The Daily Grind: Too many games?

"How do you deal with the glut of interesting games that seemingly never goes away?"

Simple. I see past the PR hype and realize that there are not a whole lot of interesting games out there or coming out soon. Every company seems to want to put out a generic MMO #375456 because some other company is putting one out as well. The result is a bunch of bland MMOs with no character of their own and which get boring before the initial month has worn off. Cynical view? Perhaps, but I consider it the real view after having seen the genre's titles over the past few years.

I briefly play every one of them that comes out, without ever really staying with one long term. Really I get just as much fun out of it, and in some cases more fun (the early levels are often much less frustrating, even tho they aren't as "epic"). I keep telling myself that I'm hopefully looking for the one MMO I'll find that will be a home for me for some time, but I just can't find it. I'm looking for the perfect MMO for me, but the journey has had a lot of memorable moments and given me a lot of experience in gaming.

ye, I know what you mean. I envy players who still stick to one or max 2 games over like 5 or more years.
I just get bored after a while, say 3-6 months, I need a change. but instead of alternating between 2 games, it has become too many, even if I never return to many of them. I usually never regret having played a game that I don't return to, I usually only regret it, it friends and I moved to it (AoC was a good example) and then all are dissapointed and leave and up spread out all over....

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I Feel you guys pain, it seems every new game we try and with that the guild we started out 20 trong is now down to 4 or 5 core members and now we have lost a couple of those to face book games. Where is the game thats going to grab us and hold on for a few years. the more games that are released it seems the more disapointed I am with how they turn out.
I think the worst part about the games in the past few years is the early releasing with broken features or just not even put in. That to me has been the biggest single factor why we have left so many games.

I guess it's all relative. I'd say there are too FEW (decent) MMOs out there; none of the MMOs you mentioned interests me in the slightest, new patches and expansions notwithstanding.

The market will remain threadbare, imo, until SWTOR and GW2 are ready for consumption. Until then, we are left to pick among the scraps. :)

The rest of the MMOs out there just have zero appeal to me. No amount of patching and updating, for example, would ever make me want to play Aion.

Thus, I am whiling away some reasonably pleasant hours in LotRO and may eventually dabble in Cataclysm at some future point, but I'm really just biding my time for SWTOR or GW2 to be released.

I just don't play them. Who has the time to invest into an MMO these days?

I'm also very selective about games I pay for, so that limits the list hugely, but factoring in the negative opportunity cost makes it even worse. Out of the interesting MMO's I would play, I only see WoW, Aion, GW2, Maybe give AoC a second try due to all the great press it's received, and uhh... oh right, FF14. I'm expecting either FF14 or GW2 to not really speak to me, so only 3 games hold any interest for me atm.

I currently do maybe 2 or 3 SC2 Beta games a day, and that's the extent of my online multiplayer. I did roughly 5 hours of Super Mario Galaxy 2 with the g/f over the past week, it's a fun game 2 player, not as good as little big planet multiplayer imo.

To answer your question directly, I've never found that many MMO's to be interesting. The majority of the ones out now are cheaply made and not worth paying for. The free ones have never been worth playing. But even from the 3 MMO's that I do like, I still don't play them because the necessary time investment isn't worth it. I used to play MMO's exclusively, but I'm really enjoying the freedom that comes with console games/non persistent world games.

Only new MMO's that I can remember releasing that are interesting are Dungeon Fighter Online and Runes of Magic.

I am waiting for Earthrise to have a better look at it, but as for right now, my time is being spent going to work on Super Street Fighter 4, studying the new frame rates on old characters that are unpopular. Hopefully theres enough buffs to one of them to make them A tier and playable and nobody knows it >:)

I am enjoying the glut. I have installed three MMOs in the past week and uninstalled four.

I have one I am playing long-term, another web based I visit on occasion and another that I plan on installing tonight.

Keep em coming!

There's only really a glut if Fantasy MMO's built in a similar style to World of Warcraft is your one and only interest in MMORPG's. Everywhere else, there's still quite a drought. We're not exactly drowning in Sci-fi offerings at the moment and how come there still isn't a proper Western setting MMO? You'd think given the number of developers in America they'd have delved into their own lore and myth by now.

I'll have to be a negative Neddie too, and ask "what glut".

I've not found anything released in 2010 to be at all tempting - not interested in revisiting the old franchises, no interest in traditional FTP games and anything close to AAA status has thus far proven my instinct to steer clear well-founded.

Same story on the single-player front too, sadly. -_-

Much like 2009, my 2010 gaming consists of:

* Playing Guild Wars 1
* Anticipating Guild Wars 2
* Being cautiously optimistic about The Old Republic

This is shaping up to be a surprisingly good summer for games, odd since I remember summers back when I had time to play them that nothing came out. Already this month we've had Red Dead Redemption and Super Mario Galaxy 2. In July (IIRC) Dragon Quest IX (with online multiplayer /boggle) and SC2 come out. And then in September Halo: Reach. That's enough to keep me busy, especially considering I still haven't beat FFXIII or Ogre Battle 64 on the Virtual Channel.

