MMO Developers, please stop remaking World of Warcraft...

[RobCoxxy]

APB will probbaly beat it.

APB will never destroy Nerdvana. However, it is fucking awesome.

 

[vallorn]

We could do with different types of MMO's though, like something more focused on the story and with minimum grinding. I'm thinking something along the lines of a scaled up Borderlands that's a lot better made in all aspects.

you just described my Ultimate potential game!

Spoiler: Have a cookie!

the only things that could see removing WoW would be The Old Republic (which, suprise suprise, everyone else has already said) or that rumoured WH40k MMO if they get it better than that PoS that was WH online.

 

[TerranReaper]

In this point in time, it will be VERY difficult to dethrone WoW. I simply don't see any of the new MMOs doing that, despite on how good they do. People have already said, WoW is a jack-of-all trades, something for everyone. I personally think the only MMO that can kill WoW is any other MMO Blizzard will make in the near future, but even that seems unlikely to me.

 

[warmonkey]

Its got a great PvP system

Well.. actually, it doesn't.

It has a highly polished PvP system, but the PvP system is still little more than an afterthought. WoW is still a PvE game with a gear escalator / mudflation model, and that just doesn't make for a good PvP game.

They have spent a lot of time trying to make it worthwhile, but in the long run WoW's PvP is still inferior to DAoC's, Shadowbane, even Warhammer so long as you ignore their end-game city siege / grind crap.


Games just need to stop trying to beat WoW. Just make a good damned MMO! Make a game that'll stand on its own legs. You don't make a table and once it's done lop off a leg and replace it with a power cord because you want it to be more like the kettle. That. What? Huh? Stop doing that game industry!

 

[Mr. In-between]

MMO developers, please stop making MMOs.

 

[HyenaThePirate]

Your complaint is because WoW is built along the guidelines of an RPG, like most MMOs. In an RPG the players goal is to become stronger and in many cases they move along to the nearest way to become stronger. You act like the gear becomes crap as soon as they raise the level cap and you need to go back to the same dungeons to get better gear and that the raised level cap is the only new thing introduced to the game.

They've only raised the cap when they release new expansion packs and among those packs have come countless additions to the players enjoyment. A new world to explore, new races, new quests, new instances, new classes and new PvP battles. WoW is not a game you can beat, no MMO is beatable, but that's the hook they use. This isn't a game you can beat in 7-10 hours and it requires a lot of dedication to reach the top. If you believe its futile, fine, then WoW isn't the game for you. But then again its a futile effort to wait for an MMO to be different from WoW.

I think that is the biggest problem with WoW. Sure you get a new world, etc, but after a while it stops being "fun" when all of your efforts are essentially made INSTANTLY obsolete. I think its a matter of scaling. Instead of being a tough guy faced with a new tough challenge, you go from being a tough guy to Daniel Larusso LITERALLY in seconds, where it becomes yet again a grind just to get through the first new levels, and all of the people who were barely a challenge for you (the casual players) suddenly find themselves with gear being dropped off in the new N00b zones that far and away outshine that epic level gear you worked your ass off for months to collect. Those long hard nights trying to obtain that Sword of 1000 truths by running the same instances on UBER Hard corps just to get the 1 in 10000 drops from that Boss that has clocked a million wiped parties is instantly wiped out when some random guy gets a normal green sword that fell off the latest color variation of a 'boar' out in the wilderness with stats that would have made you cream your panties before the expansion.

It works once or twice but now that formula of "working to the top only to be kicked to the bottom arbitrarily with the next expansion" gets stale fast. And thats why I feel that people are actually hoping and praying for the next best thing. People are just tired of WoW but for the moment, there isn't much competition.

Another problem I think is that WoW will run on virtually ANY pc made inthe past 10 years flawlessly. Almost ALL new MMO's have had graphical or Processing requirements that have hovered around the edges of cutting new tech. Many wow players have yet to get dual core pcs (very few in my last guild!) and you can forget people running out to upgrade their systems with the latest $300 Nvidia card just to play an MMO. Age of Conan had a great new system and epic world along with TONS of neat and amazing lore... but the requirements just to run the damn game eliminated a LARGE portion of the potential market.

 

[AncientYoungSon]

The reason WoW will be very, very difficult to dethrone is the same reason why it's hard to make any progress in the world of particle physics. That may sound strange, but let me explain--it's an awesome analogy!

In particle physics, the new discoveries all require such a huge investment of money and equipment that only the tip top minds in the field can convince people with money to let them use the money. Back in the day, anyone could be a physicist--Galileo dropping things off buildings, Newton getting bumped on the head by an apple, etc. It was simple observation of the normal, everyday world. But physics isn't like that anymore. There's a certain amount of theoretical work that can be done just on the chalkboard, but the real juicy work requires bigger and bigger particle accelerators.

There are two relevant consequences to this: firstly, only a very, very select few will be able to conduct this research because the investment of time, money, and equipment is so extreme. Secondly, part of being in that group of select few means you can't try anything too terribly extreme or different from the mainstream view of things, because nobody is going to give you millions of dollars to do something in a completely new direction that may very well reveal nothing.

