GW2 thoughts after playing: The history of MMO failure's.. w/a sprinkle of WoW talk edition

[Cleverness]

The reason people have a hard time getting out of the EQ/WoW mindset is because it works. If you are going to do something different (and I encourage that developers try) you have to do something so compelling that it draws people out of that mindset. But then again, you have to balance that with the fear that people will reject something that is too strange or different.

Don't blame the players for liking a successful game. WoW is a good game, the best in it's genre. MMO's don't have to play the way WoW does (many games *coughSWTORcough* failed because of this), but you have to balance newness with familiarity.

I don't envy MMO developers right now.

How many MMO's actually launched being a WoW copy and survived? You can claim it works, but all people say when playing such games is "it feels like WoW" and just go play that. I'm having a hard time thinking of a EQ/WoW clone that started p2p and has stayed p2p, if you can refresh my memory that'd be great. The model worked back then but it's obviously not as successful now since even a newly hyped up game with similar qualities like SWTOR is dealing with subscriber issues. But yea who needs innovation in the gaming industry, or at the very least not trying to copy what everyone else is trying to copy unsuccessfully. Let's just base it off WoW so the masses who don't stick around after the 1st month are happy, that has worked in the past right? With the exception of Rift, there are frankly no real successful WoW clones, Rift was probably the most successful.

I don't know why we need to constantly copy WoW, yes it works and the game is fun, but people putting out the same product isn't good for the market since people want variety, remember early 2000's? If people want a EQ/WoW experience, they played EQ/WoW, if they want a FF experience they played FF11, anime type game they played RO, space pirate type game they played EVE Online, etc. Games that are different in build and design and each actually having a good sized subscriber base. As opposed to all the fail games that try to copy the most successful game in MMO history, not realizing that it is not something that be easily repeated and that ebfore that if an MMO had 100k it was great, if it had 500k it was a titan of the industry.

[vadre]

For the first time since probably XI's ToAU release, I thoroughly enjoyed exploring in an MMO.

Don't think I've ever had as much fun at launch as I did with ToAU, but GW2 is an absolute blast. The only thing I've really taken issue with is levelling progression, in that whilst I've not really had any problems I've got some friends who are new to MMOs who seemed to routinely hit a wall doing events and being underlevelled to do something new or a new story quest so they'd have to repeat previous events. On the forums the devs have said that they've balanced it with the expectation that people craft and explore points of interest etc to gather the rest of the exp, but I don't think they should include that as a necessity, merely as an added bonus to perhaps level quicker etc.

If exp balance is kept as is, I could see myself moving more towards WvWvW grinding with alts being as I'll have to 100% zones to get enough xp to move on the first time round. Who knows though, not a major issue really.

[Dantrag]

Story progression seemed to have jumped way too fast(at least when I played). One mission would be 10 then the next 16.

[Solace]

I think that the leveling progression will improve quite a bit once Sylvari and Asura areas are open. That should bridge the gap that we are seeing in between levels right now.

[ringthree]

How many MMO's actually launched being a WoW copy and survived? You can claim it works, but all people say when playing such games is "it feels like WoW" and just go play that. I'm having a hard time thinking of a EQ/WoW clone that started p2p and has stayed p2p, if you can refresh my memory that'd be great. The model worked back then but it's obviously not as successful now since even a newly hyped up game with similar qualities like SWTOR is dealing with subscriber issues. But yea who needs innovation in the gaming industry, or at the very least not trying to copy what everyone else is trying to copy unsuccessfully. Let's just base it off WoW so the masses who don't stick around after the 1st month are happy, that has worked in the past right? With the exception of Rift, there are frankly no real successful WoW clones, Rift was probably the most successful.

I don't know why we need to constantly copy WoW, yes it works and the game is fun, but people putting out the same product isn't good for the market since people want variety, remember early 2000's? If people want a EQ/WoW experience, they played EQ/WoW, if they want a FF experience they played FF11, anime type game they played RO, space pirate type game they played EVE Online, etc. Games that are different in build and design and each actually having a good sized subscriber base. As opposed to all the fail games that try to copy the most successful game in MMO history, not realizing that it is not something that be easily repeated and that ebfore that if an MMO had 100k it was great, if it had 500k it was a titan of the industry.

