To me it was the mindlessness of MMORPGs and the catering to "collector" mindset that killed the genre. Since I played my first MMORPG I sort of looked forward to the day when technology would...
To me it was the mindlessness of MMORPGs and the catering to "collector" mindset that killed the genre.
Since I played my first MMORPG I sort of looked forward to the day when technology would allow for the genre to move away from point and click, macros, spreadsheets, mobs, and grinding. But no company ever wanted to take the risk to innovate and push the genre beyond its limitations.
The only game to try to break that mold and take MMOs to the next generation is Star Citizen. No loading zones, seamless traversal, real-time reaction-based combat and a tactile world etc. It's really the only form of MMO I'm interested in now, and can't be bothered with stuff from the rest of the industry until they catch up. Grind and a feeling like I'm on rails is the worst feeling in a game to me personally.
I don't think it's about what technology "allows", I think it's what is most profitable - point-and-click and spreadsheets is really cheap computationally, which is matters because MMOs are...
Since I played my first MMORPG I sort of looked forward to the day when technology would allow for the genre to move away from point and click, macros, spreadsheets, mobs, and grinding. But no company ever wanted to take the risk to innovate and push the genre beyond its limitations.
I don't think it's about what technology "allows", I think it's what is most profitable - point-and-click and spreadsheets is really cheap computationally, which is matters because MMOs are incredibly capital-intensive and keeping ongoing profits per player high can make or break an MMO.
Basically, "MMO" is a design constraint that imposes huge technical requirements of an unlimited player cap in the local level (compare to e.g. Counterstrike servers, where you can "once this de_aztec instance has 24/24 players nobody else can enter"), which means if you really care about all that non-spreadsheet stuff then the best solution is to drop the MMO.
Which begs the question: why would you actually want an MMO? MMOs hurt gameplay possibilities more than they help; it's for the social aspect of having a community that are more likely to interact and intermingle (and e.g. say to your friend "meet me at Kerning City on channel 2" and be able to actually meet there). And if you're designing the game around the social aspect then the gameplay almost doesn't matter. It has to be there and it has to be serviceable but it's not the selling point, so why would you focus on innovating it?
So, let's suppose you wanted to design a "random social interactions" game without the big, expensive persistent globally-shared world. What would it look like?
Well for starters, you'd want to have player-limited world instances. You'd also want to have players be randomly thrown together with strangers to work with if they want, but also have the ability to party up with their friends. This already exists, it's just called matchmaking. It's missing some stuff, like the ability to happen upon new strangers to be friends with, but games like Escape From Tarkov provide that despite not being termed as MMOs.
Ditto. The idea of having a huge world with REAL gameplay rather than "this number meets that number" nonsense is appealing, but almost no one has even tried. If there's even remotely skill based...
Since I played my first MMORPG I sort of looked forward to the day when technology would allow for the genre to move away from point and click, macros, spreadsheets, mobs, and grinding. But no company ever wanted to take the risk to innovate and push the genre beyond its limitations.
Ditto. The idea of having a huge world with REAL gameplay rather than "this number meets that number" nonsense is appealing, but almost no one has even tried. If there's even remotely skill based gameplay it's still buried under a pile of spreadsheets.
I think that's why things like Star Citizen get so much money thrown at them, because it's an MMO game that isn't supposed to be shackled to the RPG part.
I think the closest we've had is possibly Destiny 2, but even they're moving away from that and pretty much ditching leveling up as a concept entirely and all the important activities in the game...
I think the closest we've had is possibly Destiny 2, but even they're moving away from that and pretty much ditching leveling up as a concept entirely and all the important activities in the game are things that aren't open world. And even when D2 was more "traditional", it was still mostly instanced co-op than open world "massively multiplayer" activities, but at the very least, the game has unique takes on traditional MMO mechanics (like doing raid fights in a first person shooter vs a third person RPG, as is tradition).
Even then it's grinding for weapons and I found the classes/skills to be woefully unimpressive. It does feel like a step in the right direction, but they stopped almost immediately.
Even then it's grinding for weapons and I found the classes/skills to be woefully unimpressive. It does feel like a step in the right direction, but they stopped almost immediately.
I really miss Destiny 2 at its prime. I genuinely believe it had a shot at becoming one of the greatest MMOs ever made, but again and again Bungie dropped the ball in critical moments. Combined...
I really miss Destiny 2 at its prime. I genuinely believe it had a shot at becoming one of the greatest MMOs ever made, but again and again Bungie dropped the ball in critical moments.
Combined with this you had a community that, as the game grew, gradually cared less and less about content as content, but would instead focus on breaking it as thoroughly as possible so that they can grind faster and maybe not get ten chest pieces in a row.
Very sad. Some of the best times I've had gaming were in D2.
FWIW I think it's still one of the best persistent online shooters out there and I still play it a ton, but you're right that through a combination of factors (some mistakes with development,...
FWIW I think it's still one of the best persistent online shooters out there and I still play it a ton, but you're right that through a combination of factors (some mistakes with development, "grind culture" developing in the community, etc.) it just is not the same game as it was in Forsaken, for example.
To your point with the community: when the remastered Crota's End raid came out recently, there was a way to cheese a mechanic for Ir-Yut. It didn't actually make the fight any faster, there was just a way to get everyone buffed up before entering the boss room instead of during the fight (which I would argue is actually slower), and people complained when it was patched because "bungie doesn't like fun" even though the patch was to make it so you do the encounter as intended...
I think that Bungie has started to realize that making endgame content is hard, and that if you just allow your difficult content to become irrelevant after a few years at best then you're going...
I think that Bungie has started to realize that making endgame content is hard, and that if you just allow your difficult content to become irrelevant after a few years at best then you're going to run out of things to keep players engaged.
One of the biggest failures in my opinion was the inability to enter raids in contest mode. Being unable to experience the content in the way it was designed to be experienced without manually down-levelling your character pretty much takes away a gigantic chunk of the game. When I started playing FFXIV I was dumbfounded to discover you can play anything you've ever played before, capping your power however you want.
It was very strange to me how passionate people were about being able to bypass the encounters. I'm happy to hear that the devs are finally putting their foot down and actually fixing their raids when they break, but unsurprised to hear that the community doesn't like it.
Elite Dangerous came close once upon a time, but with the introduction of engineering it moved over into grindfest territory. Nowadays, Frontier has more or less put it on life support, with...
