The Stagnation of MMO industry/genre and why

MMOs are like every other American product a business first.

There's no money to be made by creating a gamers utopia, much like theres no money to be made in building a car that will last 100 years. Developers will continue to push out inferior product after inferior product because its more profitable to sell 10 stinky bags of poo than it is to sell 1 golden ticket.

Dude, relax, im not attacking wow. Im explaining that the covers on the hamster wheel came off. If youre going to grind all day in a game with pretty mundane gameplay, you might as well do it in the game where youve already made those friends and made that reputation. We arent actually arguing (though we might be if you think the future is just to try and repeat the gameplay components of wow (they kinda suck honestly - hamster wheels are tedious) and this is pretty much the point: why play that game, when theres one youve already sunk in around $500 and countless hours of chatting, bonding and forum trolling? Wouldnt it just be better to keep your account in the earlier game. So long as wow is held up as the template for mmo gaming (lets not do the whole "there was a history of mmo gaming before wow!" thing), and mass subscriptions, then that game is going to do poorly now. No one wants the hamster wheel (except hardcore mmo gamers i suppose).

Yeah we basically agree, except I think a really well-done grind can work. If SWTOR can't afford story updates, and they want to push people into alts like they seem to, they need to add a boatload of sidequests and alternative ways to level up. I'd note they're a step in the right direction there by offering daily missions plus LFG bonuses plus flashpoint loot every day, which let you skip some sidequests and the Bonus series.

And if I were them I'd basically find a way to all but retcon the class story endings to make them more open ended and uncertain. Most of the class stories I played basically felt like "The End" after it was done - that's just a terrible terrible way to script an MMO.

But yeah, it's time for some out of the box thinking, but for this game they said the story was the out of the box idea. So like the OP said, where's the story?

No offense but this is just another wall of text explaining what you think MMO's should be.

None of those reasons have anything to do with the "stagnation" of the industry. In fact, the number of people playing MMO's is pretty steady. Your thread title is misleading.

The MMO industry is unique in the sense that if your game is a "hit" people will invest many hours of their lives playing it and nothing else. This means that for a game to be a huge success, it has to bring people in from other games and hook them into actively playing and staying.

Many of your points are valid but they are opinions.


1. Sharding is not the demon people make it out to be. It can be used to great effect to allow many more people onto fewer clusters of servers and can, when done properly, lead to a game feeling more populated and alive. I like the thought of an open world too. It's why I play Eve online. Eve caps out around 32-36 thousand users logged on simultaneously in one world, they are not, however , all in the same zone. When large numbers of players hit one zone, it struggles.

2. This getting rid of the trinity thing never works and it never will. It doesn't work because there are, believe it or not, a lot of people who only enjoy playing healers or tanks. It doesn't work because it is nearly impossible to design encounters that don't devolve into ping ponging a mob between dps until it dies. That's pretty much how every encounter goes with no trinity. Kill it before it kills you. There are people who enjoy this but it has been tried and it never produces the "success" that your post implies MMO's should attain by being rid of the trinity.

3. Again, good idea but falls apart in the implementation. Been tried, fell flat. I won't say that somebody out there won't do it again and with some success. I would like to see more of this too but again, this is a personal taste issue. Many people enjoy having a known enemy and in a game like SWTOR, it is a necessity as the entire premise is a war between two factions.

4. Again, I agree and would like to see more attempts at something along these lines but I have little faith that any current developer can do it in the current MMO climate. Games in general lean on this very heavily as a way for people to feel like they have "progressed" or have "improved" their character. I'm not saying it's impossible to provide this same feeling without levels, just that nobody has been able to do it with any success. MMO's in particular, need you to have a reason to keep logging on and a level "cap" provides this, for the first few weeks anyway.

5. Various developers have done or are doing those things. Some of these games have decent little niche markets and are considered successful by many. I think EVE is one of the most successful MMO's ever created but I'm not comparing it to WoW and I think that is part of the problem with the premise of your entire post. Just because no other game has achieved WoW's success doesn't really make the rest of the industry "stagnant" or mean it has failed.

6. Investors are the reason the types of games you lament the lack of rarely get made. In fact, your entire post could have just been one word in response to the title. Investors.

Again, no offense, your post was intelligent and reasonable. Just wanted to provide a few counter-points.

Very well said and I agree with this post. WoW is still the King of the Hill because they simply do things better and appeal to a broader player base. The closest any MMO has come to it is Rift. Not in numbers, but in the way the game is designed and played. I enjoy the way combat is done in both of those.

There was a really good thread the other week about linear questing in SWTOR. I would link it, but im not trawling through the forums to be honest But yeah, heres where they fall down in this game:

go to this part of the map. Crawl through this generic and oft used dungeon area. Complete "bonus quest!!!". Click three blue things: Tepeport home (or if no teleport quietly curse you dont have a stealth character and regrind all the respawns) come back. Repeat ad infinitum.

