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Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 11:08 am
by Xest
OohhoO wrote:Still, by your logic WoW must be 10 times better than DAoC was at it's peak...
Nope, just has to be better enough than the competition. It's hard to quantify how good a game is, again it's subjective, but game ratings are the closest quantification I can think of offhand and good enough to explain this concept with. So, say game A is rated 95% and game B is rated 90%, if you have a pool of 10 million players, it doesn't mean game A will have a 5% higher playerbase because it's 5% better, it means each individual in the pool will likely think "Which game shall I spend money on", the answer is going to be the better game - obviously it's a little more complex than that due to the subjectiveness of how good a game is but in general you get the idea.

To simplify it into an analogy, you have two loafs of bread that taste largely the same, are identical otherwise except one of the loaves has 2 extra slices in it, people would rather get more for their money in general and go for the one with the extra slices, but the odd few might go for the shorter one because their personal feel is that the shorter loaf tastes better even if the others don't think it tastes any different.
Ovi wrote:You also can't compare different periods in time. There is a much larger audience for MMORPGs now than during DAoCs peak.
That isn't entirely true, in DAoC's first few years there was a major MMO peak with Everquest, Lineage and so forth still having millions of players (not as much as WoW individually, but almost as many, if not more than combined), you're right in that there was a difference however - it was largely Asian players that built up the bulk of players then. This peak died away during DAoC's lifetime and WoW brought the MMO playerbase flying back up.
Ovi wrote:Going back to the point about WoW's engine looking dated, that was not just because of the development time, but also partly by design. Blizzard purposely aimed it at a lower spec machine, in order to allow as many as possible to play it. The figures would suggest that it was probably a good decision.
I certainly understand the argument for supporting people with lower spec machines but it's perfectly feasible to produce a scalable graphics engine and that's the real problem. You can have graphics AND playability, this is hard for some companies with low budgets nowadays because of the amount of time that goes into building a game, but Blizzard simply didn't and now, most certainly doesn't have that excuse - they had the resources, funds and experience built up from earlier successes (Warcraft 1 - 3, Starcraft etc.) to achieve this but didn't.

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 11:15 am
by Xest
OohhoO wrote:I also don't think it will dent WoWs figures all that much. For a start LotRo is aimed at a very different market segment. Probably only more mature & RP-oriented players will migrate from WoW to LotRo, which probably isn't all that big a number really.
Exactly, perhaps I've not been clear by what I mean by better, I'm suggesting that if the majority of players prefer it it's better, which, from a business perspective it is because that's the goal. This doesn't mean I don't recognise that some individuals may feel LotR is better, be it because they prefer the lore, the graphics, the gameplay or whatever.

LotR will never pull away the majority of WoW players because it's just not their type of MMO (to be consistent in terminology - to them it's just not as good), however it may attract a fringe few who have never been terribly content with WoW because although it does well in general, it's just not their preferred type of MMO.

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 11:44 am
by Gandelf
I always felt that the end game with WoW was non-existent. Once I got to level 60 I lost all interest. Nowt to do except mine for ore. I can now get to level 70, so there is some new interest (currently my Mage is level sixty-eight, but when (or "if", because I'm playing LotRO now and have cancelled my WoW subs) I get to level 70, then the non-existent end game will kick in again and I will find it all terribly boring. The fact that Blizz brought out an expansion, would suggest that they realised that "old" players needed something more after level 60.

DAoC's end game is better, with PvP etc.

Whether LotRO's end game will be better remains to be seen, but I certainly think there is a greater potential for a strong community, which will perhaps make players stay.

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 12:17 pm
by Xest
Gandelf wrote:I always felt that the end game with WoW was non-existent. Once I got to level 60 I lost all interest. Nowt to do except mine for ore. I can now get to level 70, so there is some new interest (currently my Mage is level sixty, but when (or "if", because I'm playing LotRO now and have cancelled my WoW subs) I get to level 70, then the non-existent end game will kick in again and I will find it all terribly boring. The fact that Blizz brought out an expansion, would suggest that they realised that "old" players needed something more after level 60.

DAoC's end game is better, with PvP etc.

Whether LotRO's end game will be better remains to be seen, but I certainly think there is a greater potential for a strong community, which will perhaps make players stay.
It's a problem with all level based MMOs tbh. I'm strongly against level based character advancement because it truly is so limited in scope. This is why, I still feel UO had one of the best character advancement systems because it was dynamic, you basically had 700 skill points then about 40 skills or something which ranged between 1 and 100, you could get like:

100 magery
100 sheild
100 inscribing
100 magic resist
100 meditation
100 some skill that increased magic damage I can't remember the name of
100 healing

You could basically mix and match the skills, with the above you can have a sheild mage that can inscribe and heal.

