Are MMO players spoiled by WOW?

Melian

Thete wrote: »

fehu777 wrote: »

In the past I have witnessed the "watering down" of games that I loved and its a sad experience to go through = (

As a response to complaints, starter areas (that whole hour of content) was truncated and what remained was made optional. Then people complained they were getting too low level for the quests ...

Today, Doshia was nerfed.

Is ESO not being watered down?

And yes to this.

The bosses like Doshia and (beta) Gutsripper were one of the main things that sold me on this game in the first place. I liked having to think and pay attention in normal, low-level quests. I'm not one to seek out stuff labeled "heroic" or some kind of "challenge mode". I think of myself as a casual gamer. That doesn't mean I enjoy beating on loot pinatas with no mechanics.

mechman29_ESO

gonzo914 wrote: »

You kids complaining about the server being down and a long wait when changing areas or logging on should have seen Wow when it first came out. The server was down for the first 90 days the game was open. No one could get on whatsoever, but we didn't complain. We just paid our subscription fee each month hoping that would be the month it came back up so we could play.

For the first year, it took an entire fortnight just to log on, and I could clean my mom's entire basement in the time it took to go from one area to the next. And the lag was bloody awful. I logged on one day and took damage from a hit from the previous day.

And we didn't have those fancy animations like you have now. All we had were streams of zeroes and one, bright green lines and lines of them scrolling off the screen, and we had to compile them ourselves so we could see what was happening.

Plus, I had to walk 25 miles in the snow and sleet and freezing cold, uphill both ways, to get to the Starbucks where I could sit outside on the curb and pirate their wireless so I could log on to play.

You kids today just don't realize how good you have it.

This made me LOL out loud at work!

k9mouse

Emily wrote: »

They'll filter out eventually. Either that, or I will if they start catering to that.

Doshia also disturbed me. I'm really not a great player, but once I figured out her tactics she was dead on the floor. I really, really hope they don't nerf fights like that unless they're broken.

Yeah, nerfing that battle is setting up for a bad fall, IMHO. She is super easy once one figure her out. Figuring her out is half the fun and makes the battle so much more rewarding after wards.

The reason why I do not want arenas because that leads to nerf wars -- ESO is not design for those in term of balance and class.

Also, people want sandbox, here we do have the tools / sandbox already -- a player could use the cross faction guild chat and they meet somewhere in the PVP zone and do battle that way -- thus players can set up their own arenas and place bets, etc.

ESO does get a LOT of tools to use, it is up to the player to figure out how to use them. Asking ZOS for stuff that is already in the game is just hand-holding.

matthewameluxenub17_ESO

Hawtsauce wrote: »

Consumers, in all areas of the free market SHOULD expect more value for their dollar, why would anyone want to pay $60 and $15 a month for a game with 10 year old features ? BTW - I am not saying ESO is 1980s Ninetendo quality

I get your point, but let's take a step back and look at the industry as a whole.

60$/15month? Well let's bump that up 50% to keep up with inflation.

Adding in features from another game over 9 years? Well that takes time and manpower. Will need to hire more help, which requires more money.

The industry is very cutthroat and while what you say is very true, things don't happen by magic. A demand for cheaper games with more content is a good goal to strive for, but what you can actually deliver is often something different.

Also, some things just take time and there is no way to get around it other than putting in the time. If it took me 3 months to write a novel 10 years ago, I cannot magically write a novel now in 3 days. Add in the fact that games, themselves, are becoming increasingly complex, cutting off development time also becomes a higher challenge.

I get your point, but I don't think it is so easy to say we should be getting more for less, and just leave it at that.

Also (not you specifically) keep in mind there is a difference between intentional game design and lacking "standard features". If we run with your car analogy, consider that some have sun roofs, others do not. Some have 4 wheel drive. Some have seating for 4, others 10. Sometimes there are options when you purchase, sometimes you are stuck with what the specific design is. If a particular model doesn't have the exact feature you are looking for, you choose another vehicle. No one master race vehicle exists to please the entire consumer base.

fehu777

Fun and relaxing is achieving goals not hitting the fun button over and over until your fun receptors die in a fire.

lioslinn

oh gosh PLEASE don't give in to the whiners and nerf the game more. Scrapping the starter areas is already bad enough. I thought they were AWESOME to drag you into the story and immersion of it all. Now newbies just wander around the large cities, lost. I've helped I don't know how many people to that starter quest that brings you back to the starter island... been thanked profusely every time, since then the game makes more sense. Don't know why they didn't just add an option to skip the starter island instead of starting everyone in the capital....

