f13.net

It may be too early to tell who the final winner is but I think we can make a stab at a discussion.  I'm trying to limit this to talk of third gen MMO's the ones released in the last few years.  Obviously the big winner overall is still WoW and the first gen winner was probably EQ (sorry Raph).  

TERA?  Nope, going down to three servers.
SWToR?  Winner?  Not really, they moved a lot of units and probably still have a lot of players and I may go back at some point since it's free2play but that's hardly winning.
Rift?  No clue what their current population is like but they seem to keep cranking along, so maybe?  Hartsman is good at the long term fix.
The Secret World?  Uh, I hear they have had some sales issues.  But maybe they can pull an Eve and linger on.
Does Aion count as 3rd gen?  If so, maybe them then.  They have had millions of subscribers for several years now and are keep on keeping on.
World of Tanks?  Maybe one of the biggest surprises but not the new champion.
FFXIV?  Laugh.
Star Trek Online? I'm sure they'll be profitable.
GW2?  Too early to tell, it suits me well but I don't see anything there for long term guild level catassing to keep people playing for years and years and years while growing steadily.  But hey, expansions right?
ChampO?  Sorry.
DCUO?  Nah.
WAR?  Chuckle.
AoC?  Is it finished yet?

That's back four years, which is far enough I think for 3rd gen.  So uh?  Aion?  That's the winner MMO of this generation so far?  I don't really know if any other block buster MMO's on the horizon now that GW2 is out that can compete for the overall title.  Am I missing something?

I am not sure about the generations, and I will definitely want to say more about it and why, but I definitely think Guild Wars 2 is the winner. Definitely "Best all around MMORPG" of the last five years for me.

It's hard to say what 3rd gen is since WoW is a moving target.   That said I feel like SWTOR, TSW, and GW2 have at last created some "must have" features that WoW won't copy anytime soon.   GW2 is too early for people to even speak of objectively.

MMOLG or MMORPG?

If it's the first then it has to be World of Tanks no?

I want to say Guild Wars 2, but I enjoyed WAR for th eamount of time I've played GW2 so far, so I should probably hold off.  Given that GW2 isn't depending on monthly sub fees for years to make back its dev costs, its probably the winner by default though.  I don't know enough about the Asian scene/numbers to make a good guess at some of these though (especially Aion)

Yeah, that's why I said WoW is the overall winner and introduced a limited time frame (not that 4-5 years is much of a limit), I wanted to discount them from this conversation.  You could make a good argument that it's still the 'best' MMORPG to play, but I wouldn't.

And Shannow, World of Tanks should definitely be in the conversation but someone more familiar with it than I would have to talk it up.

Exactly.

Then, of course, GW2 wins on so many other fronts, so many. The business model, for a MMORPG of *this* kind, is one of the most obvious and meaningful. And mind, it doesn't affect me, I have no issues paying 15$ months for games. It affects the genre though, in lots and lots of ways. For example, it is the first big AAA "DIKU" (although GW2 has more than just that) that the fans can't threaten or blackmail or simply kill by canceling their subs (or stating they will).

That said, let's not get sidetracked. I think GW2 deserves the trophy not just for that.

Wizard101.
LOTRO.

RIFT is the only sub-based MMO I can think of that launched in the last 4 years and hasn't self-destructed. Word is that it was built for US$50m+ (http://www.develop-online.net/news/35733/Trions-first-game-budget-over-50m) and Trion announced they'd already made US$100m back in the first year or so of operation (http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/19/rift-revenues-reached-100-million-in-2011-trion-secures-new-fu/).

So it "wins" if you are only thinking about revenue. RIFT is arguably the best WoW clone there is, but it is still a clone.

But sub-based MMOs are almost all done and even F2P / hybrid titles are shutting down. This MMO arc, running from roughly January 2004 (CCP buys EVE from its publisher and self-publishes through DD) to December 2011 (SWOR launches), was when MMOs rose to mainstream prominence and we're right now in the aftermath of the collapse.

It's also way, way too early to call Guild Wars 2 anything.

Just to clarify, I can't see why is it too early to call GW2 anything. If your winner is gonna be picked on revenues, sure. If instead you are gonna cast your vote based on subjective quality factors, the time a dedicated gamer already spent on GW2, possibly beta included, is more than enough.

Because GW2 just launched.

We rewind this thread to December 2011 and SWOR becomes the main contender.

At the very least we have to get past the first 30 days or so of the F13.net post-launch honeymoon period.

Depends how you qualify 'winner'.

GW2 has the potential to be the undisputed champ, but that's just potential for now.  WoW I consider Second Gen.  RIFT certainly deserves honorable mention.  Though it'll likely go ignored by pundits, I consider FreeRealms an important beginning to the f2p transition.

While Rift is the most polished while maintaining a more traditional mmo feel, I would have to give the nod to GW2 and TSW.  Both GW2 and TSW contain gaming elements that SHOULD be found in every MMO made after them.  GW2 has done a masterful job of limiting the role of the griefer while simultaneously encouraging social play.  Sadly, the dungeons in GW2 are so poorly balanced that they may undermine this advance.  TSW did a wonderful job with puzzles and the single server feel, but lost points by feeling too much like a single player game. 

GW2 and TSW would be my votes for 3rd Gen only because they have introduced elements that are 'must haves' for me in future MMO's.  They both have their minor flaws though.

Was third gen based on a date, or a features set?  I like Rift, but it doesn't bring much to the table other than the rifts.  So if we're terming WoW 2nd gen, then Rift (and SWTOR) need to be right along with it.  

This begs another question:  Now that GW2 has launched, what AAA MMO titles are left to launch?  Arche Age, if that's major?  If a lot of these games are dying off and in threat of closure, and there's no solid games replacing them, what happens?  Interesting to think on.

The Soul system was much more innovative than Rifts.

That's a pretty sad list to be honest, so many flawed and fizzled titles. I would separate out World of Tanks as needing some description other than MMOG, also the Asian MMO's which have their own line of descent.

Isn't the secret world basically more evidence that story and character work are best done in a single player game?

So basically the only one of those that seems to be able to make a decent argument for moving the genre forward is GW2, even if it fails. Though if we are measuring by money hats then something needs to steal WoW's revenue stream, and we don't have that yet.

