooh" and "aah" and not immediately rip the developers a new one over some minor inbalance. The community has matured beyond that. If WoW added housing but didn't get it just right people would show up on the offical forums and bitch to no end about it. There's no room for half-assed, broken housing and making housing that really works is much, much harder than half-assing it, obviously. LotRO half-assed it and thus nobody really bothers with it. The tiniest sliver of bad content gets skipped or by-passed unless you force it on people, and that's just retarded to do.

Fun is circumstancial. I don't expect to have as fun with a shooter again as I did playing DAPAK2 in WinQuake with my friends and clanmates. I still occasionally have fun with a shooter, but it isn't that two-year high I was in when I played Quake 2, eventhough shooters have evolved a lot compared to MMOs. I don't see why I would ever have as fun again as I did my first year in WoW, either. It has little to do with the games we've chosen to play, really, and more to do with our attitude to the games. That changes forever and it's no fault of the genre. You used to expect nothing, now you expect all the things you used to have.

Fortunately, games like STO, WAR, TR, Matrix Online, Vanguard, Horizons, AC2, SWG, SB, and others have helped us recalibrate back to ground zero.  :grin:

Yeah, well, not trying to smooth over the atrocious shape the genre is in, just making the point that it could come an MMO that was pretty much actual crack and people would still consider it inferior to EQ/UO/whatever in several ways. ("It's TOO fun, EQ was never this much fun!")

I guess though, what really has me puzzled is that people can handle this situation when it comes to so many things, but not MMOs.

You're right in stating that nostalgia is a powerful thing.  I was just poking fun at the recent release history in the medium. 

Games like EvE, AoC, LotRO, CoH, GW and vast improvements to EQ2 do give me a little hope that we could eventually see a rebirth.  Admittedly, the hope is fading fast.

Housing is one of those things that never worked right, will never work right, and I don't expect any MMO to ever attempt it again.

Do you mean housing that can be placed anywhere only?  For instance, I was always quite satisfied with the way LOTRO did player housing.

I mean permanent non-instanced housing.

Beyond turning UO into an urban sprawl, the housing was great. Am I missing something here? IIRC, SWG did pretty well with it.

The only game I liked housing in was SWG.

I'm pretty sure Raph has said in the past that UO's world was originally built with the intention of hosting a few hundred players, not thousands, so the urban sprawl is hardly surprising. Outside of that, UO has always had great housing, especially post-2002 when they started letting you build it tile-by-tile from the foundation up.

I will only vote for playing house if I can step on them with a giant mech.  And since we've seen this movie before the Trammel server introduces perimeter defense that makes it so you can only smash houses by using jump jets.  And you have to use all the fuel to get high enough, so you sort of only get to smash them at random for a huge price.  It could work, really.

Garriot never once thought of that when he was in orbit.  Does that piss you off?  Can't really blame any of them though if the choice is sell out to the devil or go out of business.  I just hope this round these guys will have the option to say thanks but no thanks.  Not that they would, but it would make a better movie.

Worked ok in eve, daoc, sb, swg, probably vanguard?

DAOC housing was instanced.

I wouldn't call that instanced. EQ2 is instanced housing.

Do what now?

The houses all sit inside an instance together, just like LotRO. They're not *individual* instances, but it is still instanced housing, as in, it isn't people putting up their mansion right in your prime farming spot.

Ok, then the difference here is the definition of instance. To avoid a ridiculous discussion over what is and isn't an instance, the person making the requirements for what they're looking for can decide if by non-instanced they mean housing where people are pvp/pve'ing or if non-instanced just means non-individually zoned houses, and thus, if DAoC fits the requirements.

Edit forgot a few words

Something makes me think you have needle tracks inside your nose.

1. Go get your mech from the hanger (style points for choosing the TimberWolf)
2. Dropship to the planet New Carebearia.
3. Infiltrate player housing complex.
4. Smash stomp and wreack as much havoc as possible.
5. Try to avoid the anti-PK lance that just showed up to gank you.
6. Laugh hysterically at how hard they QQ about the effort involved in building New Carebearia, tile by aching tile.
7. Send in $5 for a new TimberWolf.
8. Rinse and repeat.

I love it when they QQ

The definition of Housing is getting out of control here.

Not sure where you came from, but great post.