Elite Dangerous came close once upon a time, but with the introduction of engineering it moved over into grindfest territory. Nowadays, Frontier has more or less put it on life support, with content devolving into same-y, repetitive events that don't really engage.
Having played the game, I believe that Guild Wars 2 is very much a traditional MMORPG, except for the fact that (1) its grinding is masterfully concealed and expedited and (2) every single aspect...
Having played the game, I believe that Guild Wars 2 is very much a traditional MMORPG, except for the fact that (1) its grinding is masterfully concealed and expedited and (2) every single aspect of the game is optimized for convenience. Combat (which is kind of a disguised tab-targetting) is largely mindless, and collecting is one of the main activities.
Don't get me wrong, it is a pleasant game, but it is not a significant step ahead. In my opinion, Guild Wars 2 is an excellent and highly enjoyable update to an old formula that makes every single action convenient and "videogamey" to the extreme.
Definitely want to check this out, but won't have time for a little while. One of the thing that strikes me about new MMOs and the current state of long lasting ones is that they've ramped up...
Definitely want to check this out, but won't have time for a little while. One of the thing that strikes me about new MMOs and the current state of long lasting ones is that they've ramped up complexity, difficulty and cast aside "the journey" as part of the experience.
Recently, I've had the itch to play WoW, which is something that generally strikes when I'm sick. When I get sick, I have the overwhelming feeling to jump into a comfort game and that just happens to be Vanilla WoW, so I play on a private server. The thing about Vanilla is that it's simple; there aren't complex rotations, I don't need to devote 100% of my attention to the game. I can kind of just zone out and relatively mindlessly kill things with occasional bursts of needing to really pay attention and be on my game. But those bursts are often by choice, say, I'm trying to take on multiple mobs at once for one reason or another, so I need to keep my resources as full as possible and make sure I'm not getting overwhelmed. From what I've played of Retail, as well as many other MMOs, there's little of this Peak & Trough style of play and instead, it's just Action-Action-Action; jump to the next quest, the next mob, actively dodge attacks, hit your skill at exactly the right time. Don't get me wrong, I love Dark Souls, but that's not why I play an MMO. I don't want difficulty. Weird as it sounds, I want grind. Something to do mostly mindlessly, but can be a strategic challenge, as opposed to a skill, quick reaction challenge, if I choose it to be.
Further it feels like leveling is completely vestigial and every modern game just wants to get it out of the way because, "the game begins at end game". So instead of hard scrapping, struggling and feeling rewarded when I get that one piece of gear that really makes a difference to my leveling experience, I'm given everything and pushed along. There's no need for me to peek into every nook and cranny for a small advantage, I'm simply pushed along and rapidly level up so that I can "get to the real game." This has the effect of making the world seem small, like not a real world (one of the main reasons I play an MMORPG), making me not care about my character (after all, we had no struggles to overcome together), making me indifferent to other players (no one had to struggle, so no one had to help each other out), all of this convincing me to think that this game isn't worth caring about or isn't worth my time. Here again I can mention Dark Souls: it's so widely lauded amongst people not because it's hard, but because there's a genuine struggle and scrappiness, you feel like you really worked toward a goal and it's exciting when you get past something that tripped you up only to find that you also got a cool new sword or spell. You explore the world, making it feel like a real place, because you really need and want any advantage you can cling to, so you end up seeing things that are out of the way. Thinking about the journey, look at how popular Hardcore WoW is these days; it's not that is necessarily harder (it is), but that it really makes the journey worthwhile and makes that hard scrabble even more rewarding when you get your first Wand, because no longer can you simply go and buy it off the auction house. If the game truly began at end game, no one would have any interest in Hardcore mode and Activision-Blizzard would have never implemented it in their paid version of Classic.
This might just be the rambling of a person who's been playing MMOs since the 90s, but it's something I've been thinking about here and there lately, especially as I've been playing Vanilla WoW again. A game I've been playing for almost 20 years now and yet still want to go back to and I'm not the only one, given the popularity of the both paid for Classic and the private server I play on.
That intense focus on endgame really dampens my interest in modern MMOs, too. Not just because endgame isn’t what pulled me in — that was much of what you mention with the large shared world, the...
That intense focus on endgame really dampens my interest in modern MMOs, too. Not just because endgame isn’t what pulled me in — that was much of what you mention with the large shared world, the journey through it, and slow but sure leveling — but also because everybody takes endgame so damned seriously now.
Back in Vanilla I had fun with my guild in ZG, MC, and AQ20. We were way behind the curve, but that was fine. We didn’t need to be cutting edge, progression happened when it happened while goofing around in Ventrilo. There was no impetus to push performance towards theoretical maximums or get to the top ASAP.
That starkly contrasts to today, where even entry level endgame is approached with a competitive attitude. Everybody is in a rush to get geared with current tier gear to idle in Stormwind with until the next patch, and it doesn’t seem like anybody except those pushing ridiculously high M+ keys is having fun.
I can't agree more. I think having a difficult endgame in MMOs is good, but no-one ever seems to approach it casually, even if they claim to do so. It's really baffling how far people will go to...
I can't agree more. I think having a difficult endgame in MMOs is good, but no-one ever seems to approach it casually, even if they claim to do so. It's really baffling how far people will go to get into a good static, oftentimes at the cost of their friends. I've both seen and experienced friendships ruined because one person just couldn't stand not raiding for eight hours a day to get through the tier. It's even gotten to the point where people that I trust told me that I should just take Adderall and sleep less so that I have time to raid with them in the middle of the week.
This might come off as a bit controversial but, as someone who grew up chronically online and playing video games, I think that there can be an element of addiction involved when it comes to these kinds of things. I remember raiding for hours and hours everyday until I couldn't even fall asleep without seeing flashes of the game when I close my eyes, and I wondered why the hell I let myself be pressured to do so. The community and "culture" around high end raiding can really distort people, and while it might not ruin someone's life like other things it can still change people for the worse.
Part of the issue I believe is how “casual” is defined. In my mind anybody who’s consistently playing multiple days each week or especially scheduling their lives around the game isn’t casual —...
Part of the issue I believe is how “casual” is defined. In my mind anybody who’s consistently playing multiple days each week or especially scheduling their lives around the game isn’t casual — casuals are generally much less tethered to the game, and there may be weeks that they only play for an hour or not at all, depending on what life is throwing at them at that point in time. A lot of players who don’t fall under my definition of casual will swear up and down that they they’re casuals.
