How to save the MMO genre once and for all

[@NeverKnowsBest]

Install Raid for Free ✅ IOS/ANDROID/PC: clcr.me/NeverKnowsBest and get a special starter pack 💥 Available only for the next 30 days

[@AB-sw4kb]

No

[@samalmond2321]

I'm sad that Never feels he is in a financial position where he needs to take this sponsorship, I wish I was in a position to make a large enough Patreon donation for this not to be the case

[@DavidtheBard1]

I kept waiting for this ad read to turn out to be a joke, but it never did lol.

[@MrGibdos]

Ugh I love your videos, but good gods don't take sponsorship from disgusting mobile games like Raid please.

[@henrycrabs3497]

Yikes

[@emilbj23]

I thought for a moment the Raid shadow legends AD was a joke, then quickly realised i was wrong. I can only imagine how difficult it was for you personally to finally accept such a sponsor. I just want to say that i totally understand that the amount of content you produce doesn’t have a good enough return on investment, and honestly you deserve all the money you can get for the quality and uniqueness of your videos. I will not play RAID, but i’m happy you’re getting their money.

[@MisterBungl3]

Lmfao I'm not installing it either, but I did click the link and download it . Not sure if that helps him out, but I hope so.

[@llwonder]

Only whales play raid lol

[@tmullins64]

I had the same thought! What a video to have them as a sponsor. But totally agree NKB has really great great content and I don’t mind fast forwarding a few seconds to enjoy that content.

[@Poonchow]

I've heard stream / youtube sponsors are notoriously shady in paying out what they promise. Not Raid Shadow Legends. There's a reason everyone and their grandma seems to be sponsored by them: they actually treat their partners with respect. While I think the game itself is silly, I really respect the company itself.

[@newtonwitter4829]

He was talking about the greed of corporations, and then segways into a RAID sponsor. That hurt to hear, and I can only imagine how it would’ve felt to have to say it.

[@LegandsandLabyrinths]

I saw a major shift when Warcraft killed the region channels in chat. These local chats not only segmented chat (so that conversations could actually happen without being a fire hydrant of random text), they also contributed to a sense of community. You could be passing through a region, see someone call for help with a quest, and easily pop over to help them. This simple social dynamic vanished once you were chatting to people all over the world.

[@Aetrion]

Yup, I remember that in Ultima Online you could literally only talk to people who were within your view range. The social experience was entirely different because all of your interactions happened with people who were right there, who were seeing what you were seeing, and who could interact with you mechanically. Meeting someone in the woods was kind of exciting, you'd say hello, ask them what they were doing, see if they want to trade something. Asking for directions meant finding someone first, and they could actually show you where things were. You don't get that kind of real interaction anymore because everything is global chats now.

[@mikfhan]

*[Barrens Chat intensifies]:* Where is Mankrik's wife?! Do we still have the local defense chat or is that gone as well for zone chats? Maybe we should just abuse that one to form quest groups in the zone instead.

[@mirceazaharia2094]

They should have kept region chat AND added global chat. Simple.

[@TheFlyingPilgrim]

I kind of miss it, but I remember the group chats being dead as fuck during BC, WotL, and even in Cataclysm. If you were leveling, it was dead and lonely with the rare interaction. There’s a high degree of rose-tinted lens with this kind of thing.

[@joel6376]

I never used it to chat but it was good to have it there and see people talking. Quitting at the end of BC - I cannot imagine how useless a "global" chat is, given how mess the major cities channels were. That seems like a terrible idea.

[@DagothDaddy]

My biggest thing is getting players and publishers to realize an MMO with 200k daily active users is not a failed game with a dead community. Hell MMOs with less than 100k active players tend to still be fairly lively if you get on the right server.

[@YourBlackLocal]

I’m sorry but what would this solve exactly? It’s not like Devs actually abandon games with 200k DAILY PLAYERS and if it’s getting 200k players then obviously players don’t think it’s dead. I’m just confused at what your point is.

[@Spellweaver5]

@@YourBlackLocal the problem is that it's a positive feedback loop. People think that the game is dying, people leave it or don't start it, the game dies.

[@belldrop7365]

The question is, how many of those 200k is buying microtransactions?

[@ImGonnaFudgeThatFish]

@@Spellweaver5 negative feedback loop, or "self-fulfilling prophecy", not positive.

[@themooniscoming]

@@ImGonnaFudgeThatFish it's not that the feedback about the game is positive. It's just the name of the phenomenon. It's like a chain reaction.

[@dominiccasts]

The issue with MMO social features as you describe them weirdly mirror the way suburban sprawl has traded individual convenience for social connection, but also mirror the way that urban life can lead to a sense of being alone in a sea of people. Not sure what to make of that connection, but it seems like something to consider when it comes to considering solutions.

[@hackerjack79]

Yes, except that there's something you can do about it in real life (local bars, join clubs etc.)

[@yellowdoritos]

That is similar to joining a guild, an RP community, etc. Old MMOs are like villages, everyone knows each other, people help each other, if your neighbor needs help, you help him, etc. If you're a dick, people will avoid you. You make lifelong friends simply by living in the village, even as an adult. When you move in (= join a new MMO as a noob), people will bring you pastries and invite you over (= they will give you advice, gear, help you level, and invite you to their guild). New MMOs are like cities. You have to actually try to make friends. You will most likely never talk to your neighbors. You are surrounded by strangers. If you want friends, you will have to go look for them (talking to neighbors = starting a conversation with a stranger solo-questing, joining a club = joining a guild). If you are socially awkward, you most likely won't have many friends in cities/new MMOs, but you will in villages/old MMOs.

[@marreco6347]

Well, the social isolation of suburbia is remedied with things like churches, bars and shopping malls, so MMOs could absolutely have dedicated spaces for different forms of social bonding.

[@dominiccasts]

@@marreco6347 This is true, but just like how churches and especially shopping malls are fading in relevance due to seeming redundant to daily life, so too would any MMO social space need to make sure players have a strong reason to use it

[@marreco6347]

@@dominiccasts I mean, it's a game, not real life, there's no need for a good reason for an arbitrary decision that makes the game more fun. Besides, those spaces could be used for different in game events, like those shows and movie exhibitions in fortnite, but more relevant to the game world. Like, church ceremonies that are also lore dumps or speeches and political rallies that set up the plot of future expansions, or maybe players have a random, small chance of interacting with a town drunk played live by an actor. The tech and the money has been here for a while, it's a shame things like this aren't happening.

[@okamichamploo]

I think there's something to be said about making it easier to be social while playing alone, as opposed to just discounting solo play and saying everything should be social. As an introvert myself, I used to love how in gw2 you could find a dynamic event with other players fighting off some monster or something and I could jump right in and join without saying a word. If I found someone knocked out on the ground I would raise them back up, they'd drop a little ty in the chat and we'd be on our way. Maybe we'd exchange some waves a bow or whatever, but you didn't feel socially obligated to make a party and alter your play style to fit them in. Being able to see people and interact immediately and then move on was great.

[@NiSE_Rafter]

I haven't had time to play it anymore but I experienced this I'm FFXIV. Would fish whenever I saw someone else doing it and clap for them when they got a fancy catch then they're do the same. Talked to some random person while turning in a quest because they were in a guild I considered joining. Some random person once jokingly pretended to eat me because my IGN was Cabbage. The little unexpected interactions often made my day.

[@Thegreyman42]

Yeah as a gw2 player myself, I think they have the social aspect of this fixed, especially when I literally went running to a lvl80 zone where my friends were, with a lvl 13 character, found a stranger in one of the lands and they escorted me to the other and then we separated. In other instance I saw a guy chilling in a spot and befriended him through a little of roleplay. People in gw2 in pve are generally friendly and even if they are in a hurry most of them if they see you want to talk will stop their journey to talk or even help you find that hero point that was underground and the entrance to the tunnel was nowhere close to it.

[@86Corvus]

You are not an introvert, you are a bitch. Being afraid of peoole has nothing to do with introvertism.

[@mithrae4525]

There was something of that from helping out folk with as little as a buff while passing on the road in WoW Classic, or throwing a few attacks at an enemy they'd tagged or whatever. But it still depends on the content being at least reasonably challenging, because if it's super easy to solo anyway those little buffs are basically meaningless (as in retail WoW).

[@scottishrob13]

I'm just gonna pause 30 minutes in to get this off my chest - social media has definitely shaped the way I play MMOs. I hate joining a Discord server, but a lot of Guilds/Clans/Whatevers require it. It breaks down that barrier between my identity, and my character identity in the game. I want a certain level of anonymity, and, with regard to a clan of strangers, I don't want to be bothered when I'm not logged into the game in question. It's essentially frozen me out of those social interactions with strangers that I used to enjoy. On top of that, having access to more people to chat with than I can give my time to all day every day does take some of the magic out of those random conversations with strangers in online games, MMOs being the biggest facilitator for me in the mid to late 2000s. If anything, that sweet spot between when I didn't have to wade through chat all the time to get basic chores done and the time when Discord became ubiquitous was the best time for social interactions in MMOs from my perspective. Now I'm just a solo player in ESO who can't easily sell their master-crafter doodads because I don't have the energy for a guild with social media integration (right to sell at traders is tied to guilds bidding on traders in that game). That being said, I think there are some good arguments here, but I also think there are games, like ESO, that have walked that tightrope with intention. They've solved the problem of players needing to play with their friends while maintaining what are essentially PvP servers, with 3 factions on each server. So when you hop into the large-group PvP zone late at night, you often run into the same people coordinating battle tactics and taking territory. They've straddled the line with "auction houses" (guild traders) in that anyone can purchase things, but you're pushed into being social if you want to sell. It also creates recognizable guild names at the traders you frequent, and you can tell who's doing well or not based on which guilds take over the prime traders at your favourite town. There are group-finding tools for the basic "chore" of dungeon delving, but then there's harder content that you're forced to be social with in order to find a group (i.e. no raid finder tools). They have weekly and all-time leaderboards to track scored solo/group content to see who's on top of their game and get familiar with those names. There's definitely more than that in there that's been designed from the start, or retroactively updated, to walk the tightrope of a modern experience without sacrificing all social interaction like WoW did. That's why ESO is the MMO I still play (well, that and it respects my time by keeping my gear and level grind relevant between breaks). Even with all that, though, I don't know that it's enough. I really do think that discounting the real-world changes, changes that I think have at least equal weight to game design changes, is as much misleading as doing the opposite.

[@scottishrob13]

A few more things, now that I've finished the video: Difficulty is a good knob we should be turning - but perhaps the single-player portions of MMOs should have tunable difficulty with appropriately tuned rewards. We can cater to a larger swath of people without upsetting those who want to grind efficiently or those who want more of a challenge. Destiny 2's Witch Queen campaign was a good showcase of this. Also, since I keep bringing up ESO so much, this is one area where it's ended up falling for the same pitfalls as other MMOs. Ever since the update that let people explore regions in whatever order they wanted to with auto-scaling algorithms, the normal questing experience has been far too easy to be engaging; it's only the writing, voice acting, and world bosses that carry it at all. It was a good change from the perspective of supporting playing with friends and leveling alts in areas you haven't explored though. FFXIV isn't alt-friendly, it's single-character-friendly. Perhaps it solves the same problem, but it appeals to a different type of person. Some people want to make new characters that serve a different fantasy. FFXIV actually makes that harder, since it's so much more efficient to stick with one character. ESO is a better example in that alts inherit and contribute to the player's overall progress, sharing their unique "endgame" leveling system across all characters. I don't know that the answer to monetization is to get rid of subscriptions. There's an inherent cost to the existence of each player account, character, all the things they hoard, all the things they do, and all the support tickets they open. MMOs need to at least recoup that cost, even if no new content is produced to charge for and people still want to play. Perhaps something like a subscription, but playtime based, would be interesting. It wouldn't expire, so you could use it whenever you want, but you'd have to stay topped up to retain access (or perks, if people who don't have subscriptions can still play). That way people don't feel like they need to be all-in or all-out all the time. Then you charge for large expansions to pay for that content and cosmetics or other ethical microtransactions can be where the profit comes into it.

[@cracmar03]

@@scottishrob13 thank you. I am so tired of the repeated lie how FFXIV is alt-friendly. An alt is alternate character, not a class. Doesn't matter if character can switch classes all day long, they are still same character and not an alt.

[@AlleineDragonfyre]

So why not just change your name in the guild server to your character name?

[@scottishrob13]

@@AlleineDragonfyre Discord's new server identities are nicer than nicknames, but they still aren't enough. People can still see your actual Discord name and any other servers that you may have in common. I don't necessarily want people to start connecting my game identity with my work identity on other servers and vice versa, nor do I want my relationship with hundreds of guildmates to extend to other games unless we talk about it first. I want to opt-in to sharing more details about myself rather than being forced into it I suppose.

[@AlleineDragonfyre]

@@scottishrob13 ok normal people are still going to know there is a real human being behind the name. if you have that much of a problem, make another account.

[@Eltron92]

Damn, I never really thought about how the locked down nature of servers created insulated communities where people weren't total pieces of shit because social reputation was a thing that mattered. Playing on a medium pop wow server back in the day, you knew the people you played with, you knew the guilds and their reputations, everything you covered in the vid. I remember specifically a troll who spent all his time in trade chat and who everyone on the server knew by name. He was absolutely toxic to be associated with, and in modern wow he could have done what he did and suffered zero consequences because the supply of people is limitless. I always knew that something was lost in wow and it wasn't only the loss of servers, but that was the one thing I couldn't put my finger on.

[@autosadist]

There was still a lot of this on Wyrmrest Accord (and probably Moon Guard/Argent Dawn EU, since the communities are similar and blend in offsite communities) as recently as late BFA - anyone who has ever been in trade chat on that server in the past few years knows the names of the big trade chat trolls (Alliance side, anyway - I'm sure Horde has more, given that Horde is bigger over there), everyone knows which guilds are run by opportunitistic assholes/manipulators, etc. However, when I tried to play on PvE/PvP servers, that sense of community was distinctly absent. The only reason the servers I mentioned still retained that sense of community is because RP bound all of us together, which is interesting because I've known many, many people who only stayed subbed to retail WoW in order to RP.

[@Eltron92]

@@autosadist right I'm sure it's still a thing, but there's no downsides, only notoriety which in their eyes is probably a positive. You can do all the content by yourself thru group finder tools and probably find guilds and groups for higher level shit that don't know you by name (at least at first). When servers were seperate that mf couldn't find a guild or group for anything to save his life. One of my guild mates was friends with him and made me and a few within our intra guild circle carry him thru normal ulduar to gear him up while as a guild we were working on yogg 0. I feel like his name was aramis or something on blackwing lair - US if anyone was on that server during bc-wrath. Lol he got in our vent server and didn't say a word. We all patiently waited for him to speak but we got nothing.

[@emikochan13]

They didn't really suffer consequences. Even if you knew the spammers and the ninjas even on a server of a thousand people there are plenty of people that will put up with bad behaviour.

