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This blog is primarily going to be about World of Warcraft, but in general it's more about gaming and where it's heading towards.I am really worried for the future of gaming. The games are becoming more and more about instant satisfaction, impressive visuals, and dumbed down albeit "cool looking" gameplay. I just fear in a decade or so, the video games will feel be something you consume and forget about relatively quickly, like the current pop stars and their albums. It's going to be a long one, but I hope you guys enjoy it.
I feel like recently, most of the game developers focus on two things: Great visuals and cool gameplay. The word cool used in this context is somewhat vague, it might be shooting with lazor guns, or watching your character do impressive fighting animations with the click of a couple buttons, or (for RPG) focusing heavily on combat. While these concepts, when they taken by themselves, might not be that bad, I've noticed some games feel like really well painted artworks where you only watch the scenery, and whatever else you do act as a filler. Dragon Age 2, compared to DA:O is a good example of this (I'll get to the DLC issue in a second). Really nice visuals and somewhat ok combat. The rest of the game? It basically takes place in a single city and its surroundings, with many characters that is not really possible to form a connection, telling a story that is really uninteresting, one which devs tried to cover up with fancy titles like "becoming a champion."
It's like as the visuals and animations get better, these aspects of the game draw one's attention the most, and doesn't let go. The player is immersed so much into this, that the rest of the game doesn't matter that much. Probably when asked about a game like this, some of the current generation of gamers will say "I blew some shit up, the graphics were a cool, and I had fun." And don't get into thinking that this is a problem only related to the teenage gamers, it could be of any age. The age doesn't really matter, The main issue are the visuals and presentation, and how much they indirectly take out of the game. When used correctly and combined with a strong gameplay, these two can make unforgettable games (Batman Arkham Asylum), or in the case of DA2 or current WoW, disappointments.
I have first hand experienced this heart-breaking disaster caused by this mentality. I'm talking about World of Warcraft. The game changed so much in a timespan of about two years. The time itself isn't so important, it's the mentality and the understanding by the developers. The game revolves around more and more about instant and "let me have everything" type of satisfaction. There is a demand for this because most of the current generation of gamers don't really care about or know about how one feels after a well made, challenging and fun was played and completed. The only thing I can see that what they enjoy is solely focused on rewards, whereas in past, exploration, the journey, the obstacles that you faced during the journey, and the final moment where you beat the game provided a much deeper, engaging and satisfactory experience.
It took me, as a new player, around 2,5months to go 1-60 on 2005. And that was with basically unlimited time avaliable to me due to a summer after a prep school for learning English. The zones were huge, there were class quests you could do, and although not every zone was filled with ridiculous number of quests presented nicely like today, the game sort of made you go around the world, and explore it in the process. There were still some things you might realize after hitting 60 (like the epic book needed for the weapon Quel'serrar which had a really low drop chance) To put into short terms, the attention to details was great. It wasn't as polished as today, but it was enough so that the gamer's imagination filled the rest. I took my time as much as I could, tried to see as many zones and finish as many quests as I can, and when I hit 60, I really felt really, really good. Raid attunements, items you needed for those, going all around the world for a single quest could be quite boring, unnecessary or tedious for some. But they lengthened the timespan of the game, and made it more engaging. Because if something is tough to get, it's going to be more valuable. The game was full of many details waiting to be explored. There was a whole town full of ghostly inhabitants which you could only see with a special trinket rewarded by a quest, which in order to complete, you would need to do delve into a school of necromancy and confront its inhabitants. There was a whole outdoor zone requiring basically a whole group to finish, but in the ended you got an awesome trinket for the level, and most importantly probably met 4 other (hopefully) cool people. The game allowed you to immerse yourself and enjoy it, without caring much about the end goal and the reward.
I tried to level up a warrior when Cataclysm hit. Using no heirlooms (basically special weapons which scale with character level that can be really strong at low levels) or other experience enhancing methods, I was able to hit level 36 in a week. I was getting so much experience that I outleveled zones before finishing one. Dungeons, which used to be tough and sometimes needed careful planning, were reduced to literally a rollercoaster ride which you mash buttons and get 1,5 levels worth of experience. Through only using quest gear, mobs that took me to half health to kill in past, were dead in basically 4-5 seconds. This made me disgusted with the game, and I quit shortly after that.