On the topic of addiction, I played WoW a lot in my high school and college years but I’m not sure that it was addiction in the strictest sense. Getting that next piece of tier or helping my guild push to the next point of raid progression wasn’t ever the driving force… it was more about exploration, working on alts, goofing around in battlegrounds, etc. Especially after raid gear lost its effectiveness in other parts of the game (meaning that the only reason to raid is to raid more) it started to feel like Sisyphean busywork.
You and @Felicity might appreciate Guild Wars 2, as it's an MMO that values the journey and exploration. People who ask in map chat in that game if they should skip/boost to avoid leveling get a...
You and @Felicity might appreciate Guild Wars 2, as it's an MMO that values the journey and exploration. People who ask in map chat in that game if they should skip/boost to avoid leveling get a unanimous no from the entire community because leveling, exploring and interacting with the world IS the game. Once your character is max level, then there are account wide progressions that still can feel rewarding and satisfying. There is challenging end game content but it's all optional and my experience with it was that it's extremely easy to pick up or let go when life gets busy, and usually required a new rune set or a weapon swap instead of entirely new gear in order to get in line with balance fixes. Best in slot gear has been the same tier for a decade now, because cosmetics are what people grind for and spend the big money on. It's a very player centric game that encourages its community to interact in positive ways, at least in PvE. It's been a happy place for me at least for the past decade+ and it's still going strong.
I don't mean to suggest that just playing a lot is an addiction, only that a lot of games (especially MMORPGs) are very easy to become addicted to if you're prone to it, for whatever reason. For...
I don't mean to suggest that just playing a lot is an addiction, only that a lot of games (especially MMORPGs) are very easy to become addicted to if you're prone to it, for whatever reason. For me it was belonging to something and being good at it. In these spaces you're a lot more likely to be judged by your skill than your identity, so it was an easy source of satisfaction for my brain. Beating a raid after a month of trying is very, very rewarding; my ADHD probably has a lot to do with it.
Many, and probably most people can balance it around their lives. I couldn't, and though I kind of wish there was more awareness about this kind of stuff happening to kids I have no idea how common people like me are, so I assume it's not that bad.
This is my biggest issue with Lost Ark. I probably put more time into that MMO than any other. What reeled me in was the combat and the story. The combat is phenomenal. The story isn't great, but...
This is my biggest issue with Lost Ark. I probably put more time into that MMO than any other.
What reeled me in was the combat and the story. The combat is phenomenal. The story isn't great, but it's got big set pieces and awesome cinematics. There's a castle you siege halfway through the first continent and that entire sequence is just chef's kiss
Then you hit endgame and that like, all goes away. It's just instanced dungeons you run over and over again to grind up a gear score, and everybody is toxic as fuck. And that's the whole game after like 70 hours.
I tried out WoW Retail as a completely new player recently and some of what you mention about leveling being almost vestigial definitely felt similar to me. ESO was similar when I tried that a few...
I tried out WoW Retail as a completely new player recently and some of what you mention about leveling being almost vestigial definitely felt similar to me. ESO was similar when I tried that a few years back too, with both games throwing new players into a recent expansion and rushing them towards the level cap so they can play... "endgame" with other people.
I've been a lot happier playing FFXIV where the focus is much more on the story and there's no real reason to skip to the end. There's matchmade content in any duty you've unlocked at any level, plus characters can switch class at any time so there's always something you can progress.
There was definitely a golden age of MMOs I completely missed out on, but this has felt the closest to games people told me used to exist. I've started to understand why "classic" versions of a lot of MMOs have caught on — I started with more recent ones and have generally had better experiences the older something is I think.
Yeah the magic of wow was when it originally released back in 04/05. No one really understood it and everyone just hung out, ran around dueling, chatting, and everyone was on the same server....
Yeah the magic of wow was when it originally released back in 04/05. No one really understood it and everyone just hung out, ran around dueling, chatting, and everyone was on the same server. Those were epic days that I still think about fondly but that will never come back.
It could, but not with WoW. It would likely be a niche. I suspect the cozy MMOs can fill it. Something geared more toward chillin out than combat. Mandatory downtime. That was one of the major...
It could, but not with WoW. It would likely be a niche.
I suspect the cozy MMOs can fill it. Something geared more toward chillin out than combat. Mandatory downtime. That was one of the major factors that kept Vanilla special. When you had to wait for that last party member to hoof it over, you had downtime to chat.
Star Wars Galaxies also had a lot of the chill factor, with many people exclusively roleplaying as entertainers. The fatigue mechanic was annoying, but it fostered an ecosystem of socialization.
It’s not an MMO, but I find that sometimes creating a new Valheim world and messing around in the chill starter biome scratches much of the same itch that old WoW does. Maybe the energy there...
It’s not an MMO, but I find that sometimes creating a new Valheim world and messing around in the chill starter biome scratches much of the same itch that old WoW does. Maybe the energy there could be a starting point for a cozy MMO.
The fact that Battlebit succeeded tells me that gamers, at least a group of them, are thirsty for a more social experience. People just talked in that game. It had been years since I had actual...
The fact that Battlebit succeeded tells me that gamers, at least a group of them, are thirsty for a more social experience. People just talked in that game. It had been years since I had actual conversation with random players in a random game that wasn't just information about what was currently going on in the game. "Cozy MMOs" like Palia could very well fill that niche and, hopefully, inspire someone to find a way to make another truly great more traditional MMO (totally me not huffing the hopium right now).
FFXIV is the only MMORPG I've ever consistently payed a subscription for over multiple years, and I also don't feel the need to play it constantly. I started on A Realm Reborn before...
FFXIV is the only MMORPG I've ever consistently payed a subscription for over multiple years, and I also don't feel the need to play it constantly. I started on A Realm Reborn before Shadowbringers came out and wasn't "caught up" until maybe half a year before Endwalker...and now I'm perpetually a patch behind in story terms. It's fully about the journey, not grinding for the "best" current gear and then grinding raids.
It's a Final Fantasy game with a shared world and a social component, with a focus on story and plenty of things to do to fit different interests. You can take high end raiding seriously, but it's really only one thing that exists...and there's little community (or moderator) tolerance for the kind of toxic behavior common in the WoW competitive scene.
Do you remember helping people in MMORPG's? It's such a small thing, but that doesn't really exist anymore. I remember powerleveling people, giving random rezzes or heals, running them through...
