Topic: State of MMORPGS today: they suck!

Let me explain. If you're having some experience with MMORPGs please share your ideas. This thread is being used as an evaluation and being posted on different gaming forums, because Im working on some gaming concept with a small indie developer in my region and this might even lead to some kickstarter project in the future.

OPINION: modern MMORPGs suck
Im an oldschool MMORPG veteran, started with Meridian59, then spent countless hours in Ultima Online instead of doing my homework and then wasted away in EverQuest. Gave WoW a try (quit after a few months) and after that it was everything from EverQuest 2 to Rift, RaiderZ and GuildWars 2. Why I say modern MMORPGs suck is because: They get rid of the ROLES to play.

Yes I know, games like GW2 promote their approach as unique and fresh, removing many of the tiresome elements of the MMORPG genre. Unfortunately for me, because I liked how things were back in the day. My main reasons to play an MMORPG are:

• to actually play a ROLE, hence Roleplaying
• play coop or massively coop VS environment with my friends
• I like the feel of working on a character and see it grow stronger and influence the world around him

Todays MMORPGS get rid of fixed classes, they put their emphasis on PVP heavy content and they of course try to balance everything. What it does - for me - is it makes things bland. GuildWars 2 is an awesome game. Looks good, plays good, feels good. BUT: It feels more like an online action game with people working NEXT to each other compared to working WITH each other. All classic roles gone. No healer. No tank. No DPS. Everyone can do everything a bit. So basicly everyone looks out for himself while fighting next to each other and then somehow through combo fields and stacking status effects (they have to stack because they are too weak/short duration alone as it is) you somehow progress/win "together". That's not how I like my MMORPGS.

In days of EverQuest I played a Rogue because I could do ROGUElike things. And I couldn't do others. I was no tank, I did damage, opened locks, sneak-pulled monsters out of groups, poisened the mobs softening them up. The Rogue in GuildWars 2 is cool. Too cool. You can do your 5-skills-a-weapon in quick succession, jump in and out of stealth and it all looks cool. Only, that for me it doesn'T feel like being a rogue. Why are dedicated healers gone? If you like to heal, you'd like to play a healer. Now everyone is a breed of all kinds and thats it. Why even bother calling it a roleplaying game then?

It may sound like I am majorly butthurt and to be honest: I am. Now a friend of mine who I haven't seen since school turned out to be a small indie developer doing games and software for mobile phones. Over a beer we were lamenting about the awesome times we had in the MMORPGs of old and as it happens with 2 good friends and a beer an idea was born. Now we're evaluating if there even IS still a market for an MMORPG that lends heavily to the rules/designs of old.

Thad said, I am asking you on a personal note, what do you prefer (if you even like MMORPGs) and whats important for you?

The more casual approach as of late, like fast paced combat, less tactics, less planning, less crowd control but more "they do it all skills" and the removal of traditional classes? Or do you prefer an open skill system like Elderscrolls Online will have (quite a bit like Skyrim and Oblivion)? Do you play a roleplaying game to play a role really or do you just want to do quest/adventures in a persistent world no matter what toon you're actually playing?

ROUGH IDEA OVER A BEER
Here's what we thought our MMORPG-classes should have, please let me know what you think:

• distinct classes with a distinct job for each
• ROGUE - deals damage, stills, disarms, cripples, sneaks, opens doors, poisons, sets traps, ranged abilities
• CLERIC - heals, group heals, fights with blunts, does xtra damage against undead, buffs
• KNIGHT - tank, can block with shield, knock down, selfbuffs, bandaid little quickheal
• SORCERER - deals damage from afar, teleports group/self, can use elements for status effect (cold = slow, fire = damage over time, ...)
• SUMMONER - pet class, can summon spirits or undead, can summon temporary weapons, block areas, area effect damage over time
• RANGER - archery class with support pet, can buff and cure disease, small support overtime heals
• DARK/LIGHT KNIGHT - either in the veign of a paladin (damage versus undead, small heals, etc...) or shadow knight (life leach, ...)
• MINDBENDER - enchanter, crowd control, roots, fear, snare, slow, quicken, heavy group buffs and quick direct damage spells

Do you think something like this is oldschool and of yesteryear or is there still room for a distinct crowd controller, someone who can soak up damage like hulk and some flimsy little rogues stepping in and out of the shadow to strike?

