The perfect MMO

[Nebu]

     Yeah but that is biased because we all know the Enquirer is full of BS, and you were taking (?) something that is widely not believed(Aliens) vs. something that is widly believed MMO evolution is "slow".  I know that MPS had a bad rep in the past,(That is what I hear anyway) but I just do not see it in the site.  Anyway I will not argue this point further as I do not see us changing eithers mind.  If you want to view the words I right as being tainted, that in no way effects me, I am not here to win a popularity contest :)  As I said I understand what you are trying to say I simply disagree and I can guarantee you that you will not change my mind, and I doubt that I will change yours, therefore we must agree to disagree :)

The more you write, the harder it is to understand what the hell you're saying.  Afternoon cocktails?

[Mongoose]

You cannot be happy and jaded unless you are a sadist

Yes, you can. You had better look up 'jaded' again ,and understand the context in which it was used.

with a railroad tie threw it

You know what the problem is here, I presume.

Might wanna look up sadist as well  :-D

Definition of sadism:


sa·dism  (sdzm, sdz-)
n.
1. The deriving of sexual gratification or the tendency to derive sexual gratification from inflicting pain or emotional abuse on others.
2. The deriving of pleasure, or the tendency to derive pleasure, from cruelty.
3. Extreme cruelty.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
  I was using sadist as in the second example.

Not to be completely pedantic (well, maybe just this once), but sadism is about the infliction of abuse or cruelty; masochist would have fit your original post better (as I read it).

  I stand corrected.

[Mongoose]

     Yeah but that is biased because we all know the Enquirer is full of BS, and you were taking (?) something that is widely not believed(Aliens) vs. something that is widly believed MMO evolution is "slow".  I know that MPS had a bad rep in the past,(That is what I hear anyway) but I just do not see it in the site.  Anyway I will not argue this point further as I do not see us changing eithers mind.  If you want to view the words I right as being tainted, that in no way effects me, I am not here to win a popularity contest :)  As I said I understand what you are trying to say I simply disagree and I can guarantee you that you will not change my mind, and I doubt that I will change yours, therefore we must agree to disagree :)

The more you write, the harder it is to understand what the hell you're saying.  Afternoon cocktails?

  No 151 and Cherry Pepsi here, lets just agree to disagree and be happy :)

P.S.  For the sake of clarification I will explain the italicized part.

I understand that you feel that MPS has had a bad reputation in the past,(This is what people tell me) however I do not see this negativity in the website itself.

[schild]

Scrubbing all the blood off the walls of an exploit site is impossible. The internet never forgets. You're gonna have to deal with that.

[Soln]

I bet he's (Tele-)Mediocre disguised.

[Mongoose]

Scrubbing all the blood off the walls of an exploit site is impossible. The internet never forgets. You're gonna have to deal with that.

  LOL, I actually laughed out loud at this.  Where there is a will there is a way...  I asked an expert on this and the wife explained to me that not even bleach will get blood out, however she said that pure amonia might :)  I have heard about MPS being a sploit and hack site, however I was not there at the time this was going on.  I started writing for MPS the week that WOW was released.  Recently I have taken a leave of absence from MPS, but this has nothing to do with MPS, DDO crapped out, AA crapped out, now there is nothing to write about, which is why I had started on that article.  A few peeps went back to playing DAOC, but that is a little outdated for my taste.

EDIT to add:
  I am going to get reemed on this, as I misunderstood the wife.  If you use peroxide you can get blood out of "fabric" totally.  However if there is blood on a wall pure amonia or "sudsy" amonia(Her words, not mine) will be the best, but will not get the blood 100% of the wall.  Therefore I will simply ask to be judged on my actions, and not my associations, I still say that since I have wrote for MPS,(Last 2 years) it is not the hack/exploit festival that everyone screams about.

[Merusk]

I bet he's (Tele-)Mediocre disguised.

He's young and looking to impress.  I'm going to go pull the Rolls out and take the family for a spin before setting in for my evening Sherry and Battleground fun.   After that I think the wife and I will invite over our friend Tesha (she's a model) and have a mindblowing threesome.  It'll certainly be more entertaining than this 'discussion.'

