Something strange is happening in the House of Ferrel. My excitement for up and coming MMORPGs is starting to wane. I see everyone happily talking about Rifts, Copernicus, the Old Republic and anything else that costs $200+ million. I can’t get excited at all. As much as I’m pleased with the potential of those games I’m feeling more anti-hype than hype. I’m not exactly sure why that is but I do have a few suspicions.
It isn’t EverQuest
I know everyone is tired of hearing me say this and I know I’m tired of hearing everyone say rose colored glasses but I do miss EverQuest. I miss the difficulty, the drama and the constant danger. I would spend a long time going into why I feel this way but Wolfshead already did that for me. In my deepest heart I know that no MMORPG will ever function that way again. None of these high dollar ones anyway. They’re being designed for generation Y and I’m not a member.
The UO and EQ experience is how I perceive an MMORPG should be. I’ll never change that attitude and another title like that will probably never be made. We should all accept that and go for the next best thing. For me the next best thing is EverQuest II. I am honestly excited about Velious. I’ve spent time talking to some of the developers and they’re really going out of their way to set the game back on track. It is because of all that that I don’t see a need to change.
Too much business
MMORPGs used to be the products of nerds in garages. They designed games that they wanted to play. There was no budget, marketing or anything of that nature. Titles were designed to be great first and hopefully make money. Look at MineCraft. MineCraft is a graphical cesspool. We’re talking eight-bit with no frills. Something that “the man” claims would never work. MineCraft is one of the most compelling, addictive and fun games I have ever played. It was built in the fashion I mentioned and now the creator has been rewarded with a few million dollars. I imagine the success will continue because the foundation is so strong. Did it make WoW money? No it did not. Did it spend WoW money to create it? No. I imagine the profit margin on MineCraft exceeds a LOT of the MMORPGs/Online games we get today.
I don’t want a game that was designed because some MBA wants to make money and employs some starving programmer who just wants to make games but will soon have his soul crushed by corporate culture. When the foundation of a game is “make the shareholders money” you’re just not going to get as much out of it as a player. MMORPGs are big business now and I’m just not interested. I’ll stick to the cheap games like MineCraft and League of Legends. Those are great titles that I really enjoy.
I’m settled
I fell in love with EverQuest II a long time ago and only left it because I couldn’t sustain my play style. It has been plagued with WoWization over the years but I still love it. I think EverQuest Next will be a blend of the two and despite what others say, I trust SOE. They’ve been doing this a long time and have some really good people there. We grew up together even if we sometimes grow apart (yeah, BGs in EQ2 was a massive waste of time and money).
My guild is also in EverQuest II and appears to be happy and content. I cannot say the same for every other MMORPG we played after EQ2 and there were a lot. We’ve been back for over a year now and we’re growing. I don’t want to play the nomad anymore and try to keep a guild together. I like what I have and it would take a whole lot to get me to move. It is hard to look at new titles when I’m happy with what I’ve got and looking forwards to the future.
Experience has made me jaded
Believing in hype and “the next big thing” is a fools game. There have been so many disappointment “next big things” since WoW I dare not count. The true history of the MMORPG is pretty simple on the fantasy based PvE side. You had EQ1. After that you had EQ2 which was eclipsed by WoW a week later. The tale ends there but I’ll give LotRO an honorable mention. Everything else PvE wise since then has pretty much been a let down. Those games were money driven failed attempts to capture the unique success of WoW. Why should I believe that anything else will be any different? It is hard to. My experience tells me I’ll just be hurt again if I try to love. My heart can only be broken so many times!
Speaking of EQ2
Have you entered the EQ2 Traveling Trivia Contest yet? Answer some simple lore questions for a chance to win EverQuest 2 Extended Gold Membership game time! Seriously, the questions aren’t hard!
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Eh, if you want another EQ, it’s definitely possible. More than likely it would have to be done by an independent studio, or team of people, who aren’t beholden to shareholders/investors who want huge returns on their money, would be done on a small budget, and is directly targeting a niche market of gamers.
Well I am a rift watcher
(I divorced eq2 after 6 years about 3 months ago, and we are still having a troubled relationship) but that aside, I agree with some of your points, and don’t agree with others.
I think that nostalgia has killed plenty of decent games, people go into them with rose colored glasses and say it doesn’t have xy and z and isn’t old school enough so they move on.
I would like to throw this at you that I have never understood from the “it’s not everquest or hardcore enough so it’s not good enough” mentality. If Everquest was so great, why doesn’t anyone who has these “rose colored glasses” play it anymore? I see comments about everquest this or UO that or vanguard this…but I never see why people are wanting to leave those games that did things well in their eyes.