Do you remember helping people in MMORPG's? It's such a small thing, but that doesn't really exist anymore. I remember powerleveling people, giving random rezzes or heals, running them through instances. All content is so fine-tuned to just be exactly the same level of difficulty all throughout your journey that it's like it barely happens at all. You literally can't be helped in most MMO's now.
In WoW strangers would often trade buffs with each other out in the world, because that extra bit of int or stam or whatever was almost certainly going to be felt. On my Alliance priest I’d...
In WoW strangers would often trade buffs with each other out in the world, because that extra bit of int or stam or whatever was almost certainly going to be felt. On my Alliance priest I’d sometimes even mind control Horde I encountered (PvP server) and take advantage of their temporary friendly status to buff them with Fortitude.
Ever adding flying was a big mistake in my opinion. Especially now with dragonriding which is even faster, it feels like I'm more or less just teleporting between points of interest. I think it's...
Ever adding flying was a big mistake in my opinion. Especially now with dragonriding which is even faster, it feels like I'm more or less just teleporting between points of interest. I think it's why the new patch is so boring for me... the long awaited Emerald Dream is finally in the game and yet it feels awful because you're just zooming around all the time - more so avoiding obstacles while flying than actually taking in the environment.
Maybe I'll give classic another shot with season of discovery next week!
This really reminds me of everquest, cleric buffs that lasted an hour, so it was meaningful giving/getting them to people you just meet in a city. Summoning corpses lost in the completely...
This really reminds me of everquest, cleric buffs that lasted an hour, so it was meaningful giving/getting them to people you just meet in a city. Summoning corpses lost in the completely underwater zone (most classes couldn't breath underwater without gear or spells they couldn't cast themselves, so they couldn't even get to the area where all their stuff was lost). I have some great memories.
Otoh, the same game design could be incredibly frustrating, say if you cant find a person that summons corpses.
After reading your comment again it really looks like you're talking about everquest. Good times :)
I liked that design when it worked but the bad part did stink. I recall I'm everquest making it through the Forrest with the day /night changing mobs (forgetting zone names now) to the halfling...
I liked that design when it worked but the bad part did stink. I recall I'm everquest making it through the Forrest with the day /night changing mobs (forgetting zone names now) to the halfling area from Freeport and then not being able to leave town because nobody was around to bind me. Or later on being a warrior without any transport buffs, so needing sow to make it unit the leveling zone off Freeport, if I wanted my own buff it was a long quest full of multihour camps for jboots.
In wow I recall being a mage having to make water for everyone. It just ends up being a big pita that people demand from you as extra work.
I think in the end that type of design only works when you are in the early magic part of a game where everything is exciting and new and you don't mind losing hours of time for the immersion.
I think the better design are when you see situations thar have been player created to make a service or help out to make something you can do easier. I don't play either game but I believe eve online people have a wormhole help service that you can post for help and get someone showing up if you get lost/stuck for a bit. Or in elite there are groups that you can post to their website to request a refill of you run out of gas.
To me those are prime because it's not necessary but is a situation that can happen when things go wrong and the people helping are doing it for the adventure of helping people because they want to, not because the designer has forced them into that box.
I have many fond memories of the brutality of everquest's systems however I'd never have the time nor inclination to play again when I could be exploring my steam backlog instead of looking at the screen waiting for help.
As an aside Id love for everquest's mechanics to be reproduced in a mmo simulator game where your run a guild of players in a game with brutal setbacks like thst. In thwt wya I wouldn't care if individual members of my team lost everything periodically.
For me I think it worked because at low levels it was actually possible to start over without gear, trying to find a sword or something, and then gradually improving. And once i was high level...
For me I think it worked because at low levels it was actually possible to start over without gear, trying to find a sword or something, and then gradually improving. And once i was high level enough to have jboots i was in a guild, which made things much easier. I wouldn't go back though, I've tried to a couple of times, and its not the same. Probably because of the immersion as you say.
Doing it now, in fact! I've been playing Hardcore mode on a private server and the whole mentality is the opposite of sweaty. People know that they can die and lose all their progress, so while...
Doing it now, in fact!
I've been playing Hardcore mode on a private server and the whole mentality is the opposite of sweaty. People know that they can die and lose all their progress, so while this is high intensity, it seems that all the people playing Hardcore are older and understand that it's just a game and sometimes you die, so no one gets super sweaty about things.
Further, everyone is trying to help everyone out. I'm always buffing people and receiving them in return, because every little bit on Hardcore helps, because you can't use the AH and you can't trade with other players unless they're Hardcore and 5 levels above or below you, so you're scrabbling for every little advantage you can get.
This is a very long video on a subject that was addressed many times. Still, I found enough interesting information and commentary to make it worth a watch. I also like the overall calm and...
This is a very long video on a subject that was addressed many times. Still, I found enough interesting information and commentary to make it worth a watch.
I also like the overall calm and "non-ranty" tone of the narrator.
I’m really not interested in watching a two hour video, but could you distill it down to a few sentences? I grew up, playing guild, wars with my sister and a lot of friends, but never really any...
I’m really not interested in watching a two hour video, but could you distill it down to a few sentences?
I grew up, playing guild, wars with my sister and a lot of friends, but never really any others
Sure. MMORPGs are older than you think and changed a lot with time. Traditional Western MMORPGs are in decadence and are unlikely to make a comeback, but a lot of the things we love about MMORPGs...
Sure.
MMORPGs are older than you think and changed a lot with time. Traditional Western MMORPGs are in decadence and are unlikely to make a comeback, but a lot of the things we love about MMORPGs are now present in other genres.
Didn't expect to watch the whole thing but it was perfect for having on while doing some cross stitching! Really liked his voice too. It was very comfortable to watch, in a way, and he was pretty...
Didn't expect to watch the whole thing but it was perfect for having on while doing some cross stitching!
Really liked his voice too. It was very comfortable to watch, in a way, and he was pretty funny too. And it gave me a lot of background on the genre because despite having played half a dozen MMO's over the years, I had no idea it started out the way that it did which was interesting to learn about. It was time well spent to be honest and I have to say, even though he has several points about "the next big thing", I still find myself hoping for something to come along one day... I mean even New World was a lot of fun (until it wasn't) and it felt promising. I hope it's at least the style of mechanics that upcoming MMO's will look to when designing their games.
