Good Post From MMORPG.com (Gasp!)

[Kavadas]

Not the most eloquent thing I've ever read but the guy makes a very good point.

Lets face every mmorpg out there now is complete crap and that's mainly due to them all being boring EQ clones but also because developers feel the need to ruin them when a good one arrives. WAR and AOC arn't going to be amazing turn arounds of the genre and all the forum crying fanbois will be flaming me down saying "OMG U NOOB UR WRONG THEY R THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST" but after release all my fellow haters will be flaming the forums of how esactly the same they are to the crap already released, bringing balance to the forcerums. I mean there wouldn't be the need for haters if they actually did a good job and made good games.... I don't know any other genre that has haters like this one in the gaming industry. Sure you have the elitist twats who come onto forums saying how gaming isnt as good as it was back in the day, when infact all the developers did was get rid of the annoying time sinks which wern't any fun anyways. Sure alot of it is deserved from companies like EA ruining gaming series. However I no genre out there has people cosntantly on a forum dedicated to the genre who are are constantly hating on all the crap out there looking for something fun to play like me.

FPS:

- Half-Life
- Halo
- Bioshock
- COD4
- Counter Strike
- Team Fortress 2
- System Shock 2
- Operation flashpoint
- Doom 3

etc etc.

RTS:

- C&C
- COH
- Dawn of War
- Starcraft 2
- Warcraft
- TA
- SupCom

etc etc.

TPS:

- Gears of War
- Freedom Fighters
- Tomb Raider
- Max Payne

etc etc.

Sports/racing games:

- Tony Hawk games
- Gran Turismo
- Forza 2
- Pro Evo
- Madden
- Fight Night round 3
- Mario Kart
- Wipeout
- Need for speed
- All them freaking wrestling games

etc etc.

Platformers:

- Every Freaking Nintendo game.

Adventure:

- Myst
- Monkey Island series
- Sam & Max


blah blah blah you get the point I mean even God games have stuff like Rollercoaster Tycoon and The Movies and The Sims and Black and White..



So what can you say the mmorpg genre has to the standard of these major Single player/multiplayer blackbusters......... Yes just one World Of Warcraft. You may think it's boring and hate it but you can't deny the fact that it's a high quality and highly polished title which deserves the success it has because it made a change to the buggy mmorpgs in that forum list to the left < lol.

What gets me is the RPG genre has probably the biggest list of blackbuster titles from all the crazy Japanese ones like Final Fantasy to all the western ones like Elder Scrolls and Fallout and KOTOR etc etc. So how can the mmorpg genre which is basically a massive online version of the RPG one get it soooo wrong and fail sooo hard?


The problem with this genre I find and why it will always suck is the fact that it's constantly evolving and developers made dumb moves which completly ruin the game. I mean I finally find happiness with SWG and oh look SOE wanna ruin it instead of making it better and then Planetside but oh look again instead of making it better they wanna add dumb stupid looking caverns and BFR's with the worst story i've ever seen in my lifeand don't even get me started on what EA done to UO.

Every good mmorpg that's released there will always be a patch that will ruin it for you and left with nothing to play. This is why mmorpgs will always suck and even Blizzard are dumbing down WOW sooo much(didn't know it was possible but apparently it is) and ruining it with their expansions. I mean what is the point of adding 10 levels which actually doesn't mean anything at all but the rest of the world is completly useless and empty and noone will ever go there again..... great one Blizzard!


So what I'm trying to say is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU

Original Link (http://mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/171579)

I would say he's right. It seems like the MMORPG is the only genre which has actually regressed since it's inception. I mean, the industry standard is nothing but a more polished clone of a game that came out in 1997. And here we are in TR which basically borrows every single major mechanic from that same game (EQ for those still wondering).

I wonder how many years it will be before MMORPGs get back to Anarchy Online/PreCU SWG quality. Probably a long time...

Oh, Earthrise, where is you?

[Kolya]

Bravo for use of the word "twat."

[Washburne]

The problem with MMORPG's is that the more successful they are, the more people play. They more people that play, the more the devs have to cater to the masses. The best way to do that is to dumb it down. Make it so EVERYONE can play. As we all know, there are some really dumb people that play MMO's. Just look at Wolfpack.

[Akechi]

Yeah, i'm really hoping earthrise doesn't get the same treatment as a lot of other MMOs out there. But when I think about it, or maybe i'm not thinking as much about it as I should, if a developer has a game that is starting to attract flocks of people, why should they feel they have to dumb things down for those people who are already hooked anyway? I guess most just dont click with the idea that "I dont need to sacrafice the quality of my game to make it playable for three year olds"?

[Kavadas]

I think EVE kind of proves you don't need to make a game for a bunch of 'tards after you get a good sized playerbase.

[McKracken]

Honestly Anarchy Online sucked donkey balls when it came out. I was there at launch.

Imagine a game where going out to do anything meant going through a zone packed with people and you would get totally lagged out. Now in this lag zone are many angry people. They constantly scream on boradcast: "F*** You Funcom!!!" for hours at a time. Course there is no profanity filter and no ignore of any kind. =)

Imagine in this PvP game that when you do PvP someone you have to deal with HOURS of them telling you to F*** off since you were such a jerk to kill them. No ignore remember?

When you performed a mission there was a 50/50 chance the mission would crash while you were in it. If it did not crash there was another 50/50 chance it was bugged and you could not complete your objective. Finally there was a 25% chance that the zone outside your mission had crashed so you would not be able to leave unless you abandonded and failed the mission.

Zones would randomly crash making it impossible to leave the area you are in. 50+ people would mass up on the zone border waiting for the next zone to get rebooted. Sometimes this took hours.