[@the11382]

Reduced servers still won't do much if the social catalysts aren't there. And I think players not suffering consequences also has to do with MMOs removing their social catalysts.

[@chaosgyro]

Isolated servers forcibly create a community, but they also separate it. The total community of the game is divided, and people you meet that you would love to play with are often stuck on a different shard. You may as well not be playing the same game. Ultimately I just don't think the upsides outweigh the down.

[@CodexAce]

Thinking back when WOW launched it's amazing to think how different my life would be if I hadn't chosen Archimonde. The friends I made then are still great friends and a few I still talk to almost daily. One of those friends introduced me to my now wife and recently we had our first child. One seemingly insignificant choice has had so much impact on my life.

[@protatoplaysgames6918]

I shouldn't have read this before choosing lunch. If I get turkey instead of ham it may start ww3

[@brettvv7475]

@@kosmique Silly question

[@SubduedRadical]

@@kosmique Wait, so starting WW3 is the better option? Huh.

[@sammicopor]

A rare positive story about WoW, all I hear is people talking about how horrendous the player base & grouping can be. It's why I played final fantasy xiv over WoW, I just dont need forced social interaction with the deranged people that should be on anti-psychotic medication.

[@Dext3rM0rg4n]

@@sammicopor For every annoying players I played with in wow I played with 20 chill one. Wow's community is decent to good, it's nowhere near game like LoL, don't form an opinion about people you've never interracted with. Also playing an MMO only to never play with anyone is strange but you do you.

[@okamichamploo]

I think you've explained in a nutshell exactly why I find most modern MMO's so frustrating. Of the three strategies for limiting the players consumption of content, namely difficulty, grinding, and time gating, I've always found difficulty to be the only rewarding solution where the other two are basically the equivalent of taking a delicious hamburger and sticking it in between 6 layers of stale bread. Defeating a difficult dungeon makes you feel excited and accomplished. Getting a rare drop after doing the same uninspired slog of a dungeon for the 62nd time, just makes you feel relieved that you can finally stop.

[@sauceinmyface9302]

I feel grinding is most acceptable when it's able to tap into the speedrunning aspect in hardcore gamers. I'm not especially hardcore at the games I play, but I still want to improve for a lot of them. When I do a Destiny raid for the 30th time, I'm trying to optimize by giving orders and instructions to my fireteam, tweaking my loadout, memorizing enemy spawns and tech that I can do. When I do a Monster Hunter hunt for the 8th time, I'm trying to utilize every opening I have learned to get more and more hits in. I rotate through all my options between items and game mechanics(like mounting). This is especially strengthened by a robust sandbox with lots of different options. This is really hard to hit though. Grinding can become monotonous and soulcrushing if you start thinking about the work you'll need to do. Destiny's crafting system is that for me, leveling a crafted weapon is draining if you're solely focused on it, and trying to be efficient.

[@laughingalex7563]

I think time gating is frustrating to since it does create the sense of “about time its done”.

[@joshualettink7582]

Depends on the game imho. I play Oldschool Runescape because I like the grind, not in spite of it :)

[@DarthRadical]

​@@sauceinmyface9302 I feel that Warframe did a pretty good job of keeping grinding from being too bad. In part because the basic movement system is so much fun at a core level that zipping/jumping around a level at Mach 3 to finish in 3m doesn't feel too much like grinding.

[@Robert399]

I agree but we can't only think about gamers like us. The problem with difficulty gating is that it's least effective at gating the people who actually need to be gated the most and vice versa. I think having optional and some endgame content which is very difficult and aspirational is great. But if you try to gate all the core content thru difficulty and tune that for the most hardcore players, other players will never be able to see most of it and fairly quickly won't bother playing at all. It's easy to say players should all be as engaged as us but that will never happen and their money (or lack thereof) speaks just as loudly as ours.

[@oraclexi]

The server thing is so true. I played FFXI for many years (I think when I was between ages 14 and 20 in the 75 era) and I remember being genuinely concerned about my rep on the server. Always wanted to be nice to people, play well and have good gear so I got a good rep and got invited back to parties etc. Great video. If I remember correctly FFXI used to assign a server to you randomly back in the day and you needed a code from someone on a specific server if you waned to join them.

[@Daikuro1]

XI was also that "adolescent MMO experience" that I had, and that we millennials all seem to have experienced one way or the other. To this day I still have a mental checklist of usernames that I'd know were red flags when lfp. Side note: it was painful hearing several great tracks from XI in the video but the game itself never mentioned lol.

[@nineblessednineadorednined9214]

Another old XI player here. Let's not forget endgame linkshell and interlinkshell politics lol, the "dark side" of XI, but you just couldn't do without it. I was the role caller for my ls so I was privy to a lot of the issues that inevitably pop up when organizing a high number of high level players. Reputation was very important in the old MMOs, becomes very important the more social your game is, for sure.

[@CharlesNelson303]

@@Daikuro1 Especially dissapointing that XI wasn't mentioned when it has a model that almost identically matches the solutions @NeverKnowsBest mentioned. It had the challenge, it incentivized leveling "alts" in the form of subjobs, it didn't invalidate content at expansion. There are still a few items from the vanilla game that are situationally usefull even though the level cap has effectively doubled. Its major downfall is that it is extremely inaccessible. FFXIV succeeds at this where XI failed by essentially resetting progress at each patch, but it just feels terrible for anyone who has been a long term player.

[@ricardomejias5384]

I can't believe that I had to scroll down this far to see this mentioned. Also the fact that XI was never mentioned when vanilla XI basically had (almost everything) mentioned as a solution. Servers were assigned and given their sizes, you had to ensure to maintain a strong reputation in not only kindness, but also how well you performed at your job/gear. Since the level cap was stuck at 75 for several expansions, all of the gear collected through crafting/HNM hunting, world bosses, main story was relevant. Due to the game's inherent challenge, you had to rely on other players organically by forming parties to grind xp or tackle content. Linkshells (the game's guild system) would have their own forum pages so help schedule raids, battle content, social activities. A lot of the quests were also time gated (such as the chocobo license taking several days in real life) which gave the game a sense of realism and immersion. It provided tons of player flexibility with all of the jobs and sub job combos not to mention that to this day, blue mage being the most highly customizable class I think in the history of the entire MMO genre.

[@smoothiedeluxe7422]

@@CharlesNelson303 Every time he mentions it in his other video it was always in the context of 'grinding the same mob over and over again' using the same footage from Selbina. I feel like he had a really specific experience with the game that makes him not think of it fondly or only knew of the game superficially. I play FFXI to this day and it remains THE best mmo imo. End game/Adoulin stuff has been... not my thing but the base game remains immensely deep and viable. The core gameplay is just that fun and there is just so much content that you can keep cycling if one gets tiring and there is so much you can just let one activity go on cooldown till you remember you want that gameplay experience again. I don't know of any other mmo that has this much meaningful, challenging content.

[@cactusman2287]

I think players will largely behave in ways the game encourages them to, intended or not When a game is built around the acquisition of power for individual players, you inevitably will get players focused on that goal to the exclusion of other features that don't directly lead to power increases If the ultimate goal is always making numbers go up, being able to do it all by yourself is always easier than a group The answer I don't think is forced grouping however, because players can just play a more solo friendly game. Rather I think to have a shot at making players more social, you need to have goals that are inherently social, group or faction goals, that directly leads to individual power gain Leveling and gearing is inherently hyper individualist, so you need to couch it within a larger collectivist goal Most games have guilds or factions but very few actually cultivate a sense of teamwork or have any real collective identity In most games factions and guilds function like a corporation or a group of thieves, they may work together but everyone is only in it for themselves because there is no comraderie Make a gain for the collective a gain for the individual

[@Kantonar]

So right. The idea of 'collective action' is something that the MMO genre is so uniquely suited to recreate, but rarely even attempts to capture at a scale larger than individual raid groups.

[@marocat4749]

And get away with the last hit gets the most experience i mean not games but in any group fight thats a horribl design i xisting, support needs exoperience too

[@enrymion9681]

Yeah, I'd be curious if doing away with individual power gain by making an MMO where there was no character progression could work, something where other than your name and appearance the game stored no data about your character but nearly everything you did left some sort of permanent impact on the game world. Hmm, I guess multiplayer Minecraft in some cases already is kind of like that, or is it? You do have a level and you take your inventory with you when you log out which aren't that important but there's also the item durability which kind of means all your actions are expending resources someone else might have wanted to use and while that's certainly leaving an impact but not really in a way that I was thinking of. Either way it's close enough that I think it's fair to say that such a game could work

[@debrisposting4904]

@@enrymion9681 if your interested in a game very similar to what you're describing you might like a game called "Foxhole" it's a MMO war game, there are two teams that are pitted against each other over a huge map. Whichever team takes more points or achievements wins. Thing is these wars can last anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 depending on how viciously either side is attacking or defending! It also has logistics which makes battles and large scale planning and teamwork become a real component of each war! It also has a rich player made history made of both clans and events (Jade cove, the siege that lasted a real time week to break and various other events)

[@sammicopor]

You are correct. I played runescape & the clan I joined acted like they were super helpful, until I actually had a real question & it went ignored while other people felt it was more productive to talkabout stupid bullcrap instead of actually helping someone, so you are correct about guilds. Its why if I ever create a link pearl in ff xiv, I will do my best to answer people's questions to the best of my abilities instead of just treating them like they don't exist. I dont want to be like those people in runescape that ignored my question outright & made the game uninteresting to me.

[@ImBarryScottCSS]

It's so crazy to think just how different the world was 15-20 years ago playing things like WoW and RuneScape. Smart phones didn't exist, social media basically didn't exist (MySpace), most people didn't use computers never mind play PC games. You cannot overstate the seismic changes society has gone through since those times. The demographics that MMOs have to appeal to now are black and white different.

[@australienski6687]

100%

[@Texelion]

Do they really NEED to appeal to everyone ? Given the cost of development, maybe yes, but at the same time we know that trying to please everyone generally ends up pleasing no one. Maybe MMOs were and will always be a niche genre, but nowadays to be considered successful they need to be as big as WoW. And mostly they're just made to make money through the cash shop, they don't even care about making a good game first. I'm watching Josh Strife Hayes "Worst MMO Ever" series, an pretty much every MMO he talks about follow the same rules, and the same fate.

[@jaxen231]

@@Texelion true! Yo have to make a good game in your Vision and cater the niche of that. But as the Video says ppl are greedy and they wont be satisfied by being good and have a playerbase. They want everybody for money and while they try to cater everybody ... they will acutally cater to no one

[@nowayjosedaniel]

This isn't at all true. You had all this still. Guides and sites like UO STRATICS, AOL chat rooms, and forums instead of facebook. The world hasnt changed much at all, actually. Most ppl who play MMORPGs are still nerds. It really hasnt changed much. Game developers cater towards casuals bc it is easy to cater to the lowest common denominator. Just like they did back then. They just were bad at knowing what people wanted. Btw Trammel didnt kill Ultima Online. It saved it, pushing a dying game to double its subs and hit an all time high 2 years later.

[@australienski6687]

@@nowayjosedaniel "The world hasn't changed much at all". Lol, ok.

[@jmickeyd53]

Counter argument: Eve used to (I quit years ago so I can't speak about it currently) have this same sense of community in a single world. They solved the problem by making travel slow and semi-pointless. You formed a sense of community with your neighbors in much the same way as you did with servers in other games.

[@squigglesmcjr199]

Best mmo ever

[@Snaresloth]

@@squigglesmcjr199 wish more people would give Eve a shot. Such a great experience

[@chazdomingo475]

Similar with GW1. Everyone exists in the same world, but localized instances means that every area in the game had it's own community. PvPers hung out on PvP island. End gamers hung out in elite mission outposts. Traders went to the big city. And it was cool to run into people in far flung outposts in the middle of nowhere. Your guild even got its own instance that you could run into and hang out with your guildmates in, doubled as your guild's pvp arena. IMO, this method of creating nebulous communities that naturally come together is superior to forced server-based communities, where if things go poorly, you can often feel trapped on, and moving servers is always a thing that comes up inevitably for one reason or another.

[@colkbassad]

Eve is brilliant. I don't play anymore because I don't have time for it, but the feudal nature of the social interaction was so interesting and leading to the simulated geopolitcal landscape that provides most of the gameplay. In addition to the slowness of travel you mention, the game is very abstract (spending most of your time in system maps and menus) and communication with others is vital...otherwise you get bored and leave. I joined a small corporation in null security space that was allied with larger corporations and we'd go hunting in 100 ship fleets with amazing fleet commanders. The whole warping-in on top of ships and engaging in battle was hair raising. I was in a 3000 ship battle once as well with incredible stakes. In my opinion, it's the blueprint for how MMOs should work.

[@NiSE_Rafter]

That's what I liked when I played Maplestory in the earlier days. Sitting inside the cabin of the ship to Orbis and chatting with random people since we didn't want to fight the Balrog that'd appear was genuinely a pleasant time. Now there's instant transport all around the world so such moments don't really happen anymore.

[@Tokahfang]

Your social problems section was almost perfect, right on with my experience as someone who started with MUDs at the library and whose first visual MMO was EQ right in it's 1999 inception. I watched those changes in real time, and you nailed it. I am commenting to add one bit to the server section, though. Your server would have a culture, its own heroes and villains, but also, your TIME ZONE did, too. Even on a purely american server, someone who played in the early evening EST experienced a very different group of people than a late night PST player. If you played at a quieter time, you friended anyone you ever grouped with that seemed like a solid potential colleague even if they hadn't caught up to your level yet!

[@gronizherz3603]

The time zone part is so relevant, because ironically what set people apart the most on my server back in the day was "the people who stood out the most during daytime", "the people who stood out the most during night time" and "those people who are clearly NEETs standing out BOTH during the daytime and nighttime"!

[@ekki1993]

An important design mantra for the last part: Listen to the users on the problems, not on the solutions. As players, we know better about what makes a game less enjoyable, less relatable or less whatever we look for in it. As designers, the developers know better how to solve those shortcomings, since players will be the first ones to ignore the negative effects of their proposed solutions.

[@zelbinian]

YES

[@MeatSnax]

I find it really interesting that early MMOs were trying to make a great game that you can play with a lot of people, while modern MMOs prioritize BEING an MMO rather than being a good game. Ultima Online was just trying to make an immersive world with the tools they had available, and a lot of other devs read that as a rulebook for building online worlds. Like, we all know a less intrusive AI, a different combat system, and more unique quests would be better than the standard model, but it's like devs don't think people will play an MMO that doesn't feel like one. Anyway I haven't even watched 5 minutes of the video yet so maybe you say exactly this, or maybe you invalidate all my points, or maybe list 5 games that do exactly that but failed immediately, but I've been thinking about this since your last video and I think it's a really interesting topic. The promise of MMOs is living in a virtual world, but traditional MMO design almost feels like it wants to be inauthentic and un-immersive.

[@intensellylit4100]

Less intrusive AI?

