Success and Failure in MMOs

MMO plus additional monthly fees in order to play the game that you already paid for it. No thanks!

I played WoW for some time with a couple of friends - but we gave up on it for several reasons.

Unless you play WoW several hours a day, you are unlikely to get into a guild - casual players look elsewhere. We got tired of teaming up with others only to have them bail halfway through an instance - usually because they had to do their homework or their dinner was on the table! Too many young kids playing the game for my liking.

But the worse aspect (for me anyway) was the total reliance on macros and the mad scramble to get macros when new game updates came out. I tried playing without using macros and found it almost impossible - especially in PvP areas.

I do enjoy Conan though - it's nice to have a little gore in a mmorg. It's just a pity they launched the game with far too many servers - it spread the players too thin and made grouping very difficult. I think it put lots of players off the game and it's suffered as a result.

Originally Posted by Sifter3000

Quote:

Originally Posted by nukeman8
"maybe the primary feature of WoW – was that it was the first finished MMO to launch in the marketplace. That sounds silly, but within the industry, it was a revelation."

Sorry but what?
Am i misreading that or misunderstanding it?

What he means is that prior to WoW, MMO developers believed it was fine to just launch a game that was broken, or missing significant pieces of content, and that they could just fix it with a patch later. Of courst, even post-Wow, this still happens...

thanks for clearing that up, erm yeah WoW wasnt clear of all problems either thou. Suppose it was the best on release that i ever played but still very misleading statement for people that dont know MMO's

I can't stomach the monthly fee. Last time I subscribed to WoW my friend gave me FF12 the next day and I didn't play for the rest of the month. My gaming habits are too sparodic for it. I think I'll need an insanely high disposable income before I try a MMO again. I was tempted by Warhammer, and LotRO is better than WoW imo. Better lore, atmosphere and graphics make a much more immersive game. Damn I want to play it now haha

Why do something different? I got douched on Starwars galaxies so that is why I ask. If the game isn't broke don't try and fix it or make it better. I like the points you guys at bit-tech have made; the article is a great read.
What do you guys think of Final Fantasy XI though?

lol runescape =]

http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/5499/roto1.jpg

I would have to say, I own a copy of almost every mmo listed here. And I keep going back to WoW for just three reasons.
1. Too bugy to play, ie Conan. even after 3 content adding patches, they still screwed the pooch by not fixing gaping memory leaks that would lock up mine and 5 of my friends pcs.
2. Not enough content, or too much repetition of the same thing.
3. Not enough of either pvp action, or only pvp based for a mmo.

i own AOC and warhamer and wow and lord of the rings

3 of the 4 arnt played but wow is

WOWs biggest atraction is still the reason people brought it in the first place. To continue the story from warcraft 3. WOW has become alot more casual friendly since wrath of the lich king. You dont need to play 7 days a week to see the next raid instance cleared. The invension of hard modes has seperated hte elite from the casual in its own way. But you dont have to do the hard modes and thats the main dif.

Id never played an mmo before WOW. And pretty much brought it without knowing what i was buying on release date. I just thought this will be follow up to frozen throne. Now nearly 4 years later i still play it to this day.

Star wars galaxies was fun till everyone became a jedi after that not so fun

Originally Posted by Yemerich

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dreaming
Lots of stuff.

If the thing is just to socialize, why not play Second Life? It used to be a huge success. Now i barelly know anyone that plays it.
I think WoW is still there because you can socialize AND play. Besides that, the community is huge and kinda old. Not as old as UO, but old.

But that's the thing, it's all about the community. Whenever I've tried to play it I try to play it like a traditional RPG and just get fed up. The pull / draw of WoW is questing, raiding, pvping - with friends. In essence WoW is less a game in the traditional sense than it is a new medium for people to connect in.

The problem with other MMOs is they can focus on the game part as much as they like but it is 100% the community that makes or breaks an MMO. Just like nobody would sit in a chat room on their own, if nobody else was playing WoW noone would play that either. So that becomes the problem for new MMOs when they can't draw and keep that community that becomes a place where people can interact and connect with other people whilst playing the game, if they can't get / keep that then they can't beat WoW.

