Star Wars: The Old Republic will kill WoW - outsourced to Broadsword

[deuxhero]

http://www.siliconera.com/2014/03/14/dragon-quest-x-impressive-300000-daily-active-players-japan/

An MMO that only launched in one country and actively blacks IPs outside of that country has more active players than ToRtanic does.

 

[set]

The notion of player housing is pretty silly

Once again, we can thank WoW for instilling people with all the wrong notions on how MMOs should function.

 

[Delterius]

The notion of player housing is pretty silly

Once again, we can thank WoW for instilling people with all the wrong notions on how MMOs should function.

Wat.

Player housing has been around MMOs since forever. Meanwhile, WoW resisted their implementation for years. Shouldn't you be looking towards how Ultima Online's players speculated about the value of in-game property with real life money just because a given blacksmith node was closer to the main throughfaire for players/potential customers?

 

[set]

The notion of player housing is pretty silly

Once again, we can thank WoW for instilling people with all the wrong notions on how MMOs should function.

Wat.

Player housing has been around MMOs since forever. Meanwhile, WoW resisted their implementation for years. Shouldn't you be looking towards how Ultima Online's players speculated about the value of in-game property with real life money just because a given blacksmith node was closer to the main throughfaire for players/potential customers?

I can't place why housing has never been implemented in WoW - I really can't (other than it being the fact that Blizzard is lazy, but I'm sure there is a more interesting underlying reason for it), but it's fundamental to building any serious MMORPG. Real MMOs aren't about grinding, they're about interacting with a virtual world and a real community. They're about building class, reputation, and acting out roles. Having a house gives you a physical context for where you exist in a virtual world - which is always something about WoW that never made sense to me, even when I was playing the thing almost a decade ago. Without housing, your player character is pretty much a vagabond - and that loss of identity is something subtle, but powerful. It definitely harms the game.

There are two elemental kinds of "MMO" - games where players grind stats all day like gerbils on wheels and games where players interact with a virtual society, the "traditional mechanics" (like quests and items) used to simulate certain aspects of real life, but aren't the be-all focus of the game. The latter is something which has staying power, the former is only something that can succeed if it's designed like a virus and lucky.

 

[Excidium]

Fucking larpers

 

[Xor]

Yes, clearly WoW is the game without staying power.

 

[Storyfag]

The notion of player housing is pretty silly

Once again, we can thank WoW for instilling people with all the wrong notions on how MMOs should function.

Wat.

Player housing has been around MMOs since forever. Meanwhile, WoW resisted their implementation for years. Shouldn't you be looking towards how Ultima Online's players speculated about the value of in-game property with real life money just because a given blacksmith node was closer to the main throughfaire for players/potential customers?

I can't place why housing has never been implemented in WoW - I really can't (other than it being the fact that Blizzard is lazy, but I'm sure there is a more interesting underlying reason for it), but it's fundamental to building any serious MMORPG. Real MMOs aren't about grinding, they're about interacting with a virtual world and a real community. They're about building class, reputation, and acting out roles. Having a house gives you a physical context for where you exist in a virtual world - which is always something about WoW that never made sense to me, even when I was playing the thing almost a decade ago. Without housing, your player character is pretty much a vagabond - and that loss of identity is something subtle, but powerful. It definitely harms the game.

There are two elemental kinds of "MMO" - games where players grind stats all day like gerbils on wheels and games where players interact with a virtual society, the "traditional mechanics" (like quests and items) used to simulate certain aspects of real life, but aren't the be-all focus of the game. The latter is something which has staying power, the former is only something that can succeed if it's designed like a virus and lucky.

And what about the possible harmful effect of housing on socialising? After all, having your own private space which is inaccessible to others might lead to seclusion.

 

[Angthoron]

The notion of player housing is pretty silly

Once again, we can thank WoW for instilling people with all the wrong notions on how MMOs should function.

Wat.

Player housing has been around MMOs since forever. Meanwhile, WoW resisted their implementation for years. Shouldn't you be looking towards how Ultima Online's players speculated about the value of in-game property with real life money just because a given blacksmith node was closer to the main throughfaire for players/potential customers?