MMOs today are like this. People's expectations have been raised so high that only big companies with large staffs and lots of money can create them and keep them running. Think about it--how many of you would play a 256 color MMO? I personally don't find graphics to be that important, especially in an MMO, but bad graphics would probably turn away well over 80% of potential customers right off the bat, and the fancy graphics take a lot to create. Also, because there is such a large requirement of time, money, and staff, companies are not going to be too keen on trying completely new, completely unproven ideas. The WoW formula works and will generate a predictable amount of money. Anything else does not have that established certainty, and will be scarier to create. Think about it--if you had $5,000 in your bank account, would you be willing to pay $4,500 of it up front for a 5% chance of making $10,000 in 5 years?

Now, all this simply means I understand why companies are making WoW clones. That doesn't mean I like it anymore than the rest of you! But if you don't like how WoW-like everything is, perhaps you should try being more open to new ideas--buy games that are interesting but don't have super crazy graphics. Make it so that indie developers can start bringing their unique concepts to the market, because if they can make games without having to risk millions there will be a greater abundance of experiments and departures from the norm. But if you aren't willing to risk $40 or $50 on an unproven game, why would you expect a company to risk $40 or $50 million developing one?

Well said, and this IS the biggest problem right now: the raw barrier to entry is staggering and no one is willing to lose multiple millions of dollars on making an MMO that is too UNlike WoW.

I think its a matter of scaling. Instead of being a tough guy faced with a new tough challenge, you go from being a tough guy to Daniel Larusso LITERALLY in seconds, where it becomes yet again a grind just to get through the first new levels, and all of the people who were barely a challenge for you (the casual players) suddenly find themselves with gear being dropped off in the new N00b zones that far and away outshine that epic level gear you worked your ass off for months to collect. Those long hard nights trying to obtain that Sword of 1000 truths by running the same instances on UBER Hard corps just to get the 1 in 10000 drops from that Boss that has clocked a million wiped parties is instantly wiped out when some random guy gets a normal green sword that fell off the latest color variation of a 'boar' out in the wilderness with stats that would have made you cream your panties before the expansion.

Perfectly stated.

This is EXACTLY what the problem with WoW was, neatly summarized. I wish this forum had a reputation system because I'd give you some for this amazing summary.

 

[thahat]

i do give the new 40k mmo the chance, even if it would be wow ish but then an fps, it would rock cause of being 40k.

yes, chainsaw swords and rockit propelled rpg-machineguns can beat wow. XD

 

[Keava]

Wrong assumption from the very start.
Actually there is more than 2 categories.
1. People that play World of Warcraft and enjoy it as it is.
2. People that play WoW waiting for something new.
3. People that stopped playing WoW waiting for something new.
4. People that dont want to play WoW ever.

Now as your plea holds true for the 4th group and partially for 3rd, many want a game that will be similar in gameplay, allow same degree of content and not be overly hardcore-based. Industry, through smaller companies, spewed out several 'hardcore' oriented MMOs, but only one of them managed to really make its place in the market and thats EVE. All the ideas like Darkfall or MortalOnline just struggle to hold onto enough subscriptions to let them survive.

Apparently there is no place on market for other sort of gameplay, people want games that wont frustrate them too much and thus WoW, which is EQ clone, managed to hold steady. Thats the same reason why BioWare is doing the things they do with SW:TOR, making it accessible and overly wow-like in basic idea. Gamers want it, but they also want it to be polished and perfected prior to release.

Problem of last several "WoW-like" games was that they were rushed out, unpolished, filled with bugs and lack of content/features that were advertised as selling points. There wasnt even a single one decent WoW clone and dont start me with Aion, because Aion is more of Lineage(and that precedes WoW) clone with all the, typical for asian productions, issues.

Depending on how the whole next gen idea will take off with titles like WH40Kark Millenium which supposedly is build around Darksiders engine or even Funcom and their TSW, TOR might be last of the EQ-like gameplay MMOs, its just question for how long it will manage to grab attention of big enough pool of players.

 

[Rewold]

I think GW2 might make a new turn for the MMO genre. If they succesfully do what they have told us that is. If people want something new from MMO games they really should check this game out. Especially if you are into pvp.

And it won't be a WoW remake.

 

[mxfox408]

Wow is still unbalanced, i have pve awsome 25 man gear on my druid and get onwed by pvp plyers that i cant do no damage too cuz of the crazy ass amount of resiliance tht pvp gear has. how is it fair for a pvp player to walk up to me slash and kill me in 3 shot and my my spells cant hit hard cuz of the damn pvp gear i put time into the game if not more time than the pvpers, so why is it easyier for tuem.

 

[Swarley]

Has wow even really done anything that original besides being extremely polished?

 

[crimson5pheonix]

I always played FFXI, which I enjoyed until I hit level 30 or so with my Red Mage and it got boring. It wasn't going to get interesting again for 5 or 10 levels at least, and I didn't want to wait that long.

 

[Ickorus]

APB will probbaly beat it.

I don't think so but I think it's going to do very well.

OT: All these developers need to stop making their games PvP orientated, I want my epic story and PvE battles back.

