The problem with traditional MMORPGs

In my opinion they need to switch the way they have the subscriptions. I for one might not play for a week or so and it wastes the time I paid for. Maybe if you log in that day is charged or something. The gameplay isn't the problem for me, just the wasted payment for the week or longer breaks I take between playing such a game.

Coincidence that you wrote this aricle the week I got into Aion. XD
The traditional MMORPGS are meant to be that way. Alot of grind and trying to be the best player on the server,whether it is economically, politically, or physically. In the end, it just a second life( no pun intended). Trying to be that character that does things and get praise by players and NPCS. After awhile, it does get boring and it just the same thing over and over.

What can improve on is to make it way more story driven. What SWTOR did right was the voice overs. It does help and give dept to the characters and also gives meaning. The problem is there is not specific goal to an mmorpg. In rpgs, we got one goal, and we go through the game trying to gain sopmethign to achieve it. That what makes rpgs so great You become that character. But in mmorpg, you are not set in stone. You can do anything, but the problem is with that is you have no story or goal to reach up too. In all mmorpgs its the same thing, trying to be the best. But that really is similar to life, it is really improbable.

Also, the time that is needed to be the best.

Leave the end game part of the mmo's the same for the most part but make the questing much more story/pvp driven. I've played quite a few mmo's and I never even pay attention to the story when I level. I have tried to but eventually it just gets to boring and I just start grinding. I guess I would say that when i'm questing I fell completely detached from the story of the game. I'm not exactly sure what would fix it or if i'm just too over mmo's now to go back to them.

I think the biggest problem is that they force you down a single path for advancement, you have to kill everything. Why, as a healer for example, would I become a better healer by killing 8000 boars?

This is one thing that Star Wars: Galaxies did amazingly well; you advanced in a particular skill by doing it, what a concept! I'm not saying that it was the be all and end all for everyone and I'm not trying to start an argument about it's strengths vs weaknesses. I'm just saying that if these games gave you some choice and flexibility in how to progress your character they wouldn't become stale so fast.

Also, do away with levelling in the common sense. Just because you're a level 50 and I'm a level 1, doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to kill you if you're AFK. It should let you have new abilities and stat buffs definitely, but being unable to hit a character that is a certain number of levels above you just because of the level difference is BS. The worst culprits of this are the random wildlife that are high levels just to make an area inaccessible to new characters. Suddenly these deer and cows will smell you a mile away, come charging for no reason other than the level gap and one shot you. Yup I feel heroic.

Do away with these 2 things and guess what.... you've got a game that will give people a reason to play other than to go chop chop pew pew for hours and hours to get xp so that they can go chop chop pew pew for hours and hours for gear.

In all honesty, if I take vanilla WoW for example, the beauty of pvp and end game raiding came from group play(remember the 40 man groups!!) and grinding Reputation. I took a long time to get the real good items and when you did you actually had an advantage on day to day gamers. When I look at SWTOR all I see is a 2-3 week slow pace game time to hit max level and then a few gold here and there to get top level pvp gear, I don't see any actually reason for playing to get advantages from gear because it is readily available to all.

Yes there is grinding involved in a good mmo game, however like all good things if there is no real challenge nor actual benefit to "grinding" your way to that gear then, for myself at least, you lose interest and don't renew membership.

Let's hope for the best and see how GW2 will fare.

SithHunter said:
This is one thing that Star Wars: Galaxies did amazingly well; you advanced in a particular skill by doing it, what a concept! I'm not saying that it was the be all and end all for everyone and I'm not trying to start an argument about it's strengths vs weaknesses. I'm just saying that if these games gave you some choice and flexibility in how to progress your character they wouldn't become stale so fast.

I forgot how much fun Star Wars: Galaxies was when it first came out, I wish there would be more games like that

The Traditional MMO is dead IMO. Traditional MMO had the battle mechanics they had due to limitations. Games like GW2 couldn't have been made years ago to much success. Secondly, MMOs are trying to stop being as grindy as they used to be. Games like WoW will still be popular, but GW2 and the like are taking control of the MMO market.

Zerosama0000 said: The Traditional MMO is dead IMO. Traditional MMO had the battle mechanics they had due to limitations. Games like GW2 couldn't have been made years ago to much success. Secondly, MMOs are trying to stop being as grindy as they used to be. Games like WoW will still be popular, but GW2 and the like are taking control of the MMO market.

I believe the traditional mmorpgs are the one you select and do your skills. I like that more than those mindless hack and slash.

Well yeah we have to say grinding is inevitably all part of an MMORPG

Sometimes, when I'm bored with all-out guns-n'-blazing action games and/or first person shooter games, I do wish to play grindy games (kinda weird, eh?)

Besides, grinding is actually pretty rewarding by itself. After all the hours you've invested on the game, eventually you'll get to see the power of character you made.

The point is, nearly all MMORPG is all about character level. Kill weird creatures to level up. The core mechanics there by itself is grindy already. I'm not saying it's wrong or anything, as the matter of fact, sometimes I quite enjoyed grinding, and in the end, we're back to this concluding quotation.

"If you're looking for an MMO that eliminates grind you might as well give up on the genre," I completely agree on this, though I can't say much about The Old Republic, since I haven't played it myself (and have no intention to).

I associate MMO's with grinding. The problem is there just needs to more variability to the grinding through different and unique questlines that may have completely different gameplay mechanics to keep