I played the secret world in the 3rd beta, (and Ill be playing it after this sub runs out to be honest). Im sure it wont appeal to even 30-40% of this playerbase, but the questing in the starting zone is phenomenally diverse and entertaining. As is the lore. Star wars (and massively in thanks to KOTOR) has amazing lore, but really you dont get that much in this game. There are story quests of course, (which i love, and which i assume you love), but theyre really tied into the minutia of the current situation following the treaty of corusanct and the empires naughty attempt to derail it and drag the republic into a war they cant really win (forgive me, im empire at the moment).

Alas, on top of this, the real meat and potatoes of the gameplay is none the less pure grind. I understand that is a staple of mmo gaming, but thats also whats at the heart of the problem. The designers thought the gameplay was what caused the explosion in wow, but i would argue that it was affordable technological advances (faster cheaper internet and faster cheaper computers). Wow just happened to deliver a jaw droppingly exciting (though part 'copied') game at exactly the time it all happened. Maybe if those advances took place in 2000 instead and everquest wasnt so brutally mean to the casual player, (lets not underestimate this as well), it might be everquest that had 12,000,000 subs and wow was just a footnote in mmo gaming like warhammer or rift are now.

So yeah, sw needs to start stealing some ideas from its competitors. It also needs to start understanding (though honestly it should have long before now) that the theme park needs to have gaming components from various genres of gaming. Not just RPGs, but all types of games. I sarcastically posited a donkey kong quest where you have to leap barrels rather than dropping mobs... but honestly, why arent there more quests like this... why arent there platform components? Well... aside datacrons... which brings me to another point. Why are datacrons so sidelined? Why are they so personal? Why arent there archeological treasures to be discovered? Why am i, a jedi, going around slaughtering everyone i see? After the genocide ive commited for cash and experience, how can i honestly be light sided anything? Im a merc. A cold sellsword.

Why dont we have RTS quests next to fps quests, next to rpg quests, next to puzzle quests? Why is it always go here grind 50 mobs, click 3 blue switches, pop back...?
Theres a pure lack of vision at the heart of MMOs. Theyre too quick to think its the gameplay we enjoy. The gameplay though is the means to the end. Its the playerbase and our standing within it we enjoy i would think, but the hamster wheel actually sucks for the most part. But there are ways to keep the cover from slipping.

That is wrong. And if BW devs think the same they should fire themselves.

Its about dev. time and releasing a product in a relative small time of development to make a return in the investment as well.

However, swtor had the financing ot make a utopia... however, they decided to also VO and cinematics... and in 3 languages.

That takes a huge cut out of the potential of developing different content as well.

However, in the long run,BW could make swtor into a greater game to fit a larger audience but at the risk of taking a cut to development costs to include 3 languages in VO and cinematics with a lot of lvling content and not much end game content at release.

You know I didn't realize that - did they really do full voice overs in French and German? With native voice actors instead of just translation? That must have cost a fortune.

To the OP, you said...
....."1. Get rid of sharding, have one single world
2. Get rid of trinity, everyone is DPS OR invent new fun roles
3. Get rid of static factionalism. Everyone is same faction with the ability to form their own rival groups or have dynamic factions.
4. Get rid of levels and grinds. Introduce fun in the journey and forget about the destination. Introduce vanity, quality-of-life and title rewards for the achievement oriented players....

1. This is very hard to do from a technical point of view. When you have players who want the best graphic looks available and get more than say, 100 players on the screen at one time, most computers will choke and come to a super slow crawl.

2. Na. The Trinity is a proven way for large teams to control encounters. Having the different roles is what makes runs interesting and challenging to a lot of players. Some players love tanking or healing and take a lot of pride in perfecting thier roles.
WoW is adding "challenging" encounters in thier next expansion and for those who want to not have to worry about a tank or healer, those can be done in grps of 3. But the typical trinity is here to stay for most encounters

3. I agree with this point. Their should be options to remain neutral and independent if a player chooses to be. Never could understand why all smugglers or bounty hunters have to stay loyal to any one faction. Makes no sense from the lore or story concept of Star Wars.

4. Progession is a natural part of a MMO and is a good way to judge the progress of your char and also to program encounters and gear for those chars. However, UO does not have levels as such and the new MMO The Secret World ( which sucks, I played the beta ) will not have one ether. So it can be done. Grinding is work and can be boring for sure. But anything worth having requires a lot of time and boring work. Just the way things are.

Yes they did.

Also GW2 was duped into doing the same beleiving this was the wise thing to do.

The world speaks english. If not, they should learn english. They only need subtitles for expanding to other foriegn markets. There is no need to release a weaker product in a competitive market at greater risk of not being able to deilver a more refined product to any market.

If swtor was more refined for the english speaking MMO players the game would have done better without the extra work of French and german VO. It is only because the demographics are smaller but the work is the same if not more having people doing cinematics and lip syncing in a foreign language and getting it 'right'.

Doing VO in French and German was more of a favor to them than a business decision since Germans and French can speak english or definitely understand... especially if they are SW fans. I would not object to VO in other languages if BW had more money than they needed and decided to solidify other market share after solidying a great or greater product at release, and swtor still needs a lot of features, and 6 months later it still needs stuff that should be at release imo.