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Is it just me or does it seem like the MMOG scene has grown stale?

Is there anything coming out in the next year that looks A++? (Not counting Korean/Asian games please).

For the last decade it  seemed every year had a large, expensive, shiny new MMO coming out. Even though most flopped, at least there was something to get interested in.

Only thing I can think of is Green Monster Games or whatever, but I still haven't heard anything at all about that besides who they hired a few years ago.

Is it the economy? No one wants to spend tens of millions on MMO's anymore?

Carbine Studios' game (Fallout's Tim Cain one of the most prominent developers there): hints dropped here and there, looks like another attempt of "putting back teh 'RPG' into MMOGs", focusing mainly on story; then, we have Funcom's "Secret World" and Zenimax Online Studios' The Elder Scrolls Online secret project, but I think that's at least two or three  years away.

38 Studios (formerly known as Green Monster Games) MMOG will come out sometime after the single player game set into the same universe, "Kingdoms of Amalur" and currently developed by Big Huge Games.

SWTOR is about the only one I am even mildly curious about. Frankly, with the spat of faceplanted MMOs in the past 5 years, my faith in ANYONE making an MMO that will work is shaken to say the least.

It's not exactly MMOG but it is highly coop multiplayer in Dungeon Defenders (http://dungeondefenders.com/) that comes out next quarter.

Also, Guild Wars 2 is on the Horizon for next year after SWTOR. I plan on playing both.

I have 5 games in my sites.  Tera, Rift, GW2, SWTOR and DCU.  3 of those are very maybe-ish or in other words it will depend on if I feel like spending the cash and what level of boredom I am in at that time.  GW2 is top of my list, I already have beta for one of these and I get to try Tera beta in the upcoming Dec 2 weekend so will see how that goes.  Do I think any of these are going to be some holy miracle for MMO gaming?   Nope b ut maybe I will be pleasantly surprised :)

There's quite a few MMO's that could be/should be out next year or in 2012.  DCUO & The Agency from SOE,  Funcom's The Secret World, Bioware with SWTOR, Black Prophecy from Reakktor.  Theoretically, Jumpgate II could come out.  There's also Guild Wars II as noted above.  Rifts, and some others as well.

Will any of them be worth buying?  Probably not, but I am hoping The Secret World isn't complete drek, along with Rifts.

Funny, I was just thinking this morning how its the most exciting time I can remember for MMO's.

Here is whats at the top of my most wanted list:
1. Firefall - red5 studios (halo the mmo?)
2. Tera - bluehole (okay, its asian, but with combat this fun the grind is enjoyable)
3. Guildwars 2 - Arenanet (best thing I have played at any of the trade shows this year)
4. Faxion - UTV True Games (PvP, heaven vs hell)
5. SW:TOR - Bioware (I am still hoping they can turn this around)

Depends on what you mean by stale. WOW hammered the genre into conformity. Yeah, it's probably stale. But some decent offerings, I'm interested in Rift, TOR and GW2. I don't expect much, though.

The only thing I'm hoping for in gaming right now is a RDR pc port...galdernit!

The Secret World and SWTOR are pretty much all I'm looking at with even mild interest right now.

Honestly the MMO horizon looks the best it has in years, certainly the best since we were all hyped for WAR and AoC. Rift, SWTOR and GW2 are the 3 I'm most psyched for (after Cata of course).

Did you do that on purpose?

--

I am looking forward to the normal mix of games here.

Rift
SWTOR
GW2
Jumpgate
Black Prophecy
TERA

I'm really eager to get my hands on TERA since it's so different.  We'll see how much Asian Enmasse can clean up.

I did!  :why_so_serious:

Was wondering if anyone would catch it.

The only thing I'm actually super excited about is the prospect of Tribes Universe. 

Some games get me excited with the occasional video or feature, but after a few minutes the high wears off and I realize that they likely aren't going to deliver the over all experience I'd hope, so I don't think I'll be buying any of them, these games include:

Guild Wars 2 (looks neat, but realistically I don't see myself playing it long term, so probably won't pick it up in the first place)
Rift  (Looks neat also, but I have a bad feeling its going to be pretty quest heavy, and the character customization alone isn't selling me on it)
Firefall (Don't want PvE content in my MMOFPS, even though it has lots of attractive shiny).
End of Nations (I love the idea of an MMORTS, but every time they release new info it looks a little less like what I'd hoped it would be)

GW2 is the top of my list, but I don't think that will surprise anyone.

