The Stagnation of MMO industry/genre and why

my opinion is chaos comes before order,or more so chaos brings order..

i got two well grounded notions to support my point...

1.this is capitalism,and there was a gargantuan amount of money invested into this game by investors,you think that investors would let bioware get away with letting thhere jaw dropping investment vaporize?,or more to the point,what would you do if you were super rich and made the investment to bring a game like this to life?keep your entire developement cycle secret?i think so,maybe >.>

2.when it came time for the first star wars movie to be made,lucas had one heck of a time trying to pin things down...this is availible in multiple books...at one point in an early script revision,the jedi we know today were called "the legendary jedi bendu warriors" facing off against "the legions of lettow"....but of course vision and intelligence won the day and we arrive hear...see?chaos before order


and thanks for the acknowledgement

It's not just the MMO genre that's stagnating.

AAA gaming in general is stagnating because people continue to buy the same thing year after year. It's staying the same because that's what makes the most profits.

The unfortunate truth is that innovative games at most have a niche fan-base and even if it does attract a larger crowd, they always end up drifting back to their familiar things. Their WoW, Call of Duty, The Sims, and NHL/FIFA year after year.

The most successful in business are usually those that copy something else and improve upon it.

I think SWTOR did right in this regard. It plays in a very familiar style and is based on arguably the best possible IP (Star Wars) for an MMORPG or RPG. Sure, it "stole" the dialogue system from Mass Effect, the end-game from WoW, and the story from KOTOR, but put it all together and the players feel pretty invested in their characters even if each of those elements alone don't compare to their counterparts. I'm here because I loved WoW, BioWare RPGs, and Star Wars.

SWTOR has its fair share of innovation that most people seem to forget. While some aspects feel outdated, others were done outstandingly such as:

- Huttball. WoW's PvP can't hold a candle to how exciting and dynamic the gameplay is, even despite class balance issues which inevitably exist in every game. People seem to forget that WoW PvP is entirely two dimensional and you can't even leap/pull/push/charge to higher levels or across pits and fences.
- Energy/ammo/heat resource, the first MMO to ever use something other than a nearly limitless expendable pool (mana). The fact that this is available to healers makes it even more interesting.
- The class design - only the Guardian/Juggernaut and Sage/Sorceror are really reminiscent of traditional MMOs. The others put a nice new twist on them. Healers and tanks that stealth? "Ranged" tanks? Grapples, pulls, and pushes. Cover (this is another big one). I also like the idea of not having an auto-attack. If you've played games with auto-attacks you know there's always those people who are obviously occupied with something else and are not pulling their weight.
- Companions - this is a huge one. Although it's disappointing they aren't used too much at max level other than for dailies, it makes leveling up solo orders of magnitude funner than the old "auto-attack, alt-tab out, loot, rinse and repeat". It's finally viable (if a bit slower) to level from 10 to 50 as a pure healer or pure tank regardless of whether you like flashpoints, PvP, heroics, or questing.
- Story - don't really need to say anything about this. Even the people who hate SWTOR agree that it had the best leveling up experience, at least the first time. The only opinion I have to add is that I wish that the side-quests didn't consume so many resources and voice acting time, and that instead they focused more on the class storylines and the planetary arc.

It's stagnant because "MMO" is not an industry or a genre. It's a technology and a service. The technology powering these games has stagnated and the service in them has steadily degraded over the years.

Long story short: most game developers don't know how to create and run a MMO.

erm..ive been going from one mmo to another over the years,service was no better in 2004 than it is now...things were worse back then

heck even back in 2001 it was bad....this is a big improvement

I've read all this and I must say: THAN YOU!

I hope someone actually listens to what is being said here.

I totally agree with you about the customer part.

When Diablo 3 came out, I don't see a great game coming out. I see 1 million mindless drones flocked to it just because it was done by blizzard.

However, I disagree the themepark concept is flawed. Pretty much games (either MMOs or Single players) are either sandbox or themepark (or guided tour for single player, since you can't do that for MMOs). I think the problem is that most MMO, including SWTOR is flawed themepark.

Which themepark has rides that requires you to have 10 friends before you can ride together? Which themepark requires you to have equiped $10,000 worth of equipment before you can ride? Which themepark has rides that requires everyone to be 30 years old before you can ride? Well, most MMOs, including SWTOR is like this. They have themeparks but the rides are all flawly designed.

If they design it well, everyone should be able to run dungeons or flashpoints together, not separated by levels, roles, factions, servers and gears.

Yes, but it is the gamers who pays these execs. The message is to all gamers, developers and investors. Make the next breakthrough game and here are my suggestion how. Do so and you will be like Apple with their iPhones. I don't think executives would want to miss that boat. Don't follow the crowd. Harness what was done before and build the next level.

Aim higher.

And of course, don't forget about gameplay and fun. I didn't mention it because I thought those would be something that should be standard by now.

I've already explained why having levels does NOT make sense. In MMO, you want your players to keep playing. For years if possible. Why have an ending in terms of max level? This is just hamster-on-the-wheel. Sooner or later, players are going to realise this and resent you for it.

Instead, focus on the EXPERIENCE. When your player quits your game after many years, they will remember fondly of their experience rather than what reward they got out of it.

The changes in MMOs are mainly cosmetic.

While I would say if any designers take my suggestions into consideration when designing their MMOs, there would be an upfront cost, after that, the costs of maintaining is minimal.

For example, if you do away with levels, you won't need to constantly make new content. Because your initial content can be enjoyed by many people constantly because they are FUN.

Let's imagine this using SWTOR as example.

Imagine no levels and anyone can run any flashpoint as they wise and as often as they like. And let's say flashpoints don't need trinity. So today I may be running with 4 DPS, tomorrow with 1 tank and 3 DPS, next day 1 healer and 3 DPS. And everyday I run different flashpoints. My experience will be different because the fights will be different and I can run different flashpoints instead of just 1 or 2 "end-game" flashpoints. Or worse for operations only that particular operations for that particular gear. I call it the locust behaviour. Consume on flashpoint/operation and then move on.

Or I decided to switch over to imperial side when I was previously from republic. (Either PvP or PvE). The subsequent cost to make new contents are not going to be much because players will run your new content only because it is fun and won't rush to complete it just to get the next new "phat loot". There is not way you are going to make new content faster than player can consume it. Hence make the player enjoy the consumption.

Essentially, MMOs should be like a fine restaurant and not MacDonald's. (even Mac is trying to make the dining experience enjoyable now instead of grab a burger and go)

100% agree with this and so many games make this mistake. Why waste time, resources and content on things that will only be played through briefly never to be seen again unless your an altoholic (which in my opinion is a terrible way to design your game to have to rely on alting for any type of replayability, but thats a whole other issue). By eliminating leveling everything created can be forever playable and no zones go to waste.