Outside of yet more WoW expansions, I think the best bet for the genre as a whole is the League of Legends MMO. Now, I am aware they have showed basically nothing about it as of yet, but it has the company and built-in playerbase to be truly successful. Of course, I am never going to have that same sense of wonder as I had back in the 00's when playing WoW for the first time. I felt a glimmer of it in New World as I really felt they built a beautiful and immersive game, but it only lasted 100 or so hours before the facades of it came crashing down for me. I hit max level and stopped playing about thirty minutes later - a sudden realisation that there was nothing but grinding left to do.
Anyway, while my fingers remain crossed for this genre I am not holding my breath.
I'm with you: I'm not holding my breath, but I do have some hope. Things can be cyclical in life and with the recent renaissance of single player games (holy cow did we get a lot of great ones in...
I'm with you: I'm not holding my breath, but I do have some hope. Things can be cyclical in life and with the recent renaissance of single player games (holy cow did we get a lot of great ones in the last couple years), I have some hopes for MMOs having a revival, even if only for a few years. The gaming community at least partly seems to be pushing back on shallow, microtransaction filled experiences and leaning towards more traditional games. I say "partly seems" because of course games like Call of Duty are still best sellers despite how shit they've become.
But with Riot's MMO in the pipeline (the one most likely to succeed, IMO) and a few others on the horizon, there is yet hope for the MMO genre, it will just take some brilliant developers to find the right combination of game elements to make a new MMO both fun and long lasting. New World was fun, but not very long lasting, and games like Lost Ark are fun at first, but because of how long they are (grindfest), they lose a lot of players along the way.
You may like [down the rabbit hole eve online] (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BCSeISYcoyI) . It's a 5 hour thoruogh look at eve onlines history. The voice over is easy on the ears and measured...
You may like [down the rabbit hole eve online] (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BCSeISYcoyI) . It's a 5 hour thoruogh look at eve onlines history. The voice over is easy on the ears and measured through the whole thing. I didn't think I'd make it through it but couldn't put it down. There isn't a need to look at the screen too often either so would make another great background video too.
This is why i've always compared modern MMO's (Even those that started a long time ago but changed over time, like WoW) to mobile games. The art of pacing has completely disappeared from these...
This is why i've always compared modern MMO's (Even those that started a long time ago but changed over time, like WoW) to mobile games. The art of pacing has completely disappeared from these games. They are designed to teleport you to boxes, do a thing in that box, then leave the box. Combine that with the super strict class requirements in order to engage in these boxes and what you're left with is something that is much less immersive, and lacking in potential skill expression.
I'm also a little disappointed that these games kind of started to revolve around all skill expression being an individual thing - rather than being related to how you interact with a group. Basically, the skill expression in MMO's now seems to be around keeping up your personal rotations. You don't have to worry about threat or target selection or CC or managing buffs and debuffs - which all involve other party members or keeping track of other enemies. Games that at some point in the past would be referred to as MMORPG's are more just MMO action games. And MMO action games are fine, I just miss having the option of that MMORPG niche. Think i might go fire up some FFXI and try to recapture that feeling.
To me it was the mindlessness of MMORPGs and the catering to "collector" mindset that killed the genre.
Since I played my first MMORPG I sort of looked forward to the day when technology would allow for the genre to move away from point and click, macros, spreadsheets, mobs, and grinding. But no company ever wanted to take the risk to innovate and push the genre beyond its limitations.
The only game to try to break that mold and take MMOs to the next generation is Star Citizen. No loading zones, seamless traversal, real-time reaction-based combat and a tactile world etc. It's really the only form of MMO I'm interested in now, and can't be bothered with stuff from the rest of the industry until they catch up. Grind and a feeling like I'm on rails is the worst feeling in a game to me personally.
I don't think it's about what technology "allows", I think it's what is most profitable - point-and-click and spreadsheets is really cheap computationally, which is matters because MMOs are incredibly capital-intensive and keeping ongoing profits per player high can make or break an MMO.
Basically, "MMO" is a design constraint that imposes huge technical requirements of an unlimited player cap in the local level (compare to e.g. Counterstrike servers, where you can "once this de_aztec instance has 24/24 players nobody else can enter"), which means if you really care about all that non-spreadsheet stuff then the best solution is to drop the MMO.
Which begs the question: why would you actually want an MMO? MMOs hurt gameplay possibilities more than they help; it's for the social aspect of having a community that are more likely to interact and intermingle (and e.g. say to your friend "meet me at Kerning City on channel 2" and be able to actually meet there). And if you're designing the game around the social aspect then the gameplay almost doesn't matter. It has to be there and it has to be serviceable but it's not the selling point, so why would you focus on innovating it?
So, let's suppose you wanted to design a "random social interactions" game without the big, expensive persistent globally-shared world. What would it look like?
Well for starters, you'd want to have player-limited world instances. You'd also want to have players be randomly thrown together with strangers to work with if they want, but also have the ability to party up with their friends. This already exists, it's just called matchmaking. It's missing some stuff, like the ability to happen upon new strangers to be friends with, but games like Escape From Tarkov provide that despite not being termed as MMOs.
Ditto. The idea of having a huge world with REAL gameplay rather than "this number meets that number" nonsense is appealing, but almost no one has even tried. If there's even remotely skill based gameplay it's still buried under a pile of spreadsheets.
I think that's why things like Star Citizen get so much money thrown at them, because it's an MMO game that isn't supposed to be shackled to the RPG part.
I think the closest we've had is possibly Destiny 2, but even they're moving away from that and pretty much ditching leveling up as a concept entirely and all the important activities in the game are things that aren't open world. And even when D2 was more "traditional", it was still mostly instanced co-op than open world "massively multiplayer" activities, but at the very least, the game has unique takes on traditional MMO mechanics (like doing raid fights in a first person shooter vs a third person RPG, as is tradition).
Even then it's grinding for weapons and I found the classes/skills to be woefully unimpressive. It does feel like a step in the right direction, but they stopped almost immediately.
I really miss Destiny 2 at its prime. I genuinely believe it had a shot at becoming one of the greatest MMOs ever made, but again and again Bungie dropped the ball in critical moments.
Combined with this you had a community that, as the game grew, gradually cared less and less about content as content, but would instead focus on breaking it as thoroughly as possible so that they can grind faster and maybe not get ten chest pieces in a row.
Very sad. Some of the best times I've had gaming were in D2.
FWIW I think it's still one of the best persistent online shooters out there and I still play it a ton, but you're right that through a combination of factors (some mistakes with development, "grind culture" developing in the community, etc.) it just is not the same game as it was in Forsaken, for example.