[Driakos]

I do not look for respect or kudos here, as I have no time or desire for mental masturbation. (I have a wife and children for that) 

You are a dirty dirty man.

On the "Players are stuck in WoW" thing.  I don't buy it.  If I do not like playing something, I stop playing it.  I've never stayed in a game, especially one that has a monthly subscription fee, if I no longer had fun playing.

But there's nothing better out so they stay!  Well that's a choice, not a trap.

What you're really saying is "WoW is more fun than X, so people stay."  Which.. no matter how I read it, is a good thing.  Nothing sinister.

According to your stuck premise; I am stuck watching the NFL.  Because there isn't another sport to replace it?  They really should develop one, cause I hate football, I just watch it cause I'm stuck.

I think it's better just to say that after nearly two years, many players are growing bored with WoW.  They aren't caught in some crazy virtual tiger pit, waiting for UN forces to make a new MMO.  There are not any victims.

[Tale]

Mongoose, your basic problem is that you think you're a veteran with highly-evolved opinions, but you didn't even know anything about f13.net, which puts you about eight years behind the conversation you are trying to hold.

Do I get to play the male?  It is always better to give then to recieve...

Do you realise you just said "it is better to give, and receive afterwards"? No you don't, because you come from the pathetic mass of gamers who have lost the difference between the words "then" and "than". No, you did not make a typo and this is not a spelling flame. You wrote what most of your peers would have written: and it's total fucking miscommunication.

[Mongoose]

  I am not saying the peeps that play WOW are trapped, as they do always have a choice to go elsewhere, yet at the present time there is really no other place to go.  You cannot be "stuck" watching the NFL, because every year there is a draft and the players change teams, players get old and retire, and newbies replace them, therefore your "world" is constantly and purposely changing.(You are always viewing new "content")  This is unlike an MMO, where you go out and kill a mob by a tree, two years later you go out and the same mobs are there at the same trees.  An MMO, being the items and events inside, does not "age" as in real life the NFL content(Meaning NFL players) does age.  Therefore that is an unfair comparison.  To put it in perspective: if every year your favorite team had the exact same players and same record at the end of the year, how many years would you watch it?  The "content" in the NFL is in a constant state of change, thereby renewing your interest to watch it :)

  What can an MMO do to mimic this constant state of change?  Look at RvR in DAOC as an example.  Why not totally remove the entire RvR map for all three realms and put in an entire new map?(Let's say every 3-6 months?)  Shake it up, do not subject your customers to the same content that has been there for years.  The most detrimental thing in today's MMO's is a competent lack of an end game, with a creative mind, there is no reason for this.  Yes it would take time and money to constantly evolve your content in an MMO, but with 6 million subscribers there, the money is incentive enough to do it.  Look at the whole picture, instead of one stadium and one team, and you will see that the possibilities are virtually endless, yet today we are "stuck".

[Tale]

I still say that since I have wrote for MPS,(Last 2 years) it is not the hack/exploit festival that everyone screams about.

When I go to its homepage, it offers me dozens of exploits for MMOGs. The fact that it has other stuff (written by an ignoramus like you) does not change that.

[Mongoose]

Mongoose, your basic problem is that you think you're a veteran with highly-evolved opinions, but you didn't even know anything about f13.net, which puts you about eight years behind the conversation you are trying to hold.

Do I get to play the male?  It is always better to give then to recieve...

Do you realise you just said "it is better to give, and receive afterwards"? No you don't, because you come from the pathetic mass of gamers who have lost the difference between the words "then" and "than". No, you did not make a typo and this is not a spelling flame. You wrote what most of your peers would have written: and it's total fucking miscommunication.

  Actually I was trying to make a joke, I did not know someone would actually dissect it like that.  Did someone piss in your Cornflakes this morning?