I think you are misinterpreting my comments. I am not saying that being like WoW works, I am saying you can't blame the players for liking WoW because WoW does work.

Also, I believe you have to be distinct enough from WoW to be able to contrast yourself, but you also have to be familiar enough that you aren't blowing players out of the water.

I just hate when people say "the reason MMO's fail is because players only want WoW and nothing else". Statements like that are just fanboy excuses for poor games. You see it a lot when people talk about SWTOR.

I hope at some point they have an open beta for GW2. I want to try it out.

[Zzsark]

Don't think I've ever had as much fun at launch as I did with ToAU, but GW2 is an absolute blast. The only thing I've really taken issue with is levelling progression, in that whilst I've not really had any problems I've got some friends who are new to MMOs who seemed to routinely hit a wall doing events and being underlevelled to do something new or a new story quest so they'd have to repeat previous events. On the forums the devs have said that they've balanced it with the expectation that people craft and explore points of interest etc to gather the rest of the exp, but I don't think they should include that as a necessity, merely as an added bonus to perhaps level quicker etc.

If exp balance is kept as is, I could see myself moving more towards WvWvW grinding with alts being as I'll have to 100% zones to get enough xp to move on the first time round. Who knows though, not a major issue really.

Not directed at you just jumping off here.

I see a lot of people mentioning this on the forums as well as bitching about it in game and I get the feeling every time I see it that they are failing to realize that (in it's current form) there are 3 zones you can clear before what lvl 15.... with 5 at release? Should be plenty to do to level up along the way. Once more of the world opens up there's going to be so much content to do in the various level ranges that for me personally I don't think I'll ever feel like I'm outpacing the game. I also notice a lot of people expecting to level up (or be the appropriate level rather) just through hearts which is certainly not Anets intention. I can understand how doing the same DEs over and over can get old if they aren't the kind that really branch much but ffs move to another zone if you haven't already cleared them all there's so many cool places/events to explore.

[Purrrfect]

edit: didn't see the random question thread >.>

[Imitarate]

I love this game. This is pretty much exactly what I'm looking for in an online multiplayer game. It rewards cooperation, it's not overly gear-based, content is never outdated, and, in general, the whole game seems designed to make you want to play. Nuisances and timesinks are reduced where they can't be eliminated. You get rewarded for exploring, which is fantastic -- I completed Ashford and Queensdale and got several greens, transmutation stones, and I think a master salvage kit (with apparently infinite uses...?!) though the last might have been from a story-given-key mystic chest...

That being said, the game is far from perfect. Movement feels clunky, and sometimes I'm not really sure exactly where my bounding box is, especially on a charr. Some places seriously punish game mechanics -- I was in the 15-25 charr area, fighting ghosts at a ruined keep, and FINALLY did a jumping puzzle up to the very top of the ruins, to get a rich iron ore deposit. There was a veteran fighter there, on a small space... Suffice it to say, just trying to dodge the fucker's horrible attacks lead to [number redacted] deaths falling off the damned keep. I finally just kept going for the deposit while he used the fighter-block-stance dealie.

Respawn rates come in two types -- I wish this would respawn faster so I could complete this heart, and GODDAMMIT I JUST KILLED YOU LET ME SOLO THIS VETERAN. The second happens pretty much every time you try to go for a skill point solo, or one of the secret chests. Some more consistency would be nice, especially for places where you need to get past veterans to complete map points.

Then my last major complaint is that -- almost every skill point past the first couple of starter ones requires getting past, and usually killing, veterans and their normal minions. This is fine when there's plenty of people about, but on Sunday it seemed like nobody wanted to do those points anywhere near the time I was there, so I wound up soloing something like 10 of them -- or trying to; some I just literally couldn't do because of respawns. Under that same ascalonian ghost ruins, there's a sewer level with a skill point challenge next to a veteran ghost mage, surrounded by other ghosts and oozes -- who, kindly enough with a mage casting huge aoes, love to immobilize you. I gave up after 3 deaths, especially since it was a pain in the ass trek from the waypoint.