Worked well in ATitD and Wurm, bitches!   :why_so_serious:

Trammel tank brigade shows up, some roleplayer talks for ten minutes and then headshots you while your ridiculous mech is lying on the ground, toppled over after trying to jump through a building.

 :awesome_for_real:

Anybody can topple a mech. Stack up four tables, then walk forward at exactly the same time as you put a bone breastplate into your backpack.

Yes, indeed.  You could take out half a block just by stumbling around tripping over cars and stuff until you were immobile.   Was working that angle but too many typos as it was.

Reminds me of this time I saw a mech in Mechwarrior 3 headshotted by jumping into the underside of a raised highway.

The answer, obviously, is mech housing.

(http://zeishi.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/howls_moving-castle_273x407.jpg)

Ooo, Howl's Moving Castle. Trust Miyazaki to deliver us from Trammel with his sage-like wisdom.

I was going to say something about Trammel Mechfucker shitting up this thread, but it didn't exactly start on a good note to begin with.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/963220/wharrgarbl1.jpg)

The dude managed to be anti-Trammel and pro-Mech all in one post. We need to keep him and nurture him until he grows up into a proper WUA foil. Gryeyes fucked off in tears after he got tempbanned in Politics, and Sinij barely posts anymore. I'm dying here.

Maybe he could begin lobbying for a hardcore pvp Transformers (tm) MMO.

YOU HAVE THE TOUCH!!  YOU HAVE THE POWAH!!

Transformers aren't mechs, you retards. They're robot people. DUH.

Homelessness: The Dark Side of MMO

Sorry to disappoint but not likely to happen.  I'll only post when I'm seriously cockblocked so some shitty excuse for a game can collect a sub from me.  This would be Aion at the moment but since this genre's pretty much dead chances of somebody buying me a box and getting me to log in are slim going forward.

And it wasn't just the Mechwarrior thing.  It was Mechwarrior immediately followed by Red Baron.  That's actually pretty subtle, I was impressed. 

I'd like a warband mmo. Housing? fuck housing, I want to build a castle. Ok you might need a guild for that but still.

Five  levels of circular walkways with crossbowmen surrounding the courtyard for anyone who broke in... wait that would involve camping, I hate camping nevermind.

Good point, Snee. We need more fuck housing.

We had that in Shadowbane, circa 2003.

And plentiful farming to fulfill maintenance costs…

You guys may want to rephrase what it is you want. Because clearly there are games out there that fit the bill. You want a: AAA funded, big name house developed "Stuff you want goes here" game. + Mabye a huge IP

Because you are ignoring the many games out that do fit the description.

I don't care who develops it or how much it costs... I want it to be fun, have limited bugs, and have a large enough population to sustain regular interaction.

Yes you do. Or you would be playing those titles now. Just sayin'.

However, I guess I should state "Yes, people do". Because your population issue, is directly tied to the domino effect. You need people to have people.

Next, someone will come in and say graphics don't matter.

I've been trying exactly the games you're talking about for up to a week apiece for years. Many have been fun for a couple of days, and the free to play ones typically have population. After the honeymoon period, they all turn into pointless, grindy wastelands. Either I get past the fun or I get past the population... in a matter of days if not a matter of hours. The best of them are slightly hokey copies of quality gameplay I got bored of six years ago.

Maybe AAA funding is required to create and properly beta test an original MMO today, but I'm not willing to accept that quite yet.

Or maybe, just possibly, the features you pine for are not fun and rather than admit it you seek excuses.  Eventually she has to realize it's not the 37 boyfriends she broke up with, but her.

There is that too.

the smaller titles I have tried have been pretty horrible games

Except for EVE a few years ago

but EVE can be sporadically horrible still

Graphics don't matter.  :grin:

Honestly, with some alteration I agree: The tired features of MMOs that I have already played are no longer fun.

UO wore me out on make-your-own-fun sandboxes. DAoC was all the questless grind and zerg PvP I could take. WoW basically drove the quest grind and the DIKU model into the ground for me. Those systems were fun for a while, but I'm done with them. I want something surprising and new.  Arena/battleground PvP are still fun somehow... I keep going back to Guild Wars. I'm playing it again now. This is probably because I don't have to pay anything to do so.

Thousands of hours of gameplay kills most Skinner box brands of "fun". I want something new.