[@Golemoid]

@@intensellylit4100 maybe he meant UI

[@aegisofficial3819]

The problem is game developers still think that the novelty of being an MMO is still fresh, new and exciting when it flat out isn't, so past developers would simply copy WoW during the golden age, mix up the formula just enough so the game is different and then die in a ditch. There's a lot of dead games that had great ideas that needed more work, Wildstar (RIP) is still the undisputed king of Player Housing, the customization you had access to was and still is, unlike any other games attempt at the system. Developers need to say "We're making an MMORPG.. and the game is this.." instead of "We're making a game, it's an MMORPG"

[@lminithgarn9624]

Well... only indies try to make a great game now :P Which is part of why I don't believe in a AAA MMORPG soon. Hopefully these years were enough for people to stop trying to make the new WoW and instead focus on their own game.

[@simongotborg3866]

I feel that in game design (and I suspect many other fields) defining the problem is half the battle. So thanks for putting in the effort, you're probably helping the industry more than you know.

[@Dragon-Believer]

The biggest problem is that the MMORPG is too defined. They've defined out all possibility of innovation. If you innovate an MMORPG it's no longer a MMORPG. I'm very skeptical of the possibility of any future MMORPG being good. I would not even attempt to make one. I'd make something original.

[@HeloisGevit]

@@Dragon-Believer I believe in Riot and their upcoming Runeterra MMO.

[@Dragon-Believer]

@@HeloisGevit I'm very skeptical.

[@musicIistener]

I think one mechanic that really helped with socializing on Everquest 2 was crafting subclasses and how you’d have to rely on other people to handmade or handcrafted goods you couldnt otherwise get. If you wanted unique furniture for your house you’d go to your friend who was an artisan, if you wanted food or drink for sustain in raids you’d go to your friend who was a cook and so on. I think this got a bit ruined by the convenience of the broker especially in late game when you could just blow your wad and buy a random strangers stuff instead of directly paying and supporting someone you knew but the idea is really valuable! It also made guild halls more meaningful because they were places that hosted crafting equipment and ingredients so you could gain a lot by forging a community and it also gave you something to do when you had to help build it up. In the late game it gets rough again because at a certain point you scale so much that acquiring ingredients and equipment is super easy but considering these possibilities from conception is again a great way to keep it from going stale because you can think of ways to sustain the process without making it too tedious or too simple 🙂

[@roddlez]

Yep and ditto for the release version of Star Wars Galaxies*. There were so many crafting classes and specializations, you really needed to establish a network of interdependent people to access all the player-crafted wares. The downside is that players who were unable to establish such networks would end up lost or abandoning the game, but players who were able, were able to establish some actual outposts and cities. (There still just wasn’t enough story or points of interest in the game for us locusts).

[@musicIistener]

@@roddlez having so many subclasses/crafting classes is also a good way of making alts relevant and more interesting to level!!

[@vasiljambazov]

Lineage 2 comes to mind too... Only dwarves could craft and people HAD to make dwarven class as alts so they could craft mats, items, etc. Lineage 2 in my opinion did great with giving roles to players - DPS/Tanks/Healers/Buffers. In a 9-member parties only 3 were DPS, other classes were Tank/Healer/Buffer/Dancer/Songer/Recharger. You simply couldn't kill the boss/clear the dungeon with different structureof party, exclude dancer or songer for another DPS and you will fail big time... Unfortunately not everyone wanted to be support, everyone wanted to be DPS.

[@musicIistener]

@@vasiljambazov alas, a common curse among all games

[@Kantonar]

Lovely follow-up! One thing I'd add is that I think Guild Wars 2 should be referenced as an example of maintaining "end-game" content relevancy. It's the only MMO where, truly, almost nothing is ever irrelevant. Especially through their mastery system and their scaling + lack of a vertical content treadmill, each major piece of content offers something unique--both in experience and reward. I recently came back to the game after a *five year* break, and it was still not only enjoyable but encouraged to play through *all* the content I'd missed, and none of it felt trivial. Each major piece of content offers a reward that has unique value in all other parts of the game (gliders, each of the mounts, fishing, and legendary crafting masteries just to name a few of the most high-impact) that doesn't expire and doesn't become pointless when new content is released. And because of that, there are always players bustling about everywhere, and it really *does* feel like the game has only gotten bigger and bigger with time. I'm not arguing that it's a perfect system, but it feels like a bit of a blind spot to not feature the one big-budget MMO that has already put a significant amount of effort into solving this problem to relatively major success.

[@Crush_Bandicute]

THIS. Ive been playing (free) mmos since i was 12, but guild wars 2 is the only one i can return to and not be bored of in a week, mostly cause ive yet to find an mmo with a more engaging combat system than gw2. I always get excited seeing people talk about this game since it feels very underappreciated in the grand scheme of things

[@Maroxad]

Elder Scrolls Online, RuneScape, FF11 have the same thing. The magic of never raising the level cap.

[@ikreer9777]

The masteries also make creating alts easy. You earn gliding, and it's account wide. Each mount unlocked is account wide. I think the main community is fairly friendly for three reasons. Everything you do earns xp, including rezzing other players; there is no open world PvP; and everyone gets loot in group events. In the open world, everyone benefits when events succeed and there are no arguments over dividing up loot.

[@manictiger]

I kept thinking throughout the video, "you really seem to be describing Guild Wars 2", lol. Tbh, there's only one major thing missing from it, imo: the ability to export the character into an STL file. I want to 3-D print and paint my fashion wars!

[@manictiger]

​@@ikreer9777 Even WvW is pretty friendly. It's so friendly that one of the largest causes of death for me, is me trying to revive others, because the atmosphere and people just make me want to help others when it's a "wobbler" as to whether it's possible. That's kind of the ultimate test for a multiplayer game mode, imo: do I care about the people around me?

[@Loxias1989]

Aside from your dreamy voice, you do have great ideas lol. I don't consider myself a MMO fan because I don't especially enjoy PVP or grindy, endless repetitive content. Yet I loved SWTOR, playing solo or not, chatting, grinding even a bit. I'm just surprised at most MMO fans, they seem to love "working " to endgame and then keep working while I enjoy taking all my time and immersing myself in the atmosphere and lore. To each his own but that can get misunderstandings. SWTOR content seems oceanic to me yet most MMO fans consider it has no content because they do everything in a rush. And even while rushing I don't get how you can consider such a giant content rich game empty, with all these chapters, side quests, activities and replayability. Am I that slow or are they ignoring stuff ?

[@Nurk0m0rath]

They're ignoring stuff. I never played the old republic but I've played a few of those grindy MMOs and I hate them too. My first MMO literally encouraged players to group up by giving extra xp, but then punished them for staying together by splitting it between all partied members unless they were outside a certain distance from each other. It led to a lot of lonely and boring times just using chat as a social media venue while waiting for enemies to respawn. On the other hand, Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online, and early WoW quests gave me a story to get immersed in while I leveled alone and seldom seeing other people, so it wasn't grindy. I think if those people just, you know, read everything, or stopped to listen to the voice actors if the game has them, they would find it more fun. It's this speed-running mentality that makes people lose out on the experience of the game, IMO. It's like skipping to the last chapter and claiming you read the book. But as fun as following a story is, there is a problem when the story aspect isn't connected to the social aspect of the game. Sooner or later you'll run out of story to be told. The story might get someone immersed in the world, but it's the community that will keep them there. And if those two elements aren't connected, players can run through all the solo content without getting to know anyone and with no idea how to proceed from there. I think social play should be encouraged at all levels. Allow players to share credit for kills, loot, etc. Maybe don't force them to group up just to survive, but maybe make it harder or take longer to go it alone.

[@restinginn9906]

For the social problem part of the video - I think another big factor is that the internet was still in its early days when MMOs like WoW were at their peak. Back then, you had to actually talk to people to see if they had the answer to your question. You explored things and tested out your own builds because no one knew "the answer". We live in a time where every new MMO has guides, KZbin videos, and websites listing every single answer and location to whatever you need BEFORE the game even launches or day one of launch. Just look at what happened to New World (even though that game had its own separate issues). There is no sense of wonder and exploration anymore because other people have already figured out the answer and that information spreads like wildfire. I think there is something to be said about the hyper-optimization of gaming ("meta gaming") as well, as the "locusts" as you put it have optimized the fun out of everything. Other players see them "ahead" of them in level and gear and feel like they are missing out and become one of the locusts as well.

[@HelloOnepiece]

I hate youtube recommendations and social media in general for that, dont recommend be spoilers and fuck those assholes who put them in the thumbnail, I like to consume my games/shows in my own pace

[@restinginn9906]

As for the server issue, Runescape (either RS3 or OSRS) has servers "Worlds" that you can freely swap between with the click of a button. It has always perplexed me that other games have these cross-server issues when Runescape, a game made in 2001, has had almost instant server swapping at any time the player chooses, for free.

[@sovietdoggo3779]

Hyper optimization is also affecting other genres (obviously) particularly with shooters like cod where people complain about skill based matchmaking filling every lobby they play with meta slave, ttv wannabe try hards. They believe that it wouldn't be like this had sbmm been removed from cod 2019 even to the point where a tweet was made stating how older call of duty games had no sbmm and they were still great, someone said that they all had skill based matchmaking, and their proof was the fact they wrote the implementation for those games. What it really comes down to is youtubers making videos about the best setups, best cheesy techniques, and streamers influencing people who emulate their play style so they can also be "The Good Gameplay Guy".

[@Fordragon]

What do you think the internet was like in 2004/2005? You know there were build guides for vanilla WoW too. I played MMOs in the early 2000s, including pre-WoW, and definitely remember using build guides and meta character builds.

[@HelloOnepiece]

@@Fordragon I think the differnce is that back in those days, you had to search for those guides, nowadays I get youtube thumbnails where and what certain surprises are in HZD 2... I havent even played the 1st one, already getting spoiled for the sequel

[@ocfos88]

As a person who's grown up playing WoW on/off since '07, I can easily agree that Sharding and cross-server grouping basically destroyed the 'community' of the game. When consequences for being an asshat were gone, people changed almost overnight. I keep telling people this, but I'm so glad to see a person with a large audience agree. I feel like one of the best ways to urge players to actually spread out a bit, is to offer a free transfer service to empty servers, while blocking moving to servers that are already way overpopulated. I believe WoW at least used to do something akin to this, though I believe there may need to be more of an incentive than simply the move of a server. Perhaps some kind of bonus for said character, so long as it meets a specific criteria prior to moving? That would at least prevent people from abusing the system to make new characters and move them over to keep getting said benefit. There's -plenty- of ways to do such a thing at least, such as instead of an automated group finder, have the option of listing your group/yourself into the group finder. That means requiring to message people, and at the very least start chatting with someone, rather than simply pressing a button. Does it add more time to finding things? Maybe, maybe not. I always main a tank in the games I play, as I quite enjoy playing that kind of class - Such as the Warrior in FF14. However, I will say that one thing I deeply do miss about the old days of MMORPGs, is exactly one point you touched on; It helps introverts make friends. I made my friends through the old game systems, but I've practically made zero friends in modern MMORPGs, purely by grouping up with random players by pushing a button. The only times I really have made friends, is when it ended up requiring social systems, such as coordinating raids through voice chat, etc. I deeply hope the trend of antisocial systems goes away, because it feels very...dehumanizing these days. I miss the social nature of these games.

[@AeriFyrein]

Most MMOs (or at least, the popular ones) do tend to have some sort of incentives for transferring to less populated servers, while also restricting players from transferring to full servers. However, outside of specific situations (such as a game becoming just way too populated too quickly, so the servers are massively overloaded) this rarely solves things; players tend to want to play on populated servers rather than "dead" ones, and the incentives are generally not good enough to make most people switch. Especially when you typically lose things like player housing, guild housing/features, etc. As far as things like group finders go, it's a mixed bag. Pretty much every version of an LFG tool is going to be bad in some regards, whether that be not having one at all, having it be server-limited or cross-realm, if it teleports you into the dungeon automatically, etc. Each system has both good points and bad points, and I don't think you'll ever find a solid majority agreeing on which type is best. Beyond that, it's entirely possible that different regions utilize the exact same system in different ways. In FF14, for example, the Party Finder tool is mostly used in NA (and I believe EU) for more of the "hardcore" groups, while the Duty/Raid Finder sections are for more "casual" use. In the JP region, this is completely opposite, with people that are wanting to get clears done using the Duty/Raid Finder, while Party Finder is mostly for practice/casual experience. That's not to say that NA doesn't use PF for practice/casual stuff, but the Duty/Raid Finder sections are almost guaranteed to be much more of a roll-of-the-dice as to how good of a group you'll get. A big part of why I think the MMO genre has been in decline in recent years is due to the vast difference in the current playerbase compared to more oldschool MMOs. Gaming in general, even through the first couple expansions of the WoW era, was still seen as being primarily for geeks/nerds, and was most definitely not a mainstream form of entertainment. Today, it's easily one of the *biggest* forms of entertainment, and that has brought a huge amount of gamers with vastly different mindsets than older players. In turn, this has made the MMO genre move away from being developed from a fairly niche audience to try and cater to a massive number of diverse play styles, diluting the experience of them all. This creates kind of a catch-22 death spiral problem. It makes it hard for an MMO to be seen as a good investment, since they typically require much longer development time and resources than a single-player or non-MMO multi-player game. Developers and publishers want a return on their investment, so they try to make a game that has a very broad appeal. Players might find this fun initially, but as the game ends up not focusing on any one aspect, while the game might be "decent" overall, there are dozens of other games that you could play that do X better, or have a better version of Y feature. So while a game might have a nice population explosion at the beginning, the playerbase quickly falls away since the new game really brings nothing new that is worth their time to continue playing. This, in turn, causes the game to lose revenue, and the publisher starts adding in monetization that is detrimental to the game experience to make up for it. This causes further spiraling, as players start seeing more pay-to-win features added, causing them to leave; and as more people are seen to be leaving the game, it tends to be declared as "dead," and truly starts dying at the new exodus of players. I've said it before in other comments, but the solution is rather "simple," in that the developers just need to "make a good game." Too many times are games made with monetization at the forefront, and doing that is going to almost always consign a game to an early death. If the game itself is good, people will buy it, and continue to play it, and the developers will make money. If the game is designed to make money, it's almost always going to contain some massive flaws that are going to kill it.

[@lminithgarn9624]

@@AeriFyrein That's why I'm sceptical about any AAA MMORPG, they want a fast return of investment so part of that is to try to appeal to a wider audience (and failing to keep any). Even if they don't go overboard with P2W, which is a big if, I don't think they could make a game that holds on its own. MMORPGs today have competition from Battle Royals, MOBAs and Sandboxes, depending on the path chosen it will alienate some players and compete with other genres. I'm kind of curious what will be the take on Runeterra tbh, will they make it closer to the MOBA and while keeping the fanbase sacrifice LoL or move away from it and try to steal from other genres but lacking experience on them?