There was a really simple formula to why World of Warcraft felt so engaging and fun, about until the WOTLK hit: The game took time to play. I'm not just talking about leveling up, getting the PvP ranks/points, or killing hard raid bosses. The whole experience was bigger and more expansive. There was always a raid/pvp or two that you haven't got, but you could, with a little bit more determination.. There were always things to do in the game that occupied you. Professions were really useful and really worth it for the most part to improve and they actually made a difference in the way you played the game. Levelling was much tougher and longer, so it wasn't all about getting to 60 and starting to grind for shiny epics. The game really kept one occupied as long as they wanted to.
To put it simply in a better term, the game wasn't just about endgame, raiding and PvP, and especially about completing it no matter what, which seems to be the current formula. This current formula in my opinion is killing WoW. The current game world of WoW and the experience besides raiding and pvp has been reduced to a rollercoaster ride with fancy animations where one pushes a couple buttons. You have to probably lure 10 mobs during levelling up for you to actually die, as characters go through everything like a hot knife through butter. The raids are really dumbed down, and if you wanna play a harder version, hey, there is the hard mode, right? Well yes the hard modes are there, but the issue is thanks to these hard modes, Blizzard conveniently gets away with releasing less and less content. I just don't get why someone would still pay to clear the same raid four times on different lockouts, and that each of those would be a different " content". It is just the same thing over and over, which is boring as hell.
And now they brought something called Raid Finder, a tool that basically allows anyone to raid, without a guild. Just click a button and you are good to go. Just like that infernal LFD tool, it kills the social aspect of the game. In the name of rewards, the spirit of WoW was murdered. Before you say, that "Why do you care what others do?" let me answer: Slowly but gradually, any reason to group up and meet people have been removed from the game. The group quests were the first thing to go, followed by the actual need to group up by LFD, and now the need to get into a guild. I don't know the exact details but if I had to guess about starting a new raiding guild from scratch today, I think it would have taken hell of an effort. Not only you would have to deal with many people who don't know how to play, what their class is capable of, you would also have to deal with people who don't know how to react in a group setting where their anonymity isn't preserved (hrough the use of LFD and LFR)
The game and its players have become more and more asocial ever since the 3.2 patch hit during the WOTLK. That patch will be a dark stain for me in the WoW's history when I ever need to look back and think about it. There wasn't a single thing good that changed with that update. Blizzard in its greed, took the easy route, tried to maximize the subs by opening up the game. But this strategy could only work in a short-term, so when Cata hit, they started losing subs.
I could go on and on about other problems related to gaming but I will finish with this, as my own wishes. To developers who still care to make great, enjoyable games, please:
1) Don't release an unfinished, half-assed product and try to make it better through DLCs (DA2)
2) Don't take content out of the game, and resell it as something new in the form of DLCs (Many games do this)
3) Focus more on storytelling, immersion and presentation. Try to make the gamer engaged, try to make him make a connection to it (Red Dead Redemption is a great example)
4) Don't radically change what made a game good in the name of change when making a sequel, instead, start by making small changes aimed at how to improve the first game's experience. (Batman Arkham City)
5) Please don't release identical games coming from a franchise each year with minimal changes and expect us to buy it. Assassin's Creed series is on this route ever since AC2, which was a great game. But both AC:B and AC:R weren't half as interesting.
Thank you for reading this far.
  
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I'm completely with you, most of my lower/middle teens was spent playing WoW, a LOT, and I had to watch it die before my eyes. I have incredibly fond memories of leveling my first character and dying to mobs in duskwood because I didn't understand that they were higher level than me.. My stupidity vs the difficulty of the game made for an amazing experience, full of the wonder of exploring new magical zones. Now I'm completely disgusted with the game itself and it's subscribers, clinging to a husk of a once great game (probably the best game through rose tinted glassed)
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We talked about this (almost positive it was you...otherwise epic coincidence) in another topic, so I'm not gonna lie - I speed-read the paragraphs and I'm totally with you brother. I recently decided I wanted to play an MMO for a month or two and it's a ghost town...even Trade chat is quiet, it's really depressing, lol. I hate to say it but I miss all the chatspam!
