The Next Big MMO?

[Huntn]

Well, 2 months later here's my take on Warlords of Draenor/WoW...

I leveled my main to 100, didn't complete Nagrand and don't really feel like bothering with 5 hubs worth of quests just to see the end cinematic and get an item that isn't useful to me at this point.

My garrison is fully built out and self sustaining. I've reached the point where I just login and run the apexis crystals daily to get an epic cloak because it is the only slot left that I have a 630 blue in. I hit over 645 ilvl in both feral and resto specs and just need the cloaks to hit the savagely epic achievement but I am finding it hard to care. I also pickup the various work orders, herbs and ores then hearth to Warspear to put them in the bank supposedly for alts to craft with maybe someday.

I got 3 alts into garrisons at level 90 just collecting free guild resources I pick up every couple of days. They each have about 5k now. The cap is 10k. My main has about 5k and growing faster than I spend them on missions.

Speaking of missions, I have all 5 followers I needed working the buildings in my garrison and another 20 are leveled to 100/epic and are all at 645 plus for gear so they can do any and all missions including the highmaul raid ones.

I did the legendary quest up to the 680 ring. Just collecting stones now to get the upgrade to 690.

It was fun reaching this point and just doing LFR raids once a week to see the content and get some upgrades. It was fun running all the heroics at least once and passing the silver proving grounds in both my specs. However, now after just two months it has become routine and boring really. I meant to cancel this month and missed it by an hour accidentally. lol

I guess I'll give it another month and maybe I'll have some fun with the alts or something but somehow I just feel burned out on the repetitiveness of it all.

I was about 25 hours into KOTOR for Mac (thanks Aspyr!) when Draenor hit and hadn't touched it since. The other night I fired it up, reacquainted myself with it and played a bit. It was fun too. In this single player game I felt like there was purpose and story to unfold, etc.

Anyway, that's my story about WoW.

I am considering Elder Scrolls Online but I probably should just play Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim instead. The persistent worlds of MMOs with vast interesting places to explore and populated by other real people appeals to me though and is what has kept me coming back since I began playing them well over a decade ago now. Anyone have any comments about ESO? Maybe I should try Diablo III. I know it isn't an MMO but I wonder what the multiplayer is like in that, if any of it is cooperative or is it all just pvp.

The biggest advantage, which I assume you know but I'll say it anyway , of playing a solo game, is that the world doeschange based on you, versus a static MMO which besides some instanced story interactions, remains static, completely static. And it's all highly repetitive. That's a given. When I fight anyone in WoW PVE, I just run through my Attack list, usually in order, maybe slight variation to disrupt a spell, not much thought required. I'm still in Pandaria, still loving the sights.

One aspect of WoT that I love is that you are playing people, and strategies might seem repetitive, they require some thought based on terrain and the type of opponent. I guess this might be said of WoW for PVP? But I don't do WoW PVP. I restareted WoW to get to WoD, but I might not make I t. If I hold out till the next expansion, Blizzard might give me WoD for free like they did Pandaria.

 

[soulsyphon]

in world of queuecraft there is literally nothing to do but sit in your garrison queuing for dungeons/lfrs to play with idiots or to queue for random bgs to play with bots.

once you acquired your pointless gear which doesn't actually change anything except statistic display (your spells do the same percent of damage against a pvp opponent or raid boss since vanilla) you realize that you wasted your time playing this game. the constant class balances and patches/expansions is blizzard giving you an illusion of progress. nothing has progressed, absolutely **** all. the only thing that changed is the scenery, which i admit is fascinating.

this scenario is usually what happens in 'theme park' games, and this is when you start to look at sandbox games. now you might know i play eve, but there is other sandbox games out there... eve is just the most polished/popular one and will be my simple example.

in eve... there is no levels, you aren't restricted to just 2 professions, and you can play any class (ship types are classes... like frigate/destroyer/cruiser/battleship etc)

in sandbox games, you aren't limited to raiding or battlegrounds.... and dare i say pet battles... in eve online the only limit is your mind really, you can do almost anything you want, there is almost no restrictions on what you can do in eve.

in a sandbox... the dev team doesn't tell you how to play your game and to wait for a content patch/expansion to "progress" since in a sandbox... progression is a subjective goal, you are the one that decides what your goal is... in eve you can simply play the auction house... or you can be a trucker and haul stuff from ogrimmar to stormwind (if wow allowed it). heck you can even play poker in eve from a third party site and bet with eve currency.

in eve guilds aren't limited to 1000 players, and some guilds have called themselves Red vs Blue, where red attacks blue anywhere in space, just for fun. all you got to do is join a red or blue.

im still subbed to wow because i bought in the hype of warlords of draenor... i bought a 6 month sub... but i probably only played maximum of 3 days in total time... i only have one level 100 and the rest are in 90s... i just don't see the point of playing that game anymore, its not even fun... especially when you get 1 shotted in pvp by feral druids.

my suggestion is... try sandbox... as for diablo 3... you will get bored of it, diablo 3 is so repetitive that its borderline insanity.

