Does it? Seems every mmorpg after WoW trying to do the same thing as WoW (the EQ clone model) fails utterly. And many before WoW as well.

Devs should realize that you won't get much of a share of the pie if you do something someone else has already done, with a built-in playerbase and a much bigger budget. Seems the most successful western mmorpgs outside of WoW are the ones that try NOT to do things like it.

But, of course, not every dev gets that. Or, more accurately, the investors they woo for their budget don't. It's far easier to go "look, here's WoW's numbers, we'll do things like them and get a piece of their pie" than the alternative - even though it doesn't actually work that way!





Yes. You sum up the investor argument well. The problem is that last sentence - it doesn't actually work that way in practice. But it's hard to show an investor that, because it DID work that way for WoW (and EQ). There is certainly room for ONE extremely successful mmorpg using that system... but after that? How many mmorpg failures are we at since WoW released now? Meanwhile, the ones that go a different direction continue to defy expectations - EVE is still the only mmorpg to constantly grow in size since it was released, and that despite some really REALLY major technical problems in certain aspects.





I agree with this, WoW was never intended to be a sandbox game and would not be convertable to one now. That doesn't mean they have to keep going even further to minimize player options, though. "Directed gameplay"? Feh.





It is sad that those who feel that way will probably never get a chance to feel what it is like when it is real, not an illusion. I think those that do are the ones that comprehend how empty the "change the world by phasing, just like everyone else changed it" paradigm feels.





Blizzard gets no money from me. Your argument works for the past elements, but these ones? Only retention will have the final say on that.

 

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You let your emotions and your personal desires (aka "I want a sandbox MMORPG" precede hard facts once again, that's why all this little anti-wow anti-blizzard speech you repeat all the time doesn't hold water and makes no sense.

By the way, if you want a sandbox MMORPG so hard, why don't you play Darkfall, or Mortal Online, or hell, Eve? How comes those first two games failed too?

This said, if you want something that can end as UO2, watch this game: http://www.dawntide.net/
I've been trying them all, and it's the closest I've found so far, way better than DFO or MO. Sadly, it's not finished, so it can end like crap, like all others.

And the failures of non-WoW games have nothing to do with the EQ Clone model being bad - it's due to those games sucking bad, making design mistakes WoW didn't make, or just being a steaming pile of bug ridden crap. A bad imitation will always lose against the model. Games like e.g. Vanguard could have easily taken a big portion of WoW's market if the technical realization of the game hadn't been so bad.

Now don't get me wrong. I'd LOVE to see a successful, or at least a good game, that's doesn't follow the EQ/WOW clone model, but manages to make an "UO2" instead. That's why I'm following games like dawntide. The game doesn't have to get 12M players, it just has to be good enough so that enough player, notably oldtimers who enjoyed UO, join and stay, making the game viable financially. But I'm also realistic, and don't expect any major game studio to make such a game. If such a game ever comes, it will be a smaller independent studio which will take that "risk", not a major, which reduces even more the chance that such a game ever makes it to a playable state good enough to be sold, and more important, to be bought and played on long term.

 

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If you are replicating UO, make sure that are plenty of trees to bump into and get caught on.

 

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I DO play EVE (though very casually until they fix their issues with heavy system loads). I wasn't interested in Darkfall. I've never even heard of "Mortal Online".

(P.S. I went and looked it up, and I have to thank you for causing me to do that, for I otherwise never would have found this review gem:





Which made me LOL...)

The thing is, it's like the Myst example again. The few games out there trying the sandbox route don't really know what they have. They have a new genre with endless possibilities but they don't know what to do with it. It's not enough to just turn the players loose, turn on ffa pvp, and say "have at it boys". You need to give the players the tools to make it work, too. In EVE, it's the sovereignty system, and even that is just a barebones glimpse of what is possible - and no other game has taken that next step. A game like Shadowbane sounded like they had the right idea, early in their development, but it fell apart long before it released and it, like the few others that went that way, didn't give the players the tools and draws.

No game has been the UO version of WoW's EQ (pre-Trammel UO). Take what works, polish it up, add to it, and take it further.

But I think devs can only beat their heads against the wall so long. Eventually it HAS to occur to some that have an actual budget and talent behind them that trying to out-WoW WoW isn't going to work until after it jumps the shark itself, and by then their new mmorpg will come out. The little guys like Dawntide like you mentioned (why are all these little sandbox mmorpgs Scandanavian anyways?), I always hope the best for them, but giving the tools and the motivations for a sandbox game without losing the sandbox is not easy, not easy at all (as I mentioned before), and a major misstep spells doom for the feeling the targeted playerbase is after. It makes it hard for a little guy to succeed because money does buy talent - or at least enough people to mitigate the mistakes. It also has huge effect on the technical side, where I think WoW's budget really shines - that engine WoW uses performs like a champion.





I didn't mean to suggest that, I simply mean there isn't room for more than WoW in the market for the EQ clone model, technical failures or no.





Yes, I think I even said that myself.