Yeah, for a while it seemed like there were MMORPG's slated to appear every few months for forever.  But now?  I can't really think of a big, mainstream, give up all your monies, 'event' mmo on the horizon.  That's part of the reason I felt we could have this discussion now.

Of course, secretly there is Next Blizzard Project and EQIII (or Next) or whatever but if they aren't being discussed publicly then they are at least 2 years out, if not more.

I'd rather try and keep to a subjective, consensus based (if possible) definition of 'best' because, really, if you go by most objective measures then WoW is still the king.  And having a game that was released in 2003 be the best game in 2012 just seems wrong.  Can you have no 3rd gen after 9 years?  And, if there is a 3rd gen then can 2nd gen really be better than 3rd gen?.  How does that work?

I don't really care about generations.  I am just glad we starting move forward rather than just refinement of existing.

Minecraft.

But really, no one "wins" in online gaming. There are only bodies.

People vote with their wallets and their free time.  Lots of GW2 fanboisim going on the board in general when, really, it hasn't struck enough of a nerve outside of this niche group of people who want sandbox games.  Which is a cubed niche of Video Games in general.

Yes, it's far, far too early to call GW2 anything but new.  Give it 6 months, then come back to the question.  If anything I'd also label it as 4th gen.  As games release with new revenue models, GW2 will be the first of this, not the last of the 3rd.

I wouldn't stick WOT in as MMO, they're a subset.  Instanced online single-mechanic experiences with more in common to Counterstrike than your traditional MMO.  You're not crafting in tanks, you shoot and you buy.  That's it.  It's far too focused to be part of the greater idea of what MMOs are considered.

WoW went retail in 2004, but that doesn't affect your point.

I would argue that if you took the 2004 version of WoW, and launched it today, it would have SWTOR-like initial sales, followed by a SWTOR-like loss of subscribers and subsequent descent to irrelevance F2P.

Blizzard has refined and innovated their game for the past 8 years. They've co-opted features from their legions of unpaid UI programmers, as well as features that debut'ed in other games.

So, besides WoW, what is the best game to launch in WoW's wake? Is that the question we're trying to answer here?

Putting in my vote for Rift, but I think Rift will go through its entire lifecycle without ever getting close to whatever number WoW still has. I'm a GW2 skeptic because I think to keep interest and keep those dollars flowing into the cash shop or whatever, they are going to have to have a PVE end game.

I'd give my vote to Rift as well. TSW and SWTOR were both fun, but neither answers the question of "Why do I need to play this with other people?" TSW's dungeons were cool, but "not a lot of trash" is not a huge genre innovation. SWTOR's group dialogue system is another idea that was cool in theory, but wasn't used enough to actually matter if you weren't playing with a static leveling group. Everything else that's come out in the last few years has been shit.

GW2 is still too new for me to call it either way. On one hand I'm having a blast because it's a cool new world for me to explore, the crafting is nice, all the cool kids are playing it, etc. On the other, the character building feels really shallow because I just don't like the skill system they use, and PVP/RVR/WVW endgames don't appeal to me the way a good raiding game does, so I expect I'll play it until MoP or Rift's expansion comes out then migrate away for a while.

I don't think anyone won.

The state of Rhode Island?  :why_so_serious:

A lot of people here seemed to love SWTOR, Rift and even WAR when they were first released, so I wouldn't declare GW2 the people's choice just yet. Consider also that people who don't like the game probably aren't minded to go on about how much they dislike it at the moment (it bored the hell out of me but why start fights with those of you having a good time).

Couple of random points:

i) We should stop thinking going f2p is a sign of failure. If it brings in more revenue then it's the right business model. Which may be why GW2 is starting out as f2p.
ii) It's not normal for an MMO to sell and retain subs like WoW did. WoW is not the benchmark, it's a freak. Asking when a game is going to beat WoW is like asking when an album is going to beat Thriller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums). The answer is never ever, but that doesn't mean everything else is an artistic or financial failure.

Agreed, LotRO is doing quite well, several expansions and a large, active and healthy player base, and has been f2p for quite a while now.  And it's really kind of fun.

What was first and second Gen? I need a chart!

Seriously.  What are the definitions that you're going by? 

And is there a "winner" in the MMO world other than WoW? 

My opinion:

The first gen was Meridian 59 to Dark Age of Camelot; the creative phase when people were still figuring out how to build these things. Every game played very differently from the others, and had a very different back end architecture -- the similarities between UO and EQ were negligible. (By this criterion I'd argue that EVE is a first gen game that didn't release until after the second gen started.)

The second generation is the polish phase, when middleware tools became common and big publishers started looking at MMGs with dollar signs in their eyes and "just clone WoW" on their lips. This begins around the time of CoH, EVE, and WoW, and saw a lot of expensive, interchangeable titles. In my opinion we're just moving out of this phase now. From here on there will be few of - as Lum once put it - the Big Iron MMGs for a while. With the unsatisfactory performance of SWTOR and TSW (EDIT: and Final Fantasy XIV and Aion) and the collapse of Copernicus, I sincerely hope we can kiss goodbye to budgets over $50 million.

The third generation is most likely going to be that of F2P hobos. Players will drift from one free title to another, never alighting on any one for long. Budgets will be lower, production times shorter, and content smaller. But I hope the lower costs will allow designers to take more risks. A 5-10 period of budget WoW knockoffs would depress the hell out of me.

I don't think so either.

I want it to be GW2, but I agree that we have to get over the honeymoon first.
But damn, if it isn't a breath of fresh air in what has been a very stuffy genre lately.

Pathfinder will be gold and you all know it!  :drill:

If you include World of Tanks, do you also include League of Legends? How about the new Tribes?

As we see a blending of what were individual genres, I think it is going to be very hard to segregate what is an MMO and what's not. That said, any online game with ongoing revenue generation would tend to qualify in my book. (This knocks out games that are just "multiplayer" like TF2, etc).

I think first gen was "the golden age" and second gen was everything after Trammel.  I tried to find a chart related to Trammel, but I searched the entire internet and there wasn't one.

