EQ 'Next'

[HaemishM]

It's MMOG's. The bar is actually a broken fence post on the metaphorical shit farm of the Internet.

[Venkman]

Freakin' MMO "press". It used to be a thing, the house that build Stratics and shit. But man, if ever a category of game was held back by the expectations set by press still thinking it's the early 2000s, MMOs are it.

It's been years since the unique aspects of MMOs have become core to other genres. What's left that is wholly unique to this type of game? Shit, what is this type of game? It's certainly not a graphical lobby where you can randomly pick up strangers for a momentary adventure that rewards XP, levels and items. Fucking freebie garage developer apps have that now.

So is it just there's a core group of geeks who have been wanting The Perfect MMO since UO stopped stroking them the right way that keeps alive this idea of "MMORPG" being in some unique category worth specific attention?

Or is it just the dregs of the post post modern developers pumping in the last gasp of interest into what's not been unique for years?

[Kageru]

I wonder that myself... part of the thrill of EQ was "I can play online! with people in other countries!". But there's no novelty left in that, and the "inconvenience" of being dependent on others for progression isn't really very acceptable once that is gone.

I can see MMO being used for a game that has some notion of "world building"... like Eve or Salem, but I suspect that's going to be niche since the mechanics are often tedious in practice. Raid / World Event games like WoW or Defiance still sort of work because you need to be able to show off your gear, have some dailies for those times you are solo. But you could as easily plug those into single-player / lobby systems.

An evolving world where the subscription money funds an evolving world has never worked. The developers can't keep up. That approach is likely to be done using DLC these days anyway.

[Paelos]

If the developers actually made a world that evolved, it would take over the MMOG market.

[Kageru]

They can't develop enough material to justify a sub, and they can't fund it without.

Every MMO I've seen that promised "regular evolving story updates" has failed to come close. Fallen Earth, SWTOR, Defiance and others. If someone could come up with an automated system that managed some depth and was actually fun I tend to agree. I don't think we're close though.

[Stormwaltz]

Every MMO I've seen that promised "regular evolving story updates" has failed to come close.

Asheron's Call, back in it's heyday with monthly patches (he said, hopefully)?

[Sky]

No, I just find it extremely rare that two sites, whose focus on MMO's would award a game no one but them have seen.

The best ideas in online gaming rarely survive contact with the public. How many great alphas and betas have you been in that end up falling apart when you throw that many more people at them.

Rift had some great ideas that ended up being little static spots where monsters spawn. Hell, I couldn't even convince them to let quest areas flip with pvp. That game had the talent but lacked the vision and the game ended up cool but really bland and I imagine most of the reason is that you throw a few thousand whiny alphagamer douches into the mix and any innovation dies a naive death.

[Velorath]

So is it just there's a core group of geeks who have been wanting The Perfect MMO since UO stopped stroking them the right way that keeps alive this idea of "MMORPG" being in some unique category worth specific attention?

Yes and apparently a ton of those geeks still post here since a thread like this about a game barely anyone has seen (and none of them are here) can get up to 19 pages and Elder Scrolls Online is almost at 40. There's only threads for 11 games in the entirety of the PC/Console Gaming forum that have more posts than Elder Scrolls Online, so whatever it is about MMO's many of you still can't stop talking about them. If another Star Wars MMO were announced I'm sure it would get over 200 pages easily.

[Kageru]

If someone started a thread, "It would be nice to have an MMO that did not suck", you'd probably get even more. The threads are more for discussing hopes of the genre *despite* what is known of the games in development.

[Malakili]

So is it just there's a core group of geeks who have been wanting The Perfect MMO since UO stopped stroking them the right way that keeps alive this idea of "MMORPG" being in some unique category worth specific attention?

Yes, pretty much.  Especially since practically all regular multiplayer games that come out these days have everything MMOs have except the shared world - and most MMOs that come out these days don't even have the shared world, so the lines are clearly blurred more than ever.  I think its more chasing a feeling than anything at this point.  The last MMO that made me just feel in awe was when WoW came out and a large part of that was because I got to see all this stuff "in person" that I had played in the Warcraft series. EVE is probably the only game that continues to make me feel that way - but even that I no longer play. I guess Minecraft made me feel a similar way when I first started playing it as well actually.

[UnSub]

If the developers actually made a world that evolved, it would take over the MMOG market.

WoW's got something like 30 players for every player EvE has though.