But I don't agree with that. I don't think it ever could have. The best it could have done would have been to take the lion's share of the veteran EQ population (with those few who actually preferred DAoC's shift to PvE raiding), but that is only a minority of WoW's playerbase (a minority of even just its western playerbase, as EQ had almost no eastern presence at all). Vanguard's audience wasn't the casual player that makes up the huge majority of WoW.

On top of that, I don't think Vanguard would have succeeded even if it HAD worked its technical issues out. There were philosophical and directive problems at the very top there. Elements like their diplomacy system spoke loudly of compartmentalized development without the central "brain" to keep it under control and tie it together in a coherent package - the game was going to be a Frankenstein mess even if it hadn't had its technical issues.





The smaller guys can do great things. CCP is a small company based in Iceland of all places and it has made by far the best space-based mmorpg in the world, not to mention their dev blogs show a depth of understanding of issues that I have not seen anywhere else. But it takes a big guy, I think, to push it to that next step, and be the WoW version of UO.

And there just aren't that many companies the size of Blizzard out there.

But all that aside, more to the point of the original post, I think WoW is moving away from the EQ-clone gameplay, but in the exact opposite direction. Towards, dare I say it, a more console based RPG ideal. I am quite happy to play the EQ clone concept; I played EQ over UO, after all (though I liked UO too). Though it was already standing off to the side of it throughout WotLK, I don't like this wholesale movement away that is embodied by two things - the emblem based gear grind endgame (or more accurately, slowly giving it away for doing what amounts to killing newbie rats), and now "directed gameplay". Maybe its good for Blizzard, time will tell on that, but I am not a Blizzard shareholder and I'm only really concerned with MY entertainment potential from WoW, and it has dropped below the point where I am even interested in the expansion. I continue to check in here daily to see if something is popping up to rekindle that fire - rated BGs are the next thing I am watching - but it hasn't happened yet.

 

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Opinions are like buttholes.



Bold part is assumption again, and Vanguard is really not as hardcore as advertised. It can perfectly be soloed, and raids aren't very different from WoW. Not to mention Vanguard was only an example, I could have named EQ2 or LOTRO, which both took a small share of the WoW potential population, but not even remotely as much as if they didn't make some obvious design mistakes from day one. We both know fixing later doesn't work in MMO world, the players have long memories of first bad impressions. I could have named WAR or Conan, which both failed for technical problems and crappy design decisions. All those guys tried to vaguely imitate WoW, but in a sub par model, and hoped players would be stupid enough to quit the polished game for their pile of crap.



Opinions are... already said. VG had a huge amount of followers precisely because of what they wanted to make it, a real successor to EQ. The game isn't bad at all now, but wasn't even remotely ready to be released back then. Would they release it now, it would definitely have better chances, but all is lost since as I already said, MMO players keep their bad first impression for a long time.



CCP is what? One out of how many who have tried and failed? I don't think I need to post the huge list of "small" MMORPGs which have failed since 2004 when WoW was released. Not to mention EVE is really a very specific concept, they did have way less design and art problems by choosing space combat. Yeah they took and easier, albeit unexplored route, and succeeded, and it's nice, but it's only ONE single dev in 6+ years, while dozens utterly failed and bankrupted never to be seen again.

Your remark about Mortal Online is one of the major reasons why smaller studio fail btw... utterly crappy graphics and even worse animations, along with stupidly retarded ideas like forced first person view and totally naked avatars. Dawntide is way better so far than any of the recent others (DF0 and MO notably), and its devs are way more realist for many reasons, they seem to take the right design decisions. But as I said, my hopes aren't high. The beta is open btw, you can give it a try. Don't expect first class graphics and anims, but you won't see dangling balls and anuses, and the game is really very close to UO.

 

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Agreed with your post, especially these parts.


I would try a good/decent sandbox game for sure, but I don't think the demand is there. Korrigan I see you said above a sandbox game uses fewer resources - I don't make games but that was my thinking. The amount of work that goes into quests I know is really really high.

 

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Agreed.


They've made questing so insanely easy (although people STILL fail to read quests, look at the map, and need to ask questions when the answer is in their face) that the questing needs to be interesting and entertaining, otherwise it would be deathly boring. This setup in cata keeps it a little more interesting and some of the quest variants spice things up or add entertainment to keep it from getting too dull.

 

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'If you don't have one you're full of shite?'







I'll just answer this, and leave the rest alone: it's actually not. There weren't enough EQ players total to make up a majority of WoW's western playerbase. Even if they ALL moved to WoW, it just isn't enough people. It has been a long long time since I heard anything about this but IIRC EQ had somewhere a smidgeon over a million box sales, but under 2m, of which no more than half a million or so were ever subscribed at any one time. That's just not enough people to make even close to a majority of WoW's western playerbase.

Even ignoring the eastern side which clearly came mostly from lineage and ffxi, WoW's western playerbase did not come much from previously existing mmorpg populations. It tapped a new market - the casual mmorpger.

 

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Let's take two sentences out of a post and ignore the annoying arguments.

But whatever - resume your trolling and making yourself ridiculous with your doomsday theories

 

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