The problem I see with declaring a "winner" for this generation is that everyone's using a different method of payment.  SWtOR might be (if rumors about it's budget are true) the biggest financial disaster in MMO history, but it's subscriber base is still bigger (as far as I know) than EVE Online.  GW2 is subscriptionless, with a box cost only, DCUO makes it's money off of powersets and cosmetic items, Rift has subscriptions, while TSW has both subs and microtrans but sold really poorly.  How do you even start comparing these things?  Or compare them to stuff like Minecraft or DayZ which seem to have most of the elements of an MMO in place but no real metrics for how well they're doing beyond maybe how much they're talked about.

I can't see including WoT. Honestly I still don't really understand why it is in this forum.


TF2 has ongoing revenue generation.

Ah ha, I didn't know they had an item store now. OK, so then Rainbow Six: Vegas.

If it really bothers you, you can have it moved (http://).  :why_so_serious:

I agree though; I don't consider WoT, LoL or the like MMOs.

In terms of profits compared to costs, I would be shocked if RuneScape didn't win. Last I checked a couple of years ago, they had 8.5 million active subscribers at $5 a month, on pretty much the opposite of a AAA MMO budget. They've also managed to carry on the UO spirit in a lot of ways, which is nice.

I don't see why SWTOR, GW2, or TSW deserve a "win" honestly.  Even the people who like SWTOR will agree they failed miserably at updating.   TSW is great in many ways but seems to find some random thorn which eventually burns out most people.   GW2 group content is not looking good in execution or potential.

The answer would have been LoL if it wouldn't lead to an argument about what an MMO is. Like WoW, it exploded into popularity and is inspiring dozens of clones. It's also the best example of a popular Western game built F2P from the ground up, which will become the more smart business model for MMOs moving forward.

Their roots are MMO-like experiences so they get lumped-in.  They're really Massive multiplayer chatroom lobbies with a directed, single-game experience. 

In truth, like Video Games the MMO 'genre' is old enough to have created splinters and sub-genres.  Calling anything "THE BEST" or "THE WINNER" is as futile as trying to do the same for any interacive electronic entertainment aka "Video Game." 

WoW improved upon EQ.  RIFTS was the next step from WoW.  Maybe 2.5, but I think enough lessons were learned by Hartsman between WoW and EQ2 that it's worthy of being called next-gen.  Given its lineage, that'd make it a true Third Generation game, too.

If you define generations as "the MMO most MMOer is playing or has played", then WoW is third generation, EQ1 is second, UO is first. UO predated EQ by quite awhile, and if I recall correctly, had a good amount of press for records it achieved (including first to 100k, huge for this genre at a time before broadband). It was a remarkably different game, but it still was the first "huge" MMO if I understand it.

The closest to an actual fourth generation I think we've come is Club Penguin, in that it was wildly successful and evolved a number of conventions (browser based, hybrid business models, focused on new audience, etc). But that really depends on the audience you're talking to.

Like,. if we stick to the most talked about games in the traditional now-adult focused AAA still-subs-until-f2p big budget MMOs, I'm not sure between Rift and TSW. The former isn't successful enough to mark a point from which to evolve, and it's standout features were similar enough to other meager-performers. Meanwhile, the latter is probably going to die without a miracle (which is a shame).

GW2 can maybe be on the list by Christmas, earliest.

The reason world of World of Tanks is here is because there's now three categories and two forums. PC/Console games, Online games, Online Persistent Worlds / RPG's. Online games have started to get persistent elements like experience, skill unlocks and a strategy map.

Out of all those names only TSW got my my money after WotLK... So it's Rift by revenue, SWTOR by subscriber base and TSW for being different as the indie favourite. GW2 is still too new

I agree. Despite the OP attempting to ignore it you have to say that it's still the WoW era.

GW2 isn't going to change anything. Why is it's revenue model a novelty all of a sudden? It's the same as GW (which launched around WoW)...

One of the defining factors of an MMO is it's ongoing development I'd say; hard to talk about the full quality and success before it's even released a decent expansion.
Of course by that metric it's too early to even include SWOR, but maybe it is.

I'm loving GW2 and a lot of the design is refreshing and even groundbreaking, but an MMO is so much more than the basic design and GW2 has been dropping the ball all over the place so far. All in all not a great launch and they'd better iterate well or they're gonna see a lot of  :heartbreak: when the honeymoon's over, sub or no sub.

WoW successfully defended its title against challengers. That is the answer. Although now the champ looks a bit aged and could be dethroned by some plucky newcomer.

TSW has some cool stuff in it and sure, maybe some newer games have introduced some new features that seem "must have", but the idea that a game like TSW or SWTOR won anything other than "dud of the year" doesn't make much sense.

I'd say TSW and GW2 are both 4th gen, where new things are being tried again.

I'd say you are not eligible to win before you release an expansion (or atleast 1 year has passed since release). If you can show any kind of growth after that (or even stable numbers) then you have done alot better than most MMOs of the past few years.

Because GW1 was not a DIKU and was barely a MMORPG, especially because it was not largely perceived as one at the time, which was the difference. GW1 didn't cross path with all the big MMORPG of the time, it was simply received as a different thing.

So it's not the revenue model that is a novelty. The novelty is that they used such revenue model for an AAA Diku from the start. They demolished the wall that forces players to be supporters or doomsayers, to be in or out, to switch it on or off. They demolished that 15$ monthly wall that butchers the population on servers and creates ghost towns one subscription day to the next. Most importantly, they demolished the reason so many players feel entitled to develop harsh feelings towards the MMO they are playing and ragequit while brandishing the "I am paying for this!" card.
And they didn't do it with a clone, or with a low production value game. They did it while delivering an awesome, enormous open world DIKU MMORPG.

This is the novelty.

Another game for Falc to fanboy over.  Joy!  Using past metrics it'll be dead in a few months. :why_so_serious:


No, it's not, because SWOR isn't ever going to get an expansion.  If the F2P transition doesn't bring in significant revenues it will go on ultra life support for the duration of the required contract with LucasArts and then be quietly shuttered.  



I'd agree with that... mainly because I already said it about GW2. ;)  I almost consider TSW the last of the 3rd because they still rely on subs.

All this thread is accomplishing is making me almost want to play GW2.  Almost!

I didn't attempt to ignore anything. I specifically stated that it was the overall best MMORPG and that I was deliberately excluding it by focusing on a later time domain (generation) because otherwise it would make for a boring conversation, and shit, something must have improved enough in the last 8 years to be 'better', right?  Later, we can take our consensus champ and then see how it stacks up to WoW or EQ or UO or whatever.