[Cheddar]

Do you realise you just said "it is better to give, and receive afterwards"? No you don't, because you come from the pathetic mass of gamers who have lost the difference between the words "then" and "than". No, you did not make a typo and this is not a spelling flame. You wrote what most of your peers would have written: and it's total fucking miscommunication.

Holy shit I totally missed this.  HAHAHAHA I SMELL GRIEF TITLE!

[Mongoose]

I still say that since I have wrote for MPS,(Last 2 years) it is not the hack/exploit festival that everyone screams about.

When I go to its homepage, it offers me dozens of exploits for MMOGs. The fact that it has other stuff (written by an ignoramus like you) does not change that.

  Tale in the end the one thing we all must face is reality, sometimes this is more difficult for certain peeps to face.  If you look at every post of yours in this thread, what have you constructively done?  Nothing...  In every post you have not added too, or subtracted from, the topic of this thread, you have not done anything but trolled, so I ask what is your purpose for posting here?  Make a comment on the topic, as I have stated before just think of me as someone totally repulsive, do you have anything intelligent to say on the topic at hand?

[schild]

Still weird in here, but Tale made the most salient point in the thread:

Mongoose, your basic problem is that you think you're a veteran with highly-evolved opinions, but you didn't even know anything about f13.net, which puts you about eight years behind the conversation you are trying to hold.

And as for you:

Tale in the end the one thing we all must face is reality, sometimes this is more difficult for certain peeps to face.

Who the hell taught you how to write? Fuck, that sentence is like internet transmitted face-attacking knives. Jesus.

[Driakos]

I am not saying the peeps that play WOW are trapped, as they do always have a choice to go elsewhere, yet at the present time there is really no other place to go.

You aren't?

Right now there are more players that feel "stuck" in WOW then you can imagine, what is the problem with pushing an MMO to the next level?

OMG players are stuck in WOW, you are looking at nothing else then numbers!  You need to talk to the gamers themselves and get their feelings on their experience.  "They will unsub and go somewhere else” Yeah where?

I know you don't mean trapped, but you sure as hell mean unwilling to leave.  How is that a bad thing?  How did Blizzard do wrong by creating a game that many players prefer to play over other games on the market?

Stuck and unwilling to go to inferior games (or stop playing completely), are different things.

So are you saying that we are all stuck doing things we don't really like, simply because there isn't something better?  We could be happy or sad with whatever it is, but we aren't as happy as we could be?  That is a stupid premise.  Basically you're saying, "There could be better!"  Well no fucking shit.

You cannot be "stuck" watching the NFL, because every year there is a draft and the players change teams, players get old and retire, and newbies replace them, therefore your "world" is constantly and purposely changing.(You are always viewing new "content")  This is unlike an MMO, where you go out and kill a mob by a tree, two years later you go out and the same mobs are there at the same trees.  An MMO, being the items and events inside, does not "age" as in real life the NFL content(Meaning NFL players) does age.  Therefore that is an unfair comparison.  To put it in perspective: if every year your favorite team had the exact same players and same record at the end of the year, how many years would you watch it?  The "content" in the NFL is in a constant state of change, thereby renewing your interest to watch it :)

Trades are updates.  Draft is expansion.  Comparison works.  Until "Topless Cheerleaders NFL Edition" comes out, I am stuck watching NFL.  The game itself doesn't change.  They just patch in some new rosters every so often, and sometimes change the PVP rules.  No leapfrogging off the line to block kicks, no leading with helmet on tackles, etc.

What can an MMO do to mimic this constant state of change?  Look at RvR in DAOC as an example.  Why not totally remove the entire RvR map for all three realms and put in an entire new map?(Let's say every 3-6 months?)  Shake it up, do not subject your customers to the same content that has been there for years.  The most detrimental thing in today's MMO's is a competent lack of an end game, with a creative mind, there is no reason for this.  Yes it would take time and money to constantly evolve your content in an MMO, but with 6 million subscribers there, the money is incentive enough to do it.  Look at the whole picture, instead of one stadium and one team, and you will see that the possibilities are virtually endless, yet today we are "stuck".