One problem I have seen with current MMOs is that studios and that go in with the mindset that they are going to topple WoW. So many times I hear oh this game is going to kill WoW and oh WoW's days are numbered instead of trying to do something unique. Not only that but today's MMOs seem to want to take their ideas from active IPs Star Wars, Conan the Barbarian, Lord of the Rings, etc. What made WoW and EQ unique was that they are original stories, they weren't originally movies or books.

I am going on 5 years on WoW here and the thing that keeps bringing me back is the story.

Can't the title just be State of MMORPGS today! (or your opinion of MMORPGS or How would you improve an MMORPG or something like that.) instead of putting in they suck. That would cause a negative opinion.

Tasuki, I don't agree with you that every MMO tries to topple WoW. The last gen (Age of Conan, LOTRO, rift etc) definitly tried to do just that, but the current gen (TSW, GW2, etc) try to carve their own niche. They have basically started to understand that you can't topple WoW by making a clone, because by the time your MMO gets out the door, it will be hopelessly behind.

I'm not a big MMO fan, but I highly disagree with your blog post opinion. Not so much that I think MMOs don't suck, that's neither here nor there. No, what I don't agree with is your reasoning as to why they suck. You're focusing heavily one on branch of games, not realizing that there are plenty of games that don't do what you're talking about. You like emphasis on playing a role and cooperative gameplay? There are actually quite a few of those out there. Hell, most games have a roleplaying server specifically for those types of people. You like strict, distinct classes? There are still games that do that. Look around, do some research. That's what I do. Guild Wars 2 is an innovator, not a product of the times.

Now excuse me while I go back to waiting for Phantsy Star Online 2.

The last one I played was PSO 2 on dreamcast so I don't think I'm the best opinion for this

I used to love MMOs when I had a lot of time on my hands. MMOs are becoming more casual friendly, but they are best enjoyed when you have lots of uninterrupted time on your hands.

I'm finding a lot of new MMORPGs are becoming more focused on gameplay...which is really a good thing, since most older ones are needlessly boring and repetitive.

tl;dr version: It sucks because it doesn't suck.

Guild Wars 2 and Phantasy Star look great.

Also this isn't wordpress.

I agree with you on the WoW point (which is the only one I can really talk about with any authority, as it's the only MMORPG that I've played extensively).

I started playing it in the vanilla days and got heavily into it. I enjoyed it a lot, but had to give up in the end as I found it was taking up too much of my time. However, I got given the Burning Crusade as a birthday present a couple of years later so I fired up my old warlock and got him to Level 70. I stopped playing pretty quickly after that, because I found WoW had lost a lot of flavour.

As you mention, it seems that there is less definition between the classes these days - everyone can do a little of everything, leading to less-defined roles. A great example of this is losing the faction-specific classes. I can understand that this makes things more accessible, but I felt that it meant my class didn't have quite the same identity as when I began playing.

As I've said, though, I can't speak for other games. I'm sure there are some out there that I'd quite enjoy, if I had the time to play them.

Personally I thought Guild Wars 2 was amazing. Have you tried dungeons now that rez-rushing is gone? An example I like to use is Kohler from Ascalonian Catacombs. He has an instant kill attack that can wipe out an entire party! You can try to dodge but there will always be one or two people that go down, but the guardian has a skill that negates him pulling you, which makes the role of the guardian to see it coming and negate the pull. The "Healer" class is weakened but not gone. The engineer can throw down a turret that heals everyone in the area. With the goal being to dodge attacks and not take damage of course, it won't heal you to full, but it can save you. The mesmer can draw fire though the use of clones to distract Kohler's minions. Other bosses can inflict conditions that can be turned into boons for your party. The necromancer has a skill that can negate these conditions and turning them into boons, and the guardian can take them upon him/herself and gain boons to help negate the negative affects. The roles aren't defined well, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. A party will naturally fall into different roles, and you can pick a role for yourself by selecting skills and learning when yo use them. You can get every skill and swap roles throughout the dungeon. I do agree with you though more defined roles would be good, but they aren't too defined in most games.

