I've been playing MMORPG's since they were nothing but words on a screen (MUDs). Muds were free, they were worth playing because the creators just wanted to make the gamers happy. Now days, games are just a money-making racket, and there's really no originality, no creativity left. It's all about the money now, and I'm sick of patronizing the same corporations lining the pockets of fat cat businessmen who are in essense insulting my artistic integrity as a player by expecting me to even TRY much less play the drivel they're putting on the market.

I played MUDs back in the day, before Everquest came out, then I played Everquest. I never tried Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot and Ultima Online, so I don't know anything about those other early games, but I'm assuming they were good for a reason; they were pioneers experimenting with gaming, trying to find ways to make the players happy. I'm assuming the developers were all exploring games just like the players were, and having every bit as much fun. When I heard people in my MUD talking about a MUD with graphics, Everquest, I thought, "cool..." they're making muds even better!

As it turns out, Everquest was better. It was really cool. It still had the text of a MUD, the emotes of a mud, the "Consider" feature of a MUD and tons of other features that were EXCLUSIVE to muds. (I think the "Hail" command started out in MUDS). So don't try to tell me Everquest wasn't created from a MUD background. I will never believe that. Ever. Anyway, Everquest was a lot better because it had new features, features that players liked. They just wanted to make players happy. Then along came Sony, the big conglomeration... soon after, AA points surfaced as a *sigh* money making scheme. They felt players needed a reason to keep playing. What it did was make Everquest an uber guild fiasco where you had to play for a year to earn enough AA's to be on par enough to get into the "in-crowd".

Then came Star Wars Galaxies. I thought SWG was so awesome that I couldn't see straight when it came out. I had a lot of fun in that game, and thought it would never end. But, it did end, and again, all because of money. Sony made a major mistake with the Jedi system, and didn't have a backup plan when everybody started to figure out how to unlock a Jedi slot for their account. The Jedi of the server, which were initially supposed to be controlled at about 20 per server, began to spiral out of control. I myself unlocked 3 Jedi accounts in 6 months. This, in turn, led to a massive influx of Jedi which made Sony feel obligated to cater to the whining crowd who didn't have common sense enough to figure out how to become a Jedi, lest they might *gasp* lose money because the whiners were threatening to quit the game. What did Sony do? They wanted money, so they made a Jedi village where everyone who worked for a few months could go and learn their Jedi skills. Did they stop there? Not even close. They ultimately made a Jedi slot, something which some dedicated players worked for over a year to unlock, something everyone could pick at character creation. Why? They wanted money, and had no back-up plan to curb an out of control Jedi population. In addition to people whining about wanting to be a Jedi, people whined because they wanted to win in PvP and skilled players kept beating them. Sony, tried and tried to balance the classes, but ultimately were unable to stop the whiners. Why? They were trying to balance a system that was fine. In response to whiners, Sony was running themselves in circles, unable to figure out what they were doing wrong. In frustration, unable to realize that they balanced everything fine, and people were just whining because they didn't know how to play, they finally decided to just start over with the dreaded *dun dun dun* COMBAT UPDATE. Seasoned players who loved the game for a long time were suddenly made the victims, and forced to play a game they really didn't like any more. Why did this all happen? Just like the Jedi fiasco, the combat update fiasco occurred because Sony was so afraid of losing paying customers that they ruined the game.

Everquest 2, another Sony prize, was no exception to the rule. I played in the beta, thinking to myself, "This game is going to be so awesome! It's going to be like Everquest 1 with better graphics!" Much to my chagrin, EQ2 was being designed to be, instead of like EQ1, a balance fiasco, possibly because of their traumatized state from dealing with players in SWG. Every class was the same as every other class. A paladin was exactly the same as a warrior with only slightly different support skills. A necromancer was like a magician with only slightly different pets and support spells. Further evidence of the balance fiasco was the fact that all the weapons for a given level had the same exact damage per second. Some weapons were slower, but did more damage. I did the math and they all had a DPS difference of no more than about 0.2 damage per second.