Static worlds are nice and safe and reliable, for players as well as devs. (Plus WoW has evolved since launch, but probably not in the way you mean.)

[Maledict]

They can't develop enough material to justify a sub, and they can't fund it without.

Every MMO I've seen that promised "regular evolving story updates" has failed to come close. Fallen Earth, SWTOR, Defiance and others. If someone could come up with an automated system that managed some depth and was actually fun I tend to agree. I don't think we're close though.

Guild Wars 2 is actually speeding up its content release. They seem to have content patches twice a month now, it's fairly impressive.

Apparently they have two completely separate teams working in parallell so each has 2 months for its next content sequence - but very few games can afford that sort of luxury I would suggest.

[Nebu]

Guild Wars 2 is actually speeding up its content release. They seem to have content patches twice a month now, it's fairly impressive.

If GW2's combat was the least bit engaging, I never would have left.  So much innovation in that game.  They made it fun for random people to help with quests... which is mind-blowing in this genre.

I don't need an evolving world to stay interested.  I want depth of gameplay and the option of playing solo without being treated like a red-headed step child.

[Spiff]

GW2 really cured me of a lot of my MMO cynicism. It was the most fun, non-annoying leveling experience I've ever had I think.
They did so many things right and pushed the genre miles in the right direction imo.
I haven't logged on in months though; As has been said: it lacked depth and the 'open world' PvP was a field of broken dreams, as it always is (but I'm not bitter!  ).
Going back to try Rift a few weeks ago really highlighted how good GW2 was for me. So many ideas there that I should love, but I was just annoyed and disappointed again after a few hours of play.

[Kageru]

GW2 pretty much solved the problem of "casual" levelling, and launched with so much content it spoke of ill-disciplined development. But they still haven't solved the really hard problem of how do you make a game which never ends without it becoming tedious or unrewarding. Though they are learning, their initial world events were very poorly thought out but the latest one was a little more clever.

And they have a pretty substantial content and balance patch coming, which is pretty impressive for a subscription free game.

[Venkman]

Yes and apparently a ton of those geeks still post here since a thread like this about a game barely anyone has seen (and none of them are here) can get up to 19 pages and Elder Scrolls Online is almost at 40. There's only threads for 11 games in the entirety of the PC/Console Gaming forum that have more posts than Elder Scrolls Online, so whatever it is about MMO's many of you still can't stop talking about them. If another Star Wars MMO were announced I'm sure it would get over 200 pages easily.

Well, yes, but I was more asking in general, being one of those geeks who joined here to continually rant about MMOs

It seems like the industry has kinda moved on from MMOs as an attention grabber. There's plenty out there and plenty coming. But none getting anywhere close to the attention non-MMO games get, and those getting attention in some ways because of MMO-like features they're adding.

I used to think VR would evolve from MMOs. All the pieces were there. But I think we're seeing the incremental step happening through other genres now. That's probably because those others are appealing because of the game play itself, whereas MMOs still tend to market themselves as "massive multiplayer" and a lot of apologizing about how the game actually plays. Or, easier to bolt a metagame onto an FPS than to make a fun game mechanic after you've worked out the metagame.

GW2 was a fantastic blend of both. But there's no reason to invest deeply in it, neither time nor money. I suspect I'll feel the same about Neverwinter. Fun and all the right casino-style bells and whistles to keep you pumped as you get rewarded through the system using a combat engine that doesn't suck. But the amount of time to play from start to boredom isn't all that different from any FPS or RPG that comes along for most people.

Which kinda dilutes MMO needing it's own category.

[Abelian75]

WoW's got something like 30 players for every player EvE has though.

That's not really that fair a comparison, though.  EVE is incredibly unapproachable, and while some of that is probably due to the sandbox nature of the game, a lot of it is not.  You can put a readable font in a sandbox game, for example; it's totally doable, I swear.  The two games are like the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of basic software usability in ways unrelated to gameplay.

[UnSub]

WoW's got something like 30 players for every player EvE has though.

That's not really that fair a comparison, though. 

I agree, but my response was more for the real evolving worlds = take over MMO market comment. You need a lot of other features to try to "take over" MMOs today, and I wonder if it would even be worth the effort.

[Modern Angel]

GW2 pretty much solved the problem of "casual" levelling, and launched with so much content it spoke of ill-disciplined development. But they still haven't solved the really hard problem of how do you make a game which never ends without it becoming tedious or unrewarding. Though they are learning, their initial world events were very poorly thought out but the latest one was a little more clever.