I've only dabbled here and there in MMOs, and that's primarily because I wasn't impressed with what I found. Now, mind, I never played anything with a subscription, but they all seemed like endless treadmills with no real point but to suck your time and all the fun out of something that sounded fun until you tried it.

I like to be immersed in a world. There are various things MMOs do that break that immersion, like enemies re-spawning right in front of you and important fights never being permanent because it's always got to be there for the next guy. Kind of feels like an amusement part where you can go from attraction to attraction, but you can't do anything meaningful yourself.

Something I'd like to see done in an MMO is a wilderness simulator. Create an ecosystem of monsters where predators have to hunt to survive and herbivores have to graze and find water. Then drop the player in with the goal of creating a home, staving off hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and old age by finding someone within the world to produce heirs. You can build your home close to water and farm the animals that come to drink, and if many people build their homes next to each other it would become a sort of village. Every once in awhile the village would be attacked by a really big monster or two that would take the help of everyone that lives there to kill it, but for the most part the game would be non-violent. It would also encourage you to log off when your character needs to sleep, and penalize you for sleeping too long and not feeding yourself if you haven't played in a week or so, perhaps even with the death of your character. And if you do hunt for sport, the monsters would have to either reproduce the same way that animals do in the real world, or spawn somewhere the player cannot reach or see, like in a small cave as a baby or coming up from underground.

Anyway, that idea probably just sounds like an old guy's paradise, but that's my take on an awesome MMO.

How do you ever get immersed in a game if those things are enough to break your immersion? No matter what it'll always be a video game, and those things are required in some degree for it to remain a video game. It sounds to me like you want a virtual environment all to yourself. That's great and all, but I wouldn't define what you're asking for as a "game". You also have to remember that it's a multiplayer game - many people are gonna have the same experience. The thing that makes MMOs so great is being able to form bonds with real people and share those experiences with them. I enjoyed FFXI and Phantasy Star Online on my own, but I fell in love with them when I got a chance to play with other people.

First off, not every game has to have an immersive world for me. Most of the time it can just be a game, like Mario for example.

Second off when you're talking a single player game, developers can do things like measure where the player is looking and make sure enemies never spawn in that direction. I love Skyrim's world because it's consistent. When I kill someone, their body will stay there. Things don't spawn in front of me, they always come from a distance, and everything powerful I kill is permanent, or at least as permanent as it should be considering everything resets in 2 weeks. If things are going to teleport around, there had better be a good reason, like Half-Life's resonance cascade.

It's okay for people to have the same experience provided they have some control over time, like loading and saving. But, what happens in an MMO is the enemies have that control instead and there's no explanation for it that doesn't break you out of the world. When someone says something along the lines of 'It's okay because of technical limitations', I just hear 'It's okay because the developers have no imagination'.

Another reason I can't get into MMOs has more to do with me. I'm not fond of texting in real-time, hence why I don't have texting on my phone. It removes all the nuances of conversation like pronunciation or politeness. I'd much prefer a form of communication that can be done at the same time I'm battling a big monster, and only with people in the same virtual room. Towns in MMOs are quiet, like everyone prefers texting on their cell phones to talking in person, and as of yet there hasn't been an MMO that requires a mic. I don't feel in an MMO like I'm with real people. I feel like I'm hanging out with more convincing NPCs that tend to do things like gender-bend and always dress in high fashion. Something else that could have a lot to do with it is that I've never really played an MMO with people I know in the real-world, and much prefer to hang out with them, so likely it's just me on this one.