 

[Huntn]

in world of queuecraft there is literally nothing to do but sit in your garrison queuing for dungeons/lfrs to play with idiots or to queue for random bgs to play with bots.

once you acquired your pointless gear which doesn't actually change anything except statistic display (your spells do the same percent of damage against a pvp opponent or raid boss since vanilla) you realize that you wasted your time playing this game. the constant class balances and patches/expansions is blizzard giving you an illusion of progress. nothing has progressed, absolutely **** all. the only thing that changed is the scenery, which i admit is fascinating.

this scenario is usually what happens in 'theme park' games, and this is when you start to look at sandbox games. now you might know i play eve, but there is other sandbox games out there... eve is just the most polished/popular one and will be my simple example.

in eve... there is no levels, you aren't restricted to just 2 professions, and you can play any class (ship types are classes... like frigate/destroyer/cruiser/battleship etc)

in sandbox games, you aren't limited to raiding or battlegrounds.... and dare i say pet battles... in eve online the only limit is your mind really, you can do almost anything you want, there is almost no restrictions on what you can do in eve.

in a sandbox... the dev team doesn't tell you how to play your game and to wait for a content patch/expansion to "progress" since in a sandbox... progression is a subjective goal, you are the one that decides what your goal is... in eve you can simply play the auction house... or you can be a trucker and haul stuff from ogrimmar to stormwind (if wow allowed it). heck you can even play poker in eve from a third party site and bet with eve currency.

in eve guilds aren't limited to 1000 players, and some guilds have called themselves Red vs Blue, where red attacks blue anywhere in space, just for fun. all you got to do is join a red or blue.

im still subbed to wow because i bought in the hype of warlords of draenor... i bought a 6 month sub... but i probably only played maximum of 3 days in total time... i only have one level 100 and the rest are in 90s... i just don't see the point of playing that game anymore, its not even fun... especially when you get 1 shotted in pvp by feral druids.

my suggestion is... try sandbox... as for diablo 3... you will get bored of it, diablo 3 is so repetitive that its borderline insanity.

Let me ask you about Eve. I've been blabbing about Elite Dangerous lately. In that game, there is only one fun thing I've discovered to do and that is bounty hunt. The ED Galaxy is pretty cool but it's short on sights. I've tried missions and trading and they are pretty boring. Exploration- that is an open question at this point. Honestly I don't know how long bounty hunting will sustain me, however there is no subscription so I can take my time and ignore ED for a month if I want to and not feel like I'm throwing my money away.

This is a repeat of what I said in the Eve versus ED thread. Eve strikes me in a similiar manner on the boring end and other than there is constant PVP and some big coordinated battles, which could be fun. How often does that happen? And there is that pesky subscription and a hefty death penalty which for Eve I'm ignorant of other than I know insurance exists.

Right now I can take my time and explore ED. I like the idea of coordinated battles (Eve), but I'm not sure how focused the game is. I recently discovered that in the early stages of ED, bounty hunting can be lucrative and easy. What do new Eve players do to raise large amounts of ship building cash? If you say trade and mining, that will be a strike 1, the same as it is for ED. .

 

[Plutonius]

Well, 2 months later here's my take on Warlords of Draenor/WoW...

I leveled my main to 100, didn't complete Nagrand and don't really feel like bothering with 5 hubs worth of quests just to see the end cinematic and get an item that isn't useful to me at this point.

My garrison is fully built out and self sustaining. I've reached the point where I just login and run the apexis crystals daily to get an epic cloak because it is the only slot left that I have a 630 blue in. I hit over 645 ilvl in both feral and resto specs and just need the cloaks to hit the savagely epic achievement but I am finding it hard to care. I also pickup the various work orders, herbs and ores then hearth to Warspear to put them in the bank supposedly for alts to craft with maybe someday.

I got 3 alts into garrisons at level 90 just collecting free guild resources I pick up every couple of days. They each have about 5k now. The cap is 10k. My main has about 5k and growing faster than I spend them on missions.

Speaking of missions, I have all 5 followers I needed working the buildings in my garrison and another 20 are leveled to 100/epic and are all at 645 plus for gear so they can do any and all missions including the highmaul raid ones.

I did the legendary quest up to the 680 ring. Just collecting stones now to get the upgrade to 690.

It was fun reaching this point and just doing LFR raids once a week to see the content and get some upgrades. It was fun running all the heroics at least once and passing the silver proving grounds in both my specs. However, now after just two months it has become routine and boring really. I meant to cancel this month and missed it by an hour accidentally. lol

I guess I'll give it another month and maybe I'll have some fun with the alts or something but somehow I just feel burned out on the repetitiveness of it all.

