jdwohlever wrote on Sep 11, 2012, 17:01:
Am I the only one who sees the writing on the wall?
MMO's are DYING.
Years ago, an MMO would last at least 5 years before it became unprofitable, but now it seems they fail with 6 months.

Name any MMO's that were around 10 years ago that are still around today, I can think of only one. And to be honest, that is the main reason I don't dip into the MMO genre anymore. I don't want to spend months or years developing a character, organizing a guild, learning the ins and outs of the land and various locations, only to get shut-down once I start to become a real master at the game.

I have dedicated a lot of free time a couple of MMO's that went belly-up over the years and I really do see a trend that is speeding up. Used to be, the only online franchises I would stay away from was anything from EA, as EA has never kept a successful online experience for more than a couple years (MotorCity Online, that space one, etc) but now its seems everyone but WoW has failed at the MMO model.

Maybe if there was a re-birth of what an MMO could be, instead of always following the same cookie cutter plot, then they might have a chance.
Running through a boring town 5 times to deliver a boring message to someone about something you don't care about isn't going to hold a person's interest for long.
Why is WoW the only succesful MMO left?
Because the colorful, engaging world makes people want to be there. If you took away WoW's colorful settings and variety of locations and instances and replaced them with realistic dull environments, WoW be gone within 6 months.
You have to make people WANT to escape to your world.
PvP can't hold a person if they don't care what they are fighting for. If they made stories that people actually cared about and didn't just give you a mission that really sounds more like your a lacky fetching cookies and coffee then maybe they could get somewhere.
Think about it, if your game plot/story is so boring that people don't want to read the back story or even listen to an NPC tell you the story, then what is supposed to hold the players to your game?
They always proclaim their endgame PvP like it's some magical place you get to after sloughing through the PvE story.
I got news for you, a lot of people, myself included, play an MMO for the PvE or story first. If your story or PvE is bad then just focusing on PvP isn't going to keep players long unless your willing to nerf and buff everything they demand, which changes weekly.
Build a great enough world, with an exciting and engaging story that keeps players interested and actually caring whether there faction is winning the war. Make winning the war a real reason people would want to fight. Either remove pointless "kill ten sheep" grinding, or turn it into something more engaging that people would do anyway.
Too many rules, restrictions and heartless plot points take away not only from the players sense of purpose, but make the player feel like they are seen as non-intelligent pawns just going through the same motions in a pointless fetch quest.
If you can't make the individual feel special, or that he/she matters in the grand scheme of things, then your not going to fool many people for very long.

Closed Betas wrote on Jul 31, 2012, 18:54:

Icewind wrote on Jul 31, 2012, 18:47:
The MMO has been dead as a genre for years. I know, tell me how everyone and your mother plays WoW and that Guild Wars was bluesnews.com's special game...but you know WOW is only popular due to gamer peer pressure and GW is, well...an old folks game.

The genre is dead.

Now can we make some singleplayer games for fuck's sake?

Sorry, you are just way off base. The problem is the approach of making the game, cookie cutter quest storyline character development, with no true combat, catering to the young player, with no clue how to create an economy or spending time on itemization. This is why they are all choosing the BIG NAME IP's, as its a easy cash out...
Nothing short of big suits, sucking up dollars with no real care for the products... Technology will advance and this will change..

As for single player games.. SWTOR is a single player game.. lol...
So was Age of Conan, so is just about everything else.
Why its online is anyone's guess.. Until a game removes solo'ing ability from the MP games, they will suffer and the game communities will fail because it gives a reason to be a douche.. If you needed others, you'd think twice about how your acting in game.

Beamer wrote on Jul 30, 2012, 14:21:

El Pit wrote on Jul 30, 2012, 14:13:
The Surface. Brilliant. It's a portable computer with an attached keyboard. REVOLUTIONARY! Let's call it... A NOTEBOOK!

Well, can you name another tablet-sized full computer? One that you can dock to your monitor, mouse and keyboard while working, then undock and bring to a meeting as just a tablet with a stylus for note taking, then put in a protective case with a thin attached keyboard to get work done on an airplane without taking up any more space than an iPad?

I can't. And that's the value of it, though I highly doubt the first version will be able to support multiple monitors, or even have a proper docking station for outputting to monitors, which diminishes its usefulness.

Sepharo wrote on Jul 10, 2012, 23:47:
She's an employee of Facebook... If they don't want her being "stern" then she shouldn't be. Maybe they thought they were hiring a happy-go-lucky yoga teacher and not a stickler.