As a pure game, the story is incredibly shallow, I never once felt empathy or any kind of 'involvement' in any of the quests I did, the challenge is not a case of matching yourself properly and using the right tools for the job but rather one of a grind. A game, I feel, needs a narrative, and the problem with WoW is the narrative is created by the player. For me the experience was never as authentic as playing a well scripted game, I mean look at CoD4 and WaW as two examples, some of the most evocative moments in modern gaming really in what is in my opinion what makes a game great.

But then at the end of the day it's just a form of entertainment, and it's what the end user wants to get out of it. I like to have almost a Hollywood experience, I want it to be well crafted and challenging and make me feel good about finishing it and make me feel like the characters matter, like me as the player really matters and forms an integral part of the story. For others they may just care about getting an arbitrary play time figure (player level) as high as possible, or getting their gold as high as possible, and that's their prerogative. Why I've never 'got' games like the Sims because I don't know what I'm supposed to be aiming for, it's fun as a distraction but personally I like to have something to aim for.

Originally Posted by Pugwash
Unless you play WoW several hours a day, you are unlikely to get into a guild - casual players look elsewhere. We got tired of teaming up with others only to have them bail halfway through an instance - usually because they had to do their homework or their dinner was on the table! Too many young kids playing the game for my liking.

Even so, you are basically saying that you need to prioritise the game more than food or school in order to get adequate satisfaction from it. In that context it sounds more like a narcotic than a game you are supposed to enjoy and have fun with, then put it down when you've got 'real world' stuff to do.

As someone who has been a part of the MMO world through all its twists and turns (most of the historicaly awesum games), maybe I can help those of you understand why WoW has a platinum crown of +5 amazing.

I first got addicted, and I mean addicted, to Ultima Online. IMO it's still on my list of awesome games because to this day i've yet to see a class system so brilliant and open. Granted it had its problems (tank mages, hell I was one of 'em).. UO combined medieval fantasy with renaissance lore and had an intriguing and familiar mix that helped to foster the feeling that you'd slipped through a wormhole into another world. The PvP was amazingly fun once people mastered their reflexes and discovered that you can counter spells with other spells. The Bardiche was king, and flame strike was ruled ineffective by the meager magic arrow.

Then came EverQuest, which I first heard tell of on a StarCraft: Brood War clan channel. My in-game friend barby said she was too busy killing dragons to come and give another clan hell. So I dogpiled (lol, can you remember?) EverQuest and thought it looked amazing. I then convinced my mom to get me a copy of the game (I was 15) only to find the horrid words "Monthly Subscription Required." As it was though, that game was so visually advanced that I kept playing the included tutorial and telling my friends I was playing the actual game. Once game cards came around I started playing live and was then 17. The game had seen multiple expansions and I joined the community at Luclin. My high elf wizard was a glass cannon, and I fell in love with wandering the faydark and blowing up the orcs trying to take control. I was addicted again. UO took a back seat for the first time in 4 years and I was immersed in a world that was actually bigger than me. Throwing spells at any new mob coming around, nights spent grinding around the chessboard, and begging in the nexus for a KEI so that I could level faster soon became the way I spent a night. Then I discovered a drink called Rock Star and to this day that bittery tart taste reminds me of sleepless nights in the world of Norrath. What did EQ for me was the graphics and the class gameplay. Being a wizard actually felt like being a WIZARD! Need I actually remind you all of the devastating power of Ice Comet? I could actually NUKE stuff the way i'd envisioned it while reading cheesy fantasy novels. I was the wiz =). Being able to feel like I was fulfilling a fantasy was, in both UO and EQ, was what sucked me in and kept me playing.

