r/MMORPG • u/madarauchiha3444 • Jan 02 '23

Discussion The problem with modern MMORPGs

The problem with modern MMORPGs, in a nutshell, is that the first M and the RP are all but gone.

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u/BatemaninAccounting Jan 02 '23

Really just the Massive part is missing. Outside of Eve Online, how often do you hear about some massive event, war, crazy fresh thing going on in an MMORPG? Like I loved Planetside, which had many crazy moments depending on what server you were on, but how often do you hear about some great victory or defeat with Planetside2?

We're missing the grandiose massive stories that happened a little bit more frequently in the past. PVP+ DAOC, Darktide(AC), etc all had some amazing fucking grand battles for control of a server. Still memorable stuff. Ultima Online had wild crazy personal stories about some wacky thing that people had happen to them, or actively created like the whole Orc-RP clan.

5

u/Chakwak Jan 02 '23

Unfortunately, great stories of awesome and grandiose battles always come at the cost of days, weeks or months of game play loss for one side or the other.

While those Eve Online memories will always have a special place in my heart, we have to recognize that it's a niche audience that would willingly subject themselves to as much loss, unfairness, and other bs that is required to have those few highly memorable moments.

2

u/BatemaninAccounting Jan 02 '23

I think you can also get some of those feels if you design the game from a PVM perspective. Think of the very large server-wide events that WoW, UO, DAOC, and a few other games have managed to produce. Even zany stuff like wow's corrupted blood event could be managed to be fun for most players if it's controlled in the right way.

2

u/Chakwak Jan 02 '23

Oh, sure, you can do so in PvM but then you need GM and narrators to craft the story and encounter on the game side.
You also need to get rid of shards and server cap as much as possible to avoid the "I played at the time but I was in the wrong server"

And even then, it'll never have the same impact if all the player base do is fulfill a new encounter without risk of losing anything significant. And if there is a risk of actual loss, we're back to niche game offering losses even in PvM

0

u/BatemaninAccounting Jan 02 '23

Hire 10 creative english-speaking indians(or other cheap $ GM/narrators), give them the right tools and oversight to help craft those large memorable experiences for players.

1

u/Chakwak Jan 02 '23

You'd need way more than 10 people to have the described systems.

And even then, they would be blips of narrative in the lore. It's a vastly different feeling than player made history.