Comments on: Dumbing it Down: The future of MMOs?

By: mnmike

mnmike — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:44:58 +0000

It seems to me that you’re walking a pretty fine line here. On the one hand, you want a game that has dynamically challenging game play. That’s perfectly reasonable. But an MMO also has to be popular (at least to some extent) to be fun. If I want to play a single-player game, I’ll go out and buy the latest Elder Scrolls or FF game. MMOs need to be “Massively Multiplayer”, and that means attracting a reasonably large player base.

Also keep in mind that this is a business. The biggest budget MMOs have to go after hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of players in order to make any money–and justify getting made. And given that WoW owns that marketplace, you’d be foolish building a game like that and not trying to figure out why so many people play WoW, and how we can build on that. Smaller budget MMOs can afford to take risks or to go after an inherently smaller player base, and there are a lot of small to mid-size MMO projects in development right now doing a lot of different things. It’s exactly what happens with movies, books, television, and any other consumer-driven markets. “Dumbing Down” as you say isn’t the future of MMOs; at worst it’s the future of big-budget MMOs. But there are other games out there.

By: Mike O

Mike O — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 03:11:05 +0000

Hello. I too have been thinking about the direction off MMOs for some time now. I was one that was actually really into Vanguard. I thought personally it was Great. Yes released to early. But, It was everything i wanted. Then came the pure fact that they werent making enough money. So they cut the servers in half, and “DUMBED DOWN” the game. They made it more Easy for people. Because it brought in the money. Its sad really. But i guess whining wont help much, but damn it sure feels good to vent sometimes. I miss the old EQ days. Brad you almost had it man. One day. Some day. Bzzt.

By: Shut Up We’re Talking #13 « The Ancient Gaming Noob

Shut Up We’re Talking #13 « The Ancient Gaming Noob — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:46:33 +0000

[...] Dumbing Down – Making games accessible versus lowering the bar with reference to posts on Hardcore Casual, Keen & Graev’s, West Karana, and Blessing of Kings. [...]

By: Corky

Corky — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:39:54 +0000

WOW would be sooooo cool if it was set in a D and D Forgotten Realms setting and not the dumb generic Tolkienize one it is. They could adjust stuff like mmm levels some how to make it D and D ish

I soooo hate the HArd and frustrting D and D Aeobore gmae… it was like a FPD shooter which I dont play ether…

WOW is TOOOO HARD and challegingg for me becuse I can not do a good job in the dungeons let alone Herioci oones you guys must have add ons and stuff but I dont

So actually I think WOW is about right in hardness and I would not like a game that was hard so non twitchy playerslike me who stink at games cant get c00l stuff like you long term raiders

So it should be fun and easy not hard and twithchy where dumbos like me at games l00zwe

By: Keen

Keen — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:55:50 +0000

I absolutely agree Darren that fun can equal anything depending on the player. Right now WoW created their formula for MMOs that meets the biggest demographic. It just so happens that their demographic, in my eyes, simplified the game to the point where the game feels like an assembly line.

By: darrenl

darrenl — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:26:17 +0000

WoW didn’t make the MMORPG more simple, they just took the suck out of the experience. They made it so that everyone could play…no matter what their time commitments and there is the challenge for future MMOs: How do you bring forward the challenge without reintroducing the suck.

I don’t really think this is an issue of hard/easy/casual whatever…this is an issue of making a game fun and I think that’s what we loose sight on. If it’s hard and I’m having fun and progressing, so be it. If it’s easy and I’m having fun…fine.

The industry should be concentrating on delivering fun games (that just happen to be MMOs) and not worrying so much on whether people like us think they are taking the easy way out.

…good post.

By: Analyzing the magic formula. « Hardcore Casual

Analyzing the magic formula. « Hardcore Casual — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:58:53 +0000

[...] Analyzing the magic formula. Reading Keen and Graeve, an interesting topic was brought up about MMO difficulty and how perhaps WoW has set a standard for ‘easy’ gameplay. It’s a good read, and raises some interesting points. [...]

By: West Karana » The kind of game that leaves you bruised, battered, bleeding and begging for more.

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:41:17 +0000

[...] Keen made a post decrying the “dumbing down” of MMOs — people head for easy mode at every opportunity, and seeing that, more, even easier, games are made. A vicious spiral that ends in “Hello Kitty Adventure Island“. [...]

By: Tipa

Tipa — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 20:24:28 +0000

The harder a game is, the fewer people will see the end, or all the content, or whatever — most will drop out long before they see it. This is the hallmark of *all* hard games. If people could see everything, it isn’t hard.

Back when all games were pretty hard, people accepted this arrangement. You could play EQ1 and have fun, knowing you might never reach level 50 but you would have had a great time anyway.

Would you play a new, shiny EQ1, knowing that only the most dedicated would get to level 50, now? Would you go to WoW, knowing that few people ever got to Scholomance or even got far into the Eastern Plaguelands at all?

Heck, I played EQ1 for seven years and can’t imagine doing that again, and I was at the top of the game when I left.

There are hard, current-gen games out there. EvE is just one — MMORPG.com lists dozens of MMOs of varying difficulty, we only hear about the easy ones because that’s what people want, and that’s what we’re getting.

I’m going to look and find a current generation, hard MMO, that isn’t EvE. So Lineage 2, FFXI Online and EverQuest are not on the table either — all hard Fantasy-based MMOs. But I’ll set them aside and find a new one. Just for myself, because I’d like to know… would *I* play a new, but hard, fantasy-based MMO?

By: Keen

Keen — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 19:59:35 +0000

There is a difference between difficult games that give you a sense of accomplishment and games that are tedious grinds. Time does not equal difficulty. FFXI and EQ1 are not the solution (Which I said in the post). Look at Vanguard’s attempt at recreating the EQ1 formula and you’ll see that no one, myself included, is interested in going backwards.

Games can be challenging to the mind and skill sets of players today like the games of old once were. It just takes someone to break out of the latest WoW formula to do it.