I went un a humanitarian mission to Haiti for over a year and when I came back EQ2, WoW, and Guild Wars had all launched. Dear god the choices between 3 visual amazing games all hyped to change the face of MMOs forever. I, naturally, had my eyes set on EQ2, but due to a friend's petition to come and join him in the Korgath USA server of the World of Warcraft I picked up a free trial DVD to test the waters. As a long-time Warcraft fan, and having recently payed through WC3:RoC and Frozen Throne, I was amazed to find that the world of Azeroth had jumped quite nicely from isometric to full 3D. The added bonus of no loading zones or cassic EQ-esque "zones" made the world all the more immersive. Well I still played EQ at this point, and it wasn't until awkward happenstance intervened and a player on my EQ server offered to sell me a wow key for 100 plat in-game. 100 Plat wasn't anything to me, so I forked over a day's worth of grinding and he emailed me the photo of the key as well as a notepad version. I upgraded my game and that was that. I then slowly quested my way through 60 levels and quickly found myself (after months of leveling) in a raiding guild destined for Molten Core. This is where WoW overtook EQ and UO in addictiveness. The storyline surrounding each of blizzard's 20 and 40-man raid instances coupled with the immense social aspect of raiding, and my affinity for being the class clown comedian of Ventrilo led me down a path of gross indulgence. I began raiding 40 hours a week and asked my boss if I could get off earlier on certain nights to attend these raids (he was a long time StarCraft junkie and understood the importance of games in the life of a gamer. Long story short, BC came out and I rolled a new main character to the end of immersing myself in PvP to curb my playtime. I ended up just getting addicted to both sides, and trying to down magtheridon whilst simultaneously trying to rank in arenas led my gameplay to soar to an obscene 100+ hours a week. I was playing about 18 hours a day, and it was bad. Finally I rage quit over a nerf to the functionality of the Shaman's Windfury totem that made it no longer proc off special attacks, making me fairly worthless in arena. That's it, screw you guys, i'm going home.

I spent the next year and a half bouncing from title to title. I tried going to EQ2, and loved their Druid class, but the game was too focused on PvE and I didn't want to relive my raiding days of WoW in EQ2. Also the game is demanding on your system, and my box that played WoW at 60fps in all areas barely chugged its way through the new EverQuest. I tried EVE and found myself zooming around blowing up asteroids waiting for something better to come on TV or for work to start, or whatever it was that was more entertaining that this to come along. I got a copy of Guild Wars from a friend and started playing it. I really liked the Ranger class and finally found a game that could occupy my time, then I tried to get into PvP and found that unless you own all the campaigns than PvP really sucks, and you can't do anything past Random Arenas. So this left me at an odd juncture.

I was still thirsting for the playstyle of my Enhancement Shaman, the spell-tossing battle mage crushing people with a giant mace. I was also looking for a more free-roaming world than Guild Wars could offer, and after sifting through the market, but still pissed at blizzard, I went free server. Free-server WoW helped curb the itch for that playstyle that was so smooth, the controls so simplistic yet so elegant, and a well-laid-out class that could fill multiple rolls at the drop of a hat, that I could finally play the damn thing casually. My wife started playing with me (i was 24 at the time) and I had a blast with her. Then those *******s at Blizzard released Wrath of the Lich King.

I renewed my wow subscription after the same friend that started my wow addiction in the first place told me how awesome the new expansion was, as it had revived his interest in the game as well. I got the expansion and decided to roll a Death Knight.

I have never. EVER. EVAR!!! seen a starting zone so ****ing magnificent and story driven. If a company wants to make a game to topple WoW all they'll have to do is find a story so involved and compelling as the DK storyline then drop the player in it and do everything imaginable to help the player FEEL like they're really an evil *******. Obeying the Lich King's commands I felt the old familiar fire return, and I got my wife an account ready for Live play. In the words of Jim Halpert: "Congratulations Universe. You win." Blizzard had managed to reclaim a VERY disgruntled player.

So while I look forward to games like GW2, or the hoped-for sequel to UO, I simply have to bow down and admit that WoW is the best MMO on the market for he key fact that it's easy to control, it's immersive to a fault, and depite the ease of control of your character gameplay in both PvE and PvP can go to extreme levels of difficulty.

