We really need a new mmorpg.
61 Likes
As soon as possible. New next gen successful MMO is needed badly.
23 Likes
Making both an MMO and an RPG in one seems weird to me, especially when they try to do these weird scaling things and re-balance all the time. For example leveling feels soulless because we no longer outpower zones naturally. The wolves we one-shot at level three become much harder to kill when we get to level 30.
To me, the whole point of the RPG is that my character gets stronger and everything becomes progressively more easy 
I will wait two expansions, hopefully Legion is easily soloable by then! Also please less funneling all players into the endgame. Or consider reworking/removing leveling. Because right now itâs a super slog ;/
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Yeah. I bounce back and forth and FFXIV is just⌠okay. I mean, Iâm glad that it really scratches an itch for people who like extremely scripted PvE content and the most hellacious PvP experience ever⌠but, at the end of the day, itâs really starting to show its age (especially after the flight revamp⌠so now you can, like, mount up and fly around in the snow-globe-like limited âbubbleâ over each zone. Weeeee).
Iâm kind of looking forward to Ashes of Creation. And there are a couple of anime-type MMORPGs supposedly launching this year (Tower of Fantasy and Blue Protocol) that havenât made my drop out of my chair in gagging fits yet (like, for example, Crowfall does. Seriously, the combat in that game is PUTRID).
But, yes, we desperately need another AAA-grade MMORPG. And it doesnât have to be some 300 million dollar behemoth. Just, maybe, a 30-million effort by a legitimate design studio (and no, Amazon doesnât count).
8 Likes
Would be great if Pantheon came out, or an FF14 equivalent that people donât automatically attach the âWeebâ stigma to. Yes, you know who you are. xD
âScaling worldsâ Also have got to stop, no matter what the next big MMORPG ends up being. Everquest/II was not scaling, Rift was not scaling, WoW used to not be scaling. GW2 and ESO are both meant to be entirely different experiences than your typical MMORPG.
Give me a good overworld experience like Rift generally did, with fishing mechanics along the same vein that you occasionally got luxury goods, a set of decent zone story lines with characters actually being lore relevant, and fun classes like original WoW or EQ2 where there were slight (albeit potentially suboptimal or situational) variances.
Give me loot to chase that is a bit more meaningful than just the numbers, and let all stats be some degree of useful again. Give me ways to learn more about the world in-game that arenât necessarily quests.
That feeling when your level 15 character can finally conquer just about everything in the Greater Faydark aside from some things you shouldnât be killing anyways is probably the greatest feeling ever. Learning more about the various Dragon cults in Rift through scrolls/books in cult-infested areas or about different mobs in EQ2 through the Lore and Legends quests is always fun. Things like Archaeology in WoW are fun for those of us who like history.
We can recapture the magic, people just have to stop giving the side-eye to that Esports money.
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I think the bigger problem with FFXIV than the âweebâ stigma is actually a pretty definite criticism in the game. Even moreso than WoW (which is amazing), FFXIV is a âcity loitering similation.â Once you hit the cap and have gear, thereâs almost nothing that takes you out into the world.
Fate grinding used to be a really big thing in that game. A lot of people hated it, but it at least kept a fair number of alts out in the zones, running around and interacting with other people. But a few years ago they gutted the fate XP gain, and as a result people just stand around in Ulâdah and wait for their next queue⌠over, and over, and over again. And thatâs okay if youâre the type that really enjoys taking your little anime doll to do a /e pose and stand there looking like one of the cool kids (while you do other stuff IRL), but for a lot of us, thatâs not how we want to play.
Iâm not crapping on FFXIV - it does a few things much better than WoW. But itâs pretty sad that companies seem to have just COMPLETELY abandoned the MMORPG market, especially at a time when the two âtitansâ of the genre are both really worn out.
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Which I cannot see happening. MMOs just take so much money and labor I canât imagine companies want to get into it anymore.
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Oh definitely, I think I sit in hubs more often than I really do much in the outside world, save Bozja Citadel/the old Eureka content (Which of course, people absolutely hated and I honestly donât blame them). There are absolutely valid criticism in other areas too, for example I would not blame people for being iffy on the class design, because it is very rotational and does not lend itself to having a dedicated support role which is honestly a huge problem in MMOs in general lately.
Fates, I think, are more an unfortunate result of the Dev team being unsure what the proper scaling should be on Fate rewards. The current relics have everyone out doing Fates again in the middle zones but the exp really is not THAT great for classes that would want to do those fates, even with the stipend that any class can grind the item as long as you have the quest active. It would be nice if they could agree on a âHow many fates should equal one levelâ sort of deal in the higher content. Fate grinding is actually semi-viable for DPS in the Shadowbringers zones, but Bozja kinda invalidates it now as itâs both the high-level engagement center AND the Deep Dungeon equivalent rolled into one.
They added a lot of fluff rewards to Fates but ironically did not adjust the exp well enough, outside the ShB content, and still havenât had time to revamp earlier Fates which is unfortunate.
We are in the twilight years of MMOs. The MMOs on the horizon probably wonât see the light of day and if they do make it they will likely drown with small populations and massive micro transactions to keep afloat.
5 Likes
Iâve been excited for a couple âMMOâsâ that devolved before the release date or just got scrapped over the past couple years. Guaranteed companies wanna do it they just canât get it right is the problem.
I think other MMORPGs of good quality will eventually be made. The reason weâre in this dead zone is pretty simple: because stupid companies became obsessed with copying WoW because there was a prevailing belief that if you could out-magician Houdini, then his audience would just magically reappear in your tent.
