The Daily Grind: Do you think there's too much group mentality in MMO discussion?

@smartstep
I'd agree with you with one caveat. I do believe that there is room for some mixed business implementations in MMO's, if they are donw right. Giving people options of how they pay for their game is a good thing as it opens the game up for more people. If players feel that how others are paying for their game influences their own enjoyment of the game, that is when it gets sour.

(And I don't mean "he bought an item/payed a subscription and now he's ahead of me", I mean "he bought an item/payed a subscription and now he can kille in two strikes". If it diesn't directly influence you, then you're just complaining for the sake of it)

@Lafajet

I never said freemium will not work. It works obviously.

it will never work for "everyone" though.

P2P was so dominating on western market that almost all mmorpg's were using it - I am just saying that any future business model be it freemium , f2p, b2p , p2p or whatever will not have kind of totally dominating position p2p once have.


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Don't get your example though. Nvm - I have business models I like in mmorpg's and those I don't accept cause they influent gameplay or / and my immersion and that's simply does not gonna change.

@Lafajet
And its not enough to simply dislike a game. You have to tell everyone who does like it that their opinions are wrong (and possibly insult them)

@Lafajet

Loud and clear, and I totally agree. Unfortunately, critical thinking and self-examination are hard to come by, especially on the internet. But the state of online discourse is a broad and frustrating topic. There's too many opinions and too little pressure to formulate convincing arguments or understand the participants in a discussion. Added to that, every site has different ways of presenting user comments and oftentimes there's more reward (in terms of responses) in making short, broad attacks early on. For instance, on Massively the first to post get more exposure, as do the responses to those posts (this isn't always a problem, but it can be). I always see long, well-crafted posts lost and forgotten while controversy swirls endlessly around the worst comments. That we all like to argue and put others in their place only compounds the problem.

@Lafajet

True , take notice it is not just fans / players - media and devs are doing same thing. There is constant flow of articles why some model is better and / or worse.

@eLdritchZ

Lol, by your definition I'm the "new guard", even though I started playing MMOs over 6 years ago (Vanilla-era WoW) :)

BTW, while short-sighted positions abound in the current MMO player base, I believe most current MMO players only started in the genre due to WoW (and it's clones) removing most ways a player could ruin another player's game, even if it meant throwing out most things that made the old MMOs into living, player-driven virtual worlds. I'm one such player; I steer clear from any game where I would depend on the community not hampering me (or on the community actually helping me) for my enjoyment. Instead, I choose games that, while throwing the players in a huge shared world, allow them to progress - and even succeed - on their own.

It's an old issue with MMOs. True group players - those that will actually reach out to other players, form connections, help organize things, and turn sandbox games from possibilities into realization - are actually rare. Most players, while they might join a group if invited, won't reach out, no matter what the game devs do. So, either the game embraces those types - like WoW did back then - or it must content itself with being a niche game with a limited potential user base.

It's one of the big reasons I'm quite hyped about GW2. It's developers are operating under a "no griefing allowed" philosophy, and taking away most ways a player could use to hamper other players. From my point of view, ANet is aiming to "out-WoW" WoW itself, and on paper at least it looks like they will succeed.

@DoctorFrank Actually the very thing that makes mmorpg's sticky is the fact that they are social networks:)

Finding the right balance between challenge/consequence and social functioning is right up there with business model in terms of issues facing the genre atm.

For me, my top 2 needs in a mmorpg are an open world and actual women who play :)

@DoctorFrank And you are exactly what the article was talking about; so staunch in your position that any other voice is stupid, ignorant tripe to you. You're incapable of seeing the other side because of how obsessed you are with the old days.

Meanwhile, there are people who enjoy having open, social MMO that don't require months of preparation to really begin enjoying, and there is nothing inherently wrong with their choice. You don't get to decide what an MMO is and isn't, and who should and shouldn't be allowed to play. Just because the earliest music was often used for religious rituals doesn't mean we're all "doing it wrong" because we just enjoy listening for fun. How the earliest MMOs chose to design their games has less bearing on modern design than you'd like to think.

It's important to look at what the older games did right, and not forget where MMOs came from. That doesn't mean why should drown ourselves in the past and not experiment with new ideas.

I think the biggest issue with with dichotomy that the article brings up is simply that older games used to dominate the market with complex virtual worlds. Now the casual themepart MMOs dominate. It will sway back at some point, or soar in a new direction. Just sit back and watch, and enjoy what you can along the way. No need to freak out that your MMOs of old are lost forever... after all, UO and EQ are still going.