I can't place why housing has never been implemented in WoW - I really can't (other than it being the fact that Blizzard is lazy, but I'm sure there is a more interesting underlying reason for it), but it's fundamental to building any serious MMORPG. Real MMOs aren't about grinding, they're about interacting with a virtual world and a real community. They're about building class, reputation, and acting out roles. Having a house gives you a physical context for where you exist in a virtual world - which is always something about WoW that never made sense to me, even when I was playing the thing almost a decade ago. Without housing, your player character is pretty much a vagabond - and that loss of identity is something subtle, but powerful. It definitely harms the game.

There are two elemental kinds of "MMO" - games where players grind stats all day like gerbils on wheels and games where players interact with a virtual society, the "traditional mechanics" (like quests and items) used to simulate certain aspects of real life, but aren't the be-all focus of the game. The latter is something which has staying power, the former is only something that can succeed if it's designed like a virus and lucky.

And what about the possible harmful effect of housing on socialising? After all, having your own private space which is inaccessible to others might lead to seclusion.

Seclusion is a part of socializing anyway. You don't socialize 24/7 with strangers, or even with people you know in the real world, I'd say you could skip out on that part in the virtual one as well. Besides, there's phasing and instancing already, which can fill in those roles to a degree.

Housing in WoW could be such an amazing gold sink that I'm surprised that it's not in yet.

 

[Bubbles]

The solution to the seclusion issue is to require a minimum of eight players to live in each home. It's reflective of real world living conditions for the majority of players and encourages socializing and bonding.

 

[Delterius]

I can't place why housing has never been implemented in WoW - I really can't (other than it being the fact that Blizzard is lazy, but I'm sure there is a more interesting underlying reason for it)

Weird you'd bring laziness into this equation. Player housing in World of Warcraft was feature complete since before the game's inception. What happens is that the model Blizzard opted (as was necessary) involved instanced housing. This would have been a gigantic contrast to older iterations of player housing, effectively eliminating the community from the social process.

Meaning that, in older MMOs, player houses exist in a limited quantity and within the gameworld itself. That way everyone can see (from outside) what constitutes you as a player -- trophies, items, decoration, etc. To Blizzard's devs, their method would eventually degenerate into people just hanging out in their own houses and the gameworld going empty.

As with other features, that incentive to keep player housing out of the equation sort of died out. Each WoW expansion enlarged the game world and direct interaction with a large amount of players in so called capital cities became less and less intense. The game itself adapted to it by easing the player's ways of engaging content without spamming the world chat with dungeon requests.

By the time WotLK came out the capital cities had become ghost towns, LFG had to be implemented and, so, Cataclysm's and Pandaria's efforts to bring people together in the capital cities (by turning them into gateways into the world's content as well as eliminating future hangouts, a function served Crusader's Arena and Dalaran in the former expansion) and the gameworld itself (server magic in Pandaria) had come too late. People no longer valued large communities of people in a given world. In fact, people hated that they now had to compete for quests and herbs -- the world had taken such an individualistic bent by then that community itself died out. Which is why, now, they implemented player housing without remorse. Socialization in World of Wacraft had already lost all sense of collectivity as the game itself became mostly individualistic in nature. Now you bring people to your house, instead of relying on others to quest. Etc.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Housing in WoW could be such an amazing gold sink that I'm surprised that it's not in yet.

Garrisons in this years expansion should be just that (a gold sink at least, if nothing more).

About housing in mmos - I kept thinking that every mmo should have this feature but then I realized I was biased by how great housing worked in Ultima Online. Your house was an actual object in the game world and thus interacted with it. Later you could even customize everything about the design and the decorators did amazing job using random items to make aquariums and whatnot, decoration pieces that weren't in the game. That also was possible because every single item had physical form so a sword was a sword and not an icon in your bag. And then you had player/guild run towns. Housing mattered because it was part of the game world.

For me if housing system is less than that then it serves no real purpose and just becomes a gimmick. Lotro has housing but who cares? Everyone uses it for additional storage and nothing more. I'd rather see the development time spent on making two new instanced dungeons than instanced housing.

I don't know how the connection between EQN and EQLandmark will work but that's a system that could work - you have one non-instanced world dedicated to housing and one to your regular mmo stuff.

 

[set]

I guess instances have a lot to do with it. Instances save devemlopment time and money and save on server costs -- but they bring a lot of negatives to the table, such as making the world less "real". With instances, players can play a game like WoW totally devoid from human contact.