Actually she says it herself:

"The culture of these places is to let them do whatever they want," she said. "And I'm just not really OK with anarchy."

Oh well then, looks like you aren't a good fit.

Fletch wrote on Jul 4, 2012, 19:55:
Does every fucking game have to have fucking achievements? How about the achievement of finishing the game? Like every other achievement in every game with achievements, it won't count for shit in your pathetic life, but you probably need SOMETHING to feel good about yourself that you can twitter to the fellow losers who follow you.

Anyhoo... can't wait to play it.

Cutter wrote on Jun 14, 2012, 21:56:

Dades wrote on Jun 14, 2012, 21:16:
Cutter is vindicated yet again.

Thanks, brah. It's not easy being green...or right most of the time.

winnetou wrote on Jun 13, 2012, 09:35:

D_K_night wrote on Jun 13, 2012, 05:00:
Regarding group finder, it will be interesting to see how the playerbase reacts. Because when you visit the SWTOR forums, there are so many of them who in fact don't want it, because it's a "wow" feature, and that would pollute their beloved game.

From my brief impression of the SWTOR group finder compared to the WOW version:
It's single realm, so combined with the higher post-transfer populations, it should allow players to run levelling flashpoints much more conveniently than before and might also work well for level 50 content.
Single realm means that people will probably want to be more mindful of their reputation than the relatively anonymous giant pool of players in a WOW cross-realm group.
Ignoring a player will prevent you from getting matched with that player.

It seems promising to me, and I'm looking forward to using parts of it for my alts. I'm not as optimistic about finding a group for the most difficult content via this system (which in this case would be Lost Island hard mode or Explosive Conflict story mode), but might still give it a shot.

winnetou wrote on Jun 13, 2012, 03:36:

JohnBirshire wrote on Jun 13, 2012, 03:22:
Allowing people to leave low population ones and go to higher population ones does not solve anything, it just makes the problem worse. Now you're left with even MORE low population servers than before.

These are opt-in server mergers. Servers marked as transfer sources will never be selected as a destination server. The transfer option will not disappear overnight, so players on source servers can just move whenever they accept that reality.
What this approach avoids is competing against inactive accounts for character and legacy names.

Regarding the group finder: it's currently available on the public test server. Still has a few bugs, but should probably make its way onto live servers along with the rest of patch 1.3 within the next few weeks.

Asmo wrote on May 22, 2012, 22:04:

Smellfinger wrote on May 22, 2012, 19:53:

Parallax Abstraction wrote on May 22, 2012, 18:47:
Nothing like hoping for a bunch of people to be out of work just because you don't like a product.

Yeah, he should be hoping that they keep their jobs so they can continue to produce garbage. The video game industry is in desperate need of MMO shovelware like The Old Republic.

Yep, that's the point.

I don't like playing COD these days because it's the same old recycled junk, but some people like it (a lot of people), so we keep getting more of it.

SWTOR is reaping what it sowed. I know one of their server admins and he's probably going to be out of work because of this. I don't like seeing my friends unemployed, particularly since he had zero control over the final product, but I don't want to see more crapware passed out as AAA products.

It's a natural evolution, adapt or die. It's unfortunate that people get caught up in this but tbh most BW employees should have seen the writing on the wall in late Feb.

Beelzebud wrote on May 7, 2012, 21:14:
I just want to see an MMO that does not use the Wow Formula. Design your own combat systems. Design your own skill systems. Stop making every MMO exactly the same game with a different skin on it.

Say what you will about Asheron's Call and Everquest, but at least in that era there was a clear distinction between the games.

Wraith wrote on Apr 6, 2012, 02:18:
For fuck's sake, John, it's about time you stopped believing your own bullshit.

All you ever were, was a level designer for the most advanced engines ever made. There is nothing startling or even halfway competent about your work.

* You do not understand gameplay.
* You do not understand complexity.
* You totally fail to grasp the purpose of character customisation
* You are clueless about atmosphere and how aesthetics produce specific effects upon the players
* Your understanding of scale and perspective is non-existent.

All you are is a man-child who thinks his own personal vision of what's "cool" is somehow going to be shared by others. Despite the fact that Daikatana was a bomb and every single good thing Ion Storm ever produced had sweet fuck all to do with you.

Your absence makes a game significantly better.

Don't worry about whether you talk about your game or not. It'll still be shit, because you simply have no fucking clue about what makes a good game.

Christ, I can't believe people are still giving this colossal failure more press. He's like the Derek Smart of the FPS world.