If WAR had kept the fun of levels 9 to 11 all the way to the endgame, I would still be playing it to this day.  Instant RvR/PvP gratification with some interesting class variation. 

Sadly, they had to screw it up.

In my original post in this thread I suggested we all sign up like 20 strong for a month of Fallen Earth and have some fun with it but nobody noticed or cared for that idea.  Not sure if you can get the month just paying for the month yet or if they expect me to pay money for the "box" still.  There is no box, stop doing that.

I just can't justify buying a box as well. If there was a 14 or 30 day trial, I'd get some other friends to try it too.

Same.  If I could of plopped down $10 for a month I would of.

There are many games out there where if you always had 20-strong with you for a month they'd be fairly entertaining.

I think nearly any MMO becomes a more enjoyable game as soon as you have a regular group of 5-6 people to play with. 

What I would like is for my 5-6 friends to be able to play in a MMO world without other teams to bother us.  I don't mind paying a sub for some developers to give me a giant world to play in, and I figure that has to be easier to deal with from a technical standpoint than making sure I can interact with random assholes that I have no actual interest in interacting with.  Of course, we won't be doing any 12-man raids.  That stuff is stupid anyway.

Sounds like Diablo minus the "world" and adding "game." If you design a world that a party can enjoy, it needs to be enjoyed by the single player as well.

The problem with those games is always hosting and where or on whose machine do you put the persistence data?

Well since this was once upon a time a MMO site and many of us wish we were trying a MMO and having fun with it feel free to point out one that isn't trying to charge me double or more the game time "included" to buy a box which often isn't even a box but merely a download or at best a horribly out of date cd I'm going to have to patch for 20 years anyways.  I'm not going to spend additional money beyond my sub fee on these games, they are never ever worth it.  The sub fee isn't worth it either but I realize we aren't quite there yet with people adopting the price models of the future which will encourage more players then milk them as they play.

re: Fallen Earth
Its a $15/mo game, that forces you to buy the box (read: download it from somewheres) for $30 to get your first month.  Stop fucking doing that.  They do have a free 10-day trial, not sure if it has weird trial-only limitations or what.

That's actually an interesting idea.  Create a huge, persistent, dynamic world that's meant to be played with a group of people.  Group logs on and plays it randomly.  Things your party does effects the world permanently in major ways (dungeon cleared, it stays cleared.  Helping bandit lord leads to him taking over local village and changes political make-up. Etc.).  Eventually they can come to some end'ish point where they rule/saved/destroyed/plundered the world, and can just choose to start a new campaign.  If they could make the world big and sandboxy enough, with enough forked quest's to give every play style a different sort of play through, it could be really cool.  Not sure how viable that is, but it would be pretty fun.

Neverwinter Nights?

What you're basically talking about here is a bigger, multiplayer fallout 3/Oblivion

Yeah, thats actually sort of the mental image I had.  I just didn't want to tarnish the post by linking it in any with Oblivion.   :why_so_serious:

Or you could just say, um, I dunno, Neverwinter Nights?

I thinking of something much grander in scope than Neverwinter Nights ever accomplished.

Fable Online? (I've never played it, but my wife apparently owns half the world in Fable II, and is married to 47 people by all accounts).

It's probably simpler just to play an existing MMO and leverage all the development dollars resulting from other's subscriptions. After all in a modern MMO you can easily ignore other people and instance (WoW, most modern MMO's) or just not find any (games like Vanguard or Fallen Earth). You'll probably also find that some people play a bit more than the average in your group and having other people gives them another alternative between sessions.

Myself, the wife, and a group of 3 friends levelled characters from level 13 to 74 purely by doing group instances in WoW. In some ways having a static group is the best way to get the most out of a game.

I sometimes wonder if it wouldnt be smart to develop some kind of social site completely devoted to gaming groups.  One complete with applications, "matchmaking" (so you're not paired with powergamers when you want casual-play), scheduling, etc.  Pretty much a guild for a guild for a player.

Like, eHarmony for gaming groups.   :awesome_for_real:

Wasn't that Blizzard's last April Fools?

Me and two friends routinely do that with Xbox games. Given only one of us is any good at FPS, having a more RPG style game would be nice. We've enjoyed the Halos and L4Ds, but we'd all be even happier if we could do something like Mass Effect or Fallout 3 as a group.