[Uteunayr]

Originally Posted by Genedin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Damn son. Every post you make fits the sentiment of most everyone I game with and probably everyone who plays p99. Problem is it's a niche market or at least the companies think so. They are all about getting people playing and since wow was so successful with the fastfood quest model they are copying that. I'm kind of hoping this will fail and show they mmo production companies (if there are anymore) that they need to change things.

Well, before I write my response to this, I'd like anyone passing through here to check out Jim Sterling's amazing discussion on Survival Horror. Now, I know Survival Horror isn't the thing for everyone, but the point he makes about Survival Horror is something that is very similar to the "niche" market that we make up.

Note this is going to be a very long post, as I sort of just started writing about developers and niche markets, and then shifted into the single greatest reason why WoW was successful, and finally made some notes as to why I have hope for EverQuest Next, even if it isn't exactly the EverQuest we remember.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...ival-of-Horror

"This is an industry that would rather make no money, than some money. That would have nothing if it couldn't have it all."

"Another silly reason is based on this belief that the audience will be turned off and bored if you're not waving combat in its face like some massive swinging dick."

So, with that, I will respond.

Yes, the type of game we want is not the massive, wide spread game that will usher in a new era of gaming. Sadly, that's never going to happen. WoW was perfectly timed to catch the influx of gamers into the market that are more "casual" about their attitude toward gaming. Gaming isn't their sole form of entertainment, nor does it necessarily become their most dominant form of entertainment, and that's fine. For such people, a game like EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, DAoC, and the rest... These games do not work for them at all, because generally, you need to spend a great deal of time. Perhaps not all day, of course, but the majority of your entertainment time should be devoted to these experiences.

And when WoW was released, internet was reaching a point in which pretty much everyone had it, most people had a computer that could run it, and, most importantly, it was rooted in a game that had a huge fanbase on the basis of Blizzard among many gamers. So gamers were more easily able to get their friends into World of Warcraft, hence the boom of population to around 4.5 million in the first two quarters WoW was out.

Gamers could get their casual friends who now have computers, and now have internet. And because they could get them into it, and because the game is designed to be more easily consumed than the experience offered by EverQuest/SWG/DAoC, etc., WoW exploded in population.

Now, in this way, I am talking entirely from personal experience, rather than just theory about the growth of WoW in its market. I operated a guild in WoW for 3 years, and raid lead it to be in the top 3 of my server, so what I describe here, I know to be true, at least for my server. What you have is a population that perpetuates itself. You have 10% of the population quit, and then as they quit, they go on in their lives, but want to see their friends again. What is the best way? To play games with them. What game do the majority of their friends play? WoW. So they rejoin WoW, because it isn't about the game play, it isn't about the play style, it's about their friends being clustered in the game. So as that 10% return, another 10% quit, and continue the cycle.

We have seen steady increases, and since Lich King, steady decreases, as people are breaking into and out of this system.

The problem is, every game since then has been trying to recreate WoW, but no game that is created now will have the social, or economic temporal positioning to become WoW. You just can't. So what do you do?

Game developers have decided that if they can't have it all, they'll accept nothing. So they make WoW clones. They appeal to players on the grounds of "Star Wars > Warcraft", they appeal to "You're not in Azeroth anymore!", they do all this stuff to try and defeat WoW at its game, but they fail to realize that you can't beat WoW at its' game, because WoW doesn't have a game it is playing. It really doesn't. It is the people concentrated into one place. If you took the entire WoW population, transferred them to a new MMO, it doesn't matter how bad that MMO is, so long as all their friends are there. Even shitty content is made really, really fun when you have friends with you.

So, game developers keep seeking the Holy Grail, they keep seeking to supplant the population of WoW, which is fucking stupid.

There is a class of gamers out there who love MMOs. Who played old school EverQuest, SWG, DAoC, who remember what MMOs used to be before they all tried to be WoW. We are out there, we are starving for a game that will let us do something other than WoW.

Game developers now think that every MMO player will get bored if you don't give them quest, after quest to handle and deal with, rather than just letting them explore the world and progress in their own time.

We are a starved part of the market. We're not just a niche market, because there are many of us out there who want something better from the market, but the market isn't providing it because every game developer is going after their Holy Grail.

This is why my sole hope right now is for EverQuest Next. The developers have been talking, less along the lines of "Lets kill WoW!", and far more along the lines of "Lets make a game that appeals to a corner of the market, and we can make profit off of that.". SoE is now a company that, although they have betrayed us time and time again in trying to achieve the Holy Grail (look what they did to EQ and SWG to try and stop the expansion of WoW, the CU and NGE and shit), I think they have realized they can't. I think SoE has realized that if they make a great game that appeals to a small corner of the market, making some money is better than making no money.

Heck, EQ Live is still around, and still profitable. It may not be WoW profitable, but it is profitable.

So my hope is that SoE is making a game that appeals to our community, to this side of the market, while at the same time trying to reach out to the Minecraft/Rust style market to introduce them into MMOs. Those players know hard work, they know challenge. When you spend 40 hours building a mega fortress in Rust, or mining shit in Minecraft to build a great cathedral, you learn what it is like to "grind", to work to achieve something. That's a market that isn't looking for a "casual" gaming experience, and I think SoE realizes that if they can make a MMO that is interesting, and fun to our side of the market, as well as grab another market that respects challenge, and difficulty, that they can make another profitable game to add to their large selection.

The story of EverQuest has always been in the background, it is nebulous, its in the environment for you to go out there and find, rather than being consumed and then ignored. Mix this with a market of people who like to build stuff on a voxel style world... Well, it is easy to see how these styles are not mutually exclusive, and how it is plausible that there can be a profitable game like this. It brings together two markets that probably never would have met before now. Rather than grinding out quests on the world, the gameplay is something entirely new, something dynamic, something that can be challenging and unique enough for us (the p99 style players), while being dynamic enough for the Minecraft/Rust players that are used to constantly changing worlds.

I can only hope SoE has failed at killing WoW enough that they realized they need to stop trying that.