 

[Angthoron]

By the time WotLK came out the capital cities had become ghost towns, LFG had to be implemented and, so, Cataclysm's and Pandaria's efforts to bring people together in the capital cities (by turning them into gateways into the world's content as well as eliminating future hangouts, a function served Crusader's Arena and Dalaran in the former expansion) and the gameworld itself (server magic in Pandaria) had come to late. People no longer valued large communities of people in a given world. In fact, people hated that they now had to compete for quests and herbs -- the world had taken such an individualistic bent by then that community itself died out. Which is why, now, they implemented player housing without remorse. Socialization in World of Wacraft had already lost all sense of collectivity as the game itself became mostly individualistic in nature. Now you bring people to your house, instead of relying on others to quest. Etc.

This is quite spot-on. I should add, though, that in a way tools like LFG have managed to push individualistic gamestyle even further, thus shattering the community further. You don't need to make friends for a stable dungeon party, and looks like you don't need that for casual raiding either. In fact, I'd say that LFG at launch of any MMO is actually dooming the community to fail faster as it removes one of the otherwise important forces that band people together - and the more MMOs cater to the casual crowd, the more they actually undermine it - a casual that's spoon-fed will just have that cake and eat it, and move on.

So, for this type of user, B2P/F2P model would probably be best from the point of view of the publisher. I doubt they don't know this, so new MMOs pushing a sub "until it fails" are essentially engaged in something quite doucheful.

 

[Delterius]

The process I described is, I think, only one facet of WoW's degeneration. No one will ever dare and try to describe all of them but I do have a theory, its called Speed. But first: As the gameworld expanded the community was dilluted. The same thing I said about the death of the gameworld and the rise of LFG tools can be said about the levelling process itself.

Eventually, Blizzard had to devalue levelling as an interesting and valid game segment, otherwise people will never reach the level of their friends' in time to follow them through content. After all, if we talk about the BC era, a new friend means the responsability of grinding earlier dungeons just so he can raid with you. If your friend joined mid expansion I wouldn't doubt that he only got to the equipment level required for the latest raids by the time they were all old business. And by the time LK came out the content needed to even reach those first few dungeons would have been immense if you had to reach level 60 vanilla style and then level 70 early BC style. Hence the casualization of the levelling process itself. As time goes on and on, we have the rise of character customization services that allow you to pay an extra to bypass so much of the game's content.

That all should be known to everybody but I'll tell you something that is a bit of a shocker to any relatively new player of World of Warcraft, levelling, even when alone, used to be one of my favorite parts of the game. I don't even mean this in a first time sense of discovery (as most people get bored out of zones in a while, hence their shock), but the way things were I'd level 4 human characters to the 30s before finally deciding on a main alt -- on old school brazilian dominated servers even while trying to survive against the horde of... well... Horde selfies in Stranglethorn Vale. This is partly because there was ever an incentive to party even for the easiest quests making content an interesting venture for friends and even friendly unknowns. Which means it is partly because of how much Slower everything is.

And here's the 'theory'. Simply put: the first time you boot the game and walk around you probably won't feel like the game is slow at all. If the game's pretty and/or interesting you'll probably look at things with much more focus than you ever will later on. Then you discover the flightpaths, which starts making you irritable whenever you are walking from point A to point B as you wish there was a flightmaster at the end of destination. Still, its not so bad until you buy your first mount. After that you want another, faster, mount. You want to fly. You want to fly faster. If possible you want to tear reality apart so that point A = B (teleporters).

And this starts leaking to mechanics other than just walking around. Fuck, this shit I don't want to walk towards the dungeon can't I just warp there instantly? To Hell with World PvP I'll just fly thousands of feet above the air until the justiciar goes away and lets me kill people's low level alts on Hellfire peninsula again. I don't want to have to compete with other people for mining nodes and herbs! They are all chinese botters anyway! Etc.

Eventually Blizzard smarts up to this degeneration and tries to fight it. For an instance: suddenly there's a flying exclusion on top of new areas. There's unique content outside instances to try and get people outside LFG. And so on, but that doesn't change the fact that people are just (TL;DR) slowly but surely getting bored of a game that tries its best to innovate superficially by giving players the tools necessary to merely browse content at ever accelerating pace -- and, most importantly, the habits of the community have changed and the devs fueled that. This is why when WoW finally dies no one will understand why. They have long ceased to recognize the game it once was.

As people no longer face the cool trials of yore as anything more than a quality of life issue, true gems become unplayable. And if game franchises are raped by new contenders of business world; MMORPGs eat themselves from the inside out.