Also, I love that there is a small section of posters who are all, <robovoice>"Bzzt, does not compute.  Earnings not directly comparable.  Metrics do not correlate." </robovoice>. 

It's a conversation, you converse and eventually, maybe, a consensus opinion will form.  Even if the opinion is, "Nah, this conversation is stupid, it's WoW and everything else is shite and after 8 years no one has done anything." it's still a consensus.

So far it's a tentative, "Probably GW2 but too early to be sure." but would people have said SWToR if I asked the same question last January?

SWTOR had a solid group of fans, but I am sure we all agree that no there wasn't anything even remotely close to a consensus about SWTOR. A very strong and common opinion, outside of the honeymooning forums, was that it was a worse WoW with story.

EDIT: Engrish.

There's no way GW2 will move us from the WoW era. (IMO, etc).

No, but I think the feature set is the cap of this generation.  Considering GW2 warts and all, I do not believe there will be a 'better' game in the next four years.  Though some of the open world stuff Trion is doing with RIFT is nifty and warrants attention.

People actually did answer the SWTOR question last December / this January (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=21729.0). Not many people put the numbers above 750k, even those who liked the game...

I don't understand what the hell you people are arguing about.

- The definition of 3rd generation, as it pertains to MMOGs
- Whether the definition of "best" MMOG can include criteria other than financial success
- Whether you can have a meaningful discussion on this topic without including WoW

So do RuneScape and MapleStory just not count because they're aimed at people a decade or so younger than us?

No.  They don't count because they're terrible, derivative games.

There is no 3rd generation because I still don't think we've gotten out of the FIRST generation yet. Almost everything out there is still just iterations on the EQ theme. Secret World and Planetside are the closest things we have to an MMOG that has broken those molds (in different ways) and the MOBA revolution has kind of change the whole discussion about massively multiplayer anyway. F2P has also changed the whole dynamic of the game, in a good way.

I disagree with this; MOBAs haven't changed anything because they're not massively multiplayer. 10 people in a match. They have very large communities, but so does Call of Duty. It's basically the same argument that people used to say that GW1 wasn't an MMO; I think it probably was - barely - because at least there's an actual world involved rather than a literal series of menus.

And if you sit basically anyone down and have them play EQ, then a modern MMO, there's no way that anyone says they're from the same generation. They're about as similar as Doom 1 and CoD, and I don't think you could argue that those are the same generation of FPS.

They're both older that World of Warcraft.  If you start including games that old, then talking about the "winner" is kind of a foregone conclusion.  I'm sure RuneScape is doing great for an indie title, but as far as I can tell, it's not pulling in a hundred million dollars a month.

While the interfaces may have changed, mostly to do with quality of life, what real innovations have been made in either of these genres that are generational?

For FPSes, the biggest innovation from Doom 1 to CoD is multiplayer and a level/unlock system. The basic tenets of gameplay are almost exactly the same.

Everquest to WoW to Rifts the lineage is blatantly evolutionary. The biggest innovations have been instancing and respecs, and respecs is really just an extension of UO's skills-based character building. Hell, even TSW's classless/levelless system isn't that far off considering that the gameplay is almost exactly of the same type.

To my mind, generational shifts occur with much more striking dissimilarity. Adding a world populated by hundreds of other people to what is essentially single-player RPG's was a generational shift - and as a result, it caused a significant sea change in the entire video game industry. From subscription fees to microtransactions to the addition of multiplayer in almost every video game released (well, at least 50% or more), that one innovation created a seismic shift in video games. But nothing that's been done or tried has succeeded in doing so to the MMO market since.

F2P is close, but it hasn't translated to a gameplay shift of such important magnitude.

Just my opinion, but I've always been really cynical about MMOG's and the use of generational designations. After EQ's success, everyone in the industry tried to make their new MMO be "THE NEXT GENERATION!!!!" Only it wasn't, we didn't, and the whole medium has stagnated horribly.

See it seems like you're trying to say that to have a new "generation" you have to actually create a new medium or genre. Which is just not how I would ever use the term.

FWIW, I tend to do generations completely differently and wouldn't count what's going on now as 3rd gen but as a higher number. I dive based on "who was able to influence who."

UO/EQ/AC/M59/Realm/Dark Ages/Lineage and more were all really started around the same time.

WoW/DAoC/SWG/Runescape were learning the lessons of the first set.

IMHO, the generation after that was the F2P generation, and F2P in general is the winner. I would probably pick Maple Story even though it actually predates WoW in Korea. But in many ways, what happened is that the first gen begat Korean gaming, and from that were born what today we call social gaming and what we call F2P web gaming... which were then eventually exported back to the US.

Serek Dmart & Allods?

/ducks


On a more serious note I would consider League of Legends the true winner.  It's not exactly a persistent singular world but the # of games and meta discussion of the game and community has certainly neared massively multiplayer online when viewed as a whole instead of in terms of a match.

It's pulling in more like 20-25 million a month, I think. That's still pretty damn good, and almost certainly beating most of the AAA MMOs.  MapleStory is probably making significantly more than that.

It was me, I am the winner.

The ability to strafe.

Cover, choose-your-loadout instead of find-the-gun, and the ability to zoom or look down a weapon's sight just to name a few more off the top of my head.

Quake vs CoD is a much more apt comparison to EQ vs WoW, and at least with Quake you had contemporaneous games (Goldeneye on N64, for example) reasonably executing so many of the things that would later be associated with games like CoD, such as sniper rifle zoom and being able to use/lean around cover.

FPS development has always proceeded on two parallel tracks, the Quake mold and the CounterStrike mold basically, with the DoD mold being an offshoot of the latter. People think the genre 'evolved' just because the Quake track has been sleeping for a while, but then along comes ShootMania Storm...

If you're going to argue from this high a level, why not just say that card games haven't evolved in a few hundred years because they still entail shuffling a deck and drawing cards.

The basic tenants of Football and Rugby are the same! You're carrying a ball past a goal line while the other team tries to stop you! They're identical!

It's a silly level to argue at, that's why.

You are clearly insane. The most important generational shift was balancing for lean.

But what about grenade spam?

See, you're back to a weird, objective 'it makes more money so it must be better' argument.  First of all popular does not equal good and second of all if you follow that argument to it's conclusion then we are still talking about WoW Uber Alles.

