MMORPGs How they have changed for the better? or worse?

[ZeroPointSigma]

IMO, they've changed for the worse.

Everything is about rushing to end game, it used to be about the journey and their used to be mid level content as well.

You had to actually think, things were harder, the community and talking to people actually mattered.

And the greatest feeling in the world is still grinding for a rare drop from a mob or boss and getting it.

This, so much. People rush through the game to get that "beat it first!" pat on the back and then we get flooded with "Where all the endgame content?" complaints.

[Hezzlocks]

I also hate WoW for their godawful ilvl formula design of gear. And that developers these days see it and think "This is awesome, it lets me take all the work out of item design' when item design is one of the single most important aspects of an MMO, Please stop doing it that way. Please.

It also started the trend where every (or maybe all but 1) piece of gear you have gets upgraded every raid tier.

You can blame players for ilvl actually. It started as gearscore, which was a player made scoring system for gear, but was horribly exploitable with healers using DPS trinkets etc to increase their gearscore to satisfy player made checks. Thats still somewhat doable with ilvl, but not to the degree gearscore had.

That said, I feel that keeping gear for an extended period of time is a bad system. Aside from social interaction, loot is more or less the main driving force of MMOs. If you release a new raid tier but no one wants the gear from it over the gear they got 2 tiers ago then what's the point. New raid tiers and new expansions are supposed to have fancy new loot as incentive for people to dive into it, with harder fights to promote the feeling of progression, which is an ever so important feeling in RPGs of all types.

You say it's a good thing if you get to keep gear because they had unique effects that kept it relevant, yet WoW did this exact thing last expansion with a certain trinket from Nighthold and people hated it. I speak of Convergence of Fates for Warriors in particular. The effect of that trinket for warriors was so strong that even despite nerfs it was still their top go to trinket for the entire expansion - and they hated it. There were so many new cool trinkets they wanted to try out and use but even by the end of the expansion warriors still wanted Nighthold runs to try to get the best version of the trinket they could get. And if they never even got the trinket they were heavily gimped for it. This was especially bad because no one wants to go back to farm old content unless they are gearing up alts or new members to be viable in the new content.

I hated gearscore back in the day. Ilvl is eh but it at least is a half decent indicator on what you'll get from the player, and it helps newer players determine what level of content they should be trying out. It's the player made scoring systems that cause all the grief, as they are often exploitable and unviable as benchmarks. Thank goodness FF14 doesn't use anything like raider.io. Logs, at the very least, aren't that well exploitable without doing stuff like stacking dancers and dragoons on one person.

[Nixxe]

You can blame players for ilvl actually. It started as gearscore, which was a player made scoring system for gear, but was horribly exploitable with healers using DPS trinkets etc to increase their gearscore to satisfy player made checks. Thats still somewhat doable with ilvl, but not to the degree gearscore had.

Gearscore was just an addon based entirely on ilvl after it was made visible in WotLK. ilvl was around from launch, but not shown to players.

[Alexandre_Noireau]

A Dying Genre that cannot seem to get rid of old and now unsuccesfull conventions, like: Everything has to have grind.
The focus of most games (this included) seem to be to make content last as long as possible by inflating time sinks or placing arbitrary time windows to limit progress. For a player base that mostly don't have endless time (let's not talk about game design for whales and neets...) this is just awfully bad.

XIV might be the better MMORPG, but in the grand scope of things, is like being first in the special classroom...

[Mikhaill]

Games are to play, not to live in them.
but on the other side of coin, these games were full of depressed, broken people who had no other purpose in life other than waste more time into their second world where they are able acheive something.

Wow, so this is a post.
What if people just wanted to escape? Why they have to be broken and depressed and have no purpose.
We all play these games for different reasons. Quit with the judgemental bs.

[Alexandre_Noireau]

Wow, so this is a post.
What if people just wanted to escape? Why they have to be broken and depressed and have no purpose.
We all play these games for different reasons. Quit with the judgemental bs.

Sorry but has been studied pretty much a lot the reason why NEETs play MMORPGs more than any other genre, let alone basic psychology facts like most videogames work like perfect skinner boxes. And a huge portion of people between 25-35 and our current generation of teenagers are in fact facing clinical depression and stuff like isolation (staying home at videogames) doesn't exactly help. Is not being merely judgemental, is just one of the many saddening statistics of our modern society, globalized world and the escapism that videogames offer.

Specially the point about NEETs, need more info, check the documental "Love Child" for example, a clear documentary on the pandemic that is videogame addiction in South Korea and by extension countries like japan and other developing countries.
And my grade thesis was a bit about psychology of gamers in relationship with learning processes and yes, found a lot of evidence for a subportion of the subjects (NEETs mostly) which presented several psychological disorders that were only reinforced by their exposition to videogames, MMORPGs and MMOs in general being the most recurrent "drug".

Saying it was full, would be too much, but is a pretty considerable part of the population of these games.

[Maeka]

I, for one, do *NOT* have Rose-Colored Glasses on.

Old MMOs sucked where you HAD to have 10, 20+ people to do anything "meaningful" in the game. People just don't have that kind of time and schedules anymore with how today's world works. I know people go "but mah massively multiplayer world" but they conveniently forget how they would spend 10, 15, 30+ minutes waiting for everybody to be ready to go, or then you had random disconnects, people having to AFK, etc.