[@ravenheartwraith]

what I loved about original Ultima Online was that I would come back from work and just log in to live, sometimes all I'd do is hang out at my little hut on the shores of Yew , a friend would come by and maybe we'd jump in a ship and go exploring, or play chess, go into the woods on an adventure, or whatever. No other MMO since really captured that live in another life experience, I searched for many years after and eventually gave up on the mmo genre, which turned into an amusement park ride rather then an rpg. I needed something more then levels and grinds and "endgame".

[@roddlez]

I’ve had that in other MMO’s, but maybe not to the same degree. I think a lot of MMO’s just have people hanging out and doing stuff that’s not considered gaming. FF14 has people forming bands and going around performing in cities. Some bands are able to attract enormous crowds of players. There’s a big industry of player-run bars and taverns. Players who make an in-game life with jobs such as interior decoration, bartending, and ahem escorts. In the years since UO, I’d say worlds like Second Life and VR chat have best scratched the “just hang out and see where the night takes me” itch for me. I think the metaverse is a promise for the return to that in a unified way akin to the WWW.

[@marthdaeglin]

This is something I've been wanting from a MMORPG for such a long time! A world where you can just sit back and watch the world spin on and still feel satisfied with how you're spending your time, or where you can create your own ways to pass the time organically without the game telling you where to go and what to do. I get a bit of the "sit back and relax" from BDO, but it is still very much an "amusement park" game.

[@Robert399]

There's been a big shift in multiplayer games generally away from playing to meet friends towards playing with your existing friends. They're both "social" but it's an important distinction and the latter doesn't facilitate online communities - it's basically just an activity like watching a movie or going to a cafe. Errant Signal has a good, short video on this comparing Overwatch and TF2.

[@ukyoize]

So what we need to do to save gaming is to kick out normies. Got it.

[@mikehudgins8545]

Oldschool RuneScape always felt like more of a community to me than even TBC did back in the day. I think it’s entirely possible to recognize players and form a community even with the trend to mega servers. I just don’t think games are doing enough to build around that. For example on OSRS there are specific realms for certain activities like mini games or pvp, so you naturally form a community around activities you enjoy. The more niche your interest, the more my point applies. Just food for thought.

[@turtleofpride4572]

Getting a level up was cool because total strangers. I lovved the cooking guild on the outskirts of Varrovk.

[@MisterKisk]

Oldschool Runescape has a good solution to the server problem in that your character data wasn't tied to server data. So you could go to any server you wanted to (and in some situations going to lower pop servers was better for when you were wanting to gather crafting materials), and if your friends were on other servers you could still communicate with them, and join them if the server wasn't full.

[@The_Glutton_FPV]

I loved the closing sentiments of this video. I think that as a young art form Video Games are uniquely plagued by the existence of the internet and an entitled fanbase. I generally think that artists should be free to create what they want, and consumers can and should take it or leave it. Telling an artist how to make their art, or what to make it about, feels a little antithetical to the concept of art…

[@CarrotConsumer]

I wouldn't call what large game developers do art but alright.

[@The_Glutton_FPV]

​@@CarrotConsumer Alright, that's fair, this is all just subjective opinion, after all. :) I am curious what you would call it? What is 'large' when we consider a development team? Is it the number of people working on the game, or the budget of the developer, or some combination of factors that make a game developer 'large'? Also, do you consider cinema to be art? I intend zero sarcasm, purely curious :)

[@atticratz6128]

@@The_Glutton_FPV I can’t speak to Eadly’s point but I agree with your initial point and also him to some extent: I think it’s an eye test. I wouldn’t call Assassin’s Creed Valhalla an artistic venture, but a mostly financial one. I am sure there is artistry within it due to artists being involved, but the overall direction of the project seems financially driven. Red Dead Redemption 2 in contrast seems artistically motivated. I don’t enjoy either - I find both games’ designs clunky and drawn-out, but I appreciate that RDR2 had vision behind it. I’m not shaming artists for needing to eat! We all do. I simply do not think that there is an artistic thrust is behind the AC: Valhalla’s of the world.

[@The_Glutton_FPV]

@@atticratz6128 You make a great point here, I see what you mean. These are all products, after all, but vision and intention is important. I wonder if we can say the intent behind something like ACV is more akin to pandering, or maybe it is more like Pop music (Ed Sheehan VS John Prine). I can see this being somewhat of a false-dichotomy. I think I prefer to think of it all as ‘Art’, with some being more akin to Pop Music or Comission work, and some being honest artistic expression. I think there is still craftsmanship/artistry even if you are working within a well defined scope of work that is determined by audience and sales research, alongside a huge team of other working artists and craftspeople. Interesting…

[@atticratz6128]

@@The_Glutton_FPV Pandering is a great way to put it! And I definitely agree that the large AAA team doesn’t necessarily eliminate artistry. I do think the larger the team the more pressure there is to sacrifice artistry for more guaranteed success aka pandering. I’ve preferred artistic works that do make concessions for me many times (I generally prefer commissioned pieces of classical music to the experimental, often atonal modern classical pieces) so I’m not condemning the practice by any means. Intent will shine through to an informed observer/participant so we should be sure to praise the big budget titles that get this right. We do try to do that for indie titles.

[@Netist_]

I disagree a bit on whether or not social media has negatively impacted the MMO experience. I agree that the existence of social media hasn't "replaced" social interaction in MMOs, but I think you're underestimating the impact external platforms have on player interaction. I've played plenty of games where the in-game experience is basically dead. Finding someone to play with is a chore, because the overwhelming majority of players are completely focused on increasingly insular communities built on external platforms. In-game chat is something that's turned off, never even looked at. And, unless you're part of those communities, your chances for player interaction are massively reduced. This kind of thing has always been a problem with MMOs, with things like guilds often creating those insular communities, but I think external platforms like discord have massively exacerbated the issue.

[@Zhiroc]

I was going to bring some of these similar points. In a way, I think social media is having the same impact as the "many server" problem he outlines. I used to log in to MMOs to simply be online, even if I wasn't intending to play. I would chat (a bit, I'm an introvert so really I'm not all that vocal with strangers). I had a guild in SWTOR, and we mainly used the in-game chat. But when we jumped ship to WoW, we started using Discord, and that was where we all sat, rather than being in-game, unless we were playing. But even before that, once I had joined a guild, I just about never paid any more attention to general chat anyways, mainly due to how inane I felt the conversations were. If I wanted to chat, I'd use other social media to do so, even if it wasn't actually chat (e.g., reddit).

[@scottishrob13]

Well said. It's really hard to break into those insulated communities with even the most mild anxiety. And hey, if we weren't all a little anxious, maybe we'd be out at the pub on a Friday night instead of trying to play and chat with strangers through our avatar in our favourite virtual world.

[@carneus]

Yeah definitely, even if you join a guild or something its basically just a link to a discord server and everyone talks and interacts there

[@playphasebutton2113]

I kind of agree with your statement a lot and I think he also realized this problem a bit like he concluded in the end of the video, MMO suck.

[@cracmar03]

Yess, main reason that I hate scamcord is because of it. Scamcord actively killed in game guilds for me in ESO, and I really wish ZOS would finally make design choices to go heavily ANTI-scamcord at core. Aside from voice chat, because let's just say, voice chat should never be a thing in ESO. At least majority of times zone chats are active.

[@jamesabernethy7896]

Never been an MMO player but know enough about them to understand the appeals and pitfalls. Another great analysis from you. Well written, concise delivery with enough humour to keep it lively.

[@pawkeshup]

The big issue with social media in its impact to an MMO is that, back in the day, you might remain in your bubble of your chosen MMO as people you met there drift off to a new MMO. Now, with social media, you have the ability to see the grass could be greener on the other side very easily.

[@TerraWare]

I don't know if it's even possible to "fix" the genre. Like other genre's have changed over time so have mmo's, so have we. Sometimes we remember things fondly because the place we and the technology occupied at the time, things that were than exciting are now considered boring or played out. My first mmo was SWG pre cu/nge and I remember my time playing it very fondly, the friends I made, how crafting and gathering resources worked, how everything was player made, different professions had to work together to make things. Player cities etc. Than I started playing WoW and felt it was the best thing since sliced bread. Even though it lacked that sandbox aspect and social interactions of a player run economy it did the theme park aspect really good. Overtime Blizzard did what they could to cater to the adapting player base and we simply got bored of the genre so we look back at when we were younger and this stuff was all new to us and how good it felt to play and discover. I don't know how you create that really to an audience that's been through it over and over.

[@CHEFPKR]

My first MMO was Everquest 1. I was a part of one of Luclins best raiding guilds and it was really, really cool to see "Insidious Blood of Luclin". Servers, as you say, were a blessing and a curse.

[@henrycrabs3497]

Interesting, let's see Paul Allen's first MMO.

[@NoahWolfe]

And probably (like me) you remember your guild, the people in it, the reputation of that 'one dude' on Luclin, the time you got that first huge piece of gear, the hours waiting for group or group members, corpse runs from [i forgot to bind] to NToV ... standing in Gfay / EC Tunnel hawking wares .. scouring the proper steps to complete your epic on The Safehouse / Monkly Business and on and on and on. Those memories stick so solidly for precisely the things that Never outlines so well in the first part of this video. It's more than "your first MMO" syndrome - that shit was magic.

[@roddlez]

I believe whether it was your first or not, a lot of these early MMOs were magic. There was no formula, so there were many amazing moments: * logging into Brittania in UO and getting absolutely lost in the city * In UO, ganking someone for the first time… so evil, so I felt so bad that I left one piece of their armor on their corpse * EQ the first time it goes dark (and you’re not playing a race with night vision) (possibly walking off the edge of a treehouse and into aggro range of a mob) * The first time fighting in a dungeon and someone runs by you with a train of mobs, they aggro you, and suddenly it’s a train of players all running to zone. NKB is right; MMOs will never die out, because there will always be new and innovative ways to share incredible experiences with others online.

[@straightupanarg6226]

Hi! I'm the GM formerly known as Leycrow. It's amazing to see people from my old server. I remember IB, one of the better-behaved raiding guilds on the server, glad to see you here! Who were you? Best of luck to you in your adventures!

[@straightupanarg6226]

@@NoahWolfe I think I know that 'one dude' you're talking about, whose name totally didn't rhyme with 'Deku.'

[@papabungle]

I feel MMORPG's are in the same space as classic turned based JRPGs like Final Fantasy VII ended up by around 2004. In the late 90s JRPGs were the right genre at the right time and would otherwise be relatively niche. The PS1 era saw an explosion in turn based JRPGs for a number of reasons, but a lot of it was that compared to complete wild west of the original development for 3D games, they played relatively well. You generally don't need precise movement like a lot of the clunkier platformers. The camera isn't trying to kill you the entire time. And they often used pre-rendered backgrounds to make the game look even more impressive than their peers in ways other games of the era that had real time rendered worlds couldn't. But the abstract turn based gameplay isn't everyone's ideal form of gameplay. It was just an already straighforward gameplay style that had already been basically perfected and could be reoriented to 3D without having to completely relearn how to design a game from the ground up so compared to 3D shooters, platformers, fighting games, the JRPG kind of entered the 5th console generation with headstart. And once other genres developed and were perfected in 3D the JRPG's niche appeal went back to being niche. There's a few big names that generally sell very well, a lot of small titles especially back when handhelds were a big part of the industry, but it's not one of the defining forces in gaming like it was during the PS1 era. The MMORPG I think is the same. Just as Final Fantasy VII dropped at the start of the age of exploration for 3D games, Everquest and later WoW dropped at the start of the age of exploration for Online games. There were popular games and popular shooters (I was a spectator towards a lot of my friend's time playing Diablo II and Battlefield), a lot of people didn't have good PCs or internet. I remember my first few months playing WoW being on dialup before DSL started being a thing in my area. My PC when I started playing WoW was a complete junker that could barely run the thing. Early online gaming with persistent worlds and characters were very exciting to a lot of people. But RPGs with lots of leveling, obtuse stats, tab targeting, autoattacking, is ultimately very niche, if it wasn't for the exact era these games launched where the limitations of PC gaming as well as the limitations of the average user's hardware made a lot of those things that might not truly be everyone's cup of tea in a more perfect world ends up working towards everyone's advantage in a more primitive gaming era. If you're machine sucks and you can't get amazing framerates, that'll get you killed endlessly in an FPS. And while it's not great in an MMORPG, it's certainly less detrimental and even the place where it's going to run the worst, populated cities, isn't going to threaten your life so much. If you have a 5 seconds lag spike in the middle of a fight in an FPS you're dead. If you had a 5 second lag spike fighting a mob in WoW, once it's done you and the enemy will have your health bars suddenly snap to the right levels and you can react accordingly. But even in high school me and my friends would talk about things like "Wouldn't it be cool if there was an MMORPG that played like Devil May Cry" or "Wouldn't it be cool if there was an MMORPG that was first person?" And now games that sort of fall into this criteria do finally exist. Online shooters both 1st and 3rd are way more accessible than ever before. We have things like Minecraft, Fortnight, Warframe, Elden Ring. WoW and the MMORPG rush it appeared right in the middle of and then proceeded to dominate was a sort of time and place thing. And while MMORPGs won't truly go away and there will remain big names in the genre (And oh hey one of them is also a Final Fantasy that actually wasn't intentional lol) the genre's time as a cultural forerunner has gone. And now that we live in an era where between the far better internet and the far better computer hardware the idiosyncrasies that initially helped WoW dominate so hard no longer work to everyone's favor and people have better options for their more specific tastes. Anyway these are my thoughts before I even watch the video, tho I did watch the previous video on the history MMORPGs.

[@ArilandoArilando]

There's no inherent reason why MMO's need tab targeting combat, indeed some of them don't.

[@papabungle]

@@ArilandoArilando True but the more action it is, the less RPG it is as something of a definitional rule. Then you start looking at things that would be better defined as MMO-action, or MMO-Shooter with RPG elements.

[@ArilandoArilando]

@@papabungle I disagree completely. There's plenty of action RPGs out there (Elden Ring and the Souls games for example).