Point being, once the majority of players passes the earlier content, just because they CAN do it doesn't mean they WILL. Soloing veterans can be quite a lot of fun, it's been one of the most consistently challenging things I've done during BWEs, but it's not like there's any real reward to it. You barely get more XP than from a normal, and as far as I can tell, even heart completion doesn't count veterans as more than normals. It's a bit minor, but it's something to consider.

Again, I love this game, but I sympathize with those who aren't into it. It just happens to offer me enough things that I crave to overlook the significant downsides. I'm banking a lot, too, on the design philosophy going into the game, that I've seen pretty consistently from ArenaNet.

[Purrrfect]

Respawn rates come in two types -- I wish this would respawn faster so I could complete this heart, and GODDAMMIT I JUST KILLED YOU LET ME SOLO THIS VETERAN. The second happens pretty much every time you try to go for a skill point solo, or one of the secret chests.

So much this.^

[Rhyis.]

The reason people have a hard time getting out of the EQ/WoW mindset is because it works. If you are going to do something different (and I encourage that developers try) you have to do something so compelling that it draws people out of that mindset. But then again, you have to balance that with the fear that people will reject something that is too strange or different.

Don't blame the players for liking a successful game. WoW is a good game, the best in it's genre. MMO's don't have to play the way WoW does (many games *coughSWTORcough* failed because of this), but you have to balance newness with familiarity.

I don't envy MMO developers right now.

People are tired of it. That's why all these new MMOs are failing because everybody just does exactly what WoW has done and think they'll make money. It's like when FPS tried to copy Quake for 10 years. Only Half-life had success at it. Everybody else failed horribly and lost money. Quake=EQ, Half-life=WoW. But now we're had years of CoD, Battlefield, and other new gen FPS that follow a different model. MMOs need to get to the next gen.

As to my original point, you misunderstood me completely. I was simply saying that people are no longer used to MMORPGs not being a race to endgame to hit the "real" content (and the reason for that is because of WoW). This game is designed differently so you have to approach it differently. I doubt anybody that rushes to max level playing this game will enjoy it because, a) Leveling up doesn't give you new skills, exploration and questing does and b) Missing most of the content of the game

[Lucavi]

Don't think I've ever had as much fun at launch as I did with ToAU, but GW2 is an absolute blast. The only thing I've really taken issue with is levelling progression, in that whilst I've not really had any problems I've got some friends who are new to MMOs who seemed to routinely hit a wall doing events and being underlevelled to do something new or a new story quest so they'd have to repeat previous events. On the forums the devs have said that they've balanced it with the expectation that people craft and explore points of interest etc to gather the rest of the exp, but I don't think they should include that as a necessity, merely as an added bonus to perhaps level quicker etc.

If exp balance is kept as is, I could see myself moving more towards WvWvW grinding with alts being as I'll have to 100% zones to get enough xp to move on the first time round. Who knows though, not a major issue really.

Crafting builds up a shit ton of XP when you start discovering new craft recipies on your own. I know it probably pisses some people off, but if you're playing like the devs explain to play, you'll have no real problems leveling up. Get all the hearts in each zone, explore the maps completely, run back and forth a few times at places to not only get crafting mats, but to do a few gold events here and there, and if you find a good farming spot somewhere, hunker down and clear the place out, then craft with what you just snagged from the spot. You'll level easily.

