Posts here tend to reflect back on older games, our love for them, our memories, what worked and didn’t, the evolution of MMO design, etc. As a result, we often see a theme in the comments section:
“X game would never work if released today. If X game were released today it would fail. People don’t want X game.”
Those saying these things are correct, but not for the reasons they think. It’s like anything old vs. anything new. People want and gravitate toward the newer thing. The market changes as people’s tastes change. What we want and think is heavily influenced by the here and now of our culture. But don’t lose sight of why something worked in the past.
An old PDA if released today would fail. Why? Because people want the iPad. Does that make what the old PDA did bad, or undesirable? No. People still want a touch device, an organizer, something that can make phone calls, store contacts, take notes, play games, etc. People still want the same things, but they want them ‘sexier’. The limits of what we desire today have expanded. There’s no reason why new games can’t do what those games did while taking into consideration the proper expanded desires of today’s market.
I think Apple has done a nice job proving this point.
‘The original iPhone would never work if released today. If the original iPhone were released today it would fail. People don’t want the original iPhone.’ That doesn’t mean we disregard everything from the original iPhone. We take what worked and we adapt it for what the market demands. The market demands bigger? Give them bigger! The market demands faster, more color options, higher resolutions? Give it to them! But the core concept and design of the iPhone — from the user experience down to the very core of what the iPhone does — remains consistent and can not change or else the iPhone ceases to be the iPhone, and would fail.
So when I see people saying that a game like EverQuest, DAoC, or SWGÂ wouldn’t work today, I’d like to see proof that someone has really tried. Release a sexier version of DAoC, EverQuest, or even SWG (maybe The Repopulation?) and let’s see if it simply wouldn’t work. My honest belief is that it would work, just like it already did, and it work a heck of a lot better than the games releasing today with models that are supposedly ‘what the market demands.’
Revamped versions of older games can work, but it may require them to be true to their original audience, something I doubt will happen with re-releases from larger studios courting more casual audiences.
The successful re-release of games like Homeworld 1/2 Remastered has shown that players will come back to high quality games, but it still needs to be demonstrated specifically for MMO’s.
I think released MMO’s will prove challenging for similar reasons why current ones aren’t suited for old school gamers, that is we no longer comprise their primary demographic.
Still I think courting old-school gamers could be a profitable venture. “Settling” for WoW’s 5 million subscriber present in 2005 may still be worthwhile versus more recent 7.5 million numbers, but trying to convince developers of that when they see 50% more profit might be a tough sell. (http://www.statista.com/statistics/276601/number-of-world-of-warcraft-subscribers-by-quarter/)
I perceive the combination of catering to casual player expectations of easy accessibility along with mega-guild content consumption and in game dominance will kill enjoyment of new releases for me, so I have functionally ceased playing MMO’s.
Some old games hold up, others don’t. Some products evolve, others don’t.
The iPhone has evolved, keyboards haven’t. A keyboard from 2000 is 95% of what a keyboard is today (99% if you don’t factor in ‘gaming keyboards’ like the G15). Someone looking to make a new keyboard can look back at a 2000 design and know what worked then will work today. Someone designing a new phone isn’t going to look at the original iPhone.
The same applies to games. A lot of the worldly aspects of UO design still hold up today. A lot of what kept people playing something like DAoC back in the day don’t apply anymore. That’s the important thing to understand here; saying DAoC would fail today doesn’t mean it was a bad game for it’s time, it just means it hasn’t aged as well as other games, and shouldn’t be used as a reference for what works/worked.
[begin quote]….. So when I see people saying that a game like EverQuest, DAoC, or SWG wouldn’t work today, I’d like to see proof that someone has really tried. RELEASE A SEXIER VERSION of DAoC, EverQuest, or even SWG (maybe The Repopulation?) and let’s see if it simply wouldn’t work. My honest belief is that it would work, just like it already did, and it work a heck of a lot better than the games releasing today with models that are supposedly ‘what the market demands.’ ……,[end quote]
But that’s what they’ve done: released a sexier version! WoW was a sexier version of Everquest. SWTOR is a sexier version of Star Wars than SWG. I’ll admit, not EVERY feature of Everquest or SWG was repeated (and made better), but that’s one of the reasons it was sexier! For example, there’s far less sandbox in SWTOR than SWG, but that’s why SWTOR is sexier: it was cheaper to make and players didn’t demand sandbox features.
I think comparing the evolution of gaming to the evolution of the iphone is legitimate, but riddled with pitfalls. First, comparing technical progression, like graphical, to something creative or behavioral, is problematic. We can say almost certainly that 100,000 polygons is more than 10,000, and most will agree it’s better. But what if we’re comparing the styling of an OS window, like its colors or textures? You cannot turn to numbers as supporting evidence to make your case for a change in styling.
What if I liked the original layout of the buttons on the first iphone, but 98% of iphone users disagree with me? What if I like less polygons because it uses slightly less battery energy? And what if I liked the CHARACTER of something in the original, like the texturing and commical quips in one of the programs – which changed in later versions?
