The sky has not fallen (yet)

[ajax34i]

All they had to do was duplicate WoW, put a Star Wars skin over it, and add story/lore. 

They succeeded with the last two points, but with the first, they half-assed it.  They duplicated WoW alright; vanilla WoW, devoid of any of the QoL features and mechanic/gameplay polish that came after vanilla's inception.  One could say that those things are what kept WoW going and ever increasingly popular.

Unfortunately, trying to add the features WoW adds as it goes from expansion to expansion is, pretty much, feature creep, from a dev's point of view.  I can see why they took version 2005 and froze their design document at that.

To add to the list of things I think they did wrong, my reason for quitting was their abysmal CS, actually.  I would have been perfectly happy to solo my way through a few class storylines over a period of 6-8 months, but their CS just pissed me off.

[Secundo]

All they had to do was duplicate WoW, put a Star Wars skin over it, and add story/lore. 

They succeeded with the last two points, but with the first, they half-assed it.  They duplicated WoW alright; vanilla WoW, devoid of any of the QoL features and mechanic/gameplay polish that came after vanilla's inception.  One could say that those things are what kept WoW going and ever increasingly popular.

Testify. I quit WoW in summer of 2005, approximately 5 minutes after I got my main to the level cap. All I could see to do at that point was alt leveling, the pvp that was available then, or the raids that were available then. Those alternatives were either uncompelling, or downright repulsive, so I laid down the game until BC came out. Blizzard has added so much to the game since they launched, that I wonder if any newcomer can really compete. Even a competent newcomer.

I did pretty much the same except I waited until Lich King to play it again and I loved it. Cataclysm made me unsub within a month of release though.

[Lantyssa]

If you're smart enough to figure out what works and what doesn't, you don't need to copy other games.

RIFT is the only game I can think of that tried to copy and came away with a good game, and frankly the copied bits hurt more than help.  They made a good game because they understand what makes a good game, not because they copied WoW, and their best bits are more due to culture, method, and uniqueness.

GW2 is doing its own thing while incorporating lessons learned from themselves and others.

TOR is failing because it copied.

[Rokal]

A newcomer that wanted to succeed would renovate the combat away from the hotbar. Otherwise, all the rest of the devs are hyenas circling the big kill.

This is true, but it's much easier to see in 2012 than 2007.

[Minvaren]

It's amusing to see so many of the detractions of this game come down to "it's not WoW."   

[Fabricated]

I still don't know what exactly people want in a non-hotbar style combat system.

[Draegan]

I still don't know what exactly people want in a non-hotbar style combat system.

Something like DCUO, DDO, or TERA.  Or at least  Hybrid like GW2.  Or maybe something like D3 even.

[Fabricated]

I still don't know what exactly people want in a non-hotbar style combat system.

Something like DCUO, DDO, or TERA.  Or at least  Hybrid like GW2.  Or maybe something like D3 even.

Maybe I don't get what people are talking about then regarding the term. Last I recall all those games had hotbars.

[Draegan]

I still don't know what exactly people want in a non-hotbar style combat system.

Something like DCUO, DDO, or TERA.  Or at least  Hybrid like GW2.  Or maybe something like D3 even.

Maybe I don't get what people are talking about then regarding the term. Last I recall all those games had hotbars.

One major different is in GW2 and TERA, positioning matters.  You can fire off abilities in a single direction whether or not you have a target and you can hit something, or miss something.

In TERA you are essentially playing off your mouse and chaining attacks together.  Some classes can just use the mouse, some need a few extra keys.  Most abilities require timing and are situational.  In GW2 this is the case as well except you're using your keyboard to fire off attacks with standard hotbar controls, but you have to work in timing and aiming.

In hotbar combat (in RIFT/WOW) all you do is stand still and go through a rotation.

[luckton]

I think they just want a simpler 'looking' game.  I admit, the 10k hotkeys and buttons one gets from playing a single class in EQ2 is pretty severe.  TOR has that problem as well.  WoW 'did', but again, time and polish has helped address that.  While you may have a bunch of skills, you're by no means required to hit all of them, depending on your roll and spec.  This will get even simpler in MoP with the changes being made to class specialization and how spec specifically gets what skills.

[Soln]

Surprised no one has mentioned Social.  Regardless of the pantsonheads PUGs or evilclownelitistjerks types we meet, having the ability to form some kind of community -- if only for a few minutes/hours per play session -- I thought was another important factor that lead to success of MMOs.  But launching without good guild tools, without casual friendly non-joiner tools (LFG/LFD), without inclusive event mechanics (e.g. WAR PQ's, RIFT's rifts) was another sign to me the game was lacking.  

[Ingmar]

I like hotbar combat. /shrug

[Paelos]

I still don't know what exactly people want in a non-hotbar style combat system.