My feelings are this: You are never going to get that feeling of “new” again. It’s not the corpse run that inspired those feelings its the fact that it was new and you had never done it OR on the flip side you were surrounded by people who had gone with you to do it and you had fun. You did these new things that you had never seen before, “wow that was so cool” only happens the first time…the next time a giant dragon comes and murders you, it’s not “wow cool it’s so new” it’s now “crap I died.”
I am a big supporter of games evolving, not de-evolving, to make game play better. I sure dont’ want to spend hours digging my corpse out of some crevice even if it may have been cool when it was new. MMOs aren’t new now to most folks who walk this nostalgia path, and they get stuck in this “when I was young I had to walk up hill both ways” mentality, but for the most part I’m finding that if there was a new “everquest revised” with new graphics and the same gameplay, most wouldn’t play it. I played everquest, I have alot of great memories in everquest. I would not want to play that game again to save my life, although I had alot of fun while i was there, but it was due to friends and company, not the game stuff.
However…all that being said, I would love to see an MMO that gave me something to work for without handing everything to me on a platter.
You make some solid points for the average EQ evangelist/glass crowd. To answer your question about why some of us don’t go back and play EQ I can speak for myself. The short answer is that after I stopped I got so far behind that I’d never reasonably catch up. The long answer is that “I do.” I go back and play EQ’s first four or so expansions about every two years and love it. There are no rose colored glasses here!
It wasn’t the new feeling that makes me so inclined to enjoy EQ (it wasn’t new for me. It was my second graphical MMORPG and about my 5th MUD). It was the challenge and feeling of reward. I’ve been conditioned in real life to expect things to be hard work. If I work at something long enough and I’m good at it I’ll be rewarded. EQ never gave you anything (much like real life). You had to earn it. Nothing was inevitable but death. MMORPGs these days just require you to do something a few times and eventually you’ll get what you want for the most part. I just don’t find them challenging at that is the issue.
Like I said, I’m with you in the sense that I never expect that feeling again. No AAA title will go that route again but you never know. Someone might create an independent game!
Thank you for the reply and clarification.
I agree, I don’t want things handed to me on a platter and would love to work for things and feel rewarded. My best in game story was in Everquest 2, I formed a guild of non raiders, and we went through all of the RoK content gearing up and got to VP on our own merit (was slightly after TSO came out). We struggled on Druushk and Nexona for about 2 months, but we got Nexona down early one night, and ended up doing all of VP in two days after that getting the whole guild mythed, they even stayed 2 hours past the end of the raid to get down Silverwing and Phara Dar before our timer ran out on the zone.. The excitement those nights was awesome and nothing can beat the feeling of doing it on our own without paying a guild to help us or bringing in mythed friends. So I definately understand your point on that.
I get anoyed with MMOs that will allow a casual player to get what a full time player can get within the same expansion.
However I suppose where I get hung up on all this, is when people say they want to bring back things like corpse runs, and having to run for an hour to get to a dungeon, or camping a mob for hours or days. To me those things aren’t fun but time sinks, I spent 6 months in skyfire in eq on my ranger with my friend who was a cleric killing things for her epic…heck my ranger is still camped in skyfire lol and I haven’t gone into that game for years.
I think in a MMO, there needs to be a balance with risk vs reward, make things a challenge and rewardnig, but not insane time sinks that will hinder game play. I don’t have 5 hours to go dig my corpse out of a hole…when I log on I want to be able to do something productive, instead of running from point a to point b and running out of time to actually do the dungeon (vanguard).
Wolfshead article is interesting. But I wonder.. is it really that players want easier games, or is it something parrallel to how the information age has gotten everything faster. You can see that the increasing amount of overly friendly web apps, who tried to appeal to a worldwide audience instead of a few nerds, has had an impact on PC software which now boasts finer user interfaces than ever. Likewise I think the newer generations are used to getting information fast. In New Age term, time speeds up. Everything speeds up. And I think it translates into the game as, for example, the need to go from place to place fast (no boat), auto loot/auto-anything systems, dungeon group finder, and so on. Just like the web (take Google’s latest Instant search feature), it can become distracting and hurt us (attention deficit).. but I feel there is also another side of it, that you just can’t get back there by adding more risk into the game. That time is over. My main issue with EQ2 frankly is that it’s just too easy overall. I rarely feel that I am really necessary in a group. A lot of classes can easily solo triple heroic mobs, the mentoring system still leaves mentors way too powerful relative to the mentoring level, etc. I’m just not convinced at all that by adding risk in the game you will find this experience again. The times have changed dramatically in just the last 10 years. Fortunately the WoW crowd appears to tire of the game, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some oldschool mechanics make a come back
Just saying.. risk is only part of the puzzle.