[@papabungle]

@@ArilandoArilando I'm not saying you can't hybridize genres. When you break down video games to their most fundamental genres it boils down to; Action Adventure Strategy Simulation Puzzle and Roleplaying. First and Third Player Shooters, for example, is a subgenre of Action games. And you can blend genres, like if you blend action and adventure you get action-adventure like Legend of Zelda and metroid. RPG as a video game genre, of course, get their start trying to emulate table top RPGs most notably Dungeons and Dragons. And they focus on a character becoming stronger over time, learning new skills, spell abilities, making choices based on your interpretation of the character you are supposed to be, well, playing the role of. So you can absolutely have action roleplaying games like the Souls series. And the reason it's called action-roleplaying is because it's hybridizing between an action game and a roleplaying game. RPG at it's most stripped down to the fundamentals of the genre doesn't have or require action game elements. It could have entirely turn based combat, or no combat or platforming at all. And as you add more and more action elements into an RPG, there does come a point somewhere where it stops being an RPG with action elements and starts being an action game with RPG elements. Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal both have you leveling up the power of your weapons, but those are very light RPG elements in what is otherwise almost entirely an Action focused game. For example, how much time in Warframe is really spent on building out and stating out your character vs running and gunning through missions? How much is spent on the story? How much choice do you have in the story? Maybe it's changed in the years since I played it but Warframe is really much more of an action game with some roleplaying elements than a pure roleplaying experience. On the other side of things, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines has combat. You can run and gun and use melee weapons and vampire powers to kill people. But the bulk of the game, it's various quests with different endings, the different ways you can build up your character and personalize them. The game is much more about creating your vampire and getting into their head and roleplaying them than it is an action game. I hope this illustrates what I mean when I say the more action a game has, the less roleplaying it has. That's not to say action roleplaying games can't have excellent roleplaying in them, or that it makes it a bad or "Impure" genre. Dark Souls 1 has been my favorite game ever since I played it on it's release date over 10 years ago. But if there was an MMO like Devil May Cry online and the game had all the amazing stylish combat you'd expect from a Devil May Cry game and there was a big open world where you could play with other players. Something like that is probably going to be way more MMO-Action than MMORPG even if there's a character creator, leveling and gearing system. And would people largely be playing it for the roleplay or would they be largely playing it for the action? And when you look at online games going forward, sure there with be RPGs and there will be MMOs. But by and large for online games going forward you're going to see way more shooters and hack and slash action games with RPG elements than games that are really about immersing you in the role of your character and trying to inhabit their and their journey and choices.

[@MRwho35]

It's interesting, most of the issues you describe with MMOs, at least in my eyes, could be solved by the very players if they were allowed to (lack of content, sense of community, individual servers, etc). Which brings me back to how Neverwinter Nights was originaly concieved to be a highly modular game with MMO mechanics which still has a continuous support by fans and modders alike. Dispite having no love for Beamdog I'm happy to see that Neverwinter Nights still has a loyal playerbase which keeps improving on the game and some have delivered trully great works both in their modules and in the modding assets. Admitily I'm still relativily new to the community works despite playing it back in the day but overall the game offers a opportunity for everything a dedicated fanbase of RPGs could possibly want (at least by the time it was delivered anyways). I really recommend you give it a go, Never, even if just for other topics.

[@carloslinares991]

Just finished both MMO videos and I really appreciate the depth of knowledge you added to the uniqueness of MMOs and the the mechanics and features that so heavily influenced the games. Super entertaining, great videos

[@lexmelotti]

Hey, MMO developer here. Just wanted to let you know that your videos and feedback are not pointless at all. Some buddies at work and me love watching your videos, taking notes, pondering, discussing, agreeing and disagreeing with them. I think you got a lot of good points there and I think we might be heading somewhat in the same direction as some of your solutions for our future game, but well... you know... those are though problems and MMOs are not that easy to develop. 🙃

[@jamesstaggs4160]

My fondest memory of an MMO was Star Wars Galaxies right around the time they introduced mounts and vehicles, back when the game was brutally difficult if you went out alone. I forget the name but it was a small Rebel town on Tatooine and one of the most exciting things to do was to get involved in a Krayat Dragon hunt. To take one down it required 30 to 50 players, so you'd be standing around for an hour or two shouting about the hunt to get people interested, then it was a good 15-20 minute real time hike through the desert just to get to the dragon. Then it was another 15 to 25 minutes beating on the dragon to kill it, which didn't always happen. So out of a good 2 plus hour game session only a fraction of that was what people would consider playing the game, but it sure was great when you killed one. I stopped playing Wow a long time ago (I played it for a few months way back in 2006, but a seven year stay in a Tennessee State penitentiary after the cops put together a raid of their own on my house obviously made me stop playing). I had a blast the whole time I was playing it. I had an elvish hunter but I preferred my undead rogue. I loved running around Alliance areas while invisible and stalk unsuspecting players so I could kill them when they were alone. I haven't started playing again due to the fact that you can just get a lvl 60 character right off the bat. That really cheapens the entire experience of leveling a character.

[@roddlez]

An extreme cure for MMO-addiction right there.

[@paulie-g]

@@roddlez An extremely unsympathetic faction, the constabulary. OP, and the players get paid real cash money to always be available for raids.

[@vicenarian340]

Two NKB videos in a month? This is certainly a welcomed change!

[@krilcclo]

I've watched most of these long form videos that you've made. This video hit me hard. It's such a great look into what games, and us, have done. We had those great times. Hopefully the devs and the players will get back into the groove and have the best times again. Love your looks into games and keep up the great work.

[@cubicuboctahedron]

WoW launched my freshman year in college. I think it was the right combination of time and demographics to feed into how that early game was designed. I left MMORPGS right before Cataclysm because of guild drama. I really liked how the game was becoming more ergonomic, but being part of a raiding guild putting in 3-5 hours a day 4-6 days a week into progression and prep could be really punnishing with real life obligations. You were committed to the group and everyone worked towards a goal. You sacrificed and planned your day and real life obligations around guild obligations. Add to that the insult of people ninja transfering made dropping social games an easy choice. An MMORPG is as unpleasant as the last asshole who shit on your efforts.

[@YesNoMaybeOkSure]

City of Heroes player here - can confirm that making Alts is really fun, and is a big part of the game for many players.

[@johnriggio9781]

Recently started playing FF14 after wanting to be in MMOs again. Use to be a very large fan of WOW but I have to say your points are why I think FF14 has been something I've been able to enjoy so much in comparison.

[@hopelessly.lavenderly]

i agree. for a lot of these, even if ffxiv doesnt necessarily solve the issue, it does attempt to do so. plus because of the game's design, people arent like, assholes, so the playerbase makes the content. there's definitely a non zero amount of people who sub every month just to go to nightclubs and cafes

[@RedSpade37]

​@@hopelessly.lavenderly Never in my life, in any other game where you can, have I ever participated in anything like that, but I will be darned, FFXIV has a strong "nightclub culture rp" thing going on, so I checked it out, and wow, it was neat! They really commit to it and everything, and it's like an experience, you know? I might resub & reinstall just to see if the place I used to go to is still there...

[@hopelessly.lavenderly]

@@RedSpade37 me too! the fact that oftentimes there's a whole staff team is just awesome too. makes it feel real and a lot more fun

[@jamesmanley3d]

The way LotRO’s PvP was described in the video just instantly reminded me of why I love Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning’s PvP. Balance could be scuffed to Hell, and still can be in the case of the private server, but it was always, and still is, a fantastic experience when players communicated with warband leaders to coordinate assaults and sieges. Which I suppose makes it clear that an interactive and community based PvP system can be more fun than even the most finely balanced experience.

[@adiscerningdunmer9311]

I still play on that private server. Surprisingly, it's the MMO I've played the most consistently over the past year or so, when I've got WoW Classic and FFXIV going, as well as GW2. I think it's that sense of coordination, and the massive clashes -- especially when I can see names I recognize in those hordes. I ended up having more fun talking like an Orc with everyone else in an organized warband for four hours than I did with the last four years I had with WoW retail. There's something magical about that game.

[@Spellweaver5]

Holy shit. In the end of the last video, it sounded like you were making a joke that you "definitely know how to save the genre, just won't tell". Instead, it's a real video. I haven't watched it yet, but even if it's complete nonsense, I applaud you.

[@NorthernDruid]

Back when I played WoW I had a ton of alts, which led me to notice something interesting. Because I played my many characters in parallell rather than serially, I'd notice a surge of new characters every so often, as people had reached max level with their previous character and then started over. Once daily quests were introduced, as well as Heroic Dungeons I believe, there was plenty for max level characters to keep busy with aside from the more exclusive raids and more niche pvp battlefields. So those waves of new characters running through the earlier zones diminished, greatly, and the greater world became much emptier as a result.

[@hatac]

Good analysis. Is there a discord or something where you and others discuss this? My solutions would be: 1. A fraternity system that emulates the social size effect of servers and gives bonuses if you're fighting in a party with people on your friends list and fellow fraternity members. It does not replace the smaller guilds. Add an internal ranking system of fraternity honor. 2. End game problem: There is no reason why the game can't have 2 or 3 difficulties. The player chooses. Higher difficulty increases the grind, lowers drops, raises the XP target for each level. And adds higher death penalties. 2b. Turn some content into semi-random PvP. Allowing players to take control of NPC foes and occasionally bosses replacing the AI. The NPC is otherwise unchanged. If you get a goblin runt work it. This adds variability to repeated missions. Its off by default but a player can turn it on to face a random player controlled mob. This buys off the trolls. Add a special drop for the winner of the fight with its value to the drop in player inverse to the difficulty. 3. Money. In game crowd funding of content upgrades and new content. If enough people back a new dungeon, pledging to pay for it with tokens bought with real money the dev's make it. Lot's of small additions not big Kickstarter projects. Not cosmetic stuff or pay to win. I.E. "Better gnolls in south woods!" $400. 4. Player created quest messages with loot. Let players create content and post it with a quest giver or notice board. Check for obscenities. Players can craft bonus loot for it. Quest taker ranks the quests on completion. The ranking system tracks the best player quest master. This way the game never gets stale. I have a game world I'm designing I need a team of 100 people and a truck load of money. lol. I'm doomed. I can't see straight to code.

[@AngelOfThePast]

4 horseman of mmo decline is a fucking metal line. I never thought about the server issue before, but I agree. I would think the answer to fixing server issues could lie in auto balancing server access, with a premium for creating on a higher pop server. So for example no server would have a greater than 10% faction difference, and not two servers would ever have more than a 20% population difference, because creating or transferring a character to those servers would cost extra money (increasing as the difference got higher and higher). This would theoretically make sure you never have the downside of a server. If you want to play with your friend and you can't help it, you can still pay for access to that server. I agree that this is the most important issue though. Fucking erp lol. I've always enjoyed playing old content even when I'm completely overlevel'd just so I could see lore in real time. I always thought there should be a way to force your character to a lower level so you can enjoy them in their prime, kinda like level syncing lower dungeons. Leveling alts is the shit though. "Make sure you at least please somone" TRUUUUE! Great video!

[@hightierplayers2454]

Absolutely true and encapsulates a lot of my own thoughts on what has happened. Us older gamers need to remind the world of what has actually happened because a lot of people forget that its NOT just a generation getting older, its legitimately provable that games and especially mmos have gotten less and less in terms of quality in nearly everything except graphical resolution. We last-millennium hardcores truly know more and were better than any gamers that have come into existence since and its time we used the proof of the last decades to bring the perspective back since nobody among the newer additions can tell why the industry is heading downwards meanwhile to us older hardcores its as obvious as something right in front of your face. Sidenote: Your endgame section could've used FFXI's first few years of endgame as a prime example of how to keep old stuff relevant and what I considered "extremely good" endgame balance unlike literally all that came after its downfall (everything that has happened in 14's development journey). The days when 75 was the absolute cap and literally 3 expansions of endgame was all relevant and desired all at the same time. Peoples' plates never felt so full and so rewarding to being in the game all the time. The skill ceilings and the nuances may have been too high for many, but I think it was far better than the games we get today that have huge playerbases but the games themselves suck so much worse than what I was playing 20 years ago.

[@hackerjack79]

Less and less is not provable though, it is subjective. It feels less to you but for someone who prefers to play without a vast amount of social interaction or someone who have sparing and inconsistent time available the old system wouldn't only be inferior, it would be unplayable. And I say that as a member of the 20-years ago club.

[@poisonated7467]

@@hackerjack79 Those who have not experienced both are ignorant and their "opinion" is less valid. As for those who have less time, that's irrelevant. A game should be fun for 2 hours the same as 12 hours. Don't give designers excuses, the only excuse they have is publishers breathing down their necks.

[@DagothDaddy]

I'd love to see max level quest lines in MMOs one that require the skill and power you achieve by max level. Something like the Mage tower on WoW but applied to an entire quest line.

[@zerpblerd5966]

Dark Age of Camelot has this

[@Varitok1]

Camelot and Wildstar tried the UBER HARD MODE approach and the games croaked.

[@TheDeadmanTT]

Guys, go home. It's over, he has a girlfriend =(

[@ponderingForever]

41:20 The ARR reworks that came with 6.1 made me appreciate the new player story prog more. Still a long way to go- but just getting through a more challenging base setup is a good to let people know what later stuff is like (adjusted AoE patterns and enemy combos)

[@wingingitwithbleep8934]

MMOs are a victim of their own success. Where as it used to be this super obscure nerdy thing, it got so big that it eventually imploded on itself. Blame WoW but I think its really just a societal change that MMOs could not keep up with. People don't communicate how we did in 2002 anymore. MMOs used to be a space to communicate with online friends. Now we have social media and things like Twitch or Discord. Communities don't exist in game anymore. That was a MAJOR shift. Everyone now has a super computer in their pocket that can run newer MMOs made for the platform. A lot has changed in 20 years. MMOs, as we knew them, are never coming back, not saying people won't try, but we just won't see another UO, EQ, or WoW. MMOs today are games like Destiny or GTA Online. Sad but true fate of MMO as a genre is that it has influenced everything after it. Shit even NBA2k is turned into a quasi MMO with its persistent online park mode. MMOs have died but the ideas and concepts will never die. Really, if you think about it, it wasn't the games anyway, it was the community. You miss the people and you miss being a kid with 0 responsibility other than your game. Nostalgia.

[@MaakaSakuranbo]

Eh, I think it has more to do with removing all incentives to be social and then wondering why people aren't social. If you give people social features, they'll use them to be social.

[@Milkianbot]

This is all very accurate. I am a long time Tera player (lol rip) and this literally describes everything that went wrong especially the last point about player feedback... I would also add one more thing I don't know how much it effects other games and this is probably a bit controversial but I really feel like the introduction of DPS meters and other addons/mods completely ruined the game despite everyone loving these tools so much. If you use guides and stuff you just entirely skip out on learning mechanics of a new dungeon/raid and this was especially true for Tera since all the dungeons would be first released in Korea way before NA. DPS meters are okay to an extent for self improvement but that's not how they seem to be used in practice. I think leader board competition and parsing is fun and adds a lot of replay-ability but with it comes the most toxic people which just tear apart communities which MMOs rely on heavily. The game still had tryhards and elitism before DPS meters were used by everyone but the game was so much less toxic and felt more accepting of new players. Another thing about this is that I think wiping is apart of the game, adding everything you can to make everything mindless so you can just focus solely on getting a top parse just feels wrong to me. Great series of videos though, it's actually relieving to know I'm not insane thinking that MMOs now are so anti-social you might as well just play a game made for single player.

[@301SO]

I loved the way SWOTR did cutscenes in a party, you could all select your response and it would roll to see who's response would be used.

[@KaosEspada]

While having character locked servers helps build community, i dont think they are necessary to build community. Runescape never had character locked servers but there was always a sense of community. I do like your suggestions of incentivizing players to stick to one server. It keeps players bumping into each other which is a nice feel for an MMO.