Then it hit me... they were trying to make a clone of FFXI, just for money! (This is what started it all for me--all of my loathing of the gaming industry because of the copying and pasting of other competing games just to make a dollar). Why did I come to this conclusion? Well, at the time, I put two and two together, recognizing that these weapons were similar to those in Final Fantasy XI. The overall feel of the game was VERY close to FFXI, and all the vendor weapons, unlike EQ1 but VERY like FFXI, had very similar DPS outputs. As I recall, but memory doesn't serve, even the skills, UI, and the groupings of mobs had the feel of FFXI. Why would they emulate another game? I figured it MUST have been because FFXI was the most popular game on the market at the time, and Sony, rather than create something new and innovative, wanted to go with a safe bet.

Vanguard? Surely Vanguard wouldn't be an exact copy of another competing game, could it? Say it isn't so... I played Vanguard for a while today, and it felt like I was playing World of Warcraft with nicer graphics but, overall, the same features. I'm not doing the great Vanguard justice, I know, but to me, it will always be another clone of another popular game--with no innovation, simply a copy/paste job put on the market to compete with another game. I won't play either one.

But wait, the rabbit hole gets even deeper... If I were you, I wouldn't take the rumors that Sony had no involvement in the creation of Vanguard seriously. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if Sony, knowing of their poor reputation, circulated the rumor as part of a massive, orchestrated public relations scam to fool players previously jaded towards Sony into trying Vanguard. This is still good money for Sony. Even if people don't like Vanguard, it looks like they're still going to have sold at least 100k copies of the game within a week of release. These people can't get a refund because they opened the box. Do the math: 5 million dollars. Add to that the subscription fees per month of the few hundred thousand players that will ultimately play for at least a few months and you get another 5-7 million conservatively. Now, how hard is it to make slightly nicer looking trees and grass than those in Everquest 2? How hard is it to draw 30 new character models? How hard is it to draw 50-70 new monsters and 50-80 new building textures? These artist renderers are experts, remember! I wouldn't be surprised if one guy can do 4 character models in one week. They already have the coding to make the NPCs and PCs run around and I'm willing to bet they have programs that are so comprehensive that one guy can make an entire zone in a week once the textures are all designed. What do we really know about the gaming industry through first hand experience? Is it plausible to believe that it's all just an elaborate Scotty maneuver to make us think it's harder than it really is to make a new game? I'm really getting "out there" with this paragraph, so if it provokes you to a strong opinion, remember it's not the point of my post.

The point of the post is that the gaming industry is losing it's soul in exchange for money. The above examples are just my experiences as a gamer, hoping with the innocense of youth that something like a game would be put on the market to entertain people, not take advantage of them. Everquest 2, SWG, Vanguard... On to some other games, now...

Dungeons and Dragons Online is a great game. I like it a lot. The gameplay is just plain good. The playerbase on some of the servers is really hard to deal with, and I don't want to get into how communities are a product of their environment. DDO's makers, Turbine, are making LotRO. LotRO is a game I have also played, thinking it would obviously, since it has the foundation of the amazing Middle Earth franchise underneath it, be the best MMORPG ever made. As it turns out, after playing LotRO, I see, AGAIN extreme similarity to... I can't say anything else without violating the NDA and getting this post deleted.

What other games are left? Tabula Rasa? Age of Conan? Eve Online? Frankly I'm jaded to the point of becoming Amish as it is. I don't even want to try another game because every. single. new. game. I've. tried. that I had high expectations for is from my perspective a clone of something else and has no soul at ALL.

I'll close by defining Avant Garde and Kitch.

Avant Garde artists are the true innovators of society. These are the people that create art for the sake of art. They have a small dependence on art collectors because they need money to survive, but the collectors like the artists to be just how they are, so as not to taint the soul of the art.

Then there's Kitch. Kitch is art for the sake of money. Kitch artists ride the coat tails of real artists, selling everything they can get their grubby hands on, trying to make as much money off of each new art fad before ultimately causing it to run into the ground because they proliferate the public with junk imitation art that makes it lose its soul.

This new stuff by Sony and Turbine is all Kitch. Mark my words. They're ruining the game industry with carbon copies that are a waste of our time and insulting to our gaming integrity. I will feel _VIOLATED_ if another game comes out that I have high expectations for--thinking that the graphics they _ALLOW US TO SEE_ look really beautiful, and that since it's based upon a really awesome franchise it's going to be the best game ever created--only to try it and see that it's just another project put out there just to make money, drawn up in a board room by 10 guys in a board room. These guys aren't even smart enough to select an effective array of target player demographics and design a game that is ergonomic and efficient yet fun to play. No.... they're so lazy they just copy whatever is successful!