At least I won't have to worry about Alpha Protocol. The preliminary reviews haven't been good.

Must be a slow day to have to complain about there being "too many" games, srsly

I am personally finding too many betas to play and so many MMOs I have never heard of opening betas.

I know exactly what you mean. How do I deal with it, ... I have scatterbrain as it is. It used to be just warcraft where I would start 15 different characters to try and take the game all in, now we have, as you described, all these juicy choices laid out before us, competing like mad for the little free time we may have. I take advantage of any free game time I can get, jump between a few mmo's per month, try and make a little bit of a schedule, for example, declaring an all out 'Eveonline' month and open two accounts, then the following month declare it LOTRO month. Of course there's always the 'free-to-play' games which I casually jump on during on off night or if I'm bored. All of this has lead me to create a show on youtube called 'Mikes MMO Corner' which I basicallly will talk about news, reviews, tips, tricks, and tutorials that I learn by experience or research and reading up on the net. It all still leaves me feeling scatter brained and a sense of not really accomplishing anything, so perhaps the show will help me feel like I've done something at the end of the day. Check me out on www.youtube.com/mikesmmocorner the first episode is in production right now.

...what is the world coming to when you lose people to facebook games. arrgh!

I also long for games past. Maybe someone will make another one like them.

while the sheer mass of available games can easily be overwhelming when taken out of context, i find that once i've tried 98% of the new games as they are released (or i get into beta testing), they simply don't interest me beyond a couple hours. i've moved on from my first MMO a long time ago (and the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, tbh), but the game i'm currently playing is the one that i enjoy the most, and likely will be the one i'll be playing next year at this time.

it's actually nice to try something new and have it not work out, as it reminds you of how great the game you've already invested your time in actually is.

There's a glut of interesting games? :p Sure, there's a glut - it's the "interesting" part I dispute. We're still drowning in cookie-cutter fantasy clones, though at least that makes it easy for me to filter out the MMOs that don't interest me. Up until around 2006 I had played and/or beta tested almost every western MMO, but these days there are too many MMOs so I have to be more choosy...

... and I am more choosy, because I've been burned so many times by poor MMO launches ("paying to beta test"). So if it looks like an MMO will launch with key features missing, lots of bugs, instability, shallow lore, insufficient content, an uninteresting premise, not much gameplay innovation, business plans that are galling in their greed and lack of tact, if the Devs spew the usual PR rubbish - and especially if it's a cookie-cutter fantasy MMO (been there, done that) and/or an Asian grinder (ditto) - in fact if anything seems slightly "off" about the game or the Devs - then I find it stupidly easy to just write that MMO off altogether and never play it nor read further articles about it.

Admittedly the good old days weren't that good - I stayed loyal to EverQuest for 3 years, largely because there were no other MMOs I felt like playing that I hadn't already tried. Sure, it was simpler, but there were no non-fantasy MMOs - and starting over in another fantasy MMO seemed pointless.

We may have a MMO glut now but at least some innovative/niche genre MMOs are getting released because some Dev teams want their game to be different so it stands out from the crowd. And choice is good - even too much choice - with so many MMOs around the abject failures sink fast and hopefully the most fun and well-made MMOs will survive.

After the last few years of horribly flawed releases the shortlist of MMOs I'm currently interested in is very short indeed - APB, SW:TOR, GW2 - maybe The Secret World and DCUO if they release more gameplay info that grabs me - and longer term I eagerly await details for the WH40K MMO, the World of Darkness MMO and Planetside 2.

I still only play one subscription MMO at a time - City of Heroes currently - and there are few other released MMOs I feel like playing (LotRO, AoC and Guild Wars might warrant a look if I wasn't burned out by fantasy) - and none I feel like returning to.

So 2009 and 2010 have been very quiet years for me in MMO terms - in fact I've recently gone back to single-player and normal multi-player gaming in a big way (I blame Dawn of War 2 for forcibly introducing me to Steam). Honestly MMOs just aren't as important to me as they used to be, though 2011's MMO releases may turn that around.

Well, I'm currently playing EVE, Lotro, STO, Fallen Earth(Thanks Rubi and Shawn!)and Aion. So, I know what its like to juggle a few different MMO's. I jump between all of them. I have also tried Allods, Aika, Battle of the immortals, and have my eye on Earth Rise. My thing is I want to experience different worlds, thats my draw to these games. I also don't want something that might really be great to go by me because I didn't try it out. I got into gaming 4 years ago at the behest of guys at work that all played WOW. I had never played an MMO before, and was instantly hooked. The game has a huge world to explore, and that was my main drive. As time went on, I hungered for more and wanted to see what other games content and worlds were like. As you can see from my choices, I have a variety of game worlds to check out.