@Rhyis: I don't want to say that you're full of shit, but I will say that you're using a long-tired argument. Lets break down some post-WoW games and see who copied WoW, and who lived or died:

XIV: Did not copy WoW. Failed horribly for just about every reason non-graphic-related.
Rift: Copied WoW. Major initial success, currently in stable condition.
Warhammer: Copied some of WoW, and failed for a lack of planning and lack of fixes, not to mention massive imbalance.
Star Wars: Copied WoW. Failing.
Age of Conan: Did not copy WoW. Failed, but is in stable condition after a reboot.
AION: Copied some of WoW, but failed for non-WoW reasons.
Dungeons and Dragons Online: Copied some of WoW, but failed horribly until a reboot.
LotlO: Copied some of WoW and never truly failed, but continues to adjust the game as it ages.
TERA: Copied some of WoW and is succeeding, but its too early to tell how it'll end.

These are the most major MMOs post-WoW. Games like Mortal Online, Darkfall Online, and Star Trek Online were always jokes and never had a shot, and Superhero-themed games were never taken seriously enough in the market to be considered.

I'm not seeing a ton of either games copying WoW and dying from it, or copying WoW and surviving. Also, I'm not seeing a lot of games failing or thriving for not copying WoW. What I am seeing, however, is a lot of people adopting to the new-standard UI that WoW put on the market, but either failing or succeeding for other reasons, mostly for rushing products and failing to properly balance or patch their games.

WoW made a huge impact by showing the world that a relatively clean and polished game can bring in and hold millions of subs if you hit the market at the right time. People took notice. People tend to take notice of things when someone makes a massive success in the market. Some companies copied things, and some companies did not. Some companies failed, and some companies did not.

The WoW argument is as dated as WoW's graphic engine. Please stop using it as a be-all-end-all excuse/justification for why a game does or does not fail. XIV took nothing of worth from WoW and still exploded under the weight of its own world-shattering failure.

[Rhyis.]

So one game didn't copy WoW and failed, and my argument is invalid. Cool. EQ/WoW model: Level as quickly as possible to get to endgame. Endgame: Do dungeons. That's the EQ/WoW model. MMOs don't have to follow it.

[Hyan]

I doubt anybody that rushes to max level playing this game will enjoy it because, a) Leveling up doesn't give you new skills, exploration and questing does and b) Missing most of the content of the game

I thought you can go back even at max level?

[Lucavi]

All it takes to blow up a hypothesis is one single example that counters it, so yeah. But that wasn't my main point. You mention the "level quickly to reach endgame, then do dungeons" as the prevailing method, but honestly, the former was better? The "spend 15 hours grinding to 50% of a level, then die and lose it all, plus your gear" "traditional" method was superior? To say that the modern player doesn't have the paitence nor the tolerance for that type of playstyle is no longer an insult, as that's a bullshit way to punish people who pay to play your game. I'm glad that nonsense is dead and gone.

Change takes time, dude. Its going to take time for companies to properly develop a game that gives both a sense of reward from progression of leveling, and a sense of reward from progression of difficult end fights. GW2 does a pretty good job of the former, and I haven't even been thinking about sniffing endgame, so I can't comment on the latter. I'm not, however, going to knock a company for adopting a "race to the finish" mentality, so long as the race is fun, because racing, in of itself, is fun, and if you don't like to race, nobody is forcing you to.

The prizes for being "first" are nearly always superficial, and the best games, regardless of how fast the progression, always reward you for taking your time and exploring. GW2 (and Rift as well) wouldn't have these hilarious and fun puzzles if their forefathers (EQ2, WOW) didn't play around with them first. But the average person doesn't give a shit about who did what first; all they care about is what's in whatever game they are currently playing, and honestly, from an enjoyment standpoint, that's really all that matters. You'd probably get more enjoyment out of whatever game you're playing if you aren't thinking about all of what came out before it.

I certainly don't know what the answer is in terms of progression vs. speed, but I know that I was never happier when WoW did what it did, compared to the grind-centric games that came before it. GW2 removes most of the need for leveling at all, but its still enjoyable, especially when you get such fat xp bonuses for helping others and for exploring and crafting.

If you're lucky, though, perhaps GW2's style will become the new standard. Then you'll be complaining about GW2's template being spammed in 8 years, and the cycle will repeat itself.

[Rhyis.]

I thought you can go back even at max level?

Yeah you can, that's what I'm saying. Playing only the content for your specified levels is missing much of the content of the game. Probably hard to enjoy the game playing this way.