_VIOLATED!!!!!!_

Too much text. Once you said you didn't play DAoC or UO but played EQ I stopped reading.

same.

its like saying "i recently played softball, man....sports have went way downhill since i played baseball as a kid"

I actually agree with most of your points. But you also need to realize that by playing SOE games, especially the EQ/Vanguard series, you are not exactly going with the most original games on the market. If you dig sci-fi, I really suggest you try out EVE on a free trial, it is the most original MMO on the market and a very deep game. Certain aspects of it turn people off though.

What is really driving the MMO market towards unoriginality though is the huge cost of developing and maintaining these games, and the business-side tendency of going with whatever has been proven to work. I mean, look at Vanguard - it was supposed to be a "3rd generation MMO" and due to business considerations all it ended up being was the same old thing with new graphics and a couple of shiny things tacked on like boats (wait, they had those in UO).

The original MMOs seemed awesome because they were new, and also because, well, they actually did things that to an extent we haven't even seen since them. UO allowed players to alter the world in ways that we haven't seen since and had mounts, boats, and housing probably better than any games since then. The problem being isometric view and OSI and EA screwing up the PvP. AC had awesome PvP, a really original guild system, and cool systems and world events. EQ was a total MUD ripoff but they did have a cool world, however, they introduced all the PvE, grind, loot whoring, whining crap that I really blame for ruining the market. DAOC came out a while later but still before the market was a big deal, and introduced RvR and objective based PvP. Lineage created the paradigm of the asian grinder.

Since then, though, adventurous, original games have really never paid off, unfortunately, usually since it's only the smaller studios that will attempt them. The only successful games are ripoffs of EQ or Lineage.
Shadowbane - killed off by poor interface/controls, and an overly griefable PvP system.
Dragon Empires - brilliant idea, entirely developed without viable server code.
AC2 and Horizons - total pieces of crap despite good ideas.
CoH - original and got bought by NCSoft, but lacks the depth of gear, crafting, and a real economy, and unfortunately the market wasn't so interested in a super hero MMO - still around, but not hugely popular.
Ryzom - basically just lack of marketing ability, people never got very interested in this game, granted it wasn't so amazing to play either, though not terrible.
Trials of Ascension - yeah, like this ever had a chance of coming out. Nice website.
WISH - total lack of any business sense in the development team, and apparent inability to hire someone who had any.
Mourning - having worked for this game I could make a post longer than pointman's about it alone, but let's just say that making a promise and fulfilling a promise are two different things.
Dark and Light - can you say total lack of any ability to make a decent game, or even a freaking .exe? I had to download 5 programs to install this game, and it played like crap after years of hype.
IRTH online - who the hell knows, do they even have a full staff capable of creating a game?

The main exception to this is EVE which is not only a brilliant and well made game, but has a viable and intelligent business model.

Basically until a major developer takes on an original project we are going to be stuck with more Everquests, WoWs, and Lineage2s. We can hold out hope for Darkfall, they seem to be moving toward beta and are certainly putting out more information about the game. But even that is doubtful until (if) they can find a publisher.

But really, major studios need to turn a profit. Games need to turn a profit. And MMORPGs - especially ones that are original and introduce things that can't simply be ripped off from another source, are expensive to make. The small studios willing to take a risk to make a great game more often than not realize too late that they need to make MONEY - which they don't have in the first place - and this is what kills them.

Can we get an opinion on Lineage 2? Since this is the L2 forum, and im assuming you have played it to be here.

L2 is teh sux. 'Nuff said.

This is a shared off topic forum Eili, not just L2 players post here anymore. It got changed while you were away... anyway it seems like they have not played L2.

Oh ok well I didnt know ^^.

That's what happens when you're British.

*jab*

Missed ya, Eil!

OH SNAP!

OH NOES, ELI IS BACK!!!!! Welcome back

/me murders moon horribly.

HEY ELLY!

Stick around, listen to me on lineage radio, i could use an extra listener since half the servers seemed to die horribly.

Hey, I *liked* AC2. Microsoft's screwing around with it didn't help, but it wasn't total crap..

Some people like Maple Story. Some people like Auto Assault. Some people like DDO. Some people like Barbie's Pony Adventure.

It takes a lot for a major commercial MMO that reaches launch to be completely shut down.