The most detrimental things in the MMO's of today are other players.  Once developers figure out how to fix that, we'll have better MMO's.  Hopefully there is more to your ultimate MMO than a map that changes every three to six months and a competent end-game.  If you're taking a shot at WoW, because they use their Blizzard name as a metaphor for their patching speed; Then ok, yes they add content slowly.  Two years to wait for an expansion pack is brutal.  Just want you to know though, that the average player isn't so hopelessly addicted to MMO's that they are prisoners of WoW, and cannot leave until another of greater caliber appears.  They'll leave when they get bored enough.

The genre itself is stagnating, that's no fault of WoW.  if anything, the success of WoW will bring more games into the mix.  Sure 90 percent of them will be crap, but hopefully there will be a metric shit-ton of innovation waiting to be cannibalized by another.

[Yoru]

This is barely worth it any more, but there a few nits I can still pick. I'm going to Bruce it up a bit so it's easier to block out what I'm responding to. Apologies in advance.

(600k * $15) is a lot, however (6 million * $15) is A LOT more.  I understand the only purpose of creating an MMO is for the profit of the monthly fees, but if you are going to do it, why not go for the most subscribers?  Why piss around with 100k-600k peeps when, with a little creativity and common sense, you can easily have 1-6 million +?  When you constantly aim low, you will constantly miss.(Unless you have a really big gun and cannot hold the damn thing when you fire, like having a 12 year old fire a 12 gauge, LOFL)

 Because you may also be operating under the constraints of Time, Money and Manpower that your competitors are not similarly under; very few companies could throw as much of these away as Blizzard did on WoW. Why go up to compete against the industry titan when you can't compete with their resources? You can still find a niche, carve out a slice of the industry for yourself, and make a nice chunk of change.

 By your logic, it's not worth opening a small shop unless you're going to compete with Wal-Mart.

EQ2 is in flames in comparison to their original hopes.  This was the title that was supposed to be evenly matched with WOW, however 250k does not compete with 6 million, why do you think they actually decided to throw PvP into EQ2?  A failure to you it is not, after all you bring up the fact that it is making money.  However if I was aiming to compete with another title, and just got my ass handed to me like EQ2 did by WOW, then to me I would have failed.

Or is it? Go search around for articles back before WoW and EQ2 were released; no one, no one in their right mind predicted that WoW would do 6 mil. 1 million was considered optimistic. 500k was a good estimate. EQ2 was probably aiming for 10% more than the peak level of EQ1 subscribers, which is probably around 500-600k. They're doing about half that now, and growing, from what I hear, which isn't bad at all.

Is it a smashing success? No, it's just kind of mediocre.

OMG players are stuck in WOW, you are looking at nothing else then numbers!  You need to talk to the gamers themselves and get their feelings on their experience.  "They will unsub and go somewhere else” Yeah where?  There is no competition to WOW, which is my entire point of the article I wrote, instead of evolution, Devs keep coming out with the same craptacular releases.  Go back to MMOGchart and look at the populations of all MMO's on/since WOW's release, the only games that dropped for WOW was Lineage and Lineage2 and that was less then 1.5 million, so where did the other 4.5 million come from?  Of course you had a ton of noobs enter the genre based upon the Warcraft and Blizzard reputation, but you also had a large chunk of those that join that were simply waiting for another decent MMO to be developed. 
 
  WOW has not been in the top 10 games sold either, (unless you are counting the 50,000 copies bought by gold farmers to replace the accounts that were banned, yes this is added for sarcasm) not for quite awhile, yes you constantly see the expansion pack for WOW in the top 10, but that in itself is another nightmare waiting to happen.  You get what? (No new classes)  A new area and 10 more levels?  With the current majority of the population already at the end game with at least one character, that is most likely already equipped with level 70-83 items?  How long will it take to burn through to level 70?  A few weeks at BEST, then they will be stuck right where they are now.  Blizzard had mentioned that they wanted the initial release of WOW have a level cap 70, but VU forced the release to compete with EQ2.  So look what happened, 2 years after the release and you are now simply having the content that was supposed to be in the game on the day of release!  That is not evolution, that is desperation.