Most everything else mentioned I'm watching to see if they'll hold my interest.  One that I have first-hand experience with will be for when I need something a little different.

Black Prophecy, The Secret World, and Firefall I'm hoping will be good just because I want something which isn't medieval fantasy.

The Secret World is going to be awful.

That's the secret!

Ok I cracked up at that. Good show.  :grin:

Yes, but maybe it will be less awful than we expect.

I'm only looking forward to GW2 and possibly Jumpgate, if it ever come out. 

GW2 is about the only thing I'm frothing over.  TSW and TOR are on my watch from afar list.

Whatever happened to Jumpgate Evolution and Earthrise?  Did they collapse?

Jumpgate went black and did a redesign.  Recently (last 4 months or so) they came back around talking about their game again.

I'm frothing over nothing, but I have a pre-order for GW2 and I'm looking forward to it.

Was X to the muthafuckin' Z involved?

The mmo horizon is thus:

The next WoW expansion. Yet more WoW. Subs will probably break 15 million in '11.
Guild Wars 2. Probably going to be an ok game. Probably going to be a terrible MMO.
Rift. A couple people are exited about this basically only because 'it looks pretty'.
Sswuhtore. Should be amusing watching this one faceplant.
A whole bunch of 'Who's and 'What's. Nobody cares now, nobody will care when they launch, and nobody will care when they shut down six months later.

:cry:

Things always look better over the horizon than up close.

If you think the genre is stale, I wouldn't be looking towards SWOR as its saviour.

I'm interested in DCUO and The Secret World, keeping an eye on GW2 and Rift and a few others while also looking at free trials / F2P titles, but I'm not expecting any of those titles to be a revolution.

WOW won't break 15 million subs.  I don't see it trending that way.  That's like a 40-50% increase.

They're at 12m now, so it's only 33%.

Saving this one for posterity.  I'm looking forward to GW2, Rifts, and yes the wow expansion.

Looking forward to guild wars two.

Looking forward to watching everyone be disappointed. The mechanics never change, but the NPCs and their dialogue are HILARIOUS.

Srsly?

I believe him.

If WoW breaks 15 million, I'm personally going to every last one of those poopsocker's houses and setting them on fire.

What are you going to do with the 14+ million players left after that?

Someone with a samurai as an avatar will most definitely cut you.

Personally I'm mildly curious about SWTOR, but I've got EVE, Wurm, Minecraft and various strategy games like war in the pacific etc; SWTOR is NOT high on my priority list, at all. Maybe a year after launch, if people don't bitch and whine about how much of a suckfest it is.

Those bitches are getting stabbed.

I think WOW will see a spike in subscriptions but I don't see that spike being 3,000,000 new people.  Especially since most of their gains right now are outside EU/NA.  Hell, China just got WOTLK.

God dam it, can we have ONE, MMO thread where we don't talk about wow?

Please?

That'd be peachy, but the truth is, in the world MMOs, WoW is always relevant.

Unfortunately it's true.  I look forward to the day it's about a different MMO.  Perhaps World of Starcraft.

Seriously though, it's like talking about social networks and not bringing up Facebook.  It has such a huge percent of the market that the conversation will always have something to do with it.

I hear WoW has an expansion coming out soon.  :grin:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/intrigued_dog.jpg)

Did the Torchlight MMO go away in favor of Torchlight 2.0?  I was sort of interested in that.

The MMO is still in development as far as we know.

Man.  How long have you been sitting on that one.  Almost seems a shame to have dropped him here.

Yea I didn't really want to play an ace but I didn't have a joker in my hand.

Are there any well-funded MMO efforts with open world PvP and 3+ playable sides in the pipe?

I'd take 3+ sides even if (mostly/all) instanced PvP. I think I am just really sick of 2-sided combat.