I agree with this mostly, although you also got to remember there is now a whole generation that has never played everquest, UO or any of the original hard games. They grew up on wow. Or even more recent they have been playing more new mmos. I don’t know if you can ever get back to the eq style. Old timers are a dying breed. I think if there was a game that mixed risk vs reward, with an updated travel system, with an updated game UI /graphics. but still had some of the old school charm I think it would go a long way to finding a middle road. So far, no one has been able to find the perfect balance. WoW gave too much and eq to little. Heres hoping for me at least, that one of these up coming titles strikes closer to the middle ground of Hard vs Easy, Slow vs Quick, and Risk vs Reward. I think to go too far in one direction or the other is to loose the other side and become a niche game.
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Mmm… Minecraft.
Y’know, it works for what it is, and works well… but we’re not likely to get Big Business out of MMOs any time soon. You’ll still see things like Golemizer done by intrepid soloists, but, like Minecraft, it’s a quirky product that embraces its own design vision. Those projects aren’t always easy to find or even profitable.
Actually I wonder if the real reason you are not getting excited about these games is because if you take away the graphical skin, different lore and the odd gimmic they’re the same game as the one you are currently playing?
At least this is what I think is putting me off trying something new these days, they’re all EQ1 clones (I say that despite not playing EQ2 much since I play EQ2, but the game is similar where it counts!) as far as I can see, static content, holy trinity group mechanics, dumb mobs with the odd script to liven things up.
I totally agree on the old school programmers who made these games, I don’t think they sat down with an idea to make millions, or even that they planned out a simple game where the object was to level up or collect shiney virtual loot. But instead I think the original purpose of their MMO’s was to create a virtual world for us to adventure in, EQ1 just got it right/lucky to get some great game mechanics in there.
What I’m thirsting for here is something that is trully next generation, a world where our actions shape events, where major NPCs have personalities and AI and also shape world events. For example I’d like to see every shield I make tradeskilling a writ being stored in a armoury or equipped by the local guard, AI economies should prosper or wither depending on trade and events.
When we get that game (if even?) then all the walkthrough sites will close down since quests will rely on so many factors and possibly take so many paths that it’ll be faster (and more enjoyable) to just play the game, we’ll no longer have gamers watching raid videos for howto guides either since hopefully instead the game will be more intuitive, and instead we’ll have a world where every part of it promises the prospect of adventure.
When we get there I’ll happily say goodbye to EQ2, until then I’ll continue playing it because its got Frogloks, the lore, animations and art are beautiful, it has a certain cinematic quality still and I’ve made friends.
For me my lack of interest in new MMO’s is more due to the realisation that they’re all the same game, essentially just a copy of EQ1′s gameplay with different graphics and a few twists added in.
EQ2 I think is the most advanced version of that gameplay though, I love the detail on the graphics, the gritty realism it manages at times, and Frogloks
Other then that I could sit down with AoC, WoW, LOTRO, Aion and get a pretty similar game, some will just be lacking the basic PVE progression that EQ2 and WoW both have (WAR) but they are all similar to me in the way that they all tell the player the story.
So until I see a game where the player tells the story and actually changes the world then I’m not getting excited. Eve and Planetside show how that can work, the latter I have experience with and the “world changing” is very simple.
If though we had multiple PVE factions that were AI controlled and captured/developed territory and the developers strived to make everything we do have an effect on the world no matter how small (e.g. tradeskilling, if I have a writ to make shields for the guard then why not actually have guardsmen pick up the completed shields and use them?). How about shopkeepers fortunes waxing and waning?
Until then I’ll stick with what I consider the most RPG feel like of the MMO’s, the newer ones are going more and more theme park style with quests and dungeons as the rides, the gimmics like FPS style mini-games added in are not impressing either, if I wanted to shoot a gun I’d get a real MMOFPS like Planetside or dig out DOD:Source, not something that feels about as involving as a flash game.
One day someone will produce that nextgen MMO, I hope it’ll be SOE with Everquest, I suspect it won’t be Everquest Next which seems to be a step back in the graphics department to me and an attempt at WoW 2.0 (one day I hope SOE can settle down into being their own masters and producing games for gamers again, I think the success that WoW has is like the Harry Potter series, not really expected or reproducable especially with a factory style mindset), although we can only judge it when it launches.