As far as your numbers at the end:
1) DA2 Wasn't really unfinished...more like...eh...The game concept itself was okay. Like if you took the generic idea of what DA2 was supposed to be, and wrote it on a piece of paper, it would have been a good followup to DA:O. However they just kind of...made it poorly. Instead of being an RPG it ended up being a hack n' slash. Had they actually kept gameplay from DA:O and DA2 similar, I don't think it'd have been bad at all.
As far as the DLC - they are doing DLC wway way wrong with DA2. I read an interview with the lead dev, and I have no idea where so sorry I can't link it T_T
but he said "Yeah we fucked up bad with DA2." and he listed a bunch of stuff they did wrong - I thought that was cool of him, it made me feel like he actually took the feedback into consideration and not just blowing it off and bathing in his bathtub of gold coins that he got because DA:O was awesome and DA2 lived off the hype. They admitted to releasing DLC to try and "figure out" what they could do better to fix it for next time. Basically charging us to beta test, that peeved me a bit.
Some games do DLC right - Saints Row 3 is a good one, as well as Dungeon Defenders. You can buy the game without DLC, and it's 100% complete and totally awesome. Then if you really want, you spend 5 bucks on a new mission pack, or extra this or that for 99c, etc. I think a lot of people can learn off of DLC, and I am absolutely okay with DLC, but like you said...the ORIGINAL GAME. has to be COMPLETE. I mean...imagine if you had to spend 5 bucks to go to raids in WoW. The world would explode, WoW would not be a complete game without raids.
cutting myself short cause I could write a fucking encyclopedia sized book on stupid shit game devs have started doing that didn't happen in the past...
toren-props to the guys who made Saint's Row 3, by teh way. It's been a long time since I've played a game where it felt like the devs had a fucking blast creating the game. Seriously, if anyone buys that game and wants a buddy to run around with, I'm so down. I had a ton of fun with my friend haha. 
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Oh my god you are spot on, sir. I agree completely. Another MMO that did this was Maplestory. Made the EXP needed to level lower so it was easy as shit to level and took the joy of getting to a high level and accomplishment out of the game. Worst. Fucking. Thing. To. Do.
I was actually just thinking of this exact topic today as I tried to find some game to play. They're all copies of WoW, and WoW itself is failing and becoming horrible..
Great post.
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Sorry, I have to nitpick you a little, Mr. Rager...
Personal tick of mine, games aren't necessarily copies of WoW - it's unfair to call them that, and it's unfair to say that WoW was the "MMO to copy"
You could say WoW copied DAOC or something like that. When you think about it, you could say that Brood war is a copy of Command and Conquer. Supreme commander is a copy of brood war.
You can't boil down a genre like that. Each game is an MMORPG at heart, yes. Just like all FPS aren't copies of each other (unless you're comparing COD games lololol), RTS games aren't a copy, etc. Just because WoW was probably the largest or most well known MMO doesn't mean that people are copying it. Everyone does the MMO genre with their own twist, including WoW.
The MMORPG genre is very stale lately, though, and I agree with you on that. We need another game like EVE to come out - not necessarily the EVE concept...just something that is drastically different from the norm, to spice things up. I think whoever manages to do that, and do that well, will have a nice chunk in the MMO market for a good long term period of time.
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All MMOs are both evil and doomed to fail. They are evil because they reward time spent playing instead of how well you can play the game. They are doomed to fail for many reasons. If you start at the beginning of an MMO's life then you experience everything it has to offer because you are on a journey of discovery with other people who are all doing the same thing. As the MMO grows, so do your characters and your friends characters. Eventually people start to leave the game, and new people join, but they don't want to play for 2 or 3 years in order to be competitive with the rest of the server, so they either speed grind levels or they trade characters or something. These players of course have no idea how to join in the community or really no idea how to play because they got everything the easy way. Soon enough the economy of a server is destroyed and with not enough updates the game stagnates. All MMOs are doomed to failure. This is why I only play competitive games now, because you can actually get better and take your game playing skills forward in an ever changing scene. Now I have people to socialise with when I play online it gives me just the same things I used to get from playing an MMO, but without the frustrations.