"Well-funded" and "open PvP" are at odds.  Unless Blizzard's new project decides to focus on that, you're never likely to see it happen.  While I hold it's possible, the potential for customers to drive other customers away makes it highly unlikely except for the most constrained of parameters.

Are you kidding me? All a game has to do is stop catering to the I-win button carebears, put in full open pvp with looting, tied to a pve game with camping, contested spawns, harsh death penalties and corpse runs and it's pure win. This is what mmo forums have taught me.

Weak.  It needs to kick you in the balls while you play, too. 

Rochambeau Online.

And it will SELL god damnit, because there are like, millions of sheeple willing to come and be pincushions for your 1337 peeveepee skillz, Sir Assstabsalot. Am I right?

Please, they're not "sheeple". They fully understand and appreciate that they will only be pincushions because they are inferior fighters, inferior players, and inferior human beings. My stabbing is precisely the tough love they need to overcome their earthly limitations and lrn2play.

Stuff like Call of Duty sells great, so at what point does PvP go from desirable to undesirable?  Is it the attached collecting shit and losing it?  Hell, toss out the rest of that crap, I just want a newer planetside with arguably LESS progression and a really big scale.

Here's for hoping Tribes Universe delivers (to get back on topic)

When somebody else's fun gets in the way of your fun, whether they're on your side or the enemy's. The former is why Valve took the commander position out of TF2 and the latter is why everybody fled the losing side in DAoC.
Cheers.

There's pretty much zero reason to have 3 sides unless you are doing open world PvP with persistent state. And I don't know of anything fitting that bill coming.

Oh, maybe "The Secret World" which has 3 factions and mentioned something about having PvP, but I'd want to confirm its not vapor and kick the tires before I believe anything funcom says.

Open world PvP is an abortion of an idea that gets unfortunately dragged out of the dumpster every couple years by some mouth breathing morons to parade around the streets shortly before getting run over by a truck.

Eve has it, and it works.

But it's always going to be niche. When your fun relies so strongly on other people turning up at the same time, with the same amount of people and gear, and fighting without meta-gaming there's going to be a lot of shit to dig through to get to the fun.

DCUO has open world PvP.

Max level characters are lining up outside of the safe houses that newb players emerge from and stomping them before they take their first step.

Everything old is new again.

No graduation of safe zones towards open PvP? At least Eve sort of got that part right.

Then again SOE really are terrible.

The main problem is that sticking open world pvp into a game where it doesn't fit is kind of a disaster. It isn't open world pvp that makes eve great, its the total package, of which open world pvp is a part.  

There are hints and teasers of open world PvP in Eve, but for the most part it's just like keep changes in Warhammer, yet on a larger scale.

I really have no idea what you are talking about. The existence of "safe" areas in Eve? That it has captureable objectives?

The whole game was clearly designed to support open world PvP. I really don't see how future open world PvP games would be that different... though the implementation of Eve as a game is borderline terrible.

Indeed I doubt we will see a game like Eve again. The future is much more likely to be some sort of abstracted battle ranking like World of Tanks or Global Agenda tried.

Jita is safe and will always be safe and jacks up the pvp.

Oh, well if it's just that it's because CCP aren't quite *that* stupid.

In any gaming population there'll be a small number of people who really like and excel at PvP (the wolves), a group of people who like PvP but tend to lose a lot and so need a place of safety to recover (sheep) and a bunch of people who like the concept but spend most of their time on the hamster wheel for some reason. The empire mechanic allows for that while having more than enough map space for world PvP.

It also helps explain why Eve has something like 10x the subscribers of darkfall.

Anyway, fairly irrelevant to this thread then since this argument has surely been beaten to death elsewhere. Unless there's a world PvP game in development I've missed?

I'm not a solo assassin type myself, never have been. I just like the aspect of open-world that allows people to band together in groups, battlegroups, taskforces, wwhatever you want to call them ("safety and strategy in numbers") for goals that are not just fleeting and instanced, but are still around tomorrow and have ongoing impact.

I don't like artificial resets from a timer expiring or leaving an instance, that is the main reason for the open-world desire.