Nice review. I enjoyed the last expansion (MoP) and stayed subbed the entire time. I enjoyed the current expansion (WoD) but I plan on canceling my sub after my alts hit 100. The content is not there and I don't raid so I see no point in playing till the next expansion comes out.

 

[TheBunny]

ESO has gone Sub free now.

Have not seen this mentioned on the forums yet,
But ESO has dropped subs and gone buy to play.

Buy once and play as much as you like.

 

[soulsyphon]

dear huntn,

... lets repeat the eve thread for the third time, obviously goes right through your head.

things to do, based on 2011 edition
http://swiftandbitter.com/eve/wtd/

how to earn "cash" aka CURRENCY
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/How_to_earn_ISK

 

[Huntn]

dear huntn,

... lets repeat the eve thread for the third time, obviously goes right through your head.

things to do, based on 2011 edition
http://swiftandbitter.com/eve/wtd/

how to earn "cash" aka CURRENCY
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/How_to_earn_ISK

I've got a good memory but it's short...

 

[Plutonius]

I've got a good memory but it's short...

Age does that to you .

 

[xSinghx]

Wow this thread has been going for a long time...

I think by now it should be obvious there won't be a "next big MMO." MMO's have come and gone and some like WoW still retain people. Others take what they can get but overall the height of their popularity has come and gone. The newness faded long ago and they are simply repeating a formula at this point and have been for a very long time.

And how many people look forward to buying a game that does the same old thing? If ESO is any example - not many.

If anything (as with all things) there will be (and one could argue we are undergoing) a paradigm shift away from online games that are massive and towards something more intimate (co-op). Playing with a couple of friends - great - having a massive amount of people around you as window dressing - not so much. Too many people can and do ruin a good thing at times.

If MMO's are to grow they'll need to reconfigure their thinking with regard to social interaction, which for many game developers takes a back seat to gameplay itself. This seems contradictory given the social emphasis of a game type like a MMO. As they are generally, they exist in a state of contradiction, on the one hand superficially professing a shared social experience but in reality being intensely individualistic and isolating. One may argue leveling is not like this but when it comes to endgame (which is the majority of the experience) it is completely. Everything is a line and the dynamics of the MMO makes the best use of one's social engagements into a self-serving exercise.

The future of online, massive multiplayer games will need to question what creates meaningful interaction in a game beyond defeating an opponent or being first in line for a piece of gear. Too much emphasis in these games is placed on a solitary destination for the individual rather than emphasizing a shared journey.

 

[Huntn]

Wow this thread has been going for a long time...

I think by now it should be obvious there won't be a "next big MMO." MMO's have come and gone and some like WoW still retain people. Others take what they can get but overall the height of their popularity has come and gone. The newness faded long ago and they are simply repeating a formula at this point and have been for a very long time.

And how many people look forward to buying a game that does the same old thing? If ESO is any example - not many.

If anything (as with all things) there will be (and one could argue we are undergoing) a paradigm shift away from online games that are massive and towards something more intimate (co-op). Playing with a couple of friends - great - having a massive amount of people around you as window dressing - not so much. Too many people can and do ruin a good thing at times.

If MMO's are to grow they'll need to reconfigure their thinking with regard to social interaction, which for many game developers takes a back seat to gameplay itself. This seems contradictory given the social emphasis of a game type like a MMO. As they are generally, they exist in a state of contradiction, on the one hand superficially professing a shared social experience but in reality being intensely individualistic and isolating. One may argue leveling is not like this but when it comes to endgame (which is the majority of the experience) it is completely. Everything is a line and the dynamics of the MMO makes the best use of one's social engagements into a self-serving exercise.

The future of online, massive multiplayer games will need to question what creates meaningful interaction in a game beyond defeating an opponent or being first in line for a piece of gear. Too much emphasis in these games is placed on a solitary destination for the individual rather than emphasizing a shared journey.

Interesting points . I've realized that massive online equals static for the most part if referencing a MMORPG type of world. There are other solutions that are more flexible, for persistent worlds such as base ownership in Planetside, but that is still mostly static, and it's focused completely on PVP. My fantasy has always been a dynamic world with dynamic PVE questing and situations, where all players are not guaranteed the same experience, but I imagine it would be more difficult to construct an environment like this, that would be commercially viable.

WoW is interesting because besides the release of the expansions, associated new exploring, and some level gains, the dedicated player will quickly find themselves back in the end game environment, which to me is a dead end. Servers based on a thousand players all doing the same thing seems rather artificial? I prefer lightly loaded servers. The challenge is to create these slices of adventuring for smaller coop groups or even solo and somehow keep it going, maybe an impossible task. Right now I'm enjoying Mists of Pandaria on a very casual basis. I may not even get to WoD before I fizzle out.