You say that games are dumbing down the gameplay, but in a way I don't agree with this. I think there are very specific audiences developing, of which the hardcore gamer is one of those which is being catered for. I am very exited for the future of gaming because we are still in the first generation of adult gamers. With a generation of people having grown up with gaming, who knows what will be the games that will be made for us as more gamers reach their 30's, 40's etc. We are the ones with the most spare cash remember.
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I'm gonna jump into the conversation with the two posts above me for a moment...
One thing I notice is that you say that MMO's need to change noticeably. I've been playing a bit of dota2 every now and then recently, and I like the way the game works. However, I don't like that nothing carries over. I also realize that the lack of persistent leveling, items, and etc are part of the game's core, and I wouldn't want to change that.
What would you think of something with dota2-esque player-types and player abilities and the persistent items and stats of MMO's, with some kind of open world with PvE raids and such?
On topic, I've never played WoW beyond 2 days out of a 14-day trial. I just didn't like how it felt. What are your thoughts on Mists of Pandaria?
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On January 20 2012 10:41 GigaFlop wrote:
I'm gonna jump into the conversation with the two posts above me for a moment...
One thing I notice is that you say that MMO's need to change noticeably. I've been playing a bit of dota2 every now and then recently, and I like the way the game works. However, I don't like that nothing carries over. I also realize that the lack of persistent leveling, items, and etc are part of the game's core, and I wouldn't want to change that.
What would you think of something with dota2-esque player-types and player abilities and the persistent items and stats of MMO's, with some kind of open world with PvE raids and such?
On topic, I've never played WoW beyond 2 days out of a 14-day trial. I just didn't like how it felt. What are your thoughts on Mists of Pandaria?
a) I can't answer because I literally haven't even seen a screenshot of dota2. lol.
I know dota1 though, do you mean like...you keep your gear between MOBA games? Or something? IDK I'll try any RPG once, lol. I'm bad at this kind of question.
b) Mists of Pandaria looks sucky and looks lazy to me. Making two seperate races for each faction is too much work now, just go with one, ezpz.
Also the cartoony feel to it is a little meh to me, but again...I haven't looked into it other than blizzcon so I'm not a good judge. WoW was a great game for a while but you can only rub so much shit on a diamond before it becomes not worth your time.
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If I were you, I wouldn't worry about it too much. People will get tired of the instant, effortless gratification of these games and then some dev is going to make a game that will blow everyone else out of the water. Basic capitalism and human psychology.
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I... I miss Vanilla WoW too T_T *big cry session*
Seriously, it was one of the best games I've ever played. I'd still be playing it to this day if it hadn't changed so much D: So much to do, so much to see, and it was so damn HARD! You had to WORK for shit.
They sent me a free trial when Cataclysm was released, and I went back in... Got from 19 to 40 in a few days, and when I realized that, I actually got a little mad  The game is dead. Cryyyyyyy.
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On January 20 2012 11:37 Torenhire wrote:Show nested quote +On January 20 2012 10:41 GigaFlop wrote:
I'm gonna jump into the conversation with the two posts above me for a moment...
One thing I notice is that you say that MMO's need to change noticeably. I've been playing a bit of dota2 every now and then recently, and I like the way the game works. However, I don't like that nothing carries over. I also realize that the lack of persistent leveling, items, and etc are part of the game's core, and I wouldn't want to change that.
What would you think of something with dota2-esque player-types and player abilities and the persistent items and stats of MMO's, with some kind of open world with PvE raids and such?
On topic, I've never played WoW beyond 2 days out of a 14-day trial. I just didn't like how it felt. What are your thoughts on Mists of Pandaria? a) I can't answer because I literally haven't even seen a screenshot of dota2. lol. I know dota1 though, do you mean like...you keep your gear between MOBA games? Or something? IDK I'll try any RPG once, lol. I'm bad at this kind of question. b) Mists of Pandaria looks sucky and looks lazy to me. Making two seperate races for each faction is too much work now, just go with one, ezpz. Also the cartoony feel to it is a little meh to me, but again...I haven't looked into it other than blizzcon so I'm not a good judge. WoW was a great game for a while but you can only rub so much shit on a diamond before it becomes not worth your time.
a)
Keep gear from instances? Yes. Between MOBA rounds? Oh hell no. That would mean people one-shotting each other at level 1.