A lot of people fault wow as a game that requires no skill, while this is true in regards to the physical ability of the player (you don't have to develop the mouse-twitch aim reflex of a hardcore FPS player), it is a game of knowledge. You have to know an absurd amount about the game and then develop your reflexes and a lightning-fast mental rolodex of your skills if you wish to compete, particularly in PvP. Not hitting the exact right ability right when you needed to will find you on the losing end of that Shaman vs. Paladin fight you just picked. Not finessing the Retadin to blow his bubble in the wrong part of the fight, or neglecting to to spam your cleanse totem against that rogue will leave you screaming at yourself that you're a noob.

There's so much that went in to making WoW the game of the decade that you really can't narrow it down to one universal constant that is THE REASON that wow is so damned epic. As evidenced by my experience, what sucked me in in the beginning was not what brought me back in the end. What made me bored with other games and want to return to wow was different in each game. With Guil Wars, I just wanted to jump off that cliff and not run around to find the pathing. Hell, i just wanted to JUMP. Conan luckily fizzled before I could get to gamestop to buy it. Thanks first-wavers for saving me the forty bucks. Warhammer was a big one on my list, I played it and though "why not just play wow?" It was too much of a rip-off and it had its problems to boot.

In the end I herald UO as having the best class creation system (choosing you own mix of skills to hone) in the history of the game. EQ gets the "epic" trophy, as nothing, not even WoW (except in a few cases, a la C'Thun and the DK start area) has really been able to give you the feel of a truly huge and epic experience that EQ did. Finally WoW slides in at #3 on my list of greats because it simply felt the most natural. Sitting down in front of a computer to run around on your first Level 1 Undead you really don't have to figure out the controls, they're very intuitive, and this leads you straight into the gameplay. Without fiddling around figuring out how the game works blizzard lets you plop right into the action by letting you use 2-3 skills for a level or two, giving you that first blast of light and DING level 2 within minutes (vs. the 1-hour WTF fest of EverQuest, getting your ass handed to you by a gnoll pup). Then it sends you out of the noob zone into the World.... (of Warcraft).

This is my MMO life story, and the reasons why new games coming out leave me feeling a giant /yawn coming on. (I was in the friends and family beta of Stargate: Worlds and can tell you it's not my cup of tea).

So here's hoping for the next huge thing, but for now WoW is the undisputed king of the world of MMOs, and i'll probably be playing it for a while yet to come, as much as I have to admit that makes me a wownerd. I just can't deny that it's a truly remarkable game. And the story is loose enough to not bind you to it, yet present enough to get into it.

- serial_

I would like to throw in my 2c which has only a little to do with the article (which was very interesting) - rather I want to agree with the few here who dislike WoW and MMOs in general.

I played WoW for a few hours on free trial and I must say I did not enjoy a minute of it. Admittedly the presentation was poor to my tastes about a year ago now - the game had not aged well. But more than this the game asked me to do very boring tasks repetitively: thanks for the 10 boar hides, now get me 20. Oh and yes how about 10 snake leathers or something.

I did play Guild Wars for some time and enjoyed most of it - but as mentioned here Guild Wars is more like a multiplayer game with lots of people playing and visible in common areas, rather than a true MMO game where your interaction is with all players at all times. I did find the Guild Wars story to be average, and the cutscenes would drive me to madness.

I feel very strongly about computer games, but I play them to be immersed, interested and involved. I like HUD-less games with great atmosphere where I feel that I am truly there.. actually I want to feel like I am the *only* one there. Computer games to me have always been about personal involvement, better than a great book, better than a great film.

What WoW and similar games do is remind us that most humans are social animals. WoW is probably so successful because of ease of pick-up and play. It is a good game in that sense, in that it is fun to most people at most times, and it does what it promises to do very well. Blizzard are very very good at making games that do what they are supposed to do and keeping the interaction seamless.

But WoW is *not* a good game when compared to what I see as the greats of modern games: such as Half-Life 2 and episodes, Thief series, Portal, Braid, Psychonauts, Fallout series, Grim Fandango, Planescape Torment and others. I may have only played WoW for a few hours - but those few hours in any of the mentioned games would have me gripped, amazed and happy like a kid in chocolate-land.

Plus.. I have trouble paying a monthly fee :P

I think this quite nicely ties into the 'what makes a game a game' blog post. Really I guess it depends what the player wants from a game, whether like me they demand a strong narrative and a sense of immersion, feeling like you are taking part in some story, or whether you look for a game where you can team up with friends and just run about doing some quests etc.