Sorry - I thought this entire thread was about commercial success, not about what makes for the 'best' game?  You started off the thread with "Obviously the big winner overall is still WoW and the first gen winner was probably EQ (sorry Raph)."  Since both of those are terrible games from a gameplay point of view, what was this discussion about if not 'commercial success but without including WoW'?

Edit: Not to mention that your analysis in the original post of all the other games hinges pretty much entirely on subscriber count / commercial success, not a discussion of 'gameplay' or 'fun'.

It does = who won though.

The answer to the OP's question to me is a pretty personal one.  We can debate it all we want to and 10 yrs. ago sure, maybe we'd have an answer.  But today's gamespace is much much larger, carrying an even bigger economy then the music industry.  It's at the point now where debating this stuff is a bit like debating novels...  fruitless, pointless, and really just an exercise in argumentative prowess.

That being said, I really do feel NO ONE has 'won' because not a single studio is deserving the trophy.  It's still out there... lurking, waiting to be claimed.  AoC had the best shot of any game since WoW (there can be no doubt in this), but they were rushed to release with only half their features, un-optimized, and very buggy.  They sold the most boxes if I recall yes?  (not including SWOR)

Perhaps the days of the epic MMO are gone.  We're going to be greeted yearly by these niche releases that look to perfect a subset of entertainment values. Rift, TSW, GW2, STO, SWOR, etc. all exhibit this quality.  In this arena I do believe TSW wins simply due to story trumping everything else.

Broadly though, as of today I'm going to hold my vote until Wildstar releases.  WoW reinvented the genre, so I figure most of the original WoW-devs can do it again with Wildstar.  The winner is likely to be a science-fantasy game anyways (high fantasy is a crowded theme), so may as well put the money there.

Popular != good is always the cry of those who won't accept that their tastes are not universal and they are, in fact, the minority.  Popular generally = most-accepted or else it wouldn't be popular.

I detest the current trends in women's shoes and auto designs. It doesn't mean everyone else's taste sucks because they like them, it means I have to accept that my tastes are uncommon and unpopular.  I can be an elitist dick about it, which will net me nothing, or I can acknowledge and move on.

I pretty much agree. I hate it when people put on the beret about something supremely subjective, and then openly use an items financial success as some sort of evidence that it sucks.

Actually, card games haven't really evolved much in a hundred years until you got things like collectible card games. Similarly with board games that had a slight burp of evolution in the 80's with some electronic components, and lately with the addition of collectible pieces and/or construction on top of the board/modularity of the boards.

Handegg, rugby and football are all offshoots of the same rulesets - the split between the three could be considered a generational tidal shift that then spawned their own generational evolutionary track. In fact, that's probably one of the best analogies I can give you for my thoughts on the generations. MMOG's are an evolutionary offshoot (a new medium) of video games in general.

I still don't think there's been enough progress made with the MMOG formula to claim a new generation, though I will concede that the shift from subscriptions to F2P for new titles (not the shift from subs to F2P for existing titles) has the potential to actually make a second gen. To me, there hasn't been enough PROGRESS in gameplay, execution or innovation to make a generational shift. Fuck, we're still trying to make chat systems work right on launch (TSW says HI!) and player trading systems (GW2 says HI!)

When does 2nd generation get here? I think either when F2P with microtransactions is the norm for big bugdet titles and/or when player generated content/worlds are commonplace (that's 3rd gen).

Holy fucking shit, I completely agree with Schild on something, unqualified.  :yahoo: :yahoo:

This is basically one of the two or three key things I'm arguing in the project I'm working on.

There is no "third generation" of diku-style MMOs. There's only mutant offspring and stillborn babies. Evaluating the 3gen games is like sailing down the river in "Deliverance".

F2P is here. I marked it as Club Penguin, though MapleStory (per Raph) or Habbo could mark it as well. These games got enormous for a time. Legacy games strapping on F2P don't count since they weren't built for it. But I think SWTOR killed subs for anyone else serious about this space. Box sales still cover the big budgets though. That will probably be the case for awhile, though the newer F2P games seem to have gotten the formula right enough to get way more than the minimum % of players to invest.

But user gen content? I don't think so. Just how easy does it need to get to create and ship a game before people realize there's a reason why developers scoop up the relatively few player-teams who have the right cross section of skills and mindset to build and release a full game?

How many of the F2P games are pulling in Maple Story numbers? It looks like the F2P space is pretty fucking glutted to me.

Not sure about third gen (what does that mean?)

From my perspective, there are only 3 games that really matter right now.

EVE - never ending super sandbox politics economy etc.

TSW -  Awesome single player game, questionable MMO content, but done reasonably enough to actually show a path for a legitimate story based MMO (unlike STWOR IMO)

GW2 - Sucessor to WoW in a way the previous games are not.  What WoW was to EQ, GW2 is to WoW.  I think the PvE content is somewhat mediocre to be honest, but I can't argue against the fact that GW2 holistically incorporates aspects from WAR and RIFT in a cohesive and effective way.  Sometimes I find it a massive grind with no point, but other times I find it a gorgeous, fluid amalgam of previous MMOs.

Popular != good and popular != bad.  Popular is it's own parameter that is only loosely coupled to quality, there are many things that effect popularity.  Good, mediocre or bad qualities are only part of it.  If we want to play stupid games there are hundreds of examples of things that are objectively, measurable worse than their competitors and yet are more popular.

We've already had examples of the burgeoning stages of that with things like COH's user-built dungeons (and EQ2 as well I think). I didn't say the content would be GOOD.  :why_so_serious:

Keep in mind, this is 3rd gen I'm talking about with user-generated content. And we've got quite a ways to go before that happens. It'll be a lot like MUD's were in the past - small, dedicated groups running their own little domain (like the Bottle City Boys in my third novel). We might actually see full-sensory immersion technology before we see that 3rd gen MMO type of thing, but I've been known to be surprised before.

I Still need a Chart.

How about a table for starters?  :-)

(http://www.darniaq.com/Images/table.jpg)

Same percentage of AAAs pulling in WoW numbers  :awesome_for_real:

Mind you, I'm focused just on f2p persistent worlds, not the general f2p Facebook games.