Some people like Hello Kitty, too. :p

To the OP you need to spread your wings a bit and fly far away from SOE to find original games. I understand what you mean by many games feel the same, but i cant agree the MMO business is dying. Back 6 years ago when UO had 200,000 subscribers it was a hell of a big thing! UO and EQ were the only 2 games realy making headway on the market. They were fresh and original. Now WoW has what? 6,000,000 subscribers? Hell of a big thing id say!

I guess what many people are waiting for nowdays is a sort of evolution of MMOs. We are waiting for something new and different to come along. Look at the console market for example. For years we just had joysticks with consoles like atari 2600. Then we got control pads with master systems and nes'. Control pads have changed a lot scince then but untill recently everything from the PS to the gamecube used control pads. Now we have the Wii and its awsome energetic control system.

So you can look at it like this, in all the years consoles have been around theres been 3 big evolutions in the way the games on them are controlled. In comparison we had MUDs for years, scince the dawn of the internet. Then suddenly we got graphics with UO, EQ and so on. Now we have grown, there will soon be a MMO player in every household. Just like a few years ago we pretty much decided there was a console in nearly every household. Now we wait for the next big evolution on how we play MMOs. :-)

Skullbreaker:
UO allowed players to alter the world in ways that we haven't seen since and had mounts, boats, and housing probably better than any games since then. The problem being isometric view and OSI and EA screwing up the PvP.

As a UO player id like to point out that having UO as an isometric view is a good thing. Not only is it more individual but it feels like a game system that should be played in the isometric view. Would a game like say, Baldurs Gate be the same game if it was made as a 1st/3rd person style game?

Just my 2 pennys :-)

Yeah, UO is meant to be isometric but it scares away a lot of players who are more used to a 3d view, that was my only point about that. I never had a problem personally with UO being iso.

Shame realy isnt it? I mean even after AoS it still offers so much more than half the other games out there :-(

Nah, they have really screwed it up badly. The feel of it is gone completely. For whatever reason they won't release a "classic" server which I guarantee would draw tons of players back - but I guess that is the attitude of most major game devs these days.

Me and my brother constantly talk about that Skull, Mythic did it for DAoC, and those three servers have more players than the rest of the servers combined. Once they added classes (Necromancer, Paladin) to a skill-based game, they killed it. And adding Ninjas and Samurais was just retarded.

I agree they should make classic servers, i also agree UO is screwed up in comparison to what it was, but would everyone still play if the game had never changed? Thats not an entirely straight forward question. I quit many games because i become bored of them. I wish they hadnt introduced tram at times (that kinda banished me to siege perilous for a long time and made me have a 1-2 year quitting time) but i still go back to UO after what... 9 years now? It still gets my attention.

Pointman, it'd be interesting to know your age. At 24, i've been playing games for maybe 10 years.. and i've got to say the games you find these days are not as good as the ones we used to get.

Daggerfall, to me, was the pinnacle of RPG games. I never learnt the plot, I never advanced in the game, but it was sure as hell fun stealing from shops if you waited until nighttime. Morrowind came along and... it was atrociously designed, more bugs than Elite 3! (Elite 3 was also the greatest, so much fun until you lost the manual). Games these days focus on things other than gameplay, because they can.

In the previous decade, games had to rely on their skills to get by, these days they all try to get by on looks alone. I agree Mmorgs are not as good as they used to (I never got into Muds because they all sucked if you didn't actually bother to learn all the commands and such).

Another series of games i've played is Championship Manager (Now branched out into Footie Manager) I began CM2 and I felt it peaked back then... sure you get more options now, but it's not as much fun these days.

I think if you asked a 13 year old, you'd find they could play 25 hours a day of WoW and the like, but would scoff at the games you'd consider classics...

It's hard to state whether a game is better or not unless you are prepared to get 1000 people to rate the top ten games of the year every year for the next 2 decades and compare the scores to see if there is any change.

I guess I'd have to disagree with the Sony hating. I know it's great fun for some people but if you do it, You have to at least be savy enough to know that Sony was always part of EQ, from the begining, and that it wasn't the case of"EQ was a great game and the Sony came along and screwed it up". Explain Qeynos if that was the case. That was always in the game.

I also disagree with the EQ2 statement that, in your example, a Warrior and Palidin are the same. My EQ2 main is a necro and I play my toon completely differently than a mage. So I wonder actually how much you played that game.