To your point with the community: when the remastered Crota's End raid came out recently, there was a way to cheese a mechanic for Ir-Yut. It didn't actually make the fight any faster, there was just a way to get everyone buffed up before entering the boss room instead of during the fight (which I would argue is actually slower), and people complained when it was patched because "bungie doesn't like fun" even though the patch was to make it so you do the encounter as intended...
I think that Bungie has started to realize that making endgame content is hard, and that if you just allow your difficult content to become irrelevant after a few years at best then you're going to run out of things to keep players engaged.
One of the biggest failures in my opinion was the inability to enter raids in contest mode. Being unable to experience the content in the way it was designed to be experienced without manually down-levelling your character pretty much takes away a gigantic chunk of the game. When I started playing FFXIV I was dumbfounded to discover you can play anything you've ever played before, capping your power however you want.
It was very strange to me how passionate people were about being able to bypass the encounters. I'm happy to hear that the devs are finally putting their foot down and actually fixing their raids when they break, but unsurprised to hear that the community doesn't like it.
Elite Dangerous came close once upon a time, but with the introduction of engineering it moved over into grindfest territory. Nowadays, Frontier has more or less put it on life support, with content devolving into same-y, repetitive events that don't really engage.
Guild Wars 2 might scratch that itch some.
Having played the game, I believe that Guild Wars 2 is very much a traditional MMORPG, except for the fact that (1) its grinding is masterfully concealed and expedited and (2) every single aspect of the game is optimized for convenience. Combat (which is kind of a disguised tab-targetting) is largely mindless, and collecting is one of the main activities.
Don't get me wrong, it is a pleasant game, but it is not a significant step ahead. In my opinion, Guild Wars 2 is an excellent and highly enjoyable update to an old formula that makes every single action convenient and "videogamey" to the extreme.
Definitely want to check this out, but won't have time for a little while. One of the thing that strikes me about new MMOs and the current state of long lasting ones is that they've ramped up complexity, difficulty and cast aside "the journey" as part of the experience.
Recently, I've had the itch to play WoW, which is something that generally strikes when I'm sick. When I get sick, I have the overwhelming feeling to jump into a comfort game and that just happens to be Vanilla WoW, so I play on a private server. The thing about Vanilla is that it's simple; there aren't complex rotations, I don't need to devote 100% of my attention to the game. I can kind of just zone out and relatively mindlessly kill things with occasional bursts of needing to really pay attention and be on my game. But those bursts are often by choice, say, I'm trying to take on multiple mobs at once for one reason or another, so I need to keep my resources as full as possible and make sure I'm not getting overwhelmed. From what I've played of Retail, as well as many other MMOs, there's little of this Peak & Trough style of play and instead, it's just Action-Action-Action; jump to the next quest, the next mob, actively dodge attacks, hit your skill at exactly the right time. Don't get me wrong, I love Dark Souls, but that's not why I play an MMO. I don't want difficulty. Weird as it sounds, I want grind. Something to do mostly mindlessly, but can be a strategic challenge, as opposed to a skill, quick reaction challenge, if I choose it to be.
Further it feels like leveling is completely vestigial and every modern game just wants to get it out of the way because, "the game begins at end game". So instead of hard scrapping, struggling and feeling rewarded when I get that one piece of gear that really makes a difference to my leveling experience, I'm given everything and pushed along. There's no need for me to peek into every nook and cranny for a small advantage, I'm simply pushed along and rapidly level up so that I can "get to the real game." This has the effect of making the world seem small, like not a real world (one of the main reasons I play an MMORPG), making me not care about my character (after all, we had no struggles to overcome together), making me indifferent to other players (no one had to struggle, so no one had to help each other out), all of this convincing me to think that this game isn't worth caring about or isn't worth my time. Here again I can mention Dark Souls: it's so widely lauded amongst people not because it's hard, but because there's a genuine struggle and scrappiness, you feel like you really worked toward a goal and it's exciting when you get past something that tripped you up only to find that you also got a cool new sword or spell. You explore the world, making it feel like a real place, because you really need and want any advantage you can cling to, so you end up seeing things that are out of the way. Thinking about the journey, look at how popular Hardcore WoW is these days; it's not that is necessarily harder (it is), but that it really makes the journey worthwhile and makes that hard scrabble even more rewarding when you get your first Wand, because no longer can you simply go and buy it off the auction house. If the game truly began at end game, no one would have any interest in Hardcore mode and Activision-Blizzard would have never implemented it in their paid version of Classic.
This might just be the rambling of a person who's been playing MMOs since the 90s, but it's something I've been thinking about here and there lately, especially as I've been playing Vanilla WoW again. A game I've been playing for almost 20 years now and yet still want to go back to and I'm not the only one, given the popularity of the both paid for Classic and the private server I play on.
That intense focus on endgame really dampens my interest in modern MMOs, too. Not just because endgame isn’t what pulled me in — that was much of what you mention with the large shared world, the journey through it, and slow but sure leveling — but also because everybody takes endgame so damned seriously now.
Back in Vanilla I had fun with my guild in ZG, MC, and AQ20. We were way behind the curve, but that was fine. We didn’t need to be cutting edge, progression happened when it happened while goofing around in Ventrilo. There was no impetus to push performance towards theoretical maximums or get to the top ASAP.
That starkly contrasts to today, where even entry level endgame is approached with a competitive attitude. Everybody is in a rush to get geared with current tier gear to idle in Stormwind with until the next patch, and it doesn’t seem like anybody except those pushing ridiculously high M+ keys is having fun.
I can't agree more. I think having a difficult endgame in MMOs is good, but no-one ever seems to approach it casually, even if they claim to do so. It's really baffling how far people will go to get into a good static, oftentimes at the cost of their friends. I've both seen and experienced friendships ruined because one person just couldn't stand not raiding for eight hours a day to get through the tier. It's even gotten to the point where people that I trust told me that I should just take Adderall and sleep less so that I have time to raid with them in the middle of the week.
This might come off as a bit controversial but, as someone who grew up chronically online and playing video games, I think that there can be an element of addiction involved when it comes to these kinds of things. I remember raiding for hours and hours everyday until I couldn't even fall asleep without seeing flashes of the game when I close my eyes, and I wondered why the hell I let myself be pressured to do so. The community and "culture" around high end raiding can really distort people, and while it might not ruin someone's life like other things it can still change people for the worse.