PLEASE no mini-map - adds to the immersion

no auction house - it forces people to actually *gasp* interact and talk!! At least allow people to create custom channels like trade or wts etc.

It's much more rewarding to fail at something, then try again and succeed. Being able to win every fight, finish every quest quickly is just bleh. Feels like a rat race. no thank you.

Anything that encourages players to talk is good. Sooo tired of modern mmos where I feel like I'm playing solo with other characters just sprinting by silently in all directions.

Please don't do like every other mmo and sacrifice everything in the name of convenience. People who want everything easy will get bored and switch mmos quickly anyway.

I for one miss the difficulty of everquest1. I miss factions, which meant carefully exploring enemy areas to avoid the guards which would chase you around if you got too close to the city. 'bosses' being tough until you figured out their strategy or invited a few friends to help, and yes even the xp loss upon death. Made it a lot more exciting to go explore dangerous areas instead of '*** hum 5g repair cost'...

and please for the love of the eight can we have 5 minutes of general chat without WoW comparisons =p

Madae

Sometimes, I think really hard and hope that most of you will just disappear one day. It hasn't worked yet, but I'll keep trying and let you know if it does.

Kyotee0071

What always gets me is "World of Warcraft was the first MMO". I try and bite my tongue but always end up replying.

But seriously, you all have it made these days!

Back in my day we played on a dial up modem. Yeah I know, most of you youngin's (comment not directed at anyone in this particular) have never heard the annoying noise of your dial up modem getting busy. Think of a group of mini Khajiit getting freaky while over amped on a large supply of Moon-Sugar. That noise would be close.

Our characters only had 20 pixels (slight exaggeration) and we looked awesome! It might of taken 5 minutes to log in, but man my banded armor and fine steel sword was a thing of legends!

We had to sit and heal or regen mana for minutes at a time. And guess what, if you were 'meditating' to regen your mana you could only see your spell book, Nothing else.

We had to sit at a dock for 20 minutes waiting for the ship to come in so we could get to other places. No clicking an icon and porting around!

We sat in the same spot for hours camping an area for experience. 5 minutes of sitting, 30 seconds of fighting. But guess what we had a blast because during those 5 minutes we were actually chatting and getting to know each other /gasp !

Oh speaking of chatting, we had to type! No voice chat. Woah I know crazy right. We tore through 80 man raids taking down Gods, all without DPS Meters, Gear Scores, and Voice Chat. How did we do it!

Oh man, some of us were blind as a bat at night as well. If we didn't have a torch or fire beetle eye we had to actually feel our way down long tunnels to get to the zone entrance. Why you ask?

Because we had to get to our corpse if we died! We didn't respawn with all our gear and weapons. No we respawned with nothing, zilch, nada, nothing - and from quite a distance away. We had to run back and somehow get to our corpse past all the enemies so we could loot our items and seek revenge.

Man I could go on

Thinking back now I really miss how old school MMMORPGS used to be. If I could have today's graphics and animations and fighting styles with an old school MMO rule set, I would so play that game haha.

demonlkojipub19_ESO

yea, I think many MMO folks are spoiled by wow. This in turn makes many MMO devs "Wowitize" their games. The funniest one IMO was Rift, with their slogan "You're not in azeroth anymore". I mean really, how obvious can you be. But, Wow is in too many peoples eyes the MMO standard, at least the WoW years after its launch. Certainly wasn't the standard when it launched lol.

ESO at least tries not to Wowitize the game too much, and I love that. the last new MMO I played tried that at first too, but too many people didn't like their non-wowitized game and so they caved in and re-made it in WoW's image, and its all because of the spoiled folks that cant have it any different, accusing developers of trying to "reinvent the wheel. Weakness of the company mind didn't help either. It helped it succeed and make the game appealing to those spoiled people who cant have anything but WoW style mechanics, but now its nothing awe and ooo, just another WoW clone.