If I could remake Everquest today, it’d not be the same game. However, it’d not be WoW. It’s safe to say, I’m not part of the hip crowd, but I don’t consider myself unchanging. I like to play games from all eras to get a taste of what was offered. Yet I do think games have changed some things for the better, although many things are still subjective and tied to our past experience.
begin quote…..
Gankatron says:
March 9, 2015 at 8:19 am
(….)
I am perceive the combination of catering to casual player expectations of easy accessibility along with mega-guild content consumption and in game dominance will kill enjoyment of new releases for me, so I have functionally ceased playing MMO’s.
…..end quote
Amen! For me, the issue is they can’t be modded or customized on a server-wide scale. The expeirence on a single character is also limited, even though they try to please every playstyle. Neverwinter Nights was different: it allow you to create customized servers. Skyrim is not an MMO, but it allows players to mod it and create a very different experience. The principle problem I see with MMO’s is the best they can do is please all playstyles IN THE SAME GAME – which even with the best intent and effort is going to fall far short of what a moddable game (or mmo) could do.
The issue is there is a bit too much lumping in of bad mechanics with good ones when we look fondly at old games. The iPhone may have been great, but it lacked certain design and usability aesthetics that we desire now. Games like eq and daoc have good ideas, but also lots of bad outdated ones, and when we celebrate those bad ideas it’s hard for people to take our comments seriously.
One of the key components to a discussion like this is identifying what mechanics were crucial to the success of a game, and which weren’t. People may have hated experience loss in EQ, but EQ would not have been the same game without it. In an effort to always make the least common denominator happy, the game ceases to be something that keeps people playing for years and turns into a shallow 3 monther.
Developers are terrified of releasing something that doesn’t have mass appeal. Players think they know what they want but the bulk of them haven’t a clue what they truly need.
One assumption people are operating under is that the so called “bad mechanics” are actually “bad” or something people today wouldn’t want. I think the actual issue lies in the user-experience of ‘playing’ the game and not in many of the mechanics. Another assumption here is that a MMO needs millions of people to be successful. Why not a stable subscriber base of 250k-500k? Why do MMOs have to be designed for millions of players?
A faster, easier to use phone is better for everybody, while a faster, easier to use mmo is only temporarily better for everybody and then becomes a disaster. There’s a point here, but I haven’t come up with it yet.
Just going to guess really but EVE has like 100k maybe 150k subs? They (and I) consider that to be a great success. There are players on there from 2005 and back. The mechanics aren’t for everyone. I myself couldn’t QUITE get into it fully. Though quite a few expansions have come out since with many systems being overhauled so I wonder… The point is all they did is make their universe and let the players shape the game. They have a solid playerbase of people that have been playing for a decade with new people that jump in to see what the game is about every time they make gaming headlines because someone lost trillions of isk in some mishap.
@Gringar: 500k subs, it’s the third largest sub MMO behind WoW and FFXIV.
Well they have grown then. Good for them 🙂
I think the issue you brought up about “bad mechanics” is dead on, Keen – and I’ve been saying this for ages. One of the “bad” mechanics about EQ was the death mechanic. People hated it – but it made you work your butt off to avoid dying and it forced tight teamwork to keep everyone alive.
I avoided playing WoW for 10 years – but was recently convinced to give it a try with the release of WoD. It was really fun! Until the storyline basically ended, that is. Popping in and out of instances directly back to your garrison is super convenient, but you lose something with all that convenience, I think. I was lucky enough to have some high-ish end geared and knowledgeable friends to play with, but I felt like dungeon runs were basically strategy free except for the boss encounters. I may just be an old codger, but running Blackrock etc. was a little too ADHD an experience for me to actually be “fun”. This is not to say I was unskilled in my time playing WoW (which yes, is over now) – I went from noob to one of the top DPS on the raids I went on during my brief stint – so it’s not failure to adapt, just a different definition of fun, I guess.
The same thing happened with EQ once they started putting more conveniences into the game – I recently decided to return to EQ to see what it’s like and it’s not really even the same game anymore. Planes of Power made travel trivial and later updates essentially removed all real penalty for death – no corpse left behind, no gear to recover, etc. It’s like the devs saw the success of WoW and thought “we can do that with EQ!” without realizing that the people who stayed for EQ and didn’t go to WoW stayed because they *liked* EQ… but like you said, 100k subscribers wasn’t good enough I guess, so they tried to drum up additional subscriptions by emulating the new big dog on the block.
I guess catering to the lowest denominator so you can get the most subs or in-game purchases trumps actual gameplay difficulty. I relish the times spent in EQ grinding out dungeon runs and hate the “Loot Piñata” paradigm that is so prevalent in modern MMO-dom.
I’m hopeful that Crowfall will turn the MMORPG world on its head a bit when it comes out – they’ve definitely got some cool ideas to shake up the status quo.