Yes, I'm looking at numbers, because I'm asking you to quantify the idea that people are getting tired of a product. In most industries, this is sales numbers. With TV, we have the Nielsons. For MMOs, we have sub numbers. The sub numbers aren't indicating that people are tired of a product.

Entertainment does not exist in a vacuum; if people are tired of WoW, they can not only switch to other games, they can also, you know, go outside. Watch TV. Go see a flick. The numbers indicate that, no, they'd like to play WoW.

I need to talk to the gamers themselves? That's anecdotal evidence, which isn't statisically valid. However, you could try to quantify the observation that people are frustrated and feel stuck. You'd need to get a large, random sample of WoW players - by taking a completely random sample of active accounts' email addresses, most likely - and have them take a survey on the game. Further, if you want to bring my own experience into this, then no, the WoW players I know have been playing WoW since release and still chatter every day about the next expansion, what raid loot they got, etc. (It's rather onerous to try to talk to them about anything else, in fact.)

 With respect to the chart's population data, as you noted, only a small number of games on that chart experienced a rapid decline when WoW came out. A large proportion of the players are therefore either new or maintain open accounts on multiple games. If, as you stated, there was a large number of people "that were simply waiting for another decent MMO", you'd've seen a precipitous drop in other games' subscription numbers, as large proportions of players do not maintain multiple accounts (see Nick Yee's Daedalus Project research for more on this). This conclusion is not borne out by the chart's data.

Your assertion that WoW has not been in the top 10 games sold is plain wrong: Best Selling Games for May 26th, 2006. World of Warcraft is #2. For the whole month of May 2006: here. World of Warcraft, again #2. Whole year, 2005: World of Warcraft, #1. Search out more of these numbers if you want; since Thanksgiving 2004, WoW has consistently been in the top 10, if not the top 5.

 Your idea that most people will burn through the expansion content in a few weeks also appears to come from the evident fact that you're a very hardcore gamer. According to Nick Yee's research, over 50% of the MMO population spends 20 or less hours a week playing MMOs. Anecdotally, I have a friend who played WoW casually (1-3 hours a week) for 14 months. He just hit 60 two weeks ago. According to this data, he represents about a quarter of the total market.

By the way have you even played WOW to the end game?  Not to cut Bliz on what they promised, that is still not in the game such as housing, and an actual end game, etc...  But the game has nothing at the end, the entire PvP system is a joke, you do not even compete against the opposing side, you compete against each other for points, and if you do not play 60-80 hours a week you will not hit R14, and as stated you have to slit your buddy’s throat to do it.  Look at the video's that are being made week by week, you will see a ton of players that are deleting their characters and trashing their accounts.  These are not noobs that just hit 60 and wanted to make a statement, these are greatly respected players that have been around since day one and just got sick and tired of all the empty promises that never happened in WOW.

Yes, I played two classes to the mid-40s and one class to 60 over the course of an aggregate total of 8 months subscribed. I enjoyed the time I played since I primarily played it with a group of friends and coworkers. After I hit 60, I raided a little, PVPed a little, and then moved on since I felt I was done with the game.

The videos and noise being made are a small but extremely vocal minority of players; if they actually had an impact, we'd see declining sub numbers. Do we? No. So while a few immature power-gamers may be whining up a storm (really - making a video of deleting your character?) the market seems to say that it's not quite tired of WoW yet.

Are some people? Sure. There were people tired of it before it came out. Am I saying that I wouldn't like an MMO with certain other features? No, I'm not. Go read my Wurm article; my personal favorite game features come from the virtual world camp, which are arguably the most trampled-on by a WoW-dominated market.

But fortunately there is some neat stuff coming up; I was favorably disposed to Tabula Rasa and Age of Conan at E3, both of which are due out this year. Warhammer Online could do some neat things for PVP, and that's due next year. There's a slew of smaller games I haven't written about or haven't heard of yet - Pirates of the Burning Sea for one - that are doing different, neat things.