ESO however is going in a good direction imo. Its style while not COMPLETELY ooo and awe, given that it has a lot in common with its single player games, it is still an ooo and awe thing to the MMO world. The worse thing they can do is cave in to the WoW children and start doin crazy remodeling. Hope to never see 10 hotbars, auto attack, and completely RNG dominated combat... Those people who need WoW can just take their butts back to WoW or one of its clones, or they can get use to it and see the game for the good it is.

Even still... WoW has elements in it, added way after its launch, that people expect to be in other MMOs'. Tis why it is seen as the MMO standard. It just doesn't need to be completely cloned, and some dopey devs can't understand that.

dread67

Lol how did we ever run those raids with out voice.
Memories in daoc waiting 10 minutes for a port back to the frontier.
Having to wait for a group to do trees to level.
You actually had to group with people and be civil or you would never level.

Varivox9

I don't know. I agree that there is a lot of "it isn't WoW" complaining going on (which I am VERY glad it isn't WoW...), but there are some things that I think were poorly designed. The damage numbers being one of them. I don't know of a single person I've met that doesn't have a mod for this. Simplify, but don't completely remove feedback.

In general, there is a severe lack of info for the players. "The Lord" stone increases my HP, but to figure out how much I have to do them maths. Etc.

My only real complaint about it not being like WoW comes from guild functionality. As an officer, it's a pain to promote/demote guild members based on activity with such a short history. The guild bank is easily abused (I can't limit how many things people can withdraw for instance and we've already had someone steal everything of value in it). Four ranks (including officer/leader) is not enough. I've had complaints that people don't feel like they've been properly ranked up for their rewards, but the only option available is for us to make them an officer at that point.

tlblight

NO ... HOLD UP... some of the mess up or eff ups are more then just what your saying here. lets not forget the Amazon foul up ... ALL THE PROBLEMS THAT I HAVE HAD, HAVE LITTLE TO DO WITH THE ACTUAL GAME. the lack of support is just ridiculous, I'm one of the 100s that bought the physical collectors edition... and was punished for it. I spent HOURS on the phone trying to get it worked out... tried getting in touch with zeni, and one of there contact numbers doesn't even exist. I have spent 180 dollars "not including the 15 for subscription " just to play this game. so forgive me if I'm not so forgiving . I've gotten nothing but a run around from everything outside the game to do with the game, And if I'm not mistaken most of those ppl still cant play,or are like me had to buy two copies to play one ... 2nd WOW was 10 years ago , I refuse to believe that technology has stood still in those last 10 years, so yes you are right in expecting that WE all expect more from games today, and that is the way it should be. I mean even the credit card process gave me issues. ZENI DID NOT FIX ANY OF THE ISSUES THAT HAVE COME MY WAY ... I DID. there lack of customer support is just arrogant to me. I feel like im just a drop in the bucket to them ... there is no " THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT TO THEM".

savinel

fehu777 wrote: »

This is interesting to me because I very much so enjoy the absence of
"spoon feeding" in ESO.

Every accomplishment feels more enjoyable and worth while because it took more effort to achieve.

In the past I have witnessed the "watering down" of games that I loved ...

I'm not sure what "spoon feeding" means to you... but I'm inferring that if you're happy that it hasn't been watered down than it must be "harder" in some dimension.... and that's where you lose me.

ESO's pretty easy. That's not a criticism: I like ESO a lot. But I see it as about on the same level of "hard" as WoW, albeit with better graphics, better PvP, better PVE story lines, and better variety in character builds.

I'm just puzzled by how one would see it as "harder" than WoW.

Apologies if I misunderstood you.

Caveat: my other MMO is EVE Online.

SadisticSavior

I played WoW and for the most part it bored me. Everything is gear-based, which is itself a problem IMO. But it is amplified by the fact that there are so few ways to differentiate your character other than gear. And since everyone wants the best gear, everyone ends up looking the same. The entire game is basically just a tutorial for the end game, which itself is a big long grind.

WoW is like fast food...convenient and fun if you're in the mood for it. But I'd rather eat at a real restaurant. Better quality and more variety.

Shimond

Varivox9 wrote: »

I don't know. I agree that there is a lot of "it isn't WoW" complaining going on (which I am VERY glad it isn't WoW...), but there are some things that I think were poorly designed. The damage numbers being one of them. I don't know of a single person I've met that doesn't have a mod for this. Simplify, but don't completely remove feedback.

Well hey at least you can still put them in then, eh?