If you're lucky, though, perhaps GW2's style will become the new standard. Then you'll be complaining about GW2's template being spammed in 8 years, and the cycle will repeat itself.

People should complain about games not evolving. If video games in 10 years are simply using the exact same model as today, the industry is milking it. The fact that you're ok with it is hilarious. We're the ones paying for this shit. No other genre in the industry is as stagnant as the MMO genre.... Hell, just ask anybody that works in the industry. They'll tell you the same thing.

[Cleverness]

Saying LoTRO didn't fail is pretty funny. You're completely ignoring the fact that majority of those games that have borrowed from it started out as P2P and failed to be able to support itself on this model unlike WoW, and it's the main reason why the f2p model is emerging and so popular nowadays; they couldn't retain subscribers like it and had to change to stay alive. That means they failed, despite how you want to twist that around Lucavi.

And fact is you're ignoring that before WoW, MMO's were quite different in design. Despite being popular there weren't a ton of EQ clones after it's release, each game had a unique structure to it. Mostly because it wasn't 'mainstream' to make an MMO, so people made what they wanted. That's why if you notice EQ/FF11/RO/UO/EVE/Helbreath/etc that came out and before 2004 aren't really carbon copies of each other but different. And because WoW was successful now you have companies that instead of continue trying to find methods to be unique, "HEY, lets just base it off the WoW design and create our own world around it". You can say many failed due to improper planning and that's probably true, but don't pretend they didn't release it knowing this and some figured "well it's like WoW, should do well enough until we can fix it because people like that game."

But apparently it's ok to just copy what works, rather than try something different that can work too. Who cares about innovation.

[Lucavi]

People should complain about games not evolving. If video games in 10 years are simply using the exact same model as today, the industry is milking it. The fact that you're ok with it is hilarious. We're the ones paying for this shit. No other genre in the industry is as stagnant as the MMO genre.... Hell, just ask anybody that works in the industry. They'll tell you the same thing.

Then what's the fix, then? What's the magical solution? What's the one or more feature(s) that's going to usher in the new era of MMOs?

I'm not the kind of guy that jumps from game to game to game. I don't have a game library the size of Texas. I purchase maybe 3-4 games a year, and I milk the shit out of them, be they single player or otherwise, MMOs included. If I'm having fun with a game, I will play it until I no longer have fun with it. I don't care too much about evolution, because I care more about refinement. Just like maxing out a character before rerolling to another class, I want the genres to max out their potential before Im going to start screaming for a change.

Its easy to say "we pay them, so invent new concepts!", but I haven't heard any magical ideas coming from you, the guy who is probably more hungry for something new than anyone else around here, and honestly, the shooter market is far more stagnant than the MMO market could ever hope to be. The last major innovation was what, regenerating health when out of combat?

@Cleverness: I didn't ignore at all the fact that most of those games couldn't sustain P2P and instead went F2P, but hell, there are only 4 major titles outside of WoW that have shown an ability to sustain a P2P model. Some of them copied WoW, and some of them didn't. AOC certainly didn't, and its failures had nothing to do with WoW, and everything to do with rushed launches and idiotic investors.

Before WoW, who tried something different enough that actually worked and retained popularity? I can name a single game: EVE Online. Nobody else, with their "new innovations", made any sort of progress. Clearly, WoW's "innovation" was enough to vault it to the highest echelon of MMO success.

Have you guys ever put your brains together and figured out why no one else steps out of the WoW-template? You think its all about wanting to do what works and being lazy. Have you ever thought about how difficult it has to be to convince investors to front millions of dollars to try something completely out of left field? Do you not realize that there have probably been hundreds of "innovative" MMO ideas pitched to companies and developers, that have been shot down because those with the money were too scared to invest on a risk?

I'm not blaming WoW for that, and I never will. WoW wasn't a predicted hit when it was being developed, and even Blizzard took a risk when making it. They've said time and again that they were not expecting more than 100k subs at best with the game.