Part of the issue I believe is how “casual” is defined. In my mind anybody who’s consistently playing multiple days each week or especially scheduling their lives around the game isn’t casual — casuals are generally much less tethered to the game, and there may be weeks that they only play for an hour or not at all, depending on what life is throwing at them at that point in time. A lot of players who don’t fall under my definition of casual will swear up and down that they they’re casuals.
On the topic of addiction, I played WoW a lot in my high school and college years but I’m not sure that it was addiction in the strictest sense. Getting that next piece of tier or helping my guild push to the next point of raid progression wasn’t ever the driving force… it was more about exploration, working on alts, goofing around in battlegrounds, etc. Especially after raid gear lost its effectiveness in other parts of the game (meaning that the only reason to raid is to raid more) it started to feel like Sisyphean busywork.
You and @Felicity might appreciate Guild Wars 2, as it's an MMO that values the journey and exploration. People who ask in map chat in that game if they should skip/boost to avoid leveling get a unanimous no from the entire community because leveling, exploring and interacting with the world IS the game. Once your character is max level, then there are account wide progressions that still can feel rewarding and satisfying. There is challenging end game content but it's all optional and my experience with it was that it's extremely easy to pick up or let go when life gets busy, and usually required a new rune set or a weapon swap instead of entirely new gear in order to get in line with balance fixes. Best in slot gear has been the same tier for a decade now, because cosmetics are what people grind for and spend the big money on. It's a very player centric game that encourages its community to interact in positive ways, at least in PvE. It's been a happy place for me at least for the past decade+ and it's still going strong.
I don't mean to suggest that just playing a lot is an addiction, only that a lot of games (especially MMORPGs) are very easy to become addicted to if you're prone to it, for whatever reason. For me it was belonging to something and being good at it. In these spaces you're a lot more likely to be judged by your skill than your identity, so it was an easy source of satisfaction for my brain. Beating a raid after a month of trying is very, very rewarding; my ADHD probably has a lot to do with it.
Many, and probably most people can balance it around their lives. I couldn't, and though I kind of wish there was more awareness about this kind of stuff happening to kids I have no idea how common people like me are, so I assume it's not that bad.
This is my biggest issue with Lost Ark. I probably put more time into that MMO than any other.
What reeled me in was the combat and the story. The combat is phenomenal. The story isn't great, but it's got big set pieces and awesome cinematics. There's a castle you siege halfway through the first continent and that entire sequence is just chef's kiss
Then you hit endgame and that like, all goes away. It's just instanced dungeons you run over and over again to grind up a gear score, and everybody is toxic as fuck. And that's the whole game after like 70 hours.
I tried out WoW Retail as a completely new player recently and some of what you mention about leveling being almost vestigial definitely felt similar to me. ESO was similar when I tried that a few years back too, with both games throwing new players into a recent expansion and rushing them towards the level cap so they can play... "endgame" with other people.
I've been a lot happier playing FFXIV where the focus is much more on the story and there's no real reason to skip to the end. There's matchmade content in any duty you've unlocked at any level, plus characters can switch class at any time so there's always something you can progress.
There was definitely a golden age of MMOs I completely missed out on, but this has felt the closest to games people told me used to exist. I've started to understand why "classic" versions of a lot of MMOs have caught on — I started with more recent ones and have generally had better experiences the older something is I think.
Yeah the magic of wow was when it originally released back in 04/05. No one really understood it and everyone just hung out, ran around dueling, chatting, and everyone was on the same server. Those were epic days that I still think about fondly but that will never come back.
It could, but not with WoW. It would likely be a niche.
I suspect the cozy MMOs can fill it. Something geared more toward chillin out than combat. Mandatory downtime. That was one of the major factors that kept Vanilla special. When you had to wait for that last party member to hoof it over, you had downtime to chat.
Star Wars Galaxies also had a lot of the chill factor, with many people exclusively roleplaying as entertainers. The fatigue mechanic was annoying, but it fostered an ecosystem of socialization.
It’s not an MMO, but I find that sometimes creating a new Valheim world and messing around in the chill starter biome scratches much of the same itch that old WoW does. Maybe the energy there could be a starting point for a cozy MMO.
The fact that Battlebit succeeded tells me that gamers, at least a group of them, are thirsty for a more social experience. People just talked in that game. It had been years since I had actual conversation with random players in a random game that wasn't just information about what was currently going on in the game. "Cozy MMOs" like Palia could very well fill that niche and, hopefully, inspire someone to find a way to make another truly great more traditional MMO (totally me not huffing the hopium right now).
FFXIV is the only MMORPG I've ever consistently payed a subscription for over multiple years, and I also don't feel the need to play it constantly. I started on A Realm Reborn before Shadowbringers came out and wasn't "caught up" until maybe half a year before Endwalker...and now I'm perpetually a patch behind in story terms. It's fully about the journey, not grinding for the "best" current gear and then grinding raids.
It's a Final Fantasy game with a shared world and a social component, with a focus on story and plenty of things to do to fit different interests. You can take high end raiding seriously, but it's really only one thing that exists...and there's little community (or moderator) tolerance for the kind of toxic behavior common in the WoW competitive scene.
Do you remember helping people in MMORPG's? It's such a small thing, but that doesn't really exist anymore. I remember powerleveling people, giving random rezzes or heals, running them through instances. All content is so fine-tuned to just be exactly the same level of difficulty all throughout your journey that it's like it barely happens at all. You literally can't be helped in most MMO's now.
In WoW strangers would often trade buffs with each other out in the world, because that extra bit of int or stam or whatever was almost certainly going to be felt. On my Alliance priest I’d sometimes even mind control Horde I encountered (PvP server) and take advantage of their temporary friendly status to buff them with Fortitude.
Ever adding flying was a big mistake in my opinion. Especially now with dragonriding which is even faster, it feels like I'm more or less just teleporting between points of interest. I think it's why the new patch is so boring for me... the long awaited Emerald Dream is finally in the game and yet it feels awful because you're just zooming around all the time - more so avoiding obstacles while flying than actually taking in the environment.
Maybe I'll give classic another shot with season of discovery next week!
This really reminds me of everquest, cleric buffs that lasted an hour, so it was meaningful giving/getting them to people you just meet in a city. Summoning corpses lost in the completely underwater zone (most classes couldn't breath underwater without gear or spells they couldn't cast themselves, so they couldn't even get to the area where all their stuff was lost). I have some great memories.