Mount and Blade.

[Margalis]

Going to disagree though.  You should copy what works and what doesn't work.  The tough part is figuring out which one is which.

This seems like common sense but I believe it is actually wrong.

The problem with copying is it invites comparison, and if you invite comparison to WoW you will come out behind. There are games that don't have cross-server grouping where people don't complain about not having it, because comparing the game to WoW is more apples to oranges. If your game is sufficiently different you can no longer get dinged for missing feature X or having your version of feature X be worse.

The problem with copying what works is that most of WoW works, so you end up copying the entire game. You go with "best in breed combat" (aka WoW combat), "best in breed UI" (aka WoW UI), "best in breed endgame features" (aka WoW endgame), "best in breed PvP" (aka WoW PvP), and you just have WoW but without the cooking time, polish, or established player base. And there is the problem that if you copy the PvP structure and the endgame now you almost have to copy stuff like cross-server play, travel options, etc, since those latter systems support the former.

It's like a goddamned car.

It's not though. It's like a goddamn thing, and instead of creating your own thing that can be literally anything you decide to make a Yugo. A toaster doesn't need air conditioning and yacht doesn't need wheels. Once you go down the road of "we need all the standard features" you are locked into at best a slightly better version of what exists and much more likely a worse version. And even if you create a better version of an MMO you have to deal with existing player base inertia.

[Minvaren]

Server merges hinted at.

When asked if the new group finder would be cross-server, Erickson replied that it would be single-server because "we are coming up on a huge move to servers with massively higher population caps than we have today."

[Evildrider]

Server merges hinted at.

When asked if the new group finder would be cross-server, Erickson replied that it would be single-server because "we are coming up on a huge move to servers with massively higher population caps than we have today."

I hope this is exactly what they do.

[Draegan]

Going to disagree though.  You should copy what works and what doesn't work.  The tough part is figuring out which one is which.

This seems like common sense but I believe it is actually wrong.

The problem with copying is it invites comparison, and if you invite comparison to WoW you will come out behind. There are games that don't have cross-server grouping where people don't complain about not having it, because comparing the game to WoW is more apples to oranges. If your game is sufficiently different you can no longer get dinged for missing feature X or having your version of feature X be worse.

The problem with copying what works is that most of WoW works, so you end up copying the entire game. You go with "best in breed combat" (aka WoW combat), "best in breed UI" (aka WoW UI), "best in breed endgame features" (aka WoW endgame), "best in breed PvP" (aka WoW PvP), and you just have WoW but without the cooking time, polish, or established player base. And there is the problem that if you copy the PvP structure and the endgame now you almost have to copy stuff like cross-server play, travel options, etc, since those latter systems support the former.

Thats silly though.  
WOW has swords and dragons!  Our game can't have those.
WOW has a LFG auto-group tool.  Our game can't copy that!
WOW has instanced dungeons and raids.  Our can't do it!?
WOW has a class system with talents...
WOW has two factions...
WOW has a moddable UI...
WOW has damage meters...
WOW has flying mounts...

If I had to copy from the MMO Market and iterate on that I would copy:
1.  WOW's LFD/LFR system.
2.  RIFTs dev tools and iteration process and speed.  
3.  RIFTs texture alteration of the world on the fly tools (whatever you call creating Rifts that alter the world around you temporarily.)
4.  SWTOR's crafting/gathering system with companions.
5.  GW2's server architecture and queuing system.
6.  TERA's network code.
7.  GW2's quest philosophy.
8.  Rift's and TERAs in game moddable UI without addons.

Personally, I wouldn't use WOWs end game, combat system (hotbar combat) or PVP.  If I had to pick a game to mimic for PVP it would be a combination of GW2 (as far as we know) and TERA.  I actually don't like any current game's PVP at all.

[Draegan]

Server merges hinted at.

When asked if the new group finder would be cross-server, Erickson replied that it would be single-server because "we are coming up on a huge move to servers with massively higher population caps than we have today."

I hope this is exactly what they do.

It's still stupid though.  They should work towards developing a way to put every single player playing SWTOR into a pool for dungeon queuing.  Even if they have to make a pitstop in creating server pools first.

[Fordel]

I wonder what server merges does to my Implant monopoly.

[Ingmar]

I just hope it doesn't fuck with names/legacy names.

[Fordel]

Of course it will. How can it not?

[Sjofn]

All the non-quickbar combat I have tried in an MMO, I have not been a fan of. And frankly, people have a hard enough time with "don't stand in fire," adding anything more complicated than "push buttan, hit mans" will just tear my soul in two in group settings. 

[Kail]

All the non-quickbar combat I have tried in an MMO, I have not been a fan of. And frankly, people have a hard enough time with "don't stand in fire," adding anything more complicated than "push buttan, hit mans" will just tear my soul in two in group settings. 