[@Pizzapaj]

Best PVP in MMO was the original Guild Wars. Variety of modes, competitions organized by the developer, well known PVPers were really famous (including telling EVERYONE in the game who won a particular mode real time) and the rewards were truly persistent: ranks which had their own emblems players could show. To this day I remember the commotion from the first player reaching rank 12.

[@TheGamerUnknown]

Prior to watching video: * It's not dying. MMOs had their time in the limelight because they were the next big thing at one time. Now they're just one of many other types of game. That notoriety will never come back, but they're not dead either. If anything they're larger now on the whole than they were ever. The increased variety means players are spread out on more titles than they were before. * Specialization in the game's goals is important, in my opinion. Devs should make games that are passionately focused on one or two things they want to do amazingly. Make an MMO with the best raids this world has ever seen. Make one with an amazing story. Make one with incredible progression. Just don't try to do more than one or two things great, because otherwise they'll do all of them poorly and it'll just be another mediocre title that doesn't stand out much. EDIT: After watching the video You bring up a LOT of interesting points. As someone who played Runescape back in the day and now plays OSRS, I see what you mean about these games becoming more like a singleplayer title. The way that content is handled (a rush to endgame, then a grind to keep people busy) was really interesting. I never understood why "endgame" was so critical to some people, now I see how this happened. Definitely don't agree with 99% of what you said in the Money section. It's the only part I disagree with. Overall, amazing video. So glad to see what you had to say. :)

[@Bonkikavo]

Like jazz, punk, heavy metal in music. Not dead, but novelty is gone.

[@the11382]

MMO players are still locusts, I wonder if you could use procgen and AI to help with content problems? It will not completely solve your problem, but that is ok.

[@WaddacashVR]

I appreciate the amount of thought u have put into how to fix mmos, but one thing I think worth mentioning is that all of this is based on what we have known of mmos in the past. They haven't really been a thing for more that 20 years. To think the best days are behind us may be true but I don't think is very likely. There is no telling the worlds we will be exploring in the future not only with things like vr and ai but in ways we can't even imagine yet. Don't lose hope. o/

[@mohandasjung]

Imagine what a MMO VR could be!

[@niboglin]

Any design change of an MMO is actually really hard to tell whether or not the change has some unintended side effect. Like boiling a frog - or something along those lines - this is especially the case for social aspects. What I propose is an approach that takes this into consideration. If we create this expectation, of being able to rollback on features that didn't turn out quite as planned - lets say something like our version of looking for group, we can essentially do a game design version of Forza's Rewind feature. I think the problem, is that most mmo's get into a sunken cost fallacy, as well as community feedback that goes along the lines of "don't take this convenience away from me", and finally, the inevitable: the audience that we have now is that of people that stayed for the changes we would be neglecting and alienating by going back on something they stayed for. Basically, the design choices filter out players that don't enjoy the change, so why appeal to players that aren't loyal to the games decisions. If we make a conscious and public effort to address this problem, and reasonably so. I for one have admission that as game designers, we don't have crystal balls, especially when it comes to the incredibly complex problem of social health of an mmo. So the solution - being forefront to the community about the possible annex of features that prove over time to be caustic to the original vision of the game - then the willingness to basically gut and redesign those elements.

[@ad0xa]

I think one thing you didn't mention in the social problem is how quests are too easy to do by yourself in many games. And I don't mean that the skill lever is too easy. But rather the quest helper that gives you a big arrow pointing in the direction you need to go. Bc almost all of the friends I made in mmo's of old was through asking something about a quest. Like. It came so naturally. You were doing a quest and you didn't know exactly where to go, so you had to ask someone. They then maybe offered to go with you and help you out. You started talking and woosh, a new friend.

[@rudolfambrozenvtuber]

You see in modern day that hits one of the external walls devs just can't do anything about. External resources nowadays are too good at their jobs

[@poisonated7467]

@@rudolfambrozenvtuber No, games just aren't designed this way anymore.

[@rudolfambrozenvtuber]

@@poisonated7467 And even if they wanted to all of the resources would be up on a wili within one month. We have seen this happen

[@poisonated7467]

@@rudolfambrozenvtuber Not necessarily, there are ways to get around this. No one talks about them though because no one thinks it's possible to create a solution to it. I won't lie, the culture/social part of this problem is hard to solve, but you CAN design better. Make things less documentable without giving into randomness/chaos. Give the players less information so they don't have the chance to spread it.

[@rudolfambrozenvtuber]

@@poisonated7467 "just make information less available" remember: swarm of locusts

[@dylhas1]

Including rogue-like/lite mechanics in raids would also greatly improve replayability of the end game. I think this will be the next major change that will rake in cash. It just makes sense to include some sort of mechanic like that’s. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands has a roguelite endgame. Why not bring something like that into an MMO. Each person could roll for a power up with a chance of “a curse” (or some bs like that) and I see something like this being huge. Maybe it could make it so if one certain player dies then it’s failed. Idk I don’t play MMOs so I am speaking out my hole, but I stand by this as a potential endgame(changer) lol

[@바보Queen]

isn't mythic plus kind of like that. without the buff mechanic.. but it does get harder

[@cheezburgrproduction]

Enter the Gungeon and Binding of Isaac comes to mind; dungeons have the framework to receive these developments at first to test the waters. I believe the risk/reward systems tickle our survivalist animal brain

[@laughingalex7563]

City of heroes radio/paper missions tend to be that a little. They are best when you pick missions other than exclusively council groups though. It gets very repetitive to fight the same guys(people pick council cause they the easiest group in the game to fight).

[@Zhiroc]

In my opinion, the only MMO that really feels like they embrace the "MM" is Eve Online, and I say that as someone who has played it (from launch for a few years) and have no interest in playing it or a game like it again. However, it is a game where the whole dynamics revolve around players forming communities and alliances, and then acting on them. I would even go so far as to say the day-to-day gameplay itself is rather lackluster, until you get into those huge ship engagements that make the news. But I'm someone who despises PvP, and even though I played Eve for a few years, I think I can count on one hand how many times I got shot at (stayed in high-sec for most of my time) and maybe even only returned fire once or twice (running away the other times). Games with online play (PvP or coop) are really a dime a dozen now. If an MMO isn't embracing the play around having a huge playerbase online at one time, just save the expense and hassle and create a simple (and good, hopefully) online coop/PvP game rather than throw the time and money at having huge numbers of people online that ignore each other.

[@MaakaSakuranbo]

"Rather lackluster" is pretty optimistic for "click this asteroid, click orbit, click weapons, wait 10 minutes"

[@gerageobushma8970]

o7

[@Bonehund]

Thank you for this video. You managed to vocalize and expand on many thoughts I've had myself about MMOs (primarily wow) lately. Especially about the social impact of servers, as I think it's a really downplayed problem and I hope an elegant solution can be found. Overall I think your observations were spot on. It's clear the genre can't go back to it's past glory, but maybe somehow it can find new success in the modern reality.

[@dh510]

I think the obvious problem, that can't be solved, is that times and people have changed. In the 2000's and early 2010's, there were only limited options for people to connect and hang out online. Nowadays, everyone is always connected to everyone, all the time, anywhere. And people hate it! Also, the prevalence of smartphones has severely shortened people's attention span. Today, the average person is conditioned to get a dopamine hit every 30 seconds. That makes grinding a raid for hours nearly impossible. Half the time is gonna be running back to a boss, regenerating and waiting for other players. When the social aspect is no longer something special and the gameplay feels slow and repetitive, playing theses games feels like work...

[@cracmar03]

Yeah and I mean MMO's changed already, back in the day you had mindset of 'who plays MMO for a story ??' but if you look at it ... when your gameplay is work, socializing is nothing special, immersion by storytelling and visuals is what makes you different. No wonder biggest MMO's WoW, ESO and FFXIV had to switch their priorities. Granted WoW dipped into e-sport thing, for some reason.

[@ManicForMetal]

Incentivizing players to interact with the same people repeatedly would greatly improve the social experience of MMOs. For example a system of "Affinity XP" could be implemented. The basics of how the system would work is that whenever you do things that grant normal xp together, you and the other person also gain a shared pool of affinity xp representing a unique bond between the two of you that you can level up. When leveled up, the bonuses you gain while together are increased. To make this more concrete, for now let's just simplify by imagining that gaining Affinity Levels only grants a scaling % damage increase while you are together. The scaling damage increase could be set to 30% minimum just for being grouped with other players even at level 0 affinity, to give players immediate incentive to group up, and then gradually scale up to a maximum of 100%. The game could be structured so that it is possible, but clearly inefficient, to complete all of the content in the game without the boost. Theoretically the game wouldn't have enrage timers, limited mana bars, or other mechanics that make it so you have to finish fights within a certain time limit. Instead it would have increasingly challenging (but never impossible) execution tests the longer the fight drags on which can result in deaths, boss heals, and other forms of punishment if failed. This would incentivize players to play with the same people without technically requiring it. This system could be expanded upon to include other systems as well. For example you could gain affinity xp with someone for using items they crafted, and the stats granted by the items could increase based on your affinity level.

[@marocat4749]

Good idea.

[@the_disco_option]

Making people come back to your game because they enjoyed their time sounds like a much better mindset than most MMO's have today. A few already do this but I'd love to see more who do this.

[@Aetrion]

One of the big things that kills newer MMORPGs for me is the notion that everyone has to be able to switch their class and spec on a whim. You basically just have to play the meta, because there is no excuse why your character isn't optimized for the meta. FOTM players used to be kind of hated because it was people chasing power by rolling a whole new character with every single patch. It was considered a kind of soulless way to play to spend an extraordinary amount of time grinding up disposable characters as fast as possible just to take advantage of whatever temporary state of balance existed in the game. Now that's the only acceptable way to play, because there is no effort involved in switching builds anymore. It's one of those things where the devs simply concluded that everyone wants to have a 100% optimized character and the reason people hated FOTM players was simply because not everyone had the time. But what about all the people who want characters to be an individual expression of the player and their journey through the game? The small number of powergamers that were able to outshine organic characters were annoying, but now MMORPGs just completely abandoned people who care about the expressive qualities of character building. They have turned chasing optimization from essentially an exploit of an expressive system into the whole purpose of the character system with no way to enjoy it the way an actual roleplayer would want to use it.

[@the11382]

In games, building a character is part of my expression. MMOs nowadays just have metas, and any game that has a meta is dead to me. What about using procgen and AI for individualized perk trees? Your perk tree is unique to that specific character, even alts will have a different perk tree.

[@video_ouija7114]

Yes indeed

[@Aetrion]

@@the11382 Old games did have a meta, it's just that changing your build often took hundreds of hours of rerolling a character from scratch, so it was just a tiny number of powergamers who actively chased the meta. Maybe a system that randomizes your progression would solve the problem, but I think it would just lead us back around to the old way where people can still make optimized characters by rerolling until they get the perfect combination of perks in their trees. So I honestly think that the biggest thing to fix this whole meta chasing nonsense is to really lean into the idea that characters are the product of their journey, and there is no shortcut to being a character that has dedicated serious time and effort to becoming who they are. It just has to be a game where newer characters aren't segregated away from older characters, but can meaningfully play alongside them. Maybe even a game where older characters can act as mentors to newer characters to help them learn their skills, but even that would be a lengthy journey.

[@the11382]

@@Aetrion What does it mean? I don't understand how this translates into gameplay. What would a player get out of being mentored or being the mentor? How does this avoid the meta problem?

[@roddlez]

Why not just reduce the power difference between meta-builds and non-meta builds, or use mechanics that don’t specifically benefit any specific meta? Hard to get into this unless we have specific examples of games where you see this issue. But for a game where you can freely switch classes, I’m thinking FF14, and I don’t really see it having meta issues, as nearly every class within a given role (tank, healer, DPS) is viable. In FF14, I see success is dependent on having skillful players with adequate gear than on following any team meta.

[@Wulfenthrad]

Great video as always. Though, something that I feel isn't brought up enough is bringing friends into an MMO that you're already established in. It's hard to sell friends on your favorite MMO when it's so expensive. Between the box cost, the expansions, and the sub it's a considerable investment to get into a lot of MMOs. In fact, the subscription alone was enough of a reason for one of my friends to not even try FF14, not even it's free trial up to the award winning expansion Heavensward, as he said that once he got through it he would want to start paying the sub. Even if you do get them into the game, it could be several sessions before they start getting invested in the game, and at that point they would probably want to get back to playing Apex, DRG, or an endless variety of other games that don't demand dozens of hours before they start getting interesting. I'm not exactly sure how one could go about solving this, though I think that this problem is worth considering when developing MMOs.

[@Xalantor]

Subscriptions have always seemed to make playing the game a chore for me, because every hour you're not playing the game is actively worsening the value you get from the subscription. And because players, given the chance, will optimize the fun out of everything, they feel compelled to play as much as possible, burning them out completely. With every other monetization model you can just take a week off with minimal drawbacks and just jump right back into it with new energy. Goes to reinforce Nevers point that MMOs should be a vacation instead of a second job.

[@hopelessly.lavenderly]

despite being a huge MMO fan, the cost is exactly why i dont really actually play many. i do have hundreds of hours in the ffxiv trial that includes the award winning expansion heavensward, but before that was available, in the "new wow killer" era i'd hop between free to play mmo to free to play mmo not finding a reason to stick to any, because i essentially felt punished for having fun

[@klimaluky]

@@Xalantor have you this problem with Netflix, or you have it running 24/7? This mentality was build by greedy developers with constant forcing you thinking you will lose tempo with others if you don't play for some hours.

[@Nickulator]

@@klimaluky I know it's not me you're talking to, but.. I personally share my Netflix with two others, reducing the cost and we can all use the same account. This keeps it on 24/7. Had I not been able to do that, I would only stay subbed when I was actively watching stuff on it, otherwise it wouldn't be worth it. But you're right that the FOMO mechanics that developers put into their games to keep people subbed is predatory and should stop immediately. Be like FFXIV, where those things doesn't exist and Yoshi-P actually encourages people to play other games when they're done with the current content.

[@klimaluky]

@@Nickulator that's valid point about Netflix but to be fair, you can share account even in MMOs to max the playtime, so it depends if it makes any difference in pros/cons :)) But i totally agree with Netflix's problem with not enough content to watch and we unsubscribe on regular basis, when there is nothing interesting to watch left. This is IMHO must-have possibility even with sub-based game. But problem starts appearing when game have some sort of player housing :/

[@madmanvarietyshow9605]

If you're interested in an exploration of how the limited, locked down server operates, watch both Uberdanger's and Barny64's playthroughs of WoW classic. Reputations preceeded everyone. People became famous or infamous. Honorable guilds from both the Alliance and the Horde worked together to take out exploiting players who were taking more than their fair share of certain resources other players needed for their quests, players that couldn't compete with the exploiters or wouldn't stoop to that level. It was magnificent. Also both series are fucking hilarious to watch.