As for those not liking three sides, or saying the weakest side rerolls/quits, how in the world does TWO sides make that any better? If anything, having the buffer of knowing you could gang up on the strongest third would at least be better than the 50-50 of two sides would it not? What did I miss here? Remember, I am talking about a 3+ sided game that has mechanics in it to actively ally with other sides if you chose to. The whole point of 3+ sides is to mitigate that "fuck you and your superior side, I quit" feeling.

I simply would like a MMOG that goes against common sense, especially when it comes to selling well :P  :drill:

Sandbox style, cross-faction (1-2-3 don't care) guilds, cross-faction communication, housing, no raids, skill based, no gear maniacs.

I have grown a bit tired of DCUO.  It just feels like I'm doing the same over and over.  Which I guess is technically true in most games, but for some reason it is more annoying to me in DCUO than in other games.

Have you ever done a POS shoot?  It's the same concept as WH, but on a larger scale. 

As for "safe" areas in Eve-  Eve can be as dangerous or as safe as the individual player would like it to be.  If you stay in high sec space and run with the right corp you might not ever die from PvP.  That isn't really "open world PvP".  Open world PvP would suggest that you would absolutely have to put yourself at some risk to play the game. 

And then these guys die to me suicide ganking them while they most their loot...and taking all their earnings from the last year. Or they run missions with the most expensive shit in the game, and I scan your ship, track you down, and 5 of my buddies obliterate you before the cops can come.

I still love you Eve, even if you aren't fun to play with anymore.

Agree.  Nowhere is safe in EVE, although many people would like you to think there is somewhere to hide from danger.

I've done a PoS shoot.... though since I'm in teeny little nooby ships most of the time I go orbit a gate for an hour.. Eve is *fun*.

But it can be impressive. And it's the objectives that trigger some of the epic battles. This differs from Warhammer (only played the trial) in that the open world battles there were a bit more abstract. I think you had some sort of bar and maybe got a realm bonus if it was full, but it didn't come close to the possibility of losing control of the Eve station that had all your stuff in it and was your source of income.

And Eve empire is safe enough that people can graduate and share the challenge level. Any game that kicks you out into the arena straight after the tutorial is going to have some severe retention problems.

Call of Duty is also one of the "easiest" multiplayer shooters. It has a ton of autoaim, rewards you for losing and the overall design of health/damage/maps makes results highly variable where low skill players can take out high skill players relatively frequently.

Also multiplayer COD PvP modes are *only* about PvP. If you kill a player you aren't preventing them from doing something else because there is nothing else, the only reason to play is to PvP. It's much more similar to arenas than open-world PvP where you can kill players that are not currently interested in fighting other players.

So why can't those principles be applied to large scale planetside-like PvP?  I mean, I've been enjoying BlackOps multiplayer for PC quite a bit (on hardcore mode admittedly, so that might make some of those health/damage mechanics you mentioned change, I'm honestly not even very sure of how the normal mechanics are, I only tried it once).  Its set in the cold war, set it in eastern europe somewhere, give me a bunch of stuff to fight over, and I'd pay a monthly fee for that without sweating the details.

I think the problem with that specific example is the problem APB ran into - offering a paid service that competes with popular free services is not such a hot idea.

COD multiplayer is incredibly popular and free. A PvP MMO shooter would get compared to COD and the conclusion would probably be lower quality plus costs more - not a good combo. (See Hellgate also)

As long as COD is as popular as it is and remains free I have trouble imagining a super successful PvP FPS MMO.

Hellgate hardly seems like an attempt at that market.  But I guess I see your point.  I basically just want World War 2 Online but with faster paced gameplay, and maybe that kind of ongoing persistent war thing isn't as desirable for most people as it is for me. When I was playing that game regularly, I loved being able to check in on the map while I wasnt playing, see what cities were being fought over, keep up with our squad's plans on the forums, and so forth. 

I used to play a lot of Shattered Galaxy, an MMO RTS, and I liked it for similar reasons. Though that was free to play with paid extras. Even though gaining and losing territory didn't matter that much in the end it was still fun to feel like you were fighting in an ongoing war.

I'm actually really surprised that nobody has tried to do an updated take on that game.

A lot of people over on the End of Nations forums are former SG players (or current SG players), though from what I can tell EoN is actually going to not really be a true successor to SG like a lot of us want :(