History of MMO's and why they failed

[Morpane]

Final Fantasy 11 on Ps2 - my 1st MMO..endgame was just too time consuming for me, game has not died yet, its actually doing better then the sequel.

DCUO on Ps3 - quit because of the extreme menu lag and non existent player communication. Almost noone has a mic or keyboard. Love DC tho...

WoW - Stopped playing because Cata introduced exactly nothing new to the game. WoTLK might just be the pinnacle of that game, at this point they are feeding off the fact that there aren't really any other theme park alternative mmo's with the same polish, Rift included. SWTOR and GW2 poised to challenge this.

Darkfall - awesome game, great ideas. UI is a nightmare, macro vets wearing full plate armor, swinging 2 handers, shooting arrows and casting max level offensive magic are ruining the pvp. Also lag issues in large scale battles, server side.

SWG - arguably the best sandbox game ever created pre-NGE. played until THE patch then quit for WoW. If im gonna play a theme-park might as well play the best one. Company pride/ego preventing SOE from releasing pre-NGE servers that would explode with players overnight. Biggest travesty in video gaming imo, from the artistic/vision p.o.v.

AOC - Terrible grind, lackluster quest system, missing features at launch, dull instances, dull classes. It does sport a wicked cool fatality system I wish more games would use though. Graphics are still the best out there I believe, even with Rift out.

Warhammer Online - Great game on paper, Mythics presentation...not so much. Still server side performance issues all these years later, unbalanced classes, endgame promise of capitol city invasions ( the games highlight ) was lol at best and recently was changed into a 10v10 situation?....

Rift Beta - WoW with portals that open up and spew mobs....ya im gonna spend 60 bucks on that....sure. By level 12 I uninstalled the game, it felt like I was leveling an alt in WoW.

EvE - solid game with plenty of sandboxiness, maybe the best sandbox out right now since the demise of SWG. Not having an avatar makes the game feel....detached somehow. Incarna expansion will solve this problem and flood the server most likely, but its been "on the horizon" for years now.

[Ayrik]

@BigCountry - What is your nation in SAGA? Do you know who I am? Anyone else that's played SAGA, please give a shout-out for me!

UO - What a great experience, I loved exploring and the fact you didn't have to rely on combat to get far and have a good time. As everyone, the game started to get bad after the introduction of Trammel with UO:R. I kept playing off and on until a bit after AoS, when the game got pretty boring. Though, I loved the house editor. (I started playing again on the free shard UOSecondage and it's great, just how I remember it!)

DAoC - I bought it, tried to play it, couldn't figure it out...Hasn't failed yet, I guess it's just outdated, I know some people who like it.

WoW - Got to level 60 and raided Molten Core. I loved it for a while, because I was playing with friends. But then the login queues forced me to change realms and I never really played after that. Obviously it hasn't failed, but it failed me for sure because it got repetitive and boring. Story is laughable at best.

Tabula Rasa - What a major disappointment. Played beta, but stopped early on. Failed because nothing about it was interesting...just bland all around.

LOTRO - WoW clone, boring...Didn't fail, and will probably be around for a while as one of the most successful micro-transaction MMOs.

EVE - Way over-complicated, clunky UI. And I'll quote my brother on this one, 'I love everything about EVE except actually playing it'. So boring, the game just plays itself a lot of the time. And when you get into combat it is way too chaotic for me because the UI is so hard to manage.

Darkfall - Played the trial. I enjoyed it until I realized there is nothing to do. Then I died from a monster and had to wait 3 minutes to respawn. WTF?

...

The list goes on and on, but the main thing is, I like to do my own thing and my own adventure. I prefer no story, and no quests, but I also don't like being ganked for no reason just to be bullied. Nothing has really scratched that itch for me just yet.

Wow, I wasted too much time on this post.

[Salvadore]

WOW, great reads!!!

I didnt mean "Failed" as in game sent to grave, but more "Failed" as in why you quit playing or failed your expectations.

SO, in regards to UO, is it safe to say that Trammel led to its downfall?

I also noticed that, in many games within many posts, the GRIND is also a game-killer...that fair to say? Seems the cycle is usually- Grind, get tired of it because it takes too long, quit OR grind, get to apex, quit due to content. Is that also fair to say?

