The Daily Grind: What makes you optimistic?

Knowing how awesome GW1 was keeps me optomistic for GW2.

If GW2 ends up failing, there's a fair chance I'll just give up on everything else and stick with WoW. Sick to death of games that ruin themselves for no good reason.

World of Darkness, it has my greatest hope. Guild Wars 2 is also more intriguing than I thought it would be, has promise. The Old Republic keeps on feeling (in my gut) that it will be a huge disappointment.

for me that glimmer of hope is definitely Rift: Planes of Telara

I think Trion gets the point... instead of focusing on massive "innovation" like ANet, which basically just shift the MMO genre to an already existing genre (namely Action Coop Hack&Slay RPGs), they seem to go for a base of systems that have worked quite well in MMOs for over a decade, improve them, add some really interesting and engaging new systems while not pounding everything into the dirt which has made the genre a team effort and an enjoyable experience for a multitude of playstyles and age categories. Once that is achieved, launch a well polished game that doesn't make the initial game audience rage quit with it's buginess.

I like that and it is a bright shimmer of sunlight in this dreary wasteland of brown, cover based, Americans vs. The Evils of Earth Shooters and the black pillars of smoke from the innovation factories...

there isnt alot of faith in the industry right now, mostly due to players wanting a real games, story and a new game play mechanics.

ToR will prolly deliver a great story, but that appears to be about it. Alot of games are following WoW's pattern for game play and (after what 5 years?) players are starting to get bored with it. Also on that same note, Blizzard changes WoW's mechanics and players act as if the world is coming to an end.... wtf.

Anyway, there is lots to look forward to for coming months, but also alot that the game companies need to live up to. Hopefully its going to be a good year :)

I'm optimistic for the genre because their continues to be new features brought out with each new generation.

Everyone harps on Star Wars The Old Republic for going on and on about their new features. Yet, who would care if their list of features they were marketing prelaunch was the same old laissez-faire attitude of developers 5 years ago.

"We're going to have a vast expansive open world with quests!"

I'm optimistic because, while it's easy to look at the things we don't have information on and spread doom and speculate. The developers ARE getting to innovate and there are new features coming out with each new iteration of MMO. I'm optimistic because there is no stagnation as a whole. Some companies do play it too safe and they end up paying for it in the end. Sadly though so too do the companies that don't play it safe enough. In these rough economic times I'm glad that large conglomerates like EA still have the huevos to try new design. I'm optimistic and you should be too, there's so many haters out there as to be not cool anymore to be one.

I'm very optimistic about 2011. I'm personally waiting for DCUO, TOR and GW2. I'm really feeling like 2011 will be a year like 2004 was for me. Then we got WoW, EQ2 and CoH (I still play the latter two). I believe that we have some games on the horizon that, for me at least, will offer what I'm looking for.

DCUO, GW2 and hopefully HOPEFULLY The Secret World
Anything else is worthless to me

In an industry that, under the surface, is seeming to stagnate a bit, I think Guild Wars 2 will come along and be everything it has promised to be. They have handled GW1 amazingly and I feel they will continue with that. So far, they haven't said anything that they haven't delivered on. Recently, there was the fiasco with the look-altering stones and some dungeons being in the store, but really these just look like half-hearted attempts by someone solely trying to find something nefarious. They already have dungeons in the current GW1 store, and they are totally optional. The stones look to be purely cosmetic. These are items that SHOULD be in a store. Really, I think ArenaNet will live up to the reputation its built up of being a fully open, not hiding anything, and not releasing till its absolutely polished kind of company. They know what the industry wants, and I predict that they will deliver.

Money.

All those failures you speak of resulted in either substantial losses or at least much smaller than projected profits.

The MMO industry now knows what it always should have. You can't release an unfinished product and expect consumers to be happy to pay full price for it and pay a subscription to play it while you finish making it.

And you can only release a game once. It doesn't matter how good your game might end up being a year or two after release. First impressions last and the one you make at release sticks.

I'm certain that the next two years will see at least a few well-made and polished MMOs enter the market, eg. SWTOR, Earthrise, Rift, DCUO, Blizzard's next offering and maybe Tera and TSW.

GW2 still seems to be in the "optimistic" phase whereas TOR has the trolls an doomsayers out in force.

Personally I'm a bit sick of fantasy settings so I edge on the optimistic side for TOR but then I didn't stop playing SWG even when the NGE hit so I know the fatal attraction of games set in that universe.

I hope both of them deliver as I am in a seemingly growing category of people who are weary of the genre and will probably drift away if nothing decent presents itself.

Goodness knows the communities aren't as big of a selling point anymore.

I'm all for looking to the present for hope, rather than the future. While I am by no means a skeptical guy, I still hold reservations on products that I haven't tried myself; press releases and hype are awesome (really, I love them!), but they aren't typically completely representative of a coming product.

While I am very excited to try games like The Secret World, DCUO, and SWTOR, I'm more excited to hear about what's coming for my favourite games.

