The Stagnation of MMO industry/genre and why

It's a MYTH that the MMO market is stagnet. It just appears that way.

Think about FPS. Now when Doom came out we would see about 10 to 20 + Doom clones come out a year some of them had minor improvements. Then Half Life came which was a HUGE change. Since then we don't really get many huge changes in FPS but each game tries to do minor improvements and we still get probably about 5-10 new FPS a year.

In MMOs they take MUCH longer to make and we are lucky if we get 2-3 new mmos a year. HOWEVER in each MMO we do get some new contributions to the genre. Now if they made 10 new MMOs a year you would see the rapid innovation that you do with FPS or other genres. But since it takes so long and we only get a couple each year you will only see gradual changes.

As for Sandbox MMOS they are a niche market and will never catch on the mainstream

HOWEVER You will see themepark mmos add sandbox elements in their games.

the problem is the copying of wow without understanding what made it so successful in the first place. there will never be another wow nor a mmo with its success. this is because what wow did was to create and bring into the mmo market new mmo players. it introduced a lot of new people to online gaming by making a platform that is at the mentality level of a 12 year old but with enough content to satisfy those well above. it is that plain and simple.

because of this the mmo market now is now well known among the gaming community and now every new game is vying for the same players. there is little if any new people entering the market unless you count kids growing into it. this is one reason why blizzard is now dumbing wow to the 12 year olds to wring them in like they did adults in the beginning.

the trinity will exist in every game. rift tried to make every class have two or three of these roles but again that game is failing fast. eq and eq2 had support classes which for end game content was required to have in a raid and some groups. few mmos now days have such classes as everyone is trying to balance pve and pvp with pve having a simplistic pve content. eq(s) was pve and didn't care about balance issues for pvp so its pve end game was finer tuned and more challenging. you had to have certain support classes to buff and debuff and a well played one was invaluable to a raid or guild.

now and in the future you will see in the mmo market more niche' base games either by design or accident. too many of the gamers today want this or don't want that in a game. you can't have everything to everyone any more. it just doesnt work as there are too many choices. i applaud bioware for not falling into this trap like rift did.

the mmo gaming industry isn't stagnating but rather evolving.

This thread is funny, people see the symptoms, but think they are the cause. The industry is stagnate because that is what sells.

So called WoW styled MMOs have something like 30 million users worldwide, while more "innovative" games, like sandbox MMOs is maybe like a million at most.

They honestly could have used half of the money that they spent on SWTOR and created a solid Star Wars MMO without voice acting. I am fully convinced voice acting will be the death of this game, when they spend 50% or more of their budget on voice acting, that's 50% less content that we get.

As much as haters like to disagree, SWG did quite a bit right. Their worlds were huge, factions actually meant something, crafting was great, people created their own stories, and their was TONS of freedom. SWTOR not only missed the RPG concept, they totally left it out.

Unfortunately, game companies are just getting cheaper and cheaper, they want to provide less product for more or the same amount of money, and as gamers we aren't going to be happy about that. WoW will stay on top until some other company gets the balls to invest the time and the money into creating an immerse, well coded game that doesn't absolutely REEK of shortcuts.

That post falls into the usual pitfall of presenting personal opinion as fact. I, and surely many others, happen to love the voice acting which makes questing and levelling a thousand times more enjoyable than in most MMOs for me.

Basically, you enjoy sandbox games more than themepark games. That's fine but you should know that not everyone feels the same way.

This, though SWG was a bit "grindy"

^ Understands

There haven't really been any major leaps in games development since the early 00s.

The problem is most of the big names were bought out by people like EA and Activision, who won't take any risks or try new ideas. So we end up with over-priced crap like CoD being released every 5 months (with nothing new in each one) and endless clones of other games from years ago. It's the indie devs that are coming out with the innovative stuff now.

TBH SWTOR was actually slightly better during the beta, but things were removed because they claimed it was to confusing for some players (the REALLY stupid ones). But now being put back in as "new" features with some changes due to popular demand...

You want EVERYONE to be dps? No thank you Sir.

You know, at this point it has to be said.

If everyone thinks that they have all the answers, and they can to it better.....

...then go and do it.

Fund, and develop your own MMO.

What are some of you waiting for?