Personally, I LOATHE grinding. That's safe to say in EVERY game ive ever played. I simply cannot logically wrap my mind around spending long amounts of time killing mindless mobs, getting that super high level, or swimming against a rock for a full weeks time just go gain a few more HP.

Macro's - I detest them. I saw some macro's in darkfall that were more complex than the systems NASA uses on their spacecraft...NO JOKE. How is that "playing" a game???

[BigCountry]

And I'll quote my brother on this one, 'I love everything about EVE except actually playing it'.

Now that is a good quote.


Great thread guys, love reading it.

[2ardcore010]

Beginning: -

Myth of soma- 2002 - Grind was crazy, but i didn't mind. Multi's made it harder on the average honest gamer but weren't enough to kill the game. Persistance and determination are the key to catching up with high levels, that and starting at the same time. Theres was much to do and hunt along with great wars n a great community, which brings me to my final point; never really got bored of this game. Instead left for a while to play things like SB n SWG. Returned when they released devil world expansion then left that to play EQ2.

Shadowbane - another great n unique game. Grind was quite effortless and mainly alot of fun, what with the great group hunts. Had good guild content and great wars. And the community was great. Eventually left to play SWG as it did start to become boring when you get to the top level of 75-80 and everything just starts getting repetitive.

Star Wars Galaxies - Good game with some new features. the traveling was a bit much, and didnt make it to NGE (whatever that is, lol) and stopped playing before jedis came in (assuming that might be what NGE was). didn't really like the combat in it as it looked like watching super-short movie clips on repeat, personally like it to be much more interactive even if it is just hack n slash. Apart from that the quests were good and the trading (with NPCs and players) even the grinding was fun. Eventually left to go back to MoS mainly because of the boring combat system.

EverQuest 2 - the game had good quest/quest story but i couldn't find much else to do other than quests, the community was ok, and there was alot of PvE, didn't really get far in enough to get to the PvP (if any, left in about 2-3 months). Didn't really like the combat although it weren't tooooo bad. Found it to become quite repetitive aswell, though I dont remember much about it.

9Dragons 2Moons Perfect world - the next stage of gaming for me after a break from the mmo world was f2p games, 9D 2M n PW were ok for a while got bored with them quickly though as they were REALLY repetitive n with PW the game shop people would always be better off obviously.

since then i've been waiting for something new and dynamic to put a dent in the recent unchanging pattern/state the mmo industry has been left in since eq2. xsyon might just do that.

[kc999]

EQ Online Adventures for the PS2 the gateway drug, only played for 2 weeks.

Star Wars Galaxies played it when it came out, and then for 5 years after that. Nothing comes close to this for me, even after the CU and NGE it was still good enough but nothing was better than the pre-cu times. Had 5 accounts I even played the pre-cu emulator for a while.

Lord of the Rings Online played the pre-release of it and then up until right before mines of moria came out. Then I went to Iraq and everyone I played with had moved to different games.

World Of Warcraft never thought I would play it but I played for about 4 months then quit. Then another 5 months then quit again.

DC Universe Online played for a month and didnt renew after the free month. Not enough end game content and not enough people I knew playing it.

Rift bought it a week ago and it's on hold right now, still a good game though.

Other MMOs I have played but not for extended amounts of time: EQII, Aion, Global Agenda, and Final Fantasy XI. I'm sure theres more I'm forgetting.

[Dsk954]

asherons call- best MMO ever. Hasnt failed yet but going that way. In the years of EQ1 this game was great. Increasing skills was seperate from increasing levels, meaning it was very easy to customize (and therefore ruin by improperly leveling) your char. old graphics and population troubles now (with more than 1 server most servers are now populated by bots). There were discussions of server migration, which would completely revamp the game, but with all the technical problems associated with the move it never happened.

[The_Snape]

Darkfall - Played the trial. I enjoyed it until I realized there is nothing to do. Then I died from a monster and had to wait 3 minutes to respawn. WTF?

Learn 2 press space? If u realized u had nothing to do then there are 2 things wrong with you, first u dont get the point of a Sandbox game, clearly, and that makes xsyon a bad game for you, and second, if you only played the trial u cant even speak, because u did nothing compared to the game itself