And they have a pretty substantial content and balance patch coming, which is pretty impressive for a subscription free game.

Very quietly, GW2 is doing amazing stuff, not least in the turnaround from drawing board to live.

I disagree with people who say the game isn't very deep. It's just not geared toward a traditional MMO replayability scheme (or grind, if you're being cynical). I mean, GW2 has a LOT of grind if you play it a lot. If you play it as something you pop in and out of, it's remarkably fresh, still.

[Abelian75]

I agree, but my response was more for the real evolving worlds = take over MMO market comment. You need a lot of other features to try to "take over" MMOs today, and I wonder if it would even be worth the effort.

Fair enough, yo.

[HaemishM]

It seems like the industry has kinda moved on from MMOs as an attention grabber. There's plenty out there and plenty coming. But none getting anywhere close to the attention non-MMO games get, and those getting attention in some ways because of MMO-like features they're adding.

I used to think VR would evolve from MMOs. All the pieces were there. But I think we're seeing the incremental step happening through other genres now. That's probably because those others are appealing because of the game play itself, whereas MMOs still tend to market themselves as "massive multiplayer" and a lot of apologizing about how the game actually plays. Or, easier to bolt a metagame onto an FPS than to make a fun game mechanic after you've worked out the metagame.

The industry moved on from MMOG's because

1) Nobody wants to pay a subscription anymore. Without that sweet sweet steady and predictable income, publishers don't want to spend $100 million making something that requires 5 years to make back the budget. While F2P works, the income is not a steady stream like a subscription. Also, American publishers hate the word free.
2) MMOG's require the kind of time commitment to a video game that the vast majority of people do not want to dedicate. We are farily atypical here in that we are mostly obsessive compulsive geeks and the idea of a virtual world appeals to us. Mr. and Mrs. Farmville? They want their entertainment in bite-size chunks and MMOG grinds do not work that way. There's a reason mobile games are becoming a big market - bite-size chunks. Granted, most mobile developers make shit products and shit profits.
3) MMOG developers have proven they do not fucking know how to develop easy to understand game mechanics and easy to use UI's. WoW is still the goddamn high point of the medium and past level 10, it's a goddamn hellscape of rows of shiny buttons. While Planetside 2 may be a decent MMO-FPS, compared to Call of Duty? It's a fucking trainwreck for people who aren't inclined to dig further than the surface to figure out how a game works. And it's store is eye-stabbingly ugly.

[Venkman]

Agreed on the subs, but big budget AAA non-MMO games are not that far south of the $100mm. They smartly retain the box purchase and tack on F2P for foozle shit though.

Time-commitment wise, Skyrim and Witcher kinda disagree with you, though granted, those are outliers. I would be very curious to see the hours dudebros accumulate in CoD or Halo though. But that's a perception thing we've discussed here too. MMOs are about planning to invest 100+ hours in a game. In other games, players only retroactively realize they've ended up doing that.

Totally agree on your third point though. This is one of the things I was wondering most about. There's a contingent of developers still designing "MMO" as if that's a game mechanic by itself. Meanwhile, the rest of the industry that has compelling game mechanics treat the various MMO systems they rip off as just that: systems to tack onto games. Which works because it gives them an added point of difference for their huge budget risky non-subs game

GW2 is right in the middle. Obviously experienced MMO people who I feel like took a step back, said "let's make this shit fun" and then through an additive process tacked on all the casino-style levers.

[UnSub]

The other factor effecting MMOs is that there are too many of them available. You can't launch a MMO and expect players to spend years (paying a sub fee) in them anymore, because the next shiny is due out 5 months from now and has just launched its beta program.

[lamaros]

They only way to make an MMO that never ends is to design it from the ground up to be built on PC interaction. This will not happen anytime soon because, a) most people are not special and no one wants to play something that constantly reminds them of the fact, and b) such systems are beyond the ability of any current game developers (which is half c - everything has to have such expensive systems these days that costs are impossible).

The next big thing in MMOGs is when someone figures out how to integrate any one of the successful online PvP games (take your pick) with a persistent avatar centric PC 'world'. Combining the two at the moment seems to be a case of "take game a and and squish it into game b", rather than a holistic top down design, and so they're doomed to failure for a while yet.

[Kageru]

There is also the possibility of doing it mechanically. Something Rift, GW2 and Defiance are working towards. Enemy NPC's which seize territory, build up strongholds, attack players and need all sorts of activities to combat. But that's hard and humans are good at seeing through the mechanics.