And then there's not only trying to FIND people to do things with, but also meeting the ridiculously long checklist of things you HAD to have. FFXI was lousy for this at times, with only certain jobs being wanted, and you had to have better gear than everybody else applying for the same position, etc. If I wanted a job, I'd go apply for a job RL at least then I'd get paid in real money.

I'm not here to work a second job, I'm here to have fun in a game.

I like how MMOs are now, well, mostly. FFXIV is good. WoW is.... well, WoW isn't doing that hot these days sadly.

This, so much. People rush through the game to get that "beat it first!" pat on the back and then we get flooded with "Where all the endgame content?" complaints.

That's not the fault of the game, that's the fault of the playerbase. XIV encourages you to take a longer path towards the end, to do things other than rush the latest endgame content, and when people choose to do the rushing, that's on them. Nobody told you to devour the MSQ as fast as possible, skipping cutscenes, etc just to get to the raid ASAP. SE didn't hold a gun to anybody's head forcing them to do that.

SE *tries* to add extra content in, to give players side-quests and other things to do. It's just, if it ain't the most rewarding around, then people don't wanna do it because they're so fixated on getting to the end RIGHT NOW.

[Edax]

Specially the point about NEETs, need more info, check the documental "Love Child" for example, a clear documentary on the pandemic that is videogame addiction in South Korea and by extension countries like japan and other developing countries.
And my grade thesis was a bit about psychology of gamers in relationship with learning processes and yes, found a lot of evidence for a subportion of the subjects (NEETs mostly) which presented several psychological disorders that were only reinforced by their exposition to videogames, MMORPGs and MMOs in general being the most recurrent "drug".

The review of "Love Child" on wikipedia just flat out states : "This documentary is not an exhaustive look at the addiction to gaming, but does a good job of explaining this incident of the couple and their baby in South Korea."

[Nix]

-stuff-

I wish I could hug you for this post - you hit the nail on the head.

For a little backstory, I've been playing MMOs for about 20 years now (EQ, Aranock Online, FFXI, WoW, Asheron's Call, plus some other really obscure ones D: ), and in the early days I remember being dazzled by the worlds I could escape to.

Exploration was daunting and exciting, especially if you were solo, and it was nowhere near as convenient as it is now. I remember running for 20~30 minutes to reach an XP camp so that I could grind monsters with my party.

There were so many aspects of the game now that people would find "punishing", such as xp loss, lack of market boards/auction house, slower travel, grinds to level up not only class but skills; having to PAY to unlock spells/skills from trainers or farming scrolls so your mages could make happy explosions.... ahhh good times!

Now that I'm no longer a kid or teen with too much time on my hands, I'm pleased with the way that MMOs have drifted, for the most part. They feel like they appeal to a crowd that has a short attention span, or less time to play (sometimes both!). It's great to be able to log in and make a little progress. Only got an hour after working in the ER all day? No sweat! I can still do some dailies and level gunbreaker without having to rely on others.

Gaming feels "convenient" now - I don't know of how else I can describe it.

That being said, I feel like we've sacrificed in a few areas too. Games feel a mile wide and an inch deep, classes feel similar, and every patch the metaphorical carrot is replaced by one with a slightly higher iLv; though the method of obtaining said carrot still hasn't changed - you just take your tomes and voila! Carrot.

I feel bad for saying this though, but I feel like the community has changed for the worse - We used to blame it on "WoW players" back in the day, and I know that stereotype still comes up occasionally... But I feel like people screw each other over more now because there's no real consequences.

Back in the day, everyone knew everyone - If you screwed someone / a guild over, you bet your ass your name would be on a forum and everyone would know what happened and who to ignore. Now? Not so much - back in the day, (hypothetically, of course), if you asked someone on your server of -whatevergame- "Who's Fluffy?" they'd be able to tell you "Oh, I XP'd with them before, they're ok!" or "They're in my friend's raid group!" or whatever. We were forced to build bonds outside of our main social circle so that we could make progress.

Now? We have virtual anonymity. You could ask anyone on Hyperion "Who's Fluffy Pancake?" and they'd go "Who...?" despite me playing since 1.0. People don't have to create bonds - they can go into DF, be abusive to other players, be done with their dungeon and never see them again. Rinse/repeat. Screw over a guild? That's fine - name change/server hop, and do it all over again. Heck, you don't even have to server hop, because if you need to run content, you can just rely on DF groups. There are few effective consequences really for being needlessly malicious.

Because of the bonds we created in the past, we treated each other like there was a real freaking human being on the other end of their avatar. Someone wasted a party's time? You all felt that and knew not to do it to someone else. Nowadays, people just don't give a damn, and it's sad.

Overall, games aren't bad now, but they leave me without the sense of wonder and awe I felt back then. I'm happy that games have shifted to accommodate our busy lifestyles... I just wish the community was a bit more old fashioned

Thanks for reading this far~

[Alexandre_Noireau]

The review of "Love Child" on wikipedia just flat out states : "This documentary is not an exhaustive look at the addiction to gaming, but does a good job of explaining this incident of the couple and their baby in South Korea."

Is my most on hand example really. Yet the documentary touches on the pandemic that South Korea and several other nations face.
You might not want to look at it.

I work with videogame addicts daily.