The Stagnation of MMO industry/genre and why

I too thought single shard is not possible. Then I read this today.

http://thesecretworld.com/news/blog_...e_secret_world

Kudos to the secret world.

However, casting a critical eye, it is essentially a highly efficient (assumption) cross-server technology. As long as it bakes the cookies, who cares?

So if we cannot have single shard world, a cross-server to all the shards with phasing technology is the next best thing.

What you've just described above is already catered for in Eve which is a fantastic game. Apologies if this has been mentioned before - only read the first post.

To me MMOs dosent feel like MMOs anymore, i want to "live" in the world in a MMO, but mmo is getting away from open world play and pretty much all of them is taking the road of having the players stand in a "lobby" waiting to be teleported to a dungeon/battleground.

I dont know why mmo devs even borther with making anything but the lobby and the dungeons, the big worlds they make are only used for people to rush lvl through, and once you are maxed lvl you dont need to go out into the world again, so all that work just sits there unused.

You might as well play a console co-op game or games like LoL, MMOs are prety much the same as those games now.

EVE is the grindfest in it's purest, distilled form.

To the point where it will automate your grinding for you.

Actually, Funcom just did all of the above (except for #3) with the launch of TSW. Seriously, they went outside the box and met almost all of your criteria, though bad players can still misuse their implementation model and distort intended play design. It won't garner mass quantities of MMO players spoon fed on a decade of WoW and WoW clones, but it will very much give the more mindful MMO players an actual new type of play experience. It's a much more mature approach to an MMO design, and as such will attract the more mature MMO player and will actually repel the ADD MMO population raised on the WoW farm over the last decade.

Point being, there are alternatives entering the market for you. And in reality, the long version of your general analysis is more an embodiment of distorted behaviors within the player base (largely bred into the playerbase by WoW) then what MMO developers are doing. MMO companies generally must give the masses what the masses think they want (which generally is not what they actually want, just what their numb mindedness thinks it wants).

1) Sharding is impossible to avoid. It's not possible to design a gameworld that can function equally well with 100 or 1 million people. Instancing is the current solution to that but it is a community killer. An MMO without a community is doomed.

2) The variety of classes nowadays is basically what you are asking for. All classes in all new games are essentially DPS or tank capable. This is because people insist that every class must always be able to solo. The holy trinity is an RPG staple dating back to before computers. It is all about "forcing" players via game mechanic to cooperate. You lose the trinity (or some other form of it) and you lose variety, uniqueness, tactical options (for players and AI), flavor, and essentially turn everyone into a clone of everyone else. This is a major problem for MMO's today, making classes more generic would make it worse.

3) Back to the future. EQ essentially had this. While you belonged to a faction, it was possible to 'switch' by your actions (ie. killing what made the opposite faction happy).

4) Levelling, exploring, and adventuring IS the game! This has been the core mechanic of RPG's since before computers existed. Endgame was always the end of the game, hence the name. Remove character progression and we may as well just make it First Person Shooter:The MMO.

5) Unlikely. MMO's are being reborn as instant-gratification console games, whether we like it or not. It's all focus-group driven nonsense. They think if we like MMO and we like FPS, we would love an MMO that plays like a FPS. I like steak and I like ice cream. I don't want ice cream on my steak.

6) Longterm profit and sustainability are the true keys to success. Unfortunately the captilalist system only looks at growth and immediate return on investment. They don't care about the longterm. If something isn't an immediate success it is considered a failure and money will stop flowing to it.

1. Look are Secret Worlds one server technology. I play am on one server, but I still can play with US friends any time on any playfield. Doesent matter if my server is empty. I can just load into a zone from the other servers and it works without lag.

2. I totally disagree. Its the trinity system that destroys all the variety, uniqueness and tactics from every fight. Simply because with trinity there will be only one way to defeat the boss. Tank on boss, healer heals and dps kill the boss. No room for experiment! Without trinity you can self choose what ways are best to defeat the boss. Best example I can give:
Have you played Mass Effect 3 multiplayer? That is the best example I can give with having a perfect class based system without holy trinity. In that game you use halo like regain system and everyone is responsible for their health. Now there are different DPS classes with different abilities. I usually play sniper class. As a sniper I can stay at range and easily kill off the flamethrower guys. As someone who uses shotgun and have to get close range, he has very had time killing the flamethrower guy. So when we are doing a map, each class is better for their own types of enemies. But you can surely go with full group of shotgunners if you know how to play.
Now in Mass Effect 3 different classes co exists with each other. One class has mass AoE that freezes enemies. Another class has a grenade with mass AoE. So when one guy freezes all enemies around me, I throw a grenade and suddenly all enemies just explodes.
Also as a sniper, I have really hard time killing a ninja that attacks me always at close range. There is a class that has very good CCs. Once he uses his CC ability at the ninja, I can finally fire off my sniper.
Then as I have stealth, my role in the game is to stealth around the battlefield and revive people as they die since mobs cant see me. But even though I am a sniper class, I can experiment with other weapons. Since I can stealth, one other way to play is to spec full mitigation and use shotgun. With stealth I can pop anywhere I like and blast mobs out with shotgun.

This system works! It gives far more variety to the fights. But why it hasnt been implemented in MMO, I dont know?

I think he meant MMORPG because it was the creator of UO that coined the abbreviated phrase MMORPG of which MMO is a common general derivative of.

The main thing i agree with the OP on is the tv series type storyline.

Why not put each planet on it's own shard?

Everything is completely segregated anyway, and judging by the transfers, their technology for shard-jumping is almost instantaneous--at least well within the time it takes for the planets to load. Then just have many instances on each planet instead of one or two.

I would even take it one step further to get everyone on the same super-shard: allocate 1+n instances for both pve, and pvp.

What I mean is, instead of "choosing" a pvp server, you check a box when you first make a character (a permanent choice) to select PvP. By doing so, you are automatically put into the first available pvp instance each time you load a planetary shard.

If you're a PvEer who flags himself, you are just placed in the first available PvP instance. When you un-flag, you're put back into the first available PvE instance. This would eliminate accidental flaging and (forced) AoE griefs.

I don't think there's a need for separate RP instances. RPers have a knack for finding each other. And I think people tend to ignore them (live and let live) and just leave them alone. Certainly there are some obnoxious trolls who try to antagonize RPers, but I've seen those on RP servers anyway.