Ah ok, since we're talking those kinds of specific conditions, might as well toss in an entire generation of kids specially trained in content creation, not just content consumption  :grin:

Has anyone said that Blizzard won, yet?  :grin:

Doesn't SOE have the VOIP/Face capture thing, and also, didn't they just announce letting users submit models and textures for the games?

That generation is now. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, social media, desktop publishing. And the general trend of PVE in MMOG's is pointing to "way too expensive to produce enough content ever for the ravaging hordes."

It will be slow going, but it's coming.

... it's EQ2, only a small number of bitter-vets care. Most of the public won't even notice.

Uh, I'm talking about moves already happening in terms of content creation by the user base. The model submission thing is not just EQ2 AFAIK.

So here's the thing I'm stuck on. And it's the same place I'm stuck at every 3-5 years this comes up.

We've been able to create content forever. MacPaint, Hypercard, Supercard, UnrealEd, iMovie, whatever. I could go back to cave paintings, but a 30 year range is probably fine for this discussion. :-)

During these past few decades, the things most talked about with regards to usergen content have been the tools, and the looming usergen revolution. Your examples are valid for getting content distributed. But they are not content creation tools. YouTube is powered by iMovie and entry level versions of professional video editing tools. I assume for Facebook and Twitter you mean the underlying blogs and Flash apps users link to. "Social Media" is just repeating Facebook and Twitter (and including Bebo, Renren, etc). "Desktop publishing" (if that term is still used) is the only one up there about content creation, but at this point we're really talking MS Office. It's actually very powerful, but like so many other content creation tools, you need to have the means and the willingness to learn them to get the most use out of it.

We haven't seen this revolution because at heart, content creation is hard. And good content creation requires the kind of skills that evolved into the industries we pay all this money to support. The few examples either quickly monetized, got scooped up by publishers, or are known to a core few.

This is not some elitist position about content creators being "better". It's just market forces. Yea there could be point of view on large publishers keeping the indies from the public eye. But that's just black helicopters bullshit. There is nothing preventing users from creating their own work. They just need to be willing to learn the tools, be willing to put their work out their to get critiqued and be willing fail a few times before they have a hit.

All power to create your own missions as a hail mary along the lines of putting f2p on subs games. But we're all still going to respond to marketing campaigns from major publishers who hire up the content creators.

COH had a fairly robust content creation system. I was pretty heavily involved in the COH Mission Architect scene, such as it was beyond all the "lol fire farm" missions  :awesome_for_real: You could set up a variety of objectives (boss fight, gather, destroy, defend, escort, patrol, ally, ambush... off the top of my head), make your enemies using COH's (pretty good) character creator, set up clues and enemy quips to make your narrative flow, etc. You could even set up a chain of up to 5 missions with briefing/debriefing/popup messages between them, a contact (again, character creator) and have a lot of tricks for text formatting to make things flow better (I recommend playing the "Signal:Noise" arc if you want an example). There were over 600k missions made (half or more of those in the first year) and a good amount of them were decent / fun to play / etc. I levelled multiple characters doing nothing but Mission Architect missions with zero repetition overall (all high-quality well-written stories picked from various 'best of' lists on the forums) -- and it was a better experience for me than levelling via the official dev-created content. Note that I'm not saying that dev content was BAD... it's just that the MA stories had a lot more variance. The big caveat is dealing with Sturgeon's Law, obviously.

And now, COH is dead. :(


Stuff like "create models for EQ2" isn't even nearly the same ballpark, since most people don't have the time/inclination necessary for modelling and artwork. Everyone can write a (very possibly bad) story and design some monster spawns by using pre-made building blocks and tools that don't need you to know what uvw unwrapping is or how to spend 5 hours fixing up pathing nodes in that 2-room map you just spent half a day building.


edit: tried to dam my stream of consciousness in the first paragraph... it's hard to feel neutral about this, dammit!

Content creation with specialized tools has been a a hot item in theory for quite some time and has never panned out. FFS I remember when Impossible Creatures was being pitched as the RTS that would let people build any RTS.

There are so so many problems with user-created content. First, few people have the combination of time, energy and ability to do it. Second, it's very rare for mediocre games with good content creation tools to get any real support, for the most part you already need to have a good base game. (Day Z is the notable exception here)

Stuff like Minecraft where users create the content as part of the game itself? Sure. But stuff that requires separate tooling? I don't think that's ever going to really take off.

Never panned out???  So what about Half Life, Unreal, Arma, NWN?  In the strat. space, Civ, Sins, and many others.  Where it fails is in the MMO space, because as we all know MMO-Devs are fuckstupid when it comes to doing pretty much anything of substance correctly.

All it really takes is 'content creation' actually making it into the original design, rather then being tacked-on after the playerbase has already left.  Not a SINGLE MMO has ever been built around content creation.  Maybe AtitD and vanilla SWG came close, but they're abstract in purpose only.  We came close when Perpetual owned the rights to STO, but then Cryptic got a hold of it and backwards we went.

Minecraft btw, to be completely effective as a content creator does indeed require separate tooling and player-made mods.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDyW1_RRutA

I was thinking about this after my post above. Not the examples per se, but what this sub-debate is really about.

Forever people have been able to create content. The tools and distribution mechanisms change, but the fundamentals are always there. Person/group motivated to learn a tool, competent enough to do something with it, confident enough to put it out there, and correct enough to be successful. But, that's entrepreneurship, not "user generated content". All of your (and every other) examples are startup-like companies that quickly made good.

Usergen generally assumes the tools and distribution is already there and that success is purely based on user creativity. That's along the lines of Second Life, Little Big Planet, vanilla UnrealEd or Minecraft, indie Xbox, etc. I don't even put MC mods in this category, because the average person isn't a coder :-)

That's the piece that's never taken off. Oh yes there's a huge amount of creativity out there. And there are many example sof usergen becoming developed franchises. But generally those successes come after the franchise has developed (and the original saw-it-firsts have long since moved on lest they get annoyed by the newcomer/masses  :grin:).

What?

If you are willing to let players create content for free at a variety of levels, and the devs can wash their hands of anything that is created, then it can work out. There are also plenty of examples of dead mod communities out there as well.

But it is rare that players are willing to play anything but a one-off fee to play player-developed content. Ryzom had a player created content system for a large part of its life and has died about 3 times now. ATITD was mentioned and that never seemed to get bigger than about 5k players.