PvP is ok but there is only so much you can do before it becomes stale.

 

[Racthoh]

I think that is the biggest problem with WoW. Sure you get a new world, etc, but after a while it stops being "fun" when all of your efforts are essentially made INSTANTLY obsolete. I think its a matter of scaling. Instead of being a tough guy faced with a new tough challenge, you go from being a tough guy to Daniel Larusso LITERALLY in seconds, where it becomes yet again a grind just to get through the first new levels, and all of the people who were barely a challenge for you (the casual players) suddenly find themselves with gear being dropped off in the new N00b zones that far and away outshine that epic level gear you worked your ass off for months to collect. Those long hard nights trying to obtain that Sword of 1000 truths by running the same instances on UBER Hard corps just to get the 1 in 10000 drops from that Boss that has clocked a million wiped parties is instantly wiped out when some random guy gets a normal green sword that fell off the latest color variation of a 'boar' out in the wilderness with stats that would have made you cream your panties before the expansion.

Except raids bosses always drop loot. It's also not a grind to get gear when you can only do the latest raid once a week which takes maybe a few hours each day the first few days of the reset to clear. Then you just wait again. That's not grind, that's arbitrary game lengthening exploiting the gamer's wallet BS.

MMOs need to do one thing for certain; stop raising the level cap. You effectively destroy all of the previous endgame content you had by doing this. Also since most endgame content generally involves being grouped for large party sized raids this means that even if someone is interested in checking out all of that previous content they're pretty much screwed. MMOs need to take cues from Guild Wars and Diablo II, even though they aren't MMOs at all. The former made reaching the level cap painlessly easy and never raised the level cap so the majority of content is designed to be playable all the time. The latter made loot acquisition possible outside of the endgame bosses and the 'best' gear did not require you to be at the level cap. I'll give mention to an MMO called Runes of Magic, despite being free, was infinitely more enjoyable than WoW ever was for me. In that game it was essentially impossible to make any piece of gear perfect, but collecting the components to make something awesome was immensely satisfying when it finally all came together. I'd still be playing that had they not taking the WoW approach to character development IE force the player into the most recent dungeon/raid to acquire said upgrades.

 

[Jinjiro]

My thoughts on MMOs are as follows;

- Lack of variety. MMO developers need to stop making high fantasy. Anything in that genre is going to be compared to WoW, and pitting your new guns against the biggest and baddest in the genre is not a good idea. I think APB (and to an extent, stuff like Champions Online) takes a step in the right direction - other settings in which you can house the elements of MMO gaming. As a quick example, if someone were to make a decent mafia MMO, you could replace the word 'guilds' with 'families'.

- Stale faction/guild mechanics. I think more MMOs need to adopt the stance in which everyone starts as a neutral party, and chooses a side as they advance in level/the game. Having 'Horde vs Alliance' is getting a bit old, I want to make my decisions based on what I feel is right for my character as time goes on. I even think we should go so far as to allow player-made guilds and groups to create factions which an individual can earn reputation with. (Imagine that if you've killed x amount of Group 1, you become hostile to people in that Group, but because Group 2 are at war with Group 1, you gain their respect.

- MORE INFLUENCE ON THE GAME WORLD. This really, really bugs me. I hate killing the same bosses time and time again only for them to rise up the next week. If you want to use a reset function, why aren't there villages being attacked by orcs that take a week to rebuild if you don't defend it successfully, or even take it over and loot the villagers yourself? Maybe they move to a location the next week, or hire some tougher guards(meaning more loot inside!)

There needs to be a more dynamic world outside of the raid instances. What happened to random encounters? Does every dragon that attacks the land need to have a 20 page backstory? Did player housing suddenly become too difficult to control? I think an MMO that finally manages to make the players feel like they're having a large impact on the world will be a huge success. WoW's phasing doesn't cut it for me, neither did Warhammer's Sieges/Keeps.

MMO developers could save themselves work if they just put the fun in the player's hands. Their content can be amazing, but the best stories are the ones people make for themselves.

 

[warmonkey]

OT: All these developers need to stop making their games PvP orientated, I want my epic story and PvE battles back.

PvP is ok but there is only so much you can do before it becomes stale.

Nobody is making any games PvP anything, they just throw PvP around like a buzzword. Believe me, trust me, the only multiplayer gaming I enjoy is against other players. There's no MMO that currently is satisfactory. WoW's PvP IS boring, I agree, but when it's executed well PvP gameplay is the longest-lasting content possible.. but when, like in WoW, it's formulaic, unsurprising and utterly predictable at every turn? It's not even worth participating in. PvE junkies don't like it because it's PvP, and PvP junkies don't like it because it's not PvP.

I mean.. I don't even really get what your complaint is. All current popular MMOs either released or in development are really heavy on story (at least, a story as a means to explain the $LatestBigDungeon) and PvE (as timesinks to keep players striving for the best-level-gear long enough for the developers to make a new $LatestBiggestDungeon).
You can say that's boring to you, but they *are* focused on story and PvE. Just in a hackneyed way..

 

[GeorgeLopezFnarr]

I want developers to take a lot of risk and not get a job