There's room for a big, subscription based, triple-A MMO. The amount of money WoW is making confirms that. But there's probably only room for one at the top of that tree.

[HaemishM]

Time-commitment wise, Skyrim and Witcher kinda disagree with you, though granted, those are outliers. I would be very curious to see the hours dudebros accumulate in CoD or Halo though. But that's a perception thing we've discussed here too. MMOs are about planning to invest 100+ hours in a game. In other games, players only retroactively realize they've ended up doing that.

Skyrim is a bit of an outlier but it IS in a genre where 100+ hours isn't unheard of - RPG's. People who play RPG's are used to long games, especially vets of JRPG's. And with most MMOG's being some form of RPG, it's a market that is already self-selected and smaller than say dudebro shooters. And the dudebros are even smaller than say Farmville/Angry Birds in terms of overall users.

But dudebro shooters and casual games are built to be digested in smallish chunks of time. MMOG's and especially open world MMOG's are not. Hell, we all have complained about MMOG's taking a good 5-10 minutes of setup time just to get to the main activity of the night, whether that be questing, raiding or camping. You generally don't spend as little as 30 minutes in an MMOG because you get fuckall done. in that time, dudebro can play 3-5 maps of CoD and Angry Birds' players have cleared like 1/10th of the game's stages.

[Malakili]

Lots of people log WELL over 100+ hours on CoD. As Haemish suggests, the question is about how long it takes to have fun/be productive/do whatever is you want to do in a single session. Something like EVE isn't playable to me not because I can't play video games enough hours per week, but because I can no longer know for sure that I'm not going to have to bolt 30 minutes into a 5 hour op.

[Margalis]

I don't see why an MMO or any game needs to never end. Especially in an MMO is not subscription-based.

[Venkman]

Lots of people log WELL over 100+ hours on CoD. As Haemish suggests, the question is about how long it takes to have fun/be productive/do whatever is you want to do in a single session. Something like EVE isn't playable to me not because I can't play video games enough hours per week, but because I can no longer know for sure that I'm not going to have to bolt 30 minutes into a 5 hour op.

Yea, the old time-to-fun formula. One of the things that has gotten much better in MMOs since we started ranting about it during Planes raids But while WoW helped get us over the hump, and now it's built into the popular ones, the idea of a persistent/forever world hasn't caught on. Because of your Eve point.

Lamaros basically describes a Auto Assault/Huxley/GW1 model of persistent public spaces where you can insta-action into a combat/quest scenario. But these don't "feel" MMO any more than Diablo 2's chat room did. GW2 does a great job of blending various concepts that I feel like Wildstar is iterating on well.

But it does come back to time-to-fun.

I don't think it's restricted to dudebro/casual though. I can play X-com in 5 minute chunks. I can skillup my Tailoring in Neverwinter from the browser. I mention both because I feel like that's one vector towards the future of MMOs.

It's less second screen (like the tablet-based map for Assassin's Creed 3) and more just any screen, with events tailored to where and when you are. If you can get the player to care that much about your world they want to be in it all the time even if it's a lightweight momentary experience, that's a win. Cumulative hundreds of hours, and still immersive multi-hour raid/RvR style sessions on the PC or Console, but the any-screen approach could reintegrate concepts the one-off spinoff apps and social games borrowed from MMOs.

[lamaros]

Lamaros basically describes a Auto Assault/Huxley/GW1 model of persistent public spaces where you can insta-action into a combat/quest scenario. But these don't "feel" MMO any more than Diablo 2's chat room did. GW2 does a great job of blending various concepts that I feel like Wildstar is iterating on well.

But it does come back to time-to-fun.

I don't know if that's what I meant at all. I meant that you have to combine the persistent public spaces with player interaction that is 'game-like' and 'fun' in most elements - not just the 'main' one.

For me WoW felt less and less like a world as they removed the barriers to PvP and PvE fighting - if you can sign up for combat from anywhere and teleport into it then the whole world becomes to feel like a glorified chatroom and less like an MMOG.

Long transport rides in WoW sucked because they were boring and uninteractive. There was no fun involved in them. But they made WoW seem like a persistent world, because you saw it and traveled through it in a world like manner, though. For me the problem of solving 'fun' in a good persistent world is to make the downtime and world elements into games of their own - and to organize these multitude of games in a way that players can choose to mostly interact with the ones that they enjoy.