[@ElJefe3126]

Your third paradox is that MMOs have deteriorated through listening to users too much, yet an MMO that is deaf to the user base is destined to fail. But this is exactly the same problem all governments face - should we be a democracy that performs according to the will of the mob, or should be we a despot who does as he pleases, trampling any complainers underfoot? Both seem suboptimal, and at odds with the most successful governments we have to day. 200 years ago, Edmund Burke addressed this in his "Speech to the Electors of Bristol". To summarize, when elected, the electors chose not merely his finger to respond to the latest poll, but also his mind, to investigate, to ponder, to consider their input, and ultimately to do what is best for them, even if they ask for something else. So an MMO publisher must be somewhat paternal, considering the demands of players, but carefully considering and accepting, modifying, or rejecting those demands as it best protects the enjoyability of the game, even if that means leveling to endgame becomes more difficult, or the cash shop becomes less pay to win, or whatever ruinous thing the player base demands is discarded.

[@OrangeBananaMonster]

I think the solution to the end game problem is actually simpler than you say. It's not that the devs need to slow players down either through difficulty, timegating, or grinding, but that devs need to completely rethink the content that players are consuming. There is always a finite amount of content (of variable quality) on a theme park, or in a movie. But in a sandbox, with legos, or with minecraft, there is truly no end. The players supply the variable content, and they don't consume it. They *live in* it. (you say this briefly at 44:50)

[@Synthes788]

The problem with mmos is that the times have changed. In early 2000 online social interaction platforms were limited and mmos were one of the best form of them. Nowadays there are plenty of options to choose from like hanging in discord, playing other type of video games and many others. This might sound weird but the people I know who play mmos don't play the games for the social interactions but for other reasons. For examples they play final fantasy 14 for the story and rune scape to get mining and other skills to 99 because it's rewarding.

[@viniciuskenji4445]

Never played an MMO but I just can't stop watching this videos!

[@zOOmer991]

I feel a new platform like VR could help a great deal in revitalizing the genre. I mean of course, the genre flaws will persist even on a new platform, but a new platform can bring that sense of wonder that existed back when playing with people online was a new concept. If in say 10 years a mmorpg game comes out on VR and does implement the solutions you provided here it could be truly amazing.

[@AndrewBrownK]

VRChat is currently the top of "Social Gaming x VR". Someone need to take notes. Whatever they are doing right is critical to the (potential) success of any VR MMORPG in the future

[@Trumanlol86]

Love your videos! Love seeing that you're getting some great sponsorship money from Raid! Keep up the good work, I'm so glad the algorithm recommended your stuff to me!!

[@josephbegley9148]

Forcing players into being more social by removing conveniences, and increasing time played by increasing the difficulty of core content, are not the solutions to saving MMOs. You can't recreate the success of the original MMOs with a modern playerbase, or you will end up losing players like World of Warcraft's Warlords of Draenor and Shadowlands expansions, both of which were the result of game developers following advice like yours and trying to force players to group up for a modicum of power progression. By contrast, the expansions like Wrath of the Lich King (which introduced Dungeon Finder) and Legion (which introduced tons of soloable questing content) saw the playerbase grow. I do, however, appreciate the quality of the videos you have been making and your good intentions behind them.

[@vaan_]

Yup, the reason why people flocked to older titles with contrived mechanics was not because they enjoyed them (most players, at least), it was because there was nothing better.

[@Sir_Lagg_A_Lot]

Asses of Cremation (Ashes of Creation) is doing something similar. They think they can force players to be social by taking away options to use conveniences.

[@Nextliar]

The MMOs don't need lvls, only a big map to explore and gear that were needed to build in groups of people farming different zones and monsters, every gear with a story integrated to the world and you as a player will have status because the gear you get. A game where a new player can do something in a party with a endgame player, but, the difference will be enough to want to be good geared.

[@JohnSmith-ox3gy]

Easier said than done.

[@RyugaHidekiOrRyuzaki]

So basically Guild Wars 2

[@Varitok1]

@@RyugaHidekiOrRyuzaki GWs has levels

[@grayaj23]

My opinion on this is that there needs to be something *so compelling* that everyone has to play it or miss out on the new thing. That's what MMOs were during the golden age. But I think the social vacuum can be fixed. Eve players are always members of a corporation -- it's not possible to not be. People could be randomly assigned to starting guilds, and experienced players could be incentivized to manage public guilds for the benefit of new players. Part of that process would be to help prep new players to find a player-run guild to join. Give players an "affinity" rating that provides nominal advantages to XP when grouping with people they've grouped with before, or incentive to join with players from their guild. Or an incentive to join with players from a noob guild. Not enough that you couldn't stomach the loss that switching guilds would cause. Just enough so that you would have a good reason to link up with the same people more frequently.

[@Meoidn]

You want more fomo in mmos? What a shit take.

[@sleepinganarchy3486]

@@Meoidn nothing wrong with increasing social interaction in mmos

[@Meoidn]

@@sleepinganarchy3486 Fomo mechanics have nothing to do with social interaction.

[@grayaj23]

@@Meoidn TIL "incentive" is a synonym for "FOMO"

[@Meoidn]

@@grayaj23 "everyone has to play it or miss out on the new thing." Thats the very definition of what FOMO is

[@keiyangoshin3650]

I don’t believe the MMO genre is dying. It’s changing. Does ‘dying’ imply it is slowly ceasing to function? I was under the impression MMO games existed in abundance in a variety never before seen. But MMOs aren’t the only ones changing. As Never mentions, people are also changing. New generations with a different mind set are now playing MMOs. Gaming companies are becoming all consuming corporations, ever more concerned by making money rather then make the players happy. Thankfully, there are exceptions on both ends. Of course this is only my opinion.

[@lotus_143]

I agree. I think that MMOs are "dying" in the same way that platformers and turn-based combat are dying. And by that, I mean they aren't. Are they the most common style of gameplay now? No. Do they need to be to be considered "alive"? Also no. I can't help but feel that MMO players at large believe the genre is dead because WoW is "bad" now. Even if WoW disappeared completely, the genre still has tons of high quality games to play. Just because "you" don't play a game doesn't mean the game is dead.

[@vaan_]

@@lotus_143 It's lack of ability to see beyond their own belly-button. Their perspective into things exists through a biased negative lens, because different = bad. The reality of people using external communication tools where you can aggregate friends from multiple games and communicate even when not in the game is being interpreted as "people don't want to socialize" which is straight up a lie. The world changed and games kept up with it, some better than others, but they've evolved. There must have undoubtedly been some people who believed 3D graphics were going to ruin videogames and that the enthusiasm most people had at the existence of "depth" and an "environment" was misguided. Typical old man yelling at cloud scenario, now in a modern canvas. I mean, in this very comment section there are people saying that they miss real challenge, like killing the same mobs in one place for hours to spawn a rare, and that modern video games don't have any "true experience". There's no argument to be had with these people, they're blinded by nostalgia and refusing to accept that the only reason they played those games in the past is because they had nothing better.

[@GigaAxo]

Assigning the tag of 'locusts' to MMO players was an incredible visual for sure. Great video!

[@cericat]

Plague carriers isn't inaccurate either at times, even without the WoW connection. A lot of the issues are player attitudes and they bring that and contaminate other games with it at times, I don't run trials on ESO because that's a place where there's a real make or break attitude prevalent I recognise from raid guilds on WoW and other games. Weirdly BDO is less toxic there than generally with the majority of world boss fights just being everyone jumping in and fighting, it's odd.

[@chaddoell]

Thank you for another wonderful love letter to this genre which means as much to me as it does to you. I also was fortunate enough to have been involved in the heyday of LOTRO's Monster Play. I too had a totally unbalanced, uneven, low frame-rate, unforgettably enjoyable PVP experience.

[@gabbyk1391]

You can recreate the server community aspect on a much larger server, but it requires a lot of forethought to pull it off. Basically have enough unique areas worth traveling to and hanging out in and get rid of fast travel outside of rare instances (wizard portals with high requirement, etc.) Doing this will spread players around the world in such a way that a massive hub is not easily formed, and since fast travel isn't an easy option, small communities or groups will form around where certain groups of players like to be. The other half of the solution is implementing some social aspects so that communities and guilds should be formed for furthering of the player's goals such as tough content, crafting, gathering, bonuses, sharing like trade and bartering, etc. Basically give players the ability to spread out and give them high incentive to form communities with those around them. Instead of 'Server A' is a different community from 'Server B' it would become 'This town or area' has a different community from 'This other town or area.' That's a super basic rundown, but what I'm really saying is this. It's not that these features no longer work in MMORPGs, it's that no one is designing with these necessary and healthy social MMORPG aspects in mind. Ease of use and immediate player satisfaction are at the forefront of many of their gameplay design decisions instead. Which is good, if you want a dead genre.

[@mikewhitaker2880]

ive seen games try to force socialization by requiring one to be in a guild type group to do things, at least 2 problems... first, what to do with all the shlubs who still prefer solo play, and how to avoid guilds being made to have ONLY that 1 person but allowing them to run the "social" content.... and requiring multiple people to form the guild wont work as they can form then kick/leave until only 1 person is left in it.... which also brings up the issue of people who WANT to be in a guild for social reasons but get denied due to various requirements ie level, item score, ext, ext...

[@gabbyk1391]

@@mikewhitaker2880 You're overthinking this.

[@mikewhitaker2880]

@@gabbyk1391 not really, i'm one of those shlubs who gets stuck running solo in a multi-player game...and not always by choice.... overthinking... more like under thinking...

[@gabbyk1391]

@@mikewhitaker2880 You get stuck as a solo player because the game is designed to be easy enough for players to solo and finding a group is streamlines so much that you never actually need to make friends or meet anyone. It's not just you, but everyone else is affected by this and will treat others as if they barely matter. Because the players in such a game do matter much less. Like the video creator was saying, not everyone is a social butterfly in life and this is also true for in games as well. Removing natural incentives to group and find people to play with in game out of necessity greatly reduces how well a person with such a mindset can play an online game. Because to feel needed in such a game they will need to be socially aware. They will need to make friends in a social manner in which many players are just not good at. Adding weight to each individual players and requiring cooperation to succeed alleviates much of this problem and friendships naturally form over time as you cooperate with others through these hardships. I hope that makes sense. That's why most players who stick around in newer MMORPGs which are easy to solo in are almost all social players. They like to do social things with others. Not necessarily dungeons, bosses, exploration, collection or any game thing outside of interacting or utilizing mechanics that further the enjoyment of socializing with others, like housing decoration or creating costumes to wear, etc. Outside of the replay ability of the social elements, there is little to no reason for non-social gamers to stick around in such a game until new content is released.

[@mikewhitaker2880]

@@gabbyk1391 you dont understand, i dont mind games that force socialization, yet still get left out because no one else wants new friends.... because no one else is good enough for THEIR click... because they are p2w and i'm f2p... need i continue... i get forced into being the anti-social because everyone else is F'n antisocial....

[@wolfgangromine8341]

For me the biggest thing MMO's are missing is having an interesting world and lore. I'm so bored of the classic DND fantasy tropes, it's been done to death. The genre needs new life. I remember when I first played FFXI (the old one, not FFXIV) and I was so amazing at how big the world was and how little I understood. There was wonder in exploration. Now everything is so formulaic, it's predictable. The genre needs to evolve into something entirely new. New setting, new classes (so tired of the over-used warrior/mage/rogue etc,) new mechanics.

[@Xalantor]

I'd disagree that just having elves and dwarves with different names or the world being new is enough. You can make the most cookie cutter DnD world interesting, evidenced by the fact that DnD still exists and is loved and played till this day. A new world is cool, until you learn everything about it and are back to square one. Devs can never create more lore faster than players can consume it. So the key to having an interesting world lies in it's characters and the players emotional connection with them. For example, One Piece has 1016 episodes today. How OP has managed to go strong and be loved until today is the secret to making an interesting world. They do it by making characters we know and love have a personal stake in whatever is happening.

[@michaelhumphry9992]

I also think that one of the larger issues is the reliance on wikis today. My first MMO was FFXI (Lakshmi) and part of the mystique of it all was having to figure out how to do everything on my own and with my small linkshell of very solid players. Also the idea that there were no quest markers, no ideas of how to get your airship pass without having to ask in chat really made the social aspect of it enormous. My first 75 job was MNK and I had no idea of how to get Destroyers and how to unlock their hidden damage bonus. I had to ask other monks what they did and that made finally getting my own pair all the more sweeter. Wikis are nice but have removed so much of the idea of exploration.

[@belldrop7365]

What I consider the biggest turn off in MMOs is the time gating. Daily quests that forces me to play everyday or even every 4--12 hours for efficiency on the trickling down of resources. At least let me play a game for 21 hours straight a week and get the same result as someone playing it for 3 hours per day. People consider P2W as the worst in MMOs, and it's understandable. But at this point, I've long stopped caring about rich people being richer than me in games.

[@roddlez]

Agreed!!! *claps* Just want to correct one thing: it’s not necessarily “richer” people, it’s people * who will spend * more than me. There’s a subtle but important difference. I.e. there are rich people who don’t spend, and there are poor people who spend money that they ought not to spend. From the stories I’ve read, it seems like many whales are people of this latter category who spend more than those folk who actually have the expendable income. (I mean, you’re not going to be rich very long if you blow $50k in a month on loot boxes in order to get the epically rare five-star doodad for all each of your waifus!)

[@Xalantor]

Time gating isn't the issue. Having the time gates be dailies is the issue. Weeklies and monthlies are great. Dailies are cancer.

[@LarryWater]

I ignore dailies.

[@Sluggernaut]

Interesting ideas. I do think one of the things that WoW could do right now is add a way to do a ton of real quests (not just dailies) well after they are over leveled for that quest for some reward. This has a level difficulty issue and players will still just absolutely fly through them without stopping to smell the flowers but it still might give some pause and allow the absurdly massive amount of content be utilized. You should probably not listen to players but you cant ever tell them that you wont listen to them. You need to have a core mindset and goal as to how the player should feel playing your game and try to make sure the game delivers on that.

[@Nurk0m0rath]

Completely agree. The most fun I ever had playing WoW was when I was running the quests from the original game. I often found myself staying in a region to finish a questline even after the quests no longer gave xp, and I was very sad when my death knight character couldn't finish the main storyline of Frozen Throne; I saw it as a kind of redemption story for him. Luckily a friend I made there had a higher level character who could take me through the raids to finish up most of the remaining story. Actually, you *should* listen to your players. But then you should stop to consider whether their advice actually makes the game better or not, and discard the ideas if they don't make something better. Authors face this kind of criticism all the time, and people have to remember that ultimately, it's the author who has to decide whether or not to incorporate a new idea. So basically, listen to the players so you know if something is going dreadfully wrong, but take it all with a grain of salt and don't treat it as a public vote where the loudest complaints win game changes.

[@j03T3XAz]

Literally the biggest problem with MMO's and anything else in life is: when you tryhard to appeal to everyone, you end up being no one.