In my experience, "don't stand in the fire" is a problem because of hotbar combat.  People staring at their icons instead of at the game world, etc.

[Arthur_Parker]

These conversations always seem to come down to listing game features that you believe would be popular, I think the sensible approach would be to make a game you'd like to play.  Assuming you don't have really odd tastes, there's a better chance there's a market for it.

The impression I got from early Blizzard games is that they love their games, that's partly formed by reading about Diablo 1, some reviewer visited the studio and thought it was really odd that the receptionist was enthusiastically playing the game at her desk.  I'm not that fond of recent Blizzard games myself but I think that's more down to me than them, I'm not sure it's possible to pick a feature set and then decide to love it afterwards.

[Sjofn]

All the non-quickbar combat I have tried in an MMO, I have not been a fan of. And frankly, people have a hard enough time with "don't stand in fire," adding anything more complicated than "push buttan, hit mans" will just tear my soul in two in group settings. 

In my experience, "don't stand in the fire" is a problem because of hotbar combat.  People staring at their icons instead of at the game world, etc.

I did not feel any more engaged trying to clickclickclickclickFUCKCLICK in DDO, though, and we still had people dying to random shit because of lag, not noticing something, poor timing, etc. Plus once you know your rotation, you don't actually need to stare at your quickbar. :P

[Riggswolfe]

A newcomer that wanted to succeed would renovate the combat away from the hotbar. Otherwise, all the rest of the devs are hyenas circling the big kill.

For realz.

Making an MMO is pretty easy if you just look at it from a macro level:

1)  Do you have a Looking For Group tool?  No?  Keep working.
2)  Is your UI completely customizable and moveable?  No?  Keep working.
3)  Is the bulk of your content for leveling?  Yes?  Keep working.
4)  Is your end game comprised of PVP battlegrounds and daillies?  Yes? Keep working.


Beyond that, stop creating games that require 4 hotbars and a mouse with 10 buttons.  I can not go back to playing MMOs that aren't like GW2 and TERA.

I agree with most of this except 3. Then again I think one of the biggest issues in this industry is the whole "end game" obsession of devs and players. I die a little more everytime I see a new game coming and the threads all seem to be "what is the end game? I want to see it?" Which basically boils down to raids/pvp.

[Sjofn]

I will say that although I like hotbar combat, I do agree that the number of buttons is sort of getting out of control. I don't need two hotbars worth of crap to keep track of. When "stuff I actively use all the time, forever" gets above six or so, it gets obnoxious. I don't mind having oh-shit buttons off on a sidebar or whatever, but I do not need huge numbers of standard shit, you know?

[Outlawedprod]

It's still stupid though.  They should work towards developing a way to put every single player playing SWTOR into a pool for dungeon queuing.  Even if they have to make a pitstop in creating server pools first.

They fact they didn't get it done within 2 months after launch means they cannot get it done due to bad project management or poor technical forethought.  The comments about server capabilities for larger populations only reinforces this to me.

[UnSub]

SWOR is having problems because:

 - it cost too much to develop,
 - the subscription model doesn't hold onto players at the same rate any more,
 - story is a two-edged sword when it comes to retaining players,
 - BioWare has always suffered in the games mechanics department, and
 - EA wanted to beat Blactivision rather than just create a successful MMO.

The first one is the most important issue. SWOR had to be at least the second biggest Western MMO by a long way just to break even financially. There's not a lot of room for problems at that point. Which is why SWOR is the second biggest Western sub-based MMO by active player numbers and is still considered a failure.

[Draegan]

3)  Is the bulk of your content for leveling?  Yes?  Keep working.

I agree with most of this except 3. Then again I think one of the biggest issues in this industry is the whole "end game" obsession of devs and players. I die a little more everytime I see a new game coming and the threads all seem to be "what is the end game? I want to see it?" Which basically boils down to raids/pvp.

I'll rephrase the statement then.  If the measurement of time the bulk of your content is designed to last is measured in hours, you're doing it wrong.  The reason people obsess about the end game is because the majority of time spent playing MMOs is at level cap.  These days, level cap is where the game really starts.  Gone are the days where you spend months leveling up.  Design a small amount of content so your character "levels up" then spend the rest of your time figuring out how to design content that lasts longer.

Just look at Rift.  They designed some interesting zones, but the majority of the time is spent in 3 of them (prior to ember isle).  It should be the other way around.

[Venkman]

SWTOR is not sufficient evidence AAA MMO's are "over" as it was based on the false premise that "story" is enough to usher  in the next generation of MMO's and supplant wow. They are being punished for their error because as people finish the story, and look at what is left, they leave. I'd consider the MMO era being over if GW2 and Titan do really badly and there's nothing else on the horizon.

