Why Modern MMOs Suck, And How We Can Stop Them From Sucking

Over the last few years, new MMOs have been consistently stale and unimaginative. Here's what's wrong with them, and what they need to do to get better.

[Anon7349]

-Blade and Soul: Makes combat fun, Destroys what you once thought wasn't possible in MMOs

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

-Guildwars 2: Fun Combat, New MMO Mechanics, Good PVP, etc

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

-FF14: Potential to be Amazing

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[Letros]

Somehow I don't believe anything about Blade and Soul, Inhouse NCSoft games are nothing but a grindfest, that is what the Korean players love, there's a reason why Aion is huge in Korean compared to NA/EU.

Guild Wars 2 is going to be a beast for sure, Arena.net has basically taken every aspect of GW1 that was weak and transformed it into something awesome, it's a day 1 buy for me.

FF14, I can't say much, I don't follow it, maybe I'll look into it closer to release.

I think Star Wars: The Old Republic will really break the barrier open for how a modern MMO should be done, it will play out more like a game, not a chore.

[Anon7349]

Whether blade and soul is a grind fest doesn't even matter when the combat is actually fun. Killing an enemy, is insanely fun every time you do it.

When you can physically dodge your enemies attack, Punch him a few times in his weak spot, block his attack, knock your enemy out, pick him up by his head then throw him across the screen... the gameplay is fun. No Exceptions.

Guild Wars 2 is continuing to blow my mind right now, I really like what they did with the races/classes, Quests, Quality over Quantity skills, etc

[Darkfiber]

The Old Republic, even though it is fully voiced and actually has a story, looks very vanilla in terms of everything else. It's just another MMO in terms of combat, crafting, roles, layout, mob behaviour, etc etc. I don't think it'll be anything special. Sure, people will play it at first, but it doesn't know what it's trying to be. It's trying to cater to both single player RPG fans and MMO fans, but it will fail in the end at both, simply because a HUGE portion of MMO players don't want story, they want to grind to max level and get loot at fast as possible. They will get bored sitting through dozens of hours of dialog and decision making. Most of them don't WANT to do that stuff. As for the story stuff itself, sure it'll attract more single player RPG fans who have never played an MMO before, but they will quickly get turned off by the boring and repetitive combat, the stupid mob behaviour, and most importantly, the $15 a month fee. This game has had fatal flaws since its inception. You can't be everything to everyone, it just doesn't work that way. The only way you'll get single player people actually staying with it for a long time is to make it free to play, which they wont. "console" and single player game people don't want to pay monthly fees, which is why they aren't "MMO people" in the first place. They are two very different demographics. They play a game for a few days to a week, beat it and move on to another. One game isn't enough to hold their attention span for longer than that, especially if they have to pay monthly for it.

I am looking forward to Guild Wars 2 as well though. I never played the first (as I was unfortunately playing WoW at the time, ugh) but it does look pretty refreshing and the combat looks extremely fun. And you can't lose with no monthly fees. I'll be getting that for sure.

[Darkfiber]

Simple, stop trying to copy WoW. Just because it's popular with midwestern housewives doesn't mean it's a good game, it means it's a good chatroom to lose your pathetic life to.

[matthewschrager]

Agreed. WoW is great and all, but I think people look at its success and falsely assume that every successful MMO must look just like WoW. It's a bad assumption, and I think it's causing the MMO genre to stagnate.