Mixing and matching some skills had benefits, for example magery let you cast a basic poison but if you gained 100 poisoning the poison spell let you cast a much stronger poison. You could create all sorts of blends, from pure fighters with crushing, thrusting and slashing weapons to bard-mages with blacksmithing. You didn't even have to go to 100 in each skill, you could go like 4x50, 5x100 to be partially skilled in some skills to become more diverse (for example many tanks still gained 20% magery so they could cast basic teleport).

You could lock skills, unlock skills, gain skills, drop skills whenever you felt like it meaning you could change your character as you saw fit. Skills were gained by actually using them, I had a treasure hunter who gained skills be treasure hunting for example.

This alone isn't necessarily going to make an MMO uber of course, UO had shed loads of content also but it goes a long way. The content it had ranged from playing Chess, Backgammon etc. in bars to hunting, killing, skinning animals then turning the leather into armour through to treasure hunting and a much more content filled fishing system than WoW. House ownership/decorating could be a laugh too, I haven't tried it personally but you can even now design the entire shape and multifloor layout of your house in it.

Just wish companies would stop worrying that they need to copy Everquest -> DAoC -> WoW and start copying and updating the UO option! Companies are just too scared to take the risk though.

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 1:20 pm
by OohhoO
I agree Xest, UOs character-development concept was very flexible. Crafting has never been as good since either IMO. It was also a lot of fun running it as a shard & making new things with scripts. Lots of things were possible with the basic UO system. It's a crying shame it has never been developed further.

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 2:11 pm
by Xest
OohhoO wrote:I agree Xest, UOs character-development concept was very flexible. Crafting has never been as good since either IMO. It was also a lot of fun running it as a shard & making new things with scripts. Lots of things were possible with the basic UO system. It's a crying shame it has never been developed further.
It had so many cool little things that you'd not notice for ages, even little things like the gargoyle picks rocked but because there was so much content 80% of people never even found them. The rares system was cool partly because there was such a varied selection nearly everyone got a rare item of some kind which made everyone unique.

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 2:29 pm
by Ovi
Gandelf wrote:I always felt that the end game with WoW was non-existent. Once I got to level 60 I lost all interest. Nowt to do except mine for ore. I can now get to level 70, so there is some new interest (currently my Mage is level sixty, but when (or "if", because I'm playing LotRO now and have cancelled my WoW subs) I get to level 70, then the non-existent end game will kick in again and I will find it all terribly boring. The fact that Blizz brought out an expansion, would suggest that they realised that "old" players needed something more after level 60.

DAoC's end game is better, with PvP etc.

Whether LotRO's end game will be better remains to be seen, but I certainly think there is a greater potential for a strong community, which will perhaps make players stay.

For me the end-game in Wow was much better than DAoC. I prefer PvE to PvP, and the DAoC PvE at 50 just isn't as good as WOW. My favourite time for DAoC end-game was just after the release of ToA, as it introduuced a lot of PvE, from solo to group to realm.

Wow has a lot more of that type of challenging end-game, and regularly adds more. It doesn't suit everyone, it takes a lot of time and dedication to be in a raiding guild. It did suit me for a long time though.

I did prefer the PvP in DAoC, although funnily enough that stopped being as good almost as ToA was released, ML abilities combined with RAs just made it into too much of an 8v8 game.

I don't see LotR being that much different either, once you have been playing for 3 months you will have done everything and start getting bored. Probably quicker than with DAoC and Wow, since this is the third time around!

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 2:56 pm
by OohhoO
Ovi wrote:I don't see LotR being that much different either, once you have been playing for 3 months you will have done everything and start getting bored. Probably quicker than with DAoC and Wow, since this is the third time around!
4th time around for me! :D
Meridian59 (a REAL PvP game!)
UO
DAoC
LotRo

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 3:55 pm
by Ovi
OohhoO wrote:4th time around for me! :D
Meridian59 (a REAL PvP game!)
UO
DAoC
LotRo

More than 3 for me too, although over a shorter period;

DAoC; SWG; EQ2; WOW; Eve online.

Was just using gandelf's example of DAoC -> WoW -> LotRo :)

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 4:54 pm
by Lieva
oohhoo mentioned a really nifty game earlier in the week.
perhaps if i leave a forum cookie out here he will tell y'all all about it

but basically you got to play as the bad guys in a dungeon and needed to work out where the monsters went where and have a seperate room for the spiders :)

remember which it was oohhoo?

*puts a forum cookie on a stick and dangles it in the thread*