To me, this is just anothe nay-sayer Sony hater post. I mean come on. MMORPGs dying? I imagine we are still in the early stages of it's life cycle. Maybe to you though because it doesn't sound like you're having fun. I am and I play a lot.

I get your point that ideas are shared around and all games feel the same. The are all the same but different. I think you are REALLY underestimating the time and reasources needed to develop,things especially game art. EQ2 modeling is pretty extensive for the gear on the varible sizes. How hard is it to make 70 mobs? It's not a one person job.

As far as the future goes, I've seen some of the games Sony is working on. They are different. I am excited about them and believe them all to be a little innovative and they aren't chasing the market with carbon copies of success stories either. Just more fun for us on the Station Access and I think, generally as a company, they want their players to have fun. Sure they want money but that's just business.

EvE online is not a clone

you basicly listed why I stopped playing so many other online games

but as far as EvE online goes well, while I wouldn't recomend the game to anyone that likes WoW and likes fast paced action games. well that;'s just it, It's SO unlike any other Mmo that it has a player base of 170,000 for a reason

but that's still 170,000 players on one server

which while not 8 million

is 170,000 people, I use to think that wasn't a lot to, but hell wait 8 million is just beyond huge 170,000 is still more than needed.

now that's that's out of why, dispite all of it's problems and features that push most gamers away, I kindy ask you remove EvE form you list of mmo's

because it's not a MMORPG, it's a MMOFPRTS
that updates so much that well

OK TO PROVE EVE HAS CHANGED!

1up.com EGM, eve online got a 4 out of 10

just last month games for windows, which is the same company renamed ReReviewed EvE online

and gave it a 9 out of 10

they gave a 3 year old game the same score as newer titles

for a reason

while reviews aren't the frist thing I trust, going form a 4 to a 9, after 3 years, for a game with a "tiny" player base is great.

it's not like they were trying to please the 170,000 players form all over the world lol, that wouldn't, make MONEY, like you said

original point rebuttal: LIES!!!! THE MMORPG INDUSTRY IS FAR FROM DYING YOU YELLOW-BELLIED B@$TARD!think about it, wow has over 8 million subscibers....sound dying? and WAR is coming, thats gonna have a LOT of subscribers.

belac:
original point rebuttal: LIES!!!! THE MMORPG INDUSTRY IS FAR FROM DYING YOU YELLOW-BELLIED B@$TARD!think about it, wow has over 8 million subscibers....sound dying? and WAR is coming, thats gonna have a LOT of subscribers.

Way to rez a thread. So what if WoW has 8 million players, that player base is world wide. The majority of that base also happens to be loyal Blizzard fans.

Yea, WAR may be coming out, that doesnt mean its gonna be "good". Most people going to WAR are probebly die hard fans of the tabletop games. I was a die hard DnD fan. Was DDO any good? No, you could hit the cap in 5 hours. Companies now adays are making games based from hype.

So far, WAR does look good, but who knows, maybe they will go and bomb the hell out of it for all we know.

Case in turn, just because select MMOs have a good player base, that doesnt mean anything. Look at the number of MMOs available. Most of those games are dying, yet some stand strong.

true....an mmo has to be quite good, yet also populated to keep from dying. think about it, auto assault was quite entertaining yet with the amount of people that it keeps it decides to self-destruct. whilst WoW is fun to some yet boring to others....its player base IS what keeps it alive, so all of these things connect. and as for WAR, yes, at any second EA could screw it up

*ahem*

World of Warcraft now has 9 million 'active' subscibers unlike Lineage 2 which has had 14 million 'registered accounts' - most of which are either inactive or banned (mostly the later)

After reading all this and thinking about it (for 30 seconds) I say we all like things for varying reasons as it appears to me to be the point of the topic.

I love World of Warcraft.

I love Lineage 2.

Both for different reasons.

Reasons which wont be repeated because there ultimately unncessary nor required. ^^

Too bad they don't have a My Little Pony Galaxy Auto Assault MMO. I'd play that!

Niceven:

I love World of Warcraft.

I love Lineage 2.

Both for different reasons.

Reasons which wont be repeated because there ultimately unncessary nor required. ^^

Same here nice. Now i'm close to 70 on WoW i treat it more like counter strike than an MMO. I'll hop on, have a few quick blasts in battlegrounds or go on a raid, then i'm done, it's mor