 

[Bubbles]

In fact, I'd say that LFG at launch of any MMO is actually dooming the community to fail faster as it removes one of the otherwise important forces that band people together - and the more MMOs cater to the casual crowd, the more they actually undermine it - a casual that's spoon-fed will just have that cake and eat it, and move on.

This is why the TESO devs have promised that the game will not have any LFG tools for the foreseeable future (and why their special editions have been sold out for months already).

 

[Hoaxmetal]

They won't have LFG tools for the foreseeable future because they haven't figured out how to make that system.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

They won't have LFG tools for the foreseeable future because they haven't figured out how to make that system.

 

[Bubbles]

They won't have LFG tools for the foreseeable future because they haven't figured out how to make that system.

No, it's a deliberate choice. TESO was designed for old school MMO audiences first and foremost:

According to Hines, Bethesda is aware that a subscription fee will limit the number of those interested in purchasing the game; However, the company is aware it is developing for a niche audience regardless.

"We're not trying to make a game that everybody who plays games will automatically buy," he elaborated. "It is a certain kind of game. There's no shooter elements. There's no aliens. It is a massive, 'Go where you want, do what you want' game that we think offers the kind of experience that's worthy of a subscription."

http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/12/5499556/why-the-elder-scrolls-online-needs-a-monthly-subscription

 

[Angthoron]

"We're not trying to make a game that everybody who plays games will automatically buy," he elaborated. "It is a certain kind of game. There's no shooter elements. There's no aliens. It is a massive, 'Go where you want, do what you want' game that we think offers the kind of experience that's worthy of a subscription."

I'm reading words but what the fuck does this actually mean. Hello, nebulous marketing speeches.

 

[Xor]

As we all know, Pete Hines is an honest man who would never exaggerate or outright lie about a product in order to gain attention from the public before release.

 

[set]

Bethesda has a lot of those guys. ToddSmiling.tiff



In all seriousness, themepark MMOs just become about the prizes. Loot, gear, splosions - people want these thins and they want them now. As a dev, you've gotta fight that instantgratification, because it will burn out players. You also need to provide sufficient gratification that is stimulating - most players are dumb and easily frustrated/bored.

Themepark MMOs always exhaust content faster than devs can make them. This accelerates the instant gratification part, because the game quickly becomes a grind. "Newness" wears off and players stay playing only to get more stuff; to hoard; to boast.

A good MMO needs elements that allows players to create their own enjoyment and not be tied to items or whatever. Wow violates this rule beccause of social conditioning and investment - friends keep friends playing, people keep playing because they can't abandon a decade-old investment easily. It helps WoW has very polished base mechanics (like movement). Many players find new games to be jerky or difficult to adjust. It doesn't help many games like TESUVIUS imitate WoW, so mechanics are directly compared - and the newcomer can never look as pretty/polished as the incumbent.

 

[set]

They won't have LFG tools for the foreseeable future because they haven't figured out how to make that system.

No, it's a deliberate choice. TESO was designed for old school MMO audiences first and foremost:

According to Hines, Bethesda is aware that a subscription fee will limit the number of those interested in purchasing the game; However, the company is aware it is developing for a niche audience regardless.

"We're not trying to make a game that everybody who plays games will automatically buy," he elaborated. "It is a certain kind of game. There's no shooter elements. There's no aliens. It is a massive, 'Go where you want, do what you want' game that we think offers the kind of experience that's worthy of a subscription."

http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/12/5499556/why-the-elder-scrolls-online-needs-a-monthly-subscription

Old School? Only if your definition of that is "people who've only ever played WoW". Old School to me is UO or earlier - old school tends to indicate things that are "out of style" or "behind the current generation" - WoW is still played by the millions. The lack of a LFG tool doesn't suddenly make things oldschool, that LFG shit is only a couple years old.

Saying TES or SWTOR is for the old-school... you have to be willing to swallow a lot of thick, wet and hairy marketing hype.

 

[Kem0sabe]

ESO has a LFG tool, not sure where those comments came from.

 

[Delterius]

The mockery of ToR and ESO is merging into a multithread of confusion. No one knows what's about what. Only certainty is that they are both terrible games.

 

[Bubbles]

LFG or not, the dungeons in TESO are easily the best in the genre AND can be soloed by very skilled players:





Holy shit this is gonna rock.