The truth is that a small segment of any player base likes creating content while a much larger segment is only looking for something to consume. In theory, Cryptic's Neverwinter is going to have content creation tools in there from day 1, so that will be an interesting experiment.

It's just foundry 2.0.  From what I've read you can't even do basic stuff like make a Sword of Foozle +1.  The MMO factor means they have to lock everything down or people will cheat.

Notch's new game (if he gets his way) will be the 1st to pull it off (if you choose to explore the multiverse), but it still remains to be seen how innately moddable the individual universes will be aside from the onboard CPUs. Stations are player made and I assume planets, trade systems, economies, etc. are malleable but not sure how much.

What about them? Every year there are probably 50+ games that ship with some sort of mod or user created content support and out of those a small handful benefit. It's like multiplayer on consoles - there are like 4 games that do well and 46 games that tank.

Half Life, Unreal and NWN are all like a decade old! I would also point out that relying on users to create a significant amount of content (like in LBP) is different from allowing users to mod. Half Life is already a complete game - it needs zero user-generated content. The game benefits if someone makes some awesome mod but it doesn't suffer if that doesn't happen. I'm talking about games where users creating content is integral to the success of the game as a whole, rather than merely a bonus.

[not really arguing with ya]

So you think Unreal, Arma, and NWN would've been perfectly successful (and for a long time) w/o user-created content?  First of all, no one buys Unreal unless they want to at least try hobbyist level designing or even total conversion.  UT4's gamemode was a tack-on at best.  It's one of the most recognizable game franchises near solely because of UE/UDK.  Period.

Arma?  Same deal.  Matter of fact, it was originally developed as a military toolset derived from Virtual Battlefield Systems.  The game would've never even existed w/o being originally developed as a user-created platform for tactical simulation.  The game itself is really just a VBS mod with the editor dumbed down.  It still succeeds now for this reason only.

NWN wouldn't be NWN w/o at least the intention of dungeonmastering.  And regardless if people intend to DM, people would BUY IT because it has/had that capability.  Hence, key to its success.

You think Minecraft would've succeeded to the extent it did w/o creative mode?  If that's not integral I dunno what is.   ALL of the above examples are games designed almost specifically with user-content in mind; not merely as a bonus.  W/o it, they're not great games.

Someone mentioned Ryzom.  That's actually a good example of how user-content can save a game.  Because there's no way that game gets revived as much as it did w/o Ryzom Ring in place.

Actually, content creation itself isn't hard - it's just that making GOOD content isn't an exact science. The real hard part has always been distribution, getting the content to the people willing to pay money for it. The Internet has changed all that.

The biggest problem with user-gen content in MMOG's is the platform for distribution. As in, MMOG's fucking SUCK as platforms for anything. They are horribly cobbled together pieces of shit that barely work much less work as intended. Triple AAA MMOG's with budgets like Secret World are still releasing with broken chat systems FFS, which is MMOG 101. The content creation tools are there - but the platforms to move the content are utter shit.

Yes.

Counterpoint:  Second Life.

 :headscratch:
Sorry, there's no way ARMA survives w/o the player community.  Not a chance.  The makers of the game will tell you that.  Unreal may have been successful in early iterations, but their entire existing business model (today) would've been thrown out w/o the player community.  NWN is perhaps the exception, but I distinctly recall people having visions of dungeonmastering stardom when considering purchase of that game.  Whether it ended up that way for them post-purchase is kinda moot.   W/o tools, the new NWN would be bargain-bin at release btw.

Morrowind and Oblivion would have been utter and complete flops without mod support.  Skyrim is actually a good game on it's own merits, but it still owes a huge chunk of sales to the Creation Kit.

Aren't most of these examples of usergen going big after they went into the formal industry though? I'm getting hung up on the business angle. But honestly, I think that's the piece that many miss when talking about how usergen is just around the corner... for the past 30 years.

MW, MC, NWN, all traditional games that released toolkits for post-play fun. Emergent behavior made the post purchase communities what they are. But I'll bet Bethesda isn't wooing future publishing deals because of all the Skyrim mods. This is not the business they are in. Because they're not monetizing those toolkits, and their value in marketing a big budget video game is unknown.

To me, we'll have reached the point a few of you think is here when:

• Usergen content is the model that makes it a success, monetized, well supported as a business unto itself. A Metaplace that wasn't ahead of its time, a SL that doesn't suck, a marketable usergen experience that doesn't require 95% of it be blocked for appropriateness.
  
• We (or a successor generation) would rather pay for usergen content than professionally generated stuff.

We're a long way from both. In large part I think we need to grow a generation of kids as content creators, not just another generation of predominantly content consumers. Monetization models will evolve from that, not into that.


What has the internet changed when the vast majority of distribution and consumption happens through a few channels that require the goods to fight for attention (or: same as it ever was)?

That wasn't a vast conspiracy. That was self-selecting. Anyone can see anything they've ever wanted, learning everything there is to know, play, design, build and distribute anything they want. And what are they doing? They're going where the marketing campaigns tell them to go. Word of mouth only goes so far and for only a rare few things, and even then, only if you have the patience for that to happen in your lifetime.

There ain't no "if you build it they will come". Take your pick:

• "if you build it, and a core group loves it so much they become ambassadors for it over a period of a few years while you triple-mortgage your life holding your breath...
• You kickstart it alongside the hundreds of other video games being kickstarted (what is it now, the top 6 of 10 projects are games?) and hope to get funding then the right team then those people still paying attention 18 months later when you done, then you can pay the bills..."
  
• You fund a clever marketing pitch and your product isn't complete shit..."

... maybe they will come".

There is nothing new here. We'll see it again with 3D Printers. We'll see it again with the Holodeck, and the Matrix. Unless we change how kids are raised.

Funny how this and the 3D printer thread in politics are overlapping :-)

tl;dr: you didn't read the above because I didn't sell you on my usergen'd post  :awesome_for_real:

NWN was created specifically as a user gen/dungeon master game.  The campaign was tacked on purely to give people something to do at the start.   Everything about the design was centered around making usergen easy.  They released the toolset before the game came out (http://www.fileplanet.com/88066/80000/fileinfo/Neverwinter-Aurora-Toolset---BETA-Version) to let modders start creating user gen ahead of time.  The game was definitely not traditional.