On the flip side, neither I nor any of the people I play with run that mod. Some of us don't actually find that we need all that information to have fun.

kelisw1ub17_ESO

RiverWalker wrote: »

I wouldn't say "spoiled" per se, but well... this says it very well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64

That's a great video. I remember well the days of SWG, when we had a thriving guild and a city and we were all just going along minding our own business having a blast in game, then all of a sudden, like an asteroid, the NGE smashed into us and within the space of weeks everyone was gone. Everyone in the guild, everyone on the server, all gone. WOW had become so successful that SOE panicked and tried to make their beautiful sandbox game into WOW and it killed it. Would be great if somebody could make a game that mixed sandbox and themepark well. The only thing is the themeparkers will always complain about how hard the sandbox is and the sandboxers will always be trying to keep the themeparkers out of their sandbox.

Evelyn_Nightingale

Madae wrote: »

Sometimes, I think really hard and hope that most of you will just disappear one day. It hasn't worked yet, but I'll keep trying and let you know if it does.

Who would you let know? We'd all be gone. Maybe you can ask to have a solo phasing option so you don't see/hear other players. It'd be just you and the NPCs

Utildai

Yes, they are. Apparently none of these players played MMO's back in the day, like AC, EQ1, AO... or even older....

lioslinn

Kyotee0071 wrote: »

What always gets me is "World of Warcraft was the first MMO". I try and bite my tongue but always end up replying.

We had to sit and heal or regen mana for minutes at a time. And guess what, if you were 'meditating' to regen your mana you could only see your spell book, Nothing else.

We had to sit at a dock for 20 minutes waiting for the ship to come in so we could get to other places. No clicking an icon and porting around!

We sat in the same spot for hours camping an area for experience. 5 minutes of sitting, 30 seconds of fighting. But guess what we had a blast because during those 5 minutes we were actually chatting and getting to know each other /gasp !

haha a kindred spirit. I had forgotten about staring at the spellbook and waiting for the boats. Made lots of memorable friendships waiting for those dang boats.

In fact I met my husband in everquest1, try to beat that we're happily married with kids now. can't say I regret all those long 'downtimes' in game.

Dunhilda

To be fair WoW has done so much you can no longer compare it with anything, WoW has set a benchmark that will never cease to exist no matter what game comes out, it been sadi only Blizzard can remove WoW and therefore that will end up being the case.

To me I enjoyed WoW greatly and I will always return to it at one point or another no matter what I will end up back in that game, many MMO that came out ( AoC Warhammer just to name a couple) I will never return to them ( Warhammer servers shut down now but if it was up I still wouldn't Also I will never touch EA MMO again)


Right now from ESO launch i was playing many hours I've now slowed down to a couple of hours a day, sadly I will never compare ESO to do better nor expect it to be better than WoW I just want it to be difference from wow which it is but sadly what I seen I'm scared for the endgame of ESO, Still I will press on and play for three months and see for myself and judge with my own eyes if ESO is worthy to be a game I could return to, or perhaps it's the one that killed the Elder scroll series off for me


We'll see


For now I'll enjoy ESO while it last, and may it last a long time, unlike APB that died in six months!

Laura

yes

Hawtsauce

Utildai wrote: »

Yes, they are. Apparently none of these players played MMO's back in the day, like AC, EQ1, AO... or even older....

I played DAOC , AO , EQ2, FFXI, WoW, Warhammer, GW2, Rift ...

Games are not what they used to be because people are not what they used to be, people now are kinda a- holes you know ? I dont want to socialize with them or get to know them, If I want to talk to people and get to know them and know about their lives I will get off the computer and go out into the world. I am sure that makes me sound like the a-hole but whatever , at least im honest right ?

Elder_Soul

Well, thankfully, ESO is NOT WoW!

I tried WoW twice... first time, I played 2 hours and uninstalled; second time, I played 2 minutes and wondered why I had installed it again, then uninstalled.

This game is what I enjoy about BIG RPG games... exploring and crafting. Heck, I feel like Gilligan... I was going to go on a 3 hour cruise around Kenarthi's Roost and now I've been there for over a week! That is what makes a great MMO IMHO.

There are things I don't care for in ESO, but overall, I am really enjoying the exploring and crafting. I could loot "junk" all day long and let that be a game in itself.