[@QthePhysicist]

I haven't watched your whole vid yet, but the fact that you spent TEN YEARS thinking about how to save MMOs does beg the questions: do they even need saving? And another question, saving from what? From death? And finally, there is one MMO that DOES need saving, and as much as I am not a fan boy, it's Star Wars Galaxies! I hope your video makes that happen! LOL

[@RobtheStampede]

I think some of the things you mention as "difficulty" are pretty poor examples of it. For example, teleports or XP curves. Those aren't difficult; locating the dungeon isn't hard and grinding three times as many boars doesn't make you a better player. Those are examples of taking more time to do the same thing. A game that focuses on difficult should have challenging mechanics that you can't afford to screw up, not bigger numbers.

[@ghostlygardener5644]

And it is funny how multiple difficulty tiers apparently is grind and not putting difficulty in the game. WoW is brought up a lot in the video, and that game has only gotten more and more difficult with time, not less.

[@Xalantor]

I think devs should always listen to player feedback when it comes to numbers "X weapon/class is overpowered", and ignore them when the feedback is about changing the artistic core vision of the game.. But then, studio's would need a artistic core vision to begin with... Faction Balance: Any game with opposing factions NEEDS a balancing mechanic for the underdog faction. More exp, better loot chances, lower currency sinks. One faction will always dominate otherwise, because why wouldn't you join the winner. Trading: I don't see why the only choices for trading are either spamming chat or a global auction house. How about regional auction houses where you'd have to physically move from one location to the other to trade creating price imbalances ready to be used by savy traders. Why not have a shipping fee related to the distance to where you buy and where the item is sold, maybe even a waiting time, encouraging you to buy more expensive local stuff if you need something fast or saving money where you can if you plan ahead. Time Gating: Daily Quests are trash and weeklies are just acceptable. Monthly objectives are king because some days or weeks people just cannot be online, work or family related. Monthly and weekly stuff helps with preventing player burnout, providing incentive to log on regularly but don't try to dictate you schedule. I quit many a game because it was designed to force me to plan my life around it, rather than the other way around. For me this equates to a second job and I will drop those games instantly even if I like the rest of the game, just like I did Lost Ark. Also don't make those weekly and monthly goals require me to do things I find boring or tedious. Give me enough different tasks that I still get the weekly reward even if I never do dungeons, farm crafting mats or do PVP arena.

[@lminithgarn9624]

That idea of regional trade can be put in motion to simulate an economy and create a trader profession. No Mans Sky like other space games use a system that can be related. On NMS each planetary system has a core activity which defines its production and its needs, which can be bought and sold respectively for extra profit. Time-gating isn't what you mentioned though. What you mentioned is FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and I don't believe you will get rid of that because it's a great tool for the game, even if players login get those and logout it helps to bring in new players because it raises the number of active player base. It's free marketing. Time-gated is walled progress... an energy system, you can only run X raid 1 time per day/week, restricted respawns of something, crafting a weapon takes X amount of hours etc. Many developers said they implement this to avoid burnout but often ends up with monetisation or at the very least delays content clearance annoying players. Most players dislike excessive time-gates for obvious reasons.

[@lminithgarn9624]

Faction Balance is a neat feature that I wish was more common even on games without PvP. An idea I always liked is having border territories being contested and you can choose to help a faction (or your faction) to control it for a reward and after X clears or X time on lead you get some benefit like regional ores or other goods . After X time opposing faction tries to take it back giving better rewards on missions, regardless if it takes territory or not, and the same regional benefits in case it does. A lot of things can be done like this to help immersion and faction vs faction dynamics.

[@Relbl]

I think the biggest problem w MMOs today is that there is no sense of adventure anymore -- they've all been 'solved' or get solved within weeks of release and there is a clear cut META to follow or the player is wasting time. That was part of the charm of Classic WoW -- nobody knew anything, and it was fun to check things out. Not too many especially cared about raiding, nor knew how to gear, so the open world felt more threatening and compelled you to want to play with a buddy. Now it seems speeding to the end is the goal, or as a wise-man once told me "hurry up to do nothing". This problem I have NO idea how to fix because it is literally part and parcel of gaming now... granted I realize your video was about solutions but I genuinely don't think there are any

[@svyatoslav4289]

Ann cave man dont think that cart can ride on weels. But if you dont understand it - that doesn't mean its hard

[@ProfKisuto]

For me - I would be willing to make sacrifices in convenience for a more living, breathing, player run world. UO and Galaxies were the best experiences I had to this day because of those elements. I had stories to tell. Things happened much more organically. People were willing to RP and get into character. It wasn't always about the gear and the raids. Obviously you need a dedicated fanbase for this to work, but I am still hoping that one day someone does it.

[@terry9819]

Agree on some points and disagree on others but thanks for taking the time to make the video. I think an obsession with esports is also having quite a negative effect on WoW at the moment as it promotes a play style that is completely at odds with what makes an mmo work. In addition longevity has been diminished a lot due to data mining.

[@atticratz6128]

Datamining and guides/walkthroughs diminish player discovery, experimentation, and ultimately enjoyment in my opinion. They’re spoilers! I don’t get the obsession with Arena in WoW either - I’m newer so I probably just don’t get it but Battlegrounds seem wayyy cooler

[@tenthirtyseven-v1]

I haven't watched the video yet but I'd like to answer for myself to why I've quit so many MMO's over the years. The one thing that always attracts me to MMO's is the word of mouth that "the community is really nice and welcoming to newbies" I've come to experience and learn over time that this is almost always wrong. You're only a newbie once and while everyone is learning, everyone's going to be understanding. As someone who always comes into MMOs later, when the community is mostly people at end game or beyond, I have never had a good experience with the community, It's gotten so bad at points that I've been forced to skip the story of a plot important dungeon or be left behind in the dust and have it be completed before I've even watched the first group of cutscenes, only to be followed with obsceneities and general rudeness. That's the worst it's got, but it's unfortunately not uncommon. So yes, I would rather play MMOs as a friend-only/solo experience. Funnily enough, I'd say it has some of the same community failings as fighting games, both require you to be there from the start, lest you face shittalk and an unwelcoming community.

[@Syngrafer]

You make a good point about that developers maybe shouldn't listen to players. In WoW: MoP->WoD: People complained that there were too many daily quests, so Blizzard removed daily quests almost entirely. WoD->Legion: People complained that there was too little content because of the lack of daily quests, so Blizzard made world quests. People hate world quests at this point. Legion->BFA: People complained that legendaries were too stupid, so they removed legendaries. (Then people complained that they wanted legendaries back, which they currently are in Shadowlands.) BFA->Shadowlands: People complained that there was too little RPG in this MMORPG, and too few impactful choices, so Blizzard added Covenants. Covenants ended up being one of the most hated features of all time. Shadowlands: People wanted an experience similar to the Mage Tower in Legion, so Blizzard added Torghast. Torghast is now commonly referred to as Choreghast, and is very disliked. To summarize: It seems that whenever Blizzard listens to player feedback, the players end up being upset.

[@DavidtheBard1]

All of those examples are missing the point, it wasn't "Blizz did as the players asked, look how it turned out bad!". It was that Blizzard improperly addressed the core issues. MoP->WoD people complained about dailies because they weren't fun, so they removed them, *but didn't replace them with something better*. World Quests in legion were well liked, Blizzard changed them in BFA to take longer and reward less. Legion legendaries were well liked, but their acquisition method was totally random, which was the aspect of them that wasn't liked. Covenants in Shadowlands claimed to offer impactful choices, but didn't. Mage tower was awesome because it was hard, rewarding, and *optional*. Torghast was hard, unrewarding, and mandatory. Literally every example you brought up involved blizzard taking player feedback into account (which was good don't get me wrong), and then botching the execution/design of their solutions. Not *oooo fickle playerbase can't be made happy*. It'd be like complaining that the milk in your fridge has gone sour, so instead of your roommate grabbing more at the store they just stop buying milk, and then when you ask why they didn't fix the problem they throw their hands up and say "man you're just impossible to please!"

[@Syngrafer]

@@DavidtheBard1 No no, trust me, I don't think I'm ever playing a Blizzard game again - I fucking hate them at this point, they're dishonest, money grubbing, psychopathic pieces of shits - I am in no way trying to defend them, all I'm trying to say is that it's very difficult to adapt to what players want when all they say is "I want x to be good" without explaining why. Blizzard is incredibly directionless it feels like, and I feel like Dragonflight might very well be one of the final expansions WoW ever has. The team just feels very done with the game, based on how Shadowlands felt like before I quit. TL;DR: I'm not trying to say that listening to feedback is bad, I'm just trying to say that it's really hard to know *exactly* what players want and like when you don't use a survey system like Runescape does. Which, I think, would help WoW a lot.

[@DavidtheBard1]

@@Syngrafer ah understood, I completely agree!

[@SemicolonExpected]

To be fair they heard the players and did the extremes of what players wanted. For example: I feel there is a middle ground between too many and few daily quests.

[@marocat4749]

@@DavidtheBard1 Ok terrible ervice and bad communicating is, you could say not adressing the issues or only superfficial is blizards fault. But its generally good advice not giving auience what they want but what they need without offending them (unless thats toprovoce a specific reaction to make them genuinly think)

[@Alex-js5lg]

It's not an MMO, but on the topic of each player having value: I had like a 0.75 k/d ratio and a 10% accuracy on MW2. A group of guys with 2.0+ k/d ratios picked me up and I played with them for years. Why? Because I pumped air support full of LMG rounds and stinger missiles because I didn't care about kills, then I'd kill a camper through a wall because I didn't care if I missed 95/100 shots on him, and then I'd go run haphazardly into the objective and cap it for our team. Even the "bad" players fit a role sometimes.

[@grapefruitsc5478]

Thank you for the fascinating watch, not as an MMO player myself (never played the games), but as a fan of other "dead" genres like real-time strategy and point-and-click adventures. If the quiet revival of the latter has taught me anything, though, it is that you probably won't recognize the genre when it returns, but that it should still fulfill the same core gameplay aesthetics. That's why I think your analysis here is so valuable to break down everything into core features of MMOs past, present, and hopefully future. Still, if I may provide my 2 cents as someone who knows next to nothing about these games: Regarding achieving social gameplay, is there a way to explicitly incentivize desired practices? For example, say there's an optional quest to research the history of your mount that requires finding your mount's sibling somewhere on the server. That may force you to interact with a stranger to find this mount and perhaps find people through knowledgeable intermediaries. And then if your mount receives a small boost close to its sibling, maybe incentivize playing with this random stranger (though the boost can be small enough to leave said stranger if the relationship is less than ideal). Regarding endgame, I think you touch on major categories like grinding, timegating, challenge, and player generated content/PvP, but perhaps automatically/randomly generated content could be added to the list? What would Rogue Legacy look like as an MMO? While leveling up and acquiring treasures could be key features of gameplay, what if progression was instead largely tied to player skill? Or just include Rogue-style raids like some of the final areas in the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games that let you keep items but restart you at level 1, leveling up as you progress through the raid?

[@Gyledresch]

Wow, and here I thought you were joking at the end of the last video. The one thing I think you missed, or didn't miss so much as only briefly hinted at, was the influence that the "rockstars" or "Uber Guilds" on a server used to have on driving the average player to want to put in even more time. It's an idea that gets a lot of hate now. The idea that some top group of 100 or 200 players on the server always had the best gear, killed the best content, and had the most money, and the vast majority of the player base would never even see that content and that gear until the next expansion, when the Uber kids moved on to the new stuff. I think the pursuit of that upper crust, the dream of one day breaking into it, the wow factor of seeing the same names, the same people, always walking around in gear you might never get to wear was a HUGE and deeply underappreciated part of the early success of games like Everquest and WoW. Until MMO's bring back a world where most people will have to look up, and look forward, and worry that they will never get to be one of the cool kids, i think the genre will stay dead. MMO communism has failed pretty spectacularly.

[@wyntrheart]

I initially wrote this comment on the previous video, but I think most of it is actually very relevant here as well: It's interesting to hear about the original late 90s early 00s having a lot of the design orientation and features that I've always wished for in MMOs. I was too young to know about those early MMOs, so I grew up in the era of WoW clones seeking to dethrone the aging king. I hated all of them, especially WoW. My ideal "dream game" since I was a child has always been an MMO, but I've never been able to find any real MMO that I can even enjoy, much less something approaching the "dream game". I don't want "content" or "endgame" or any kind of linear storyline. I don't even want leveling. I want a _world._ A dynamic, simulated, living world. I want _systems,_ not _content._ And it needs to have fun interactivity that makes the game world feel alive and real. "Grinding" shouldn't exist because combat should be fun and intrinsicly rewarding. I know every moment of a game can't be equally thrilling, but if one of the most fundamental interactions with the game feels like a chore that is simply a failure of game design. Moreover, the extrinsic value of in-game actions should be firmly rooted in the world instead of gaming abstractions like levelling. Your actions should be guided by in-world goals such as resources, reputation, protecting what you care about, destroying things you hate, or maybe even to just survive. Every aspect of an MMOs design ought to be built to contribute to one thing: bringing the player into a world that feels real. WoW is basically the epitome of everything I hate about MMOs, and its status as the eternal king of MMOs has filled me with despair and frustration for years. I do understand a little better what drew people to it now that I've watched this video, but ultimately the things that WoW had to offer weren't really what I think gives the MMO genre so much potential. WoW was about progression, much like any single-player game, and simply used the form of an MMO to magnify its scale and stakes. But I don't think an MMO should be about the player, it should be about the world. Thats the dream: stepping out of our reality and into a new one. The WoW classic phenomenon and the renewed interest in classic MMOs more generally gives me some hope that maybe we can start over and explore a sort of parallel universe of MMOs; an alternate timeline where the original design goals of the genre were refined and expanded on, instead of being abandoned. So long as we can avoid letting nostalgia and the desire to recreate the past overtake everything, this could be a chance to make real progress toward the true potential of the (mostly hypothetically) best and (presently) worst genre in gaming.

[@Titan360]

About the Final Problem: So, basically, the MMORPG needs to be broken down into even more genres that appeal to niche audiences. Perhaps such genres would work best with settings that are of a certain fantasy genre? Like, you make a non-competitive MMO for kids with simple rules in a light-hearted adventure setting with lots of cartoon physics, but you make a miserable, poverty-stricken game world with survival elements and situational permadeath mechanics to underscore the desperation. Perhaps a kind of dark, tongue-in-cheek humor setting for a competitive arena-based game set in an evil overlord's gladiatorial coliseum? A cutesy magical girl one that is MADE of social interactions where people form friendships in-game and players acquire different glamours to make their perfect custom costume?

[@Zeeaall]

I've long wanted an mmo to implement player-made dungeons and (possibly) raids or guild-made raids. Making dungeons other players could run would not only be super fun, but it would also give players something to do instead of boring daily grinds. It would also be relevant long term, as people should be able to upgrade them as time passed and new expansions were released. They could make some sort of soul catching mechanic, so killing mobs would let the player "catch it" - kind of like pokemon. Catching souls would allow the player to add the mob to the dungeon. Along side of it, either by crafting or some sort of gathering (or both), players could learn new design pieces for their dungeons. If implemented correctly, I think it could be awesome :)