Now that LOTRO has gone F2P, I'm hoping that there will be some significant content bolstering. The game oozes atmosphere, and with a steady development schedule it will be without contest in my books. The tone on the forums and in-game is very bright, and that gives me hope for the future.

Actually, that brings me to a big point about MMOs for me: The Community. I swear, nothing can bring a game down more than a disenchanted community. When you log in and people are excited, bright, and hopeful for the future, you can't help but overlook the minor flaws that haunt every MMO in the marketplace. The reverse is true; a community that does not stand by its game is one that is not fun to play in.

Cataclysm coming out brings hope for me about the revitalization of WoW. Blizzard has been at this game for half a decade now, and they know what works, and what doesn't. I hope. Grinding heroics ad nauseum isn't fun; rendering every previous raid obsolete at each tier drastically limits content; QUESTS ARE MEANT TO BE FUN, NOT BORING!

I have to go back and revise that statement on my little tirade here. I'm hopeful for cataclysm because I've seen that quests -can-, in fact, be fun. LOTRO completely sucks me in to every quest I take, with little bits of atmosphere and engaging story. But that's not to say that WoW has never done the same. The Wrathgate questline was perhaps the most beloved by WoW players in all of WoTLK; I am truly hoping that in revamping the 1-60 game, and bolstering the 80-85 game, the designers have taken into account that quests should not merely be a method of progressing from 1-85. They -can- be epic, and personal, and inventive.

If WoW can become more of a community affair, a living & breathing world with more...atmosphere, then I think we will see the end of WoW-bashing days. It remains to be seen, however, if this is possible with such a large playerbase. My fingers are crossed.

-Birk

I'm optimistic about upcoming games by developers whose prior games were fun and enjoyable, hence my optimism regarding both GW2 and SWTOR. Earlier games produced by both devs were a hit with me, so ... I'm (guardedly) optimistic about their upcoming games.

What makes me pessimistic?

Games that have to be "westernized".

Games by developers who have failed miserably on prior games.

These factors don't always result in pure fail, but they all too often do.

It's funny, this time last year I was disgusted with the AoC, WAR, Aion, and CO's, but I remained positive because looking ahead to 2010 showed so much promise. Surely STO, APB, and FFXIV were going to be huge games that were going to change the landscape of MMO's!

Fast Forward to the present, I'm here even more disgusted by the launches and failings of STO, APB, and FFXIV. But again I look ahead and remain hopeful, because SURELY 2011 is going to be the year to change the landscape of MMO's with games like DCUO, GW2, and SWTOR! Right? Right?

*hopes she won't be writing a similar comment a year from now* =P

MMO's aren't exactly the best place to look for optimism these day. I guess that is why you're asking about it. We are in the middle of the longest dry spell between good MMOG's since UO. We've seen so many hyped up games turn out to be a failure that its hard to have anything but cynicism. Like I've said before its now the safe-bet to just call everything a failure. Odds are you'll get it right.

Like the previous poster its mostly money that gives me optimism for a particular project. When I hear that a project has a 100+ million dollar budget I start to think that if they can keep their shit together that it might have a chance.

I also have a small glimmer of optimism anytime I see a niche MMO in development that seems to have acknowledged the Bartle's player types and how to create a game that balances those player types. Earthrise is so close. If only they would come to their senses and realize that they can't make the game mechanics too far balanced in favor of the griefers and killers. Its the presence of the carebear achievers and socializers that make the sandbox MMOG's into something special. UO had the balance (mainly due to a lack of alternate options) and EVE has the balance. Darkfall doesn't have the balance and they don't have a fraction of the success. Someday a developer will get the balance right and bring it to the mainstream. That will revolutionize the genre. Hell, just look at the success of Minecraft and tell me that there is no market for sandbox MMOG's.

Actually, my optimism is that games seem to be heading, slightly, towards the "let's make this game for the players to enjoy" and, slightly, away from "let's make the game take as logn as possible without making it look like that".

There's just so many features (or lack of features) that make me wonder if game makers realize we're playing these games for fun.

I'm paying to have fun, not to grind lame mobs for 70 hours, till I can finally have some fun.

After the huge disappointment that is Final Fantasy XIV the only things left for me to look forward to are Cataclysm, Guild Wars 2, Rift, the Final Fantasy XIV patch in Dec that will make the game playable, and telling everyone "I told you so!" when TOR fails.

I'm always kinda' floored when I hear that someone is feeling down about gaming. Call me crazy, but MMO gaming is more varied, healthy and accessible than ever before.

I was there 11 years ago -- I think it's safe to say that the road has only become smoother. lol

Beau

RIFT. I see promises of an MMORPG that might actually satisfy my cravings for a more adult-oriented MMO. (For god's sakes, can Blizzard dumb down WOW any more?!) With the amount of money they're pouring into their infrastructure, it gives me hope. And I've had my hopes dashed by innumerable MMO's of late.

It's either find a game to give you hope, or give in to despair altogether. The market right now, in earnest, totally sucks. Everything is a cookie cutter, and atop it sits a company that is largely indifferent to people who like a challenge (beyond the challenge of living among self-centered raiders) to their MMO experience.