The only thing I hope stays like WoW is that they keep it subscription based. Every MMO that I have played that went to F2P or is F2P is CRAP! I don't play any of them any more. I played LOTRO for 4 years, but once it went F2P, it lost me. I played SWOTR until it went F2P. I'd rather pay and keep the griefers and jerks out!

scruffycavetroll

thread title implies that WoW did a lot right for players to have been spoiled. they did as much right as they did wrong imo.

logically, ESO would be wise to follow suit in some things, instead of being different for different sake.

SadisticSavior

scruffycavetroll wrote: »

thread title implies that WoW did a lot right for players to have been spoiled.

This. I was just about to post this.

I don't agree that it is possible to be "spoiled" by WoW, because WoW does so many things wrong. I was about to just give up on the fantasy genre alltogether before this game came along.

SuperScrubby

I don't know what came first the chicken or the egg in this instance, but I feel similar to Hawtsauce. People are bigger *** now, I personally saw the change when I played some WoW and during that generation. I don't know if the game lead to that kind of widespread behavior becoming acceptable or if the game just happened to amass a larger group due to the penetration that game had into the common household.

I will say that due to the length that WoW has been out and its continued popularity people tend to forget that many of these concepts were done before or that other games even existed before the creation of WoW.

I do feel that the drive for instant gratification is what drives the market today and whether that once again comes from WoW, I don't know, but the timing lines up. Obviously correlation does not equal causation, but from what I've seen in terms of evolution of games I would heavily credit WoW to making things more mainstream and bringing in a new era of ***.

rager82b14_ESO

Dumbest thing I have ever heard.

For one. Wow has content that is tough, Do you want to know why people always say wow is so easy? It is because they have master the ends and outs of the game. Players have got so darn good at the game that to make it tougher, would need a huge time sink, and be tedious.

Tedious does not equal hard.


The whole, WOW is the bane of the world. Wow is casual + people are just being childish. Wow is amazing because it has had a huge player base for like what 8 years? They did many things right. The one thing that they did do right is give content for all types of players, be it the hardcore or the casual.

That is some thing that all MMOs should learn from and have learn from.

tarek

i hated wow with a-vengeance HATED IT

it was like playing a math simulator, utter garbage, everything was too easy, the world stopped being fantasy and became like a mutated version of facebook UGH

knightblaster

Hawtsauce wrote: »

Utildai wrote: »

Yes, they are. Apparently none of these players played MMO's back in the day, like AC, EQ1, AO... or even older....

I played DAOC , AO , EQ2, FFXI, WoW, Warhammer, GW2, Rift ...

Games are not what they used to be because people are not what they used to be, people now are kinda a- holes you know ? I dont want to socialize with them or get to know them, If I want to talk to people and get to know them and know about their lives I will get off the computer and go out into the world. I am sure that makes me sound like the a-hole but whatever , at least im honest right ?

What happened was the MMO community, which used to be smaller and more enthusiast-oriented (meaning people had more in common with each other), became huge and mainstream and diverse, with most people having nothing more in common with each other than they do with the clerk at 7-11. That made people retreat into guilds of friends and players previously known, and treat the other players as NPCs effectively. The convenience mechanics that came along later exacerbated this (LFD/LFR etc.) but didn't create it. That situation was created by the huge boom in the MMO market that was created by WoW. It's now too big for people to have that much in common with each other, and so people prefer to not engage with people -- too many ***, as you say.

rager82b14_ESO

knightblaster wrote: »

What happened was the MMO community, which used to be smaller and more enthusiast-oriented (meaning people had more in common with each other), became huge and mainstream and diverse, with most people having nothing more in common with each other than they do with the clerk at 7-11. That made people retreat into guilds of friends and players previously known, and treat the other players as NPCs effectively. The convenience mechanics that came along later exacerbated this (LFD/LFR etc.) but didn't create it. That situation was created by the huge boom in the MMO market that was created by WoW. It's now too big for people to have that much in common with each other, and so people prefer to not engage with people -- too many ***, as you say.

This is the truth, before we would not tell some one l2p or get good if they had trouble with a mob, we would just help them. We did not care if they got better or not. We understood that people play games to enjoy not just to be omg better. MMOs are a virtual world, filled with rpg elements. So helping people out was fun for many of us. Now you got people making threads how they don't like people hitting mobs they do. Or l2p it was easy for me.