The kicker was that I was also invited to the beta for AO at the 11th hour. The devs had always said not to worry about the crappy game and that they were running 2 code bases. In addition they promised that the live version was a major improvement over the beta version. I spent 2 whole days downloading the beta client since the FTP kept crashing. 2 days later the game went live and I got my disc. It was the SAME version as the beta client with no patching.

MMORPGs have come a long way since then.

-McKracken

[Macgreggor]

The problem with MMORPG's is that the more successful they are, the more people play. They more people that play, the more the devs have to cater to the masses. The best way to do that is to dumb it down. Make it so EVERYONE can play. As we all know, there are some really dumb people that play MMO's. Just look at Wolfpack.

Actualy as unfortunate it is this is all too true with exception to them listening to the masses.

In truth, it seems to me with every MMO game I have played, its not so much the masses they cater too but more so a select few retards the bombard the Dev's with so many complaints and requests that they feel they have to make changes; which inevitably ruins it for those of us who are happy with the current system.

Keeping this in mind; I can only hope that when they do release Earthrise it is a great game at its beggining as promised, and they wont change it. However; I can already see just from reading posts on the Earthrise Forums that this probably won't be the case, and if these select few whiner babies have their way they will ruin that game as well due to unbalanced PvP content or class dominations within the system because people realize certain ones are better then others, and those that prefer the weaker classes will eventualy corrupt the Dev's into revamping them as usual.

It sure would be nice to see them put out a true gamers game that requires skill in playing rather then a noob style layout that any jack ass can navigate by simply pushing a button or 2 and letting the AI due the rest with out dumming it down regardless of what these whiner babies cry about. If only the Dev's would grow a pair of balls and tell them to fuck off and if they can't hack it in this game they can always go play WoW!

[Makenzie]

Actually i would have to disagree with most of you. Very few games follow eq mechanics. With exception to WOW, which is basically a simplistic version of the game. EQ has undergone major changes since Verant created it and Sony took it over. It had to or it wouldn't have been successful. And even Verant and Sony's other games in fact have little resemblance to EQ. EQ2 has extremely different class systems and leveling systems. As does Vanguard. The questing element is totally different. The only true system within these games that is unchanged is the melee system. TR is a quest based game with in actuallity EQ having little questing from conception and very little now still. Some elements will be the same as EQ in all games. Simply because EQ was a forerunner in gaming and its methods are tried and true. It never would have gotten its notoriety and fame for failing. And even games that broke out of the box like SWG didn't hold the interest of true hardcore gamers. Most left SWG before Jump to Lightspeed was released. It was a system that took little time and little effort to make a high end character. And within days of playing or maybe a few weeks at the outside it was simply a glorified chat room. A truely good MMO must be a challenge to high end gamers and people who have time to invest endlessly in their characters creation and evolution. Which inevitably makes casual players whine about a lack content to allow them end game at low cost in time. Dev's will always attempt to add to end game before adding content for lower players simply because a player who has invested enough time to make end game is someone who will continue to invest if new content is added. Which means Dev's will always look to the most Elite of any game community to see what they want and take their views into consideration above the average player. TR seems to have gotten this concept backwards since most players don't seem to be pushing for end game and in fact seem to perpetually be in their 20's and 30's.

[Teki]

Having only played SWG and WoW for years in each game I have to say this: The lack of "end game" content in SWG is one thing that made it so good. It was a roleplaying game. WoW is an endless grind to get levels, gear and gold. SWG was just fun, you could just be a crafter, or an entertainer, with no combat skills, and still fully enjoy the majority of the game. It was so open ended that it allowed people to be creative with their characters. Most of what I see in WoW, on an RP server at end game levels is players trying to get X piece of gear from Y boss to raise thier crit/damage/healing/threat/spellhit by 0.01%... and spending more time in a week doing it than most people spend at work in a week. To be completely honest, I wish I was still playing the pre-CU SWG. I left WoW because in order to maintain status with end-game raiding guilds, you had to invest a great deal of your life just to be on par with your guild mates so you can experience the content with them. I need a game that I can play for 20 min and put down and one that I can play for hours on end and not get bored. I am hoping that the "new and different" of TR will keep me occupied. Thanks for allowing me to rant. :o

[Akechi]

Having only played SWG and WoW for years in each game I have to say this: The lack of "end game" content in SWG is one thing that made it so good. It was a roleplaying game. WoW is an endless grind to get levels, gear and gold. SWG was just fun, you could just be a crafter, or an entertainer, with no combat skills, and still fully enjoy the majority of the game. It was so open ended that it allowed people to be creative with their characters. Most of what I see in WoW, on an RP server at end game levels is players trying to get X piece of gear from Y boss to raise thier crit/damage/healing/threat/spellhit by 0.01%... and spending more time in a week doing it than most people spend at work in a week. To be completely honest, I wish I was still playing the pre-CU SWG. I left WoW because in order to maintain status with end-game raiding guilds, you had to invest a great deal of your life just to be on par with your guild mates so you can experience the content with them. I need a game that I can play for 20 min and put down and one that I can play for hours on end and not get bored. I am hoping that the "new and different" of TR will keep me occupied. Thanks for allowing me to rant. :o



Gotta say, that pretty much just summed up my feelings about WoW and SWG completely. I'm really hoping TR becomes such a game as well, and if a year passes by and its not much different, maybe hope can come from Earthrise.... maybe... I'm not jumping completely on yet.... gonna stay pretty skeptic until I see its true colors. But for all the skepticism I have for it, its a damn good step in the direction SWG headed in. I just hope they dont screw it up and degrade it like so many other MMOs


Edit: Okay, just realized this kinda contadicts me saying that there should be high end content in TR, but hell, If it was as open-ended as that, i'd count it for super-endgame-content.... or... something... you get the point....