No mention of the formerly highly anticipated Darkfall. Could it be the worst launch in mmo history?

Originally Posted by rustor
No mention of the formerly highly anticipated Darkfall. Could it be the worst launch in mmo history?

It's a hard fight with Vanguard down there at the bottom but yep, it might just make the cut for worst launch.

Darkfall didn't so much launch as fall off the pier.

got this off youtube

Combatus (2 hours ago)

arkfall is the only MMORPG accessible to the handicapped. You can play as human with down syndrome, elf with Down's syndrome, ork with Down syndrome, EVIL elf with AUTISM, dwarf with Down syndrome, or furry scum.

Originally Posted by Flexible_Lorry


I feel very strongly about computer games, but I play them to be immersed, interested and involved. I like HUD-less games with great atmosphere where I feel that I am truly there.. actually I want to feel like I am the *only* one there. Computer games to me have always been about personal involvement, better than a great book, better than a great film.

But WoW is *not* a good game when compared to what I see as the greats of modern games: such as Half-Life 2 and episodes, Thief series, Portal, Braid, Psychonauts, Fallout series, Grim Fandango, Planescape Torment and others. I may have only played WoW for a few hours - but those few hours in any of the mentioned games would have me gripped, amazed and happy like a kid in chocolate-land.

Plus.. I have trouble paying a monthly fee :P

Most people I know who share your opinion have the same thing in common: you only played for a few hours. Also a better comparison would be Oblivion vs. WoW. Oblivion is an incredibly immersive game, and doesn't suffer from the quests of epic boredom that plague the first 60 levels of wow, but oblivion runs out after 50-80 hours. Wow has enough content to occupy you for a year or so. So it's the quantity vs. quality argument.

On a technical level wow is amazing tho. The art team did an amazing job, you can go and do whatever you want wherever, and you rarely see a loading screen. Each class has a very different playstyle and none of them are very boring. On every design level wow comes through with flying colors. And to expect an MMO of its size to compete with the short and sweet experience of a game like Portal would put it into development longer than Duke Nukem Forever.

My general take on MMOs, having played nearly all of them, loved some, hated others and once violated one horribly with a stick is that they are mostly pretty poor in terms of what they offer within the gameplay itself. Why is this? Because they are a new and somewhat unevolved genre. The development cycle for an MMO takes ages, because they need so much content, and the net result of this is that they are several generations behind other games like the FPS or the RPG, which can be made faster. I mean if we look at Everquest as the daddy of the WoW style of game, it's only about three generations of game old. From EQ to WoW to WAR/AoC.

The actual gameplay of something like LotRO, WAR or AoC is not in my view particularly far from that of Everquest. Age of Conan, WAR and Darkfall have tried in their ways to change the core dynamic of running around pressing numbers to fire off abilities, but they've all failed to do so to some degree.

Age of Conan failed to do it because once the developers had built enough of the game to convince reviewers it was good it all went to hell, the combat became too imbalanced and the much vaunted combos and such like became irrelevant. WAR failed because they still had an eye on WoW when they made it, they wanted the grind, they wanted the PvE, they wanted everything that made WoW popular, but they also wanted balls to the wall PvP, and they ended up with neither. Darkfall failed to change the gameplay much because so much of it is just rotten. Darkfall done really well could have been like an MMO version of Mount and Blade, and would have been genius. But it isn't.

I have high hopes for a lot of impending MMOs but pretty low hopes for the current batch. I'm playing WAR at the moment after a long break and it's got a real circling-the-drain vibe about it. Even with 300,000 players it's only going to go downhill because of gaping flaws that were never addressed. The elephant in the room being the lag, I have no idea how any modern game can justify the amount of lag that WAR has. The big battles of WAR are the crowning glory of the game, supposedly, and yet they have never been smooth, and when it comes to fort attacks they are seldom even playable. Beyond that there are a big pile of other problems, from the lack of incentives to actually fight other players rather than fighting NPCs or winning unopposed to class balance issues and population balance problems. Population imbalance is a game killer in an RvR focussed game because nobody likes to pay a monthly fee to get zerged on a daily basis. The smart thing to do is to have more than two factions, so that if one becomes dominant it has to face the wrath of both enemies, but they missed the boat with that.