My idea was originally to kind of add more depth to the game itself, since some of the people on my floor say that one map wouldn't be enough. Add some kind of multiplayer open world, with instances and quests. World of Dota, or something. It would probably give the game a wider audience if there was something tacked onto it that didn't at all interfere with the core game.
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edit: talking about WoW
We're just old now. It's with any new game, it's fun to explore and run up against obstacles and struggle. When you play the shit out of it of course it becomes different. Sure I enjoyed leveling the first time, (in vanilla wow as well, started playing seriously in BC) but once you do it once, it gets really old.
LFD and LFR have opened the game up so much to people who don't have much time to play, or patience with the BS in a lot of "hardcore" guilds.
I guess what I'm saying is, sure you enjoyed dying over and over, taking 30 seconds every 4 pulls to drink/eat, and needing to spend forever just running around across the world for quests while leveling just to get some blue item or another. But now when you're leveling, because low level characters are buffed and you can get heirlooms, you can instead enjoy the storyline and quests without the tedious parts. Sure for you it seems easy, but that's because you know how to play. When you're new you have no idea wtf to do, stuff like melee hunter, melee mage, etc. and they have the challenge you used to enjoy. You just need to find your own challenge, like pulling multiple mobs while leveling, pvp, hardmode raids, etc.
Perhaps it's not quite the same "epic" feeling (for me the worst offenders in killing the epic feeling of WoW was thottbot and now wowhead, taking all the surprise out of the game) but there's still fun to be had
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I quit right around Cata after my guild killed Heroic LK.
The single biggest reason for me was the apathy and intentional imbalance introduced in to the game by the devs.
I can cite like 10 things that the devs intentionally did in both pvp and pve to offset whatever it is they wanted fixed.
Wow has been just a cash cow for blizzard for about 5 years, Ulduar was the last decent patch that the game has seen.
I am going to try my best not to touch another blizzard game, you know D3 is going to have the same e-store and pet store shit.
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On January 20 2012 12:16 jubil wrote:
edit: talking about WoW
We're just old now. It's with any new game, it's fun to explore and run up against obstacles and struggle. When you play the shit out of it of course it becomes different. Sure I enjoyed leveling the first time, (in vanilla wow as well, started playing seriously in BC) but once you do it once, it gets really old.
LFD and LFR have opened the game up so much to people who don't have much time to play, or patience with the BS in a lot of "hardcore" guilds.
I guess what I'm saying is, sure you enjoyed dying over and over, taking 30 seconds every 4 pulls to drink/eat, and needing to spend forever just running around across the world for quests while leveling just to get some blue item or another. But now when you're leveling, because low level characters are buffed and you can get heirlooms, you can instead enjoy the storyline and quests without the tedious parts. Sure for you it seems easy, but that's because you know how to play. When you're new you have no idea wtf to do, stuff like melee hunter, melee mage, etc. and they have the challenge you used to enjoy. You just need to find your own challenge, like pulling multiple mobs while leveling, pvp, hardmode raids, etc.
Perhaps it's not quite the same "epic" feeling (for me the worst offenders in killing the epic feeling of WoW was thottbot and now wowhead, taking all the surprise out of the game) but there's still fun to be had
Thottbot...damn that brings some memories.
It might sound a little bit harsh but people who don't have that much time to play should either quit or accept that they aren't going to be as good as someone who plays more. Because MMO is about how you make your character differ from others, and if you put in more time, you are going to be much better than the rest and it's going to be much more satisfying.
While those who can play a lot will experience this, the rest, those who cannot play will have the potential to get there, and that potential will keep them playing and enjoying it. This is because when there are different levels of character success available in the game, one will eventually find a place to fit in and that will be fun. Currently you can only be casual and hardcore. The game doesn't allow you to fit into another slot. In Vanilla there was Casual, Semi-Casual, Semi-Hardcore and Hardcore. My guild was a Semi-Hardcore one, we cleared a lot of content and had fun but you weren't obliged to join X number of raids each week if you did not have time, or that you had to stay until the raid is over. I believe the best tier of progression was in Burning Crusade, one guild could fit in many slots because there were many raids spread over tiers and progression made sense.
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