You want to blame everything on WoW, but point your fingers at those with the power to change things: the people providing the money to the projects. Without the backing of investors, no small start-up company can turn any brilliant idea into a game. Blizzard had enough money to essentially fund themselves. EA/Bioware had enough money to fund themselves. SE had enough money to fund themselves. Mythic did not. Funcom did not.

You have no idea if the games that failed would have failed had it not been for terrified and impaitent investors that pushed for games to be released before they were finished, and for investors that pulled support as soon as a game launched, instead of remaining on-board to allow for these games to continue making tangible updates and patches. There's a damned good chance that AOC would have actually worked had they had the funding and support to continue their original designs and ideas. Instead, they had to scrap 360 support, 4 maps, multiple content updates, had to push back their patch dates, and had to gut their staff, leading to everything else coming out even slower.

Ideas are just that: ideas. Without funding, no idea can be fully realized. Before you contine to blame a lack of innovation for the "stagnation" of MMOs, try thinking outside of the obvious. Its too easy to blame WoW and "lazy devs".

[Cleverness]

I don't blame WoW, if they made a good game more power to them. It's other peoples fault for instead of trying to come up with an original idea, they want to just copy and repeat what worked. The same thing is happening in consoles(Call of Duty every year with minor changes) and movies(reboots and reimaginings and re-everything of what was successful franchises before) because it's apparently been the current fad for the last several years to just take what was successful before and redo it because it's something people liked and are familiar with and considered 'safe'.

All this bullshit wall of text talk about investors is just rabble and proves nothing, it does nothing to show what is and isn't a quality product. The number of MMO flops after MMO's became 'mainstream' is ridiculous, millions of dollars in development and production wasted. If the industry is apparently at the point where we see only 1 good MMO every 2-3 years because it's down to investors wanting a rehash of a game who had an unprecedented amount of success, that does nothing to disprove that the problem is people wanting to copy that same model over and over instead of being different and wanting to create a unique game. You're just shifting the blame on to a different group of people, which in the end means someone is still at fault for wanting it that way.

[Lucavi]

Of course someone is to blame for it! I've never taken the stance that the industry is blameless, but I will not blame developers and programmers who are at the beck and call of investors that have no business trying to run the ins and outs of the MMO industry.

Look at it this way, and lets talk football: Take the Cowboys and Redskins. Two franchises that have Owners who try to act like Coaches; who try to impliment their ideas into how the team itself is run, both through personnel and strategy, instead of allowing the GMs and coaching staff to do their job, while the Owner does theirs - signing the checks, and handling the PR to bring in the ticket sales. The best franchises in sports typically have Owners who sit back and allow the people they pay to do jobs to actually do jobs. The best franchises also have Owners who aren't afraid to put smart money out, because they know that money makes money.

Its the same thing with this industry. Investors who try to make decisions on the game because they control the money are bad investors. Investors who get happy feet and demand that games hit certain timetables, regardless of the quality, are bad investors. Investors who stick with the status-que because the big boy on the block is doing the same thing, are bad investors when they share the above two qualities.

You keep talking about people wanting to copy the same thing over and over. What did AOC copy? What did they steal from WoW? What model did they rip from the template of cartoony graphics and super-fast leveling? Do you think that's why they failed? A lack of innovation? You're absolutely crazy if you think they did, on either account.

[Rhyis.]

the shooter market is far more stagnant than the MMO market could ever hope to be. The last major innovation was what, regenerating health when out of combat?

Surely you jest? You seriously can't see the difference between Counter-Strike and any other new FPS? The whole genre has changed completely. It fact it's changed so much there's a dozen new sub-genres that didn't exist 8 years ago. Tactical FPS have vastly changed. RPG FPS have been created. Stealth FPS have been created. MMO FPS have been created. Etc, etc.

On the flip side, WoW is still the MMO standard. It's what games aspire to be... The game is fucking 8 years old. CS Source came out the exact same year as WoW but has been left in the dust by the entire genre. It's embarrassing. And the fact you can't see it boggles the mind.