However, the tone of your article was "these things must change and they must change now and in every game to come". It's the sort of naive, absolutist tone you hear on an official board rant. Things are changing, but, like Righ said, it's slow when you look at it on a day-by-day basis.

If you really, REALLY feel that passionately about the points you posted, then get some VC funding and start an indie studio. There's MMO middleware now (BigWorld, for example) that significantly eases the burden on new studios. If you want to go the Hobbyist route, you could try the Minions of Mirth engine.

[Margalis]

Welcome to 2001.

[Cheddar]

12 months * 15 + 50 for a Box = 230.   

By any account thats some pretty fucking good profit on a game. As stated before, a game that still maintains top 10 placement.  We here celebrate generic rage. 

But this... this is psuedo rage.  Or something.  mmm Beer.

[Yoru]

12 months * 15 + 50 for a Box = 230.   

By any account thats some pretty fucking good profit on a game. As stated before, a game that still maintains top 10 placement.  We here celebrate generic rage. 

But this... this is psuedo rage.  Or something.  mmm Beer.

I agree. This thread needs more beer.

[Tale]

Tale ... do you have anything intelligent to say on the topic at hand?

Sometimes I do. I just don't have anything intelligent to say in response to anything you have posted, except STFU.

Tale in the end the one thing we all must face is reality, sometimes this is more difficult for certain peeps to face.

Who the hell taught you how to write? Fuck, that sentence is like internet transmitted face-attacking knives. Jesus.

I faced reality when I read this:

I have wrote

[Margalis]

This is the typical newb mistake:

Go to a new place. Don't get a feel for what the discussion is about, or how it takes shape. Pick a topic. Don't get a feel for what other discussions have already been had on that same topic. Post your own thoughts on that topic on said group, when basic research could have shown you that what you said has already been said 10,000 times before.

Quite frankly it's insulting. If you don't have time to get the lay of the land and do a little research don't expect us to have time to pay attention to you.

[Wolf]

He sure posts a lot 

[Chenghiz]

Heh, a lot of people are paying attention to him, just enough to nitpick him to death.

[Hutch]

However if there is blood on a wall pure [ammonia] or "sudsy" [ammonia] (Her words, not mine) will be the best, but will not get the blood 100% [off] the wall.

Sadism, masochism, blood, peroxide, ammonia.

Your wife beats you, doesn't she.

[Ironwood]

This thread sucks.  Alas, today, it sucks slowly.

[WayAbvPar]

Maybe the extreme Scottish cold is finally affecting the Internet backbone.

[Nebu]

We could act as a public service and offer Mongoose THIS.

Enjoy in good health.

[stray]

I'm glad my first post at WT was in an insigificant thread about Hawaii.

[Xanthippe]

This thread needs more beer.

[stray]

Good choice.

[WayAbvPar]

More beer. Just found out that it is being held across the street from where I will viewing the USA v Italy World Cup game. Pity, that!

[Mongoose]

However if there is blood on a wall pure [ammonia] or "sudsy" [ammonia] (Her words, not mine) will be the best, but will not get the blood 100% [off] the wall.

Sadism, masochism, blood, peroxide, ammonia.

Your wife beats you, doesn't she.

  LOL, I will make sure she does not see this, as I do not want to give her ideas :)

[Mongoose]

  I would like to thank everyone for their comments and statements whether positive or negative.  Of course I would have liked it better if we could have actually stayed on the topic at hand, a little better.  Since I have had other questions and comments from other sources that I have sent the article too, I would like to concentrate on them as I feel that this topic has run it's course here.  If I have some free time, I will be more then happy to stop back and see what is happening, until then though, I must concentrate my efforts elsewhere.  Have a good day and I wish you luck in your future endeavors :)

[schild]

Thanks for being nice. I wish you the best of luck on being an internet-traveling time capsule to 2001 instead of a writer for MPS.



That was taken about a year and a half ago. The internet never forgets. NEVER. I have about 50 more where that came from. Consider it a hobby.