Personally i would like to know the Tech and business aspect of MMO. How many servers do Blizzards need for 12 Million active subscribers? How hard is it to scale more users in servers, without setting more servers so friends are kept from playing with each other?

Engine is also important as well. WoW was not graphics intensive, but as you enter Iron Forge, with 100s of active players ( polygons intensive ?) even the greatest graphics card have troubles....

Bots- No other company work as hard as blizzard at banning players for using cheats / bots. Which for many casual players is very important.

Although i really hope Blizzard will make an Word of Warcraft 2 that carries with better graphics.... and doubles the content.... Many players are find it old and left with nothing to do.

if you have nothing to do in wow you've got problems.

Originally Posted by serial_
if you have nothing to do in wow you've got problems.

Um, A-men,
I find my little guild likes to take shifts into what were into, pvp, collecting rare items, raiding, crazy stunts, gold grinding, or even just playing alt-toons to either see whats out there, or as penalty for dumb remarks.

Originally Posted by D-Cyph3r
I've never played an MMO (and never will), but everything I hear about them just sounds absolutely mind destroyingly horrid....

You shouldn't knock something you've never even tried though.

It's true that they are designed to be addictive and suck people in, but they are addictive because people love what they are doing. You are playing and enjoying yourself and you keep saying, "Just one more hour". Before you know it you've spent an entire night playing, and then the next night when you get home, you just want to jump back in again. So it's addictive for a reason. There are no drugs involved, and no mind control, it's addictive purely because people want to keep playing it because they are enjoying themselves. You have to give these games credit for achieving that.

Also there are things that make these games special and people don't really talk about it because it's a given to anyone who has played it. So if you haven't experienced them properly for yourself, you are only hearing the best and the worst things and none of the stuff in between, and it's mostly that which makes these games special. For example, for me, these games have made it much harder to enjoy normal RPG's, purely because they don't last any way near long enough. In Oblivion or Gothic 3 or something, I am blasting through an adventure and getting gear and building up my character and before I know it, I've reached the final bad guy, killed him, and it's all over. They last a week, maybe two weeks, maybe even a month if I do all the side quests. So I find it hard to become involved at all in my character because it's such a disposable character.

In the likes of EverQuest however, I played it for an entire year before I reached the end, and I was totally hooked all the way. By the time I reached the end, they started patching in free new content, and then a massive expansion pack came out adding about another year's worth of content. When you have an RPG character with that much of a future, I find I get far more involved in them. There are several things like this which makes these games really special, and most people don't describe all this stuff. You can only really fully appreciate it if you get stuck in to a game like this.

Originally Posted by 2bdetermine
MMO plus additional monthly fees in order to play the game that you already paid for it. No thanks!

There is a good reason for that subscription though. You pay for the game only once, the subscription is to pay for the privilege of playing on a server with over 2000 real people from all over the world. That costs money. It may be free to play Counterstrike or something, but you are only playing with a handful of people. This is different. Also included is better support and free new content added which you just don't get in other games.

As for the cost itself, it's so incredibly cheap and good value, I can't imagine people not being able to afford it, unless they already have other hobbies or something. I think a WoW subscription is about £10 for an entire month... I spent about twice that on Friday night alone when I went to watch the new Terminator movie at the cinema, and that only lasted about 2 hours. If I go out drinking I spend 3 or 4 times that in one night. So £10 for an entire month is great value, especially if you play it a lot. I think with most people, they really get in to these games and end up playing them every night and it becomes their main hobby. So if you work out how much it costs per hour of entertainment, it's a couple of pennies.

Guild Wars is just perfect for me..and yes i know that its not a "true" MMO..
Great balance in pve and pvp..hard story-line..very good game support..weekly or monthly updates..and after almost 2years this game that i play this game, it has more and more to give! its just up to you how far you want to go in this games and i dont have the "stress" play the game because i just pay for the month ;)