GW2 has no more a chance of being ginormous than GW1 did. It'll be a great game I'm sure, but it has none of the marketing nor branding muscle that the big IP attempts had.

I didn't mean to imply that AAA MMOs are dead. What I was getting at was the idea that spending hundreds of millions on one is probably dead. There aren't any more IP big enough to even consider it, and nobody is going to spend that much on an unproven brand. No other studio is left that can generate such rabid fan-faith (maybe Valve but I believe they're too smart to try MMOs). Subscriptions are dead for newcomers. Large sprawling worlds that harness the promise of persistent 24/7 environments aren't that relevant (really, you could convert all of WoW to CoH's style of auto-instantiated zones with small caps and nobody would notice).

And to Draegen's points raised after, as soon as you announce you're "making an MMO", you're immediately like WoW or doing it wrong, which means inheriting conventions that are at the heart of why this genre can't really evolve. The commitments you need to make in building an MMO are simply too expensive to take too many chances. Heck, this is true for most genres, and especially true for Blizzard.

And Titan I'll believe is coming when there's actually something to look at. :)

I brought up mobile and social not because they're a good comparison. They're just simply where a lot of the iterationi is happening. They're low risk experimental sandboxes. Some ideas evolve, some die, but you didn't need to toss 300 people out on the street because you guessed wrong four years ago.

[Draegan]

And to Draegen's points raised after, as soon as you announce you're "making an MMO", you're immediately like WoW or doing it wrong, which means inheriting conventions that are at the heart of why this genre can't really evolve. The commitments you need to make in building an MMO are simply too expensive to take too many chances. Heck, this is true for most genres, and especially true for Blizzard.

When you're making an MMO, you and in the process of creating the game, the public doesn't even know you exist really.  You should have all those things on the list ready to go when you present yourself to the public after a few years of dev time.

[Margalis]

Thats silly though. 
WOW has swords and dragons!  Our game can't have those.
...

If I had to copy from the MMO Market and iterate on that I would copy:
1.  WOW's LFD/LFR system.
...

This isn't a game design - it's just a list of features. There's no actual game in what you described. As in there is no actual game concept or any coherency.

What I'm saying is start with an actual game design. Of course you can copy some aspects of other games or go with some proven ideas, you don't have to be 100% new with everything, but rather than some recipe that says take X from game A and Y from game B come up with a game concept and then borrow the systems that make sense in that context. Companions are cool, but it only makes sense to borrow companions in game where companions make sense. LFD? So you've decided your game has dungeons run by fixed groups, before even deciding what game you are making. (And you've ruled out making Minecraft, Eve, etc)

[Maledict]

SWTOR is not sufficient evidence AAA MMO's are "over" as it was based on the false premise that "story" is enough to usher  in the next generation of MMO's and supplant wow. They are being punished for their error because as people finish the story, and look at what is left, they leave. I'd consider the MMO era being over if GW2 and Titan do really badly and there's nothing else on the horizon.

GW2 has no more a chance of being ginormous than GW1 did. It'll be a great game I'm sure, but it has none of the marketing nor branding muscle that the big IP attempts had.

I didn't mean to imply that AAA MMOs are dead. What I was getting at was the idea that spending hundreds of millions on one is probably dead. There aren't any more IP big enough to even consider it, and nobody is going to spend that much on an unproven brand. No other studio is left that can generate such rabid fan-faith (maybe Valve but I believe they're too smart to try MMOs). Subscriptions are dead for newcomers. Large sprawling worlds that harness the promise of persistent 24/7 environments aren't that relevant (really, you could convert all of WoW to CoH's style of auto-instantiated zones with small caps and nobody would notice).

And to Draegen's points raised after, as soon as you announce you're "making an MMO", you're immediately like WoW or doing it wrong, which means inheriting conventions that are at the heart of why this genre can't really evolve. The commitments you need to make in building an MMO are simply too expensive to take too many chances. Heck, this is true for most genres, and especially true for Blizzard.

And Titan I'll believe is coming when there's actually something to look at. :)

I brought up mobile and social not because they're a good comparison. They're just simply where a lot of the iterationi is happening. They're low risk experimental sandboxes. Some ideas evolve, some die, but you didn't need to toss 300 people out on the street because you guessed wrong four years ago.

Um, GW1 was the largest western MMO after WoW. It sold million and is still actively played today by what appears to be a decent number of people?

[Kageru]

They thought cinematic story telling and brand would carry them so they could no-effort it everywhere else. They where wrong because MMO's aren't particularly great platforms for telling stories and money spent on stories give a relatively poor return in long term retention.

This has probably been linked elsewhere but it fits here too, A Rant: Enough Of Single-Player MMOs