I'll take an example from a MUD. In Medievia (yeah, yeah) they had trading. It involved going to various parts of the world and looking at the trading posts, marking down how much each of them were paying at that time for various goods. These would change over time based on supply, natural disasters, etc, whatever. You would then have to go to another trading post that sold those items then load up and run by foot over the land to get there as quickly as possible. While doing so you would often get attacked, by bandits of various sorts, by dragons, and by other players (if you were into player combat areas), so you would usually want to get a group together to fight of these challenges.

The whole process, in my mind, involved a lot of different 'games' that attracted various people in different ways. There was the game of finding a route that payed well - flying around, comparing prices, looking at distances, etc. There was the game of leading the group and navigating the world as quickly as possible (if you went off the roads you lost your packhorse and had to double back to get it). There was the game of fighting off the things that might try to attack you (PCs or NPCs). There was the game of getting rich.

Now of course these exact situation isn't comparable to modern MMOs for a number of reasons, but such MMOs do need a similar multitude of games - which are interconnected in a compelling way - in order to provide the illusion of a world. Most of them don't really do this, but instead focus on a single game experience and consider everything else to just be tools that aid it. If this thinking and designing can change, and those tools can also become games in their own rights.

Does that make any sense?

[Venkman]

So at the risk of misinterpreting you a second time, what you described is basically Eve Except replace PvE-style dragons and environment challenges during transit with other players in low sec space you want to travel through.

I love that kind of experience. It's extremely immersive, you feel like you brought a lot to the equation (how you travel, how you equip, skills you choose, etc), it's right at the very heart of the Ultima-style RPG I grew up with, and it being other people instead of AI actually makes it feel like a modern RPG.

It's basically what I consider to be the best possible definition of an actual full on MMORPG.

Trouble is, it's a life-sucking experience. It's a very difficult game for me to play casually, because how to get better at it is right there in front of you (meet the right people, train the right way, trade the right way, but all of those are contextual to the role you want to play), while being largely impossible for the 15 minutes at a time gamer I've had to become. It's the perfect world upon which to build an any-screen concept. Dust 514 kinda started them down that path.

But this does mean that I can't play the core of what I consider the quintessential MMO and therefore hafta settle for second best. And second best has been losing its uniqueness as other genres have picked up certain concepts.

[lamaros]

So at the risk of misinterpreting you a second time, what you described is basically Eve Except replace PvE-style dragons and environment challenges during transit with other players in low sec space you want to travel through.

I love that kind of experience. It's extremely immersive, you feel like you brought a lot to the equation (how you travel, how you equip, skills you choose, etc), it's right at the very heart of the Ultima-style RPG I grew up with, and it being other people instead of AI actually makes it feel like a modern RPG.

It's basically what I consider to be the best possible definition of an actual full on MMORPG.

Trouble is, it's a life-sucking experience. It's a very difficult game for me to play casually, because how to get better at it is right there in front of you (meet the right people, train the right way, trade the right way, but all of those are contextual to the role you want to play), while being largely impossible for the 15 minutes at a time gamer I've had to become. It's the perfect world upon which to build an any-screen concept. Dust 514 kinda started them down that path.

But this does mean that I can't play the core of what I consider the quintessential MMO and therefore hafta settle for second best. And second best has been losing its uniqueness as other genres have picked up certain concepts.

Yes like Eve. Except the systems in Eve are not friendly to casual experience. They require a lot of investment, and they have (or have had) poor user interfaces. I think you could make a game like Eve that has the depth and interest of its existing systems, while also making it more accessable to newcomers, and also offering more casual game experiences that people could enjoy without feeling like they have to get as invested as others.

Honestly, Eve is a good game in spite of many things that could reasonably easily be done better (IMO, of course).

[Nonentity]

I'm just now catching up on the tweets that Smedley is making about this:





Oh dear.

[Kitsune]

Lookit me here in my sunglasses leaning back in my chair.  Way I see it, it's win-win for me.  Either Smed rolls a natural 00 and actually delivers the first great fantasy sandbox since UO, or he fails hilariously and I get to laugh at it.  Absolutely no skin off my back regardless of the outcome, so I'm not gonna get worked up about it.  I've got enough other games to occupy my free time that I'm not going to be tearing my clothes and pouring ash on my head if their new EQ bombs.

[Paelos]

Get your laughing pants ready. That's pretty much my plan.