The second part of this is just clearly false. The first part - again Unreal and NWN are a decade old. Yes, there are some user-created-content success stories. But those successes are not repeatable in any real way. For each game that succeeded largely because users grabbed the ball and ran with it (this does not describe Unreal btw) there are dozens of games hoping to benefit from user-created content that flounder because the content never comes.


Uh what?

The Epic business model is to sell Unreal Engine to other companies. It has nothing to do with the player community at all. Unreal Tournament was basically left to die in favor of Gears.

No, no, no! You guys are ruining this thread with your pedantic talk of user generated content and what not. Well I'm bringing it back where it's supposed to be, a nerd slap fight about who won an arbitrary set of rules.

The winner is Warhammer (yeah I said it). Was it a failure? of course, all the fucking games on this list are failures or haven't had their whole story written yet. But you know what? At least there was enough halfway decent shit for people (mostly WoW) to steal from. Before Warhammer, there was no queuing for PvP anywhere in the world, no achievement page, and no public quests (recently resurfacing in Rift and Guild Wars 2).

Also, I am in the camp that considers TOR and GW2 in the 4th gen of MMOs. Simply put, they just don't belong in with AoC and Aion and LotR and what not.

It'll be a Cryptic game.  It is already destined to be bargain-bin at release.

And I'm telling you that this IS the generation of kids raised as content creators, the ones who made YouTube worth a billion dollars to Google, the ones who made Facebook vastly overpriced, the ones who made Twitter a household name, who are blowing up Pinterest and a bunch of other things you and I can't even imagine yet.

Is the money all there and all getting to the right place (i.e. the content creators)? Not really and not yet, but it's a slow process. My nephew is a great example. He and I are both getting into digital music creation and distribution. He's 17, I'm 41. He could create a song, put it out there, Youtube it and luck into a hit. When I was his age, music creation tools were unattainable financially, and distribution of any music I created without a very wealthy patron was non-existent. Not to mention the tools to LEARN how to do all that were out of reach, whereas now, a few Google searches and I have more than I need to learn what I want.


It's changed an absolute ASSLOAD. See my paragraph above. When I was a teenager, had I been lucky enough to be able to make a demo tape, what would the possibilities of someone in Uzbekistan seeing or hearing that song (or reading my novel)? Almost zero without big financial backing. Now? It's a distinct possibility. Do I still have to market it? Of course, I just don't have to go begging to a patron to do it. I'm not saying I'll be stinking rich doing it, or even making a living wage. But the great thing about the Internet is that I won't have to - whereas before, my creation would have to be a BIG success to make me money, now I can concentrate on niche success and still do well.

Consumer content will pan out only some amount of time after devs start building tools that they can use themselves to build content at reasonable rate.

One of the biggest reasons MMOGs never have enough content is piss poor tools being used to create it.

Just want to stress this again. It's not the NWN we are used to, sadly. It's an updated version of the Foundry system already operating in Star Trek Online.

However, it's worth remembering (as I think I've said before) that Bioware once said the majority of NWN purchasers only ever played the single player game that came in the box and neither created their own content nor consumed content that other people created. And there was some good stuff out there.

However however, is it possible that things have changed since 2002 and user-generated content is seen as more acceptable nowadays? The YouTube generation Haemish speaks of?

On a side not, am I the only person that actually enjoys playing Unreal games out of the box (specifically the Unreal Tournament multiplayer modes)?

I think some of you are forgetting why people bought some of those games.  Regardless of if they used the tools or not. 


Well played.

This describes me and the few friends I know who played NWN. We did try out the campaign with one of us DMing once, but it was unimpressive so we went back to playing coop. We never really tried downloading any usergen stuff, nor making our own.

Frankly, I think we haven't *seen* a "3rd Generation" game quite yet.

1st Generation: The *old* stuff.  2D graphics, low world populations, by the minute business models, and no marketing budgets worth speaking of.  Think The Realm, Shadows of Yserbius, oNWN.

2nd Generation: Everything since UO.  3D graphics, server populations measured in thousands, monthly fees, marketing budgets appropriate to a "AAA" title.

3rd Generation: Ain't seen none.  Just as UO bridged the gap between 1st and 2nd, there are some hints to what it will involve: Multi-mode play (different ways to play the "same" game depending on platform), a heavy social network component, and a "Free to Play" business model.

There's nothing that really sets the current crop of games as being distinct from EQ, except for more polish (and greater or lesser degrees of F2P).  Hell, most of them still have *zones*, they're just usually better integrated into the story.

--Dave

I would attribute that to the content creation actually being a swampy mess of bull-buggering hard-dom and the fact that there wasn't really a central area or ratings system a la Steam.  Things have changed since, of course.  Just look at Portal 2.

As a matter of fact Age of Conan was leagues ahead of SWTOR when it comes to evolution of the genre and the MMO generations. Not only the combat wasn't your usual EQ/WoW-clone and it was instead the first iteration of what we now, 4 years later, see everywhere (Tera, The Secret World, Guild Wars 2), but as much as they failed to deliver enough of it, Tortage is the first example of decent storytelling in a MMORPG, and it's not that different from what they did with greater resources 4 years later in SWTOR. Like it or not, Age of Conan was much more innovative in 2008 than SWTOR ever was in 2011.

Do innovations matter when nobody adopts them? I think AoC may be more of an evolutionary dead end than anything else.

Caveat: I don't think Tortage was exactly a masterpiece of storytelling. GW1 is the MMO that I think should get credit for the 'story' innovation.

AoC was just awful.  It was a pretty decent example of what happens when you blow your whole budget really early in the development process and have to flesh the game out with pennies.  Nobody paid any attention to that, apparently. 

Yea, there's a difference between "tried" and "tried and was successful because of it". AoC tried a bunch of things, and I applaud that as well as what they tried in TSW. But these are not indie-level games with indie-style forgiveness built into it. Part of being successful is understanding what the customer will accept and good enough project management to get it there.

So we're not really sure on 3rd gen. Someday if this genre continues to sell games based on the "MMO" label, some Marketing will try their "# generation" tag. And then after that some other game will be it :-)

As to UGC, I'm not sold. That's an ad network that started early enough to take root. And a number of social things all happened around the same time (texting, photo sharing, twitter, facebook, a culture of broadcasting oneself, etc). Music lead the way, videos became huge. Find me something for games.

Even Kongregate didn't get us there.