The problem with that thinking is that people a) have some degree of brand loyalty (though Blizzard has really taxed it of late), b) MMORPGs are a social construct, and a lot of people donât want to implode their guilds or circles of friends to try something new, and c) most of the really big-budget releases (like The Old Republic) were horribly flawed or partially completed, and that killed them out of the gate when the players who did show up expected a game that instantly did everything WoW does but better.
Now that the fixation on killing WoW by cutting off its face and wearing it as a skin mask has waned (and the big development bucks have correspondingly dried up), itâs somewhat unsurprising how dead the genre has been for the past 5 years. But this may also be an opportunity for independent ideas and small projects to have the proper time to bake before being served up - IE, Intrepid isnât breathing down the neck of Ashes of Creation in the same way EA was with TOR, and thus the game doesnât need to launch incomplete.
I do think, eventually, more good MMORPGs will release. Even if the market is reduced in size, there is clearly still a decent number of people out there who enjoy them. And, of course, a lot of the people playing games like WoW and FFXIV just arenât as satisfied (or loyal) as they once were (especially here).
15 Likes
Very well put Mearles
Pretty much agree 100%. I would go a bit further and say it might even be easier now to make a satisfactory launch title than it was when WoW itself launched especially because of the Guilds/Friends statement.
Even when WoW came out, people were still extremely entrenched in Everquest until up around the ends of Omens of War when a few topical issues popped up such as rising barriers to entry for new players. Everquest II was sorta in the same boat, in that both EQ and EQ:OA players were unlikely to join the game for the first few months because they were comfortable where they were.
We donât have a singular title anymore that has such a powerful grip on its players. WoW and FF14 are in a weird funnel where players drift between the two (myself included in that). LOTRO is a shadow of what it once was, and itâs supported by a sizable group of Diehards that still donât really number high enough to claim âsovereigntyâ so to speak. ESO and GW2 are entirely different experiences. DDO falls into this category too. Players are more scattered and less tied to a single game than they were 10-12 years ago. Rift literally suicided by allowing Gamigo to buy them.
Edit: Amending this a little bit too to mention Vanguard for a moment. It was another good game with a decent enough concept that much like TOR died as an unfortunate result of Microsoft rushing its release. Could have potentially been a good non-clone competitor to WoW/EQ and kept all three games healthy b/c its systems were just so different, but it died to corporate hubris.
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Yeah, and why did they? Having ambition and good ideas is not enough to make an MMO (or any game for that matter). They cost a lot, they require a lot of work, and without smart monetization they donât return enough on investment. MMOs simply have too high of a barrier to entry.
I am sure a game will eventually come around, even if it takes 20 years.
See, this is what I mean though. Any new MMO will by default be incomplete because they have to compete with mega giants like WoW who are just too well established with a bar set too high. Part of MMO experience is constant updating and additions, so any new game that doesnât have a big enough end game will by default be behind Blizz. Several prominent MMOs died that way. Itâs a very risky investment that, as you put it, âneeds to be done right.â Getting it done right requires a lot.
See, this is what I mean though. Any new MMO will by default be incomplete because they have to compete with mega giants like WoW who are just too well established with a bar set too high. Part of MMO experience is constant updating and additions, so any new game that doesnât have a big enough end game will by default be behind Blizz. Several prominent MMOs died that way. Itâs a very risky investment that, as you put it, âneeds to be done right.â Getting it done right requires a lot.
I actually donât think this is true. Because I donât think that new games are attempting to be WoW anymore - theyâre far less concerned with eating Blizzardâs lunch than they are attempting carve out their own little niche (and if they hit a home run, great, but if not, they can survive as a small project just fine).
I personally never really expected that WoW would be âkilledâ - Iâve been bored with it for a long while, myself, but itâs scratched a collective itch for a pretty big crowd, and (in a reduced capacity, perhaps) continues to do so. But recent⌠uh⌠âmismanagementâ combined with general burnout would seem to indicate that it, too, does have a shelf life, and while I donât think the end is nigh, I do think that a lot of people are leaving the game behind, and they arenât being replaced.
The ultimate destiny for the genre is probably smaller games - exactly as it was back in the days of EQ and UO. And thatâs fine - it may even be much, much better than what weâve dealt with for the past 16 years. Trying to please everyone often results in satisfying noone, and if anything could sum up the current state of WoW, thatâs pretty much it. Games that are trying to satisfy a smaller group of players may inadvertently wind up becoming big hits because their uncompromising vision tickles a fancy we didnât even know we had.
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Iâve been having a lot of fun playing ESO. I know its end game isnât as polished as WoW, but I enjoy the story/questing, its more immersive. And I actually enjoy the combat more than tab-targetting tbh. Also the community is a lot nicer.
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Just another mmorpg wonât help if itâs dishing out the same garbage.
2 Likes
The sad thing is that, with how volatile the MMORPG genre is, I likely would never risk getting invested in a new one. There are some blunders out there that fail so hard they end up getting the plug pulled in under a couple years. And once the servers go down in an MMORPG, thatâs it. The game is dead and unplayable.
Itâs basically WoW or nothing for me at this point. Even if I were to disagree with the overall direction the game is taking, I can at least count on the lights being left on for the foreseeable future.
1 Like
why?
The game itself is fine. Its the boring lack of creativity thats making it miserable. Its the cheap attempt to waste my time /played thats the problem.
Making a new game wont make the creative teams do any better than they do now.
We need new talent. not a new game.
2 Likes