Otoh, the same game design could be incredibly frustrating, say if you cant find a person that summons corpses.
After reading your comment again it really looks like you're talking about everquest. Good times :)
I liked that design when it worked but the bad part did stink. I recall I'm everquest making it through the Forrest with the day /night changing mobs (forgetting zone names now) to the halfling area from Freeport and then not being able to leave town because nobody was around to bind me. Or later on being a warrior without any transport buffs, so needing sow to make it unit the leveling zone off Freeport, if I wanted my own buff it was a long quest full of multihour camps for jboots.
In wow I recall being a mage having to make water for everyone. It just ends up being a big pita that people demand from you as extra work.
I think in the end that type of design only works when you are in the early magic part of a game where everything is exciting and new and you don't mind losing hours of time for the immersion.
I think the better design are when you see situations thar have been player created to make a service or help out to make something you can do easier. I don't play either game but I believe eve online people have a wormhole help service that you can post for help and get someone showing up if you get lost/stuck for a bit. Or in elite there are groups that you can post to their website to request a refill of you run out of gas.
To me those are prime because it's not necessary but is a situation that can happen when things go wrong and the people helping are doing it for the adventure of helping people because they want to, not because the designer has forced them into that box.
I have many fond memories of the brutality of everquest's systems however I'd never have the time nor inclination to play again when I could be exploring my steam backlog instead of looking at the screen waiting for help.
As an aside Id love for everquest's mechanics to be reproduced in a mmo simulator game where your run a guild of players in a game with brutal setbacks like thst. In thwt wya I wouldn't care if individual members of my team lost everything periodically.
For me I think it worked because at low levels it was actually possible to start over without gear, trying to find a sword or something, and then gradually improving. And once i was high level enough to have jboots i was in a guild, which made things much easier. I wouldn't go back though, I've tried to a couple of times, and its not the same. Probably because of the immersion as you say.
Doing it now, in fact!
I've been playing Hardcore mode on a private server and the whole mentality is the opposite of sweaty. People know that they can die and lose all their progress, so while this is high intensity, it seems that all the people playing Hardcore are older and understand that it's just a game and sometimes you die, so no one gets super sweaty about things.
Further, everyone is trying to help everyone out. I'm always buffing people and receiving them in return, because every little bit on Hardcore helps, because you can't use the AH and you can't trade with other players unless they're Hardcore and 5 levels above or below you, so you're scrabbling for every little advantage you can get.
It's kind of a nice new way to play Vanilla WoW
This is a very long video on a subject that was addressed many times. Still, I found enough interesting information and commentary to make it worth a watch.
I also like the overall calm and "non-ranty" tone of the narrator.
I’m really not interested in watching a two hour video, but could you distill it down to a few sentences?
I grew up, playing guild, wars with my sister and a lot of friends, but never really any others
Sure.
MMORPGs are older than you think and changed a lot with time. Traditional Western MMORPGs are in decadence and are unlikely to make a comeback, but a lot of the things we love about MMORPGs are now present in other genres.
Also, I found a website that summarizes videos, maybe you find their summary useful: https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHQE0ILci4o
Thanks, I really appreciated that actually!
Didn't expect to watch the whole thing but it was perfect for having on while doing some cross stitching!
Really liked his voice too. It was very comfortable to watch, in a way, and he was pretty funny too. And it gave me a lot of background on the genre because despite having played half a dozen MMO's over the years, I had no idea it started out the way that it did which was interesting to learn about. It was time well spent to be honest and I have to say, even though he has several points about "the next big thing", I still find myself hoping for something to come along one day... I mean even New World was a lot of fun (until it wasn't) and it felt promising. I hope it's at least the style of mechanics that upcoming MMO's will look to when designing their games.
Outside of yet more WoW expansions, I think the best bet for the genre as a whole is the League of Legends MMO. Now, I am aware they have showed basically nothing about it as of yet, but it has the company and built-in playerbase to be truly successful. Of course, I am never going to have that same sense of wonder as I had back in the 00's when playing WoW for the first time. I felt a glimmer of it in New World as I really felt they built a beautiful and immersive game, but it only lasted 100 or so hours before the facades of it came crashing down for me. I hit max level and stopped playing about thirty minutes later - a sudden realisation that there was nothing but grinding left to do.
Anyway, while my fingers remain crossed for this genre I am not holding my breath.
I'm with you: I'm not holding my breath, but I do have some hope. Things can be cyclical in life and with the recent renaissance of single player games (holy cow did we get a lot of great ones in the last couple years), I have some hopes for MMOs having a revival, even if only for a few years. The gaming community at least partly seems to be pushing back on shallow, microtransaction filled experiences and leaning towards more traditional games. I say "partly seems" because of course games like Call of Duty are still best sellers despite how shit they've become.
But with Riot's MMO in the pipeline (the one most likely to succeed, IMO) and a few others on the horizon, there is yet hope for the MMO genre, it will just take some brilliant developers to find the right combination of game elements to make a new MMO both fun and long lasting. New World was fun, but not very long lasting, and games like Lost Ark are fun at first, but because of how long they are (grindfest), they lose a lot of players along the way.
You may like [down the rabbit hole eve online] (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BCSeISYcoyI) . It's a 5 hour thoruogh look at eve onlines history. The voice over is easy on the ears and measured through the whole thing. I didn't think I'd make it through it but couldn't put it down. There isn't a need to look at the screen too often either so would make another great background video too.
Ah, another NeverKnowsBest appreciator. His videos are indeed long, but I believe they're worth the watch if you care at all about the subject matter.
This is why i've always compared modern MMO's (Even those that started a long time ago but changed over time, like WoW) to mobile games. The art of pacing has completely disappeared from these games. They are designed to teleport you to boxes, do a thing in that box, then leave the box. Combine that with the super strict class requirements in order to engage in these boxes and what you're left with is something that is much less immersive, and lacking in potential skill expression.
I'm also a little disappointed that these games kind of started to revolve around all skill expression being an individual thing - rather than being related to how you interact with a group. Basically, the skill expression in MMO's now seems to be around keeping up your personal rotations. You don't have to worry about threat or target selection or CC or managing buffs and debuffs - which all involve other party members or keeping track of other enemies. Games that at some point in the past would be referred to as MMORPG's are more just MMO action games. And MMO action games are fine, I just miss having the option of that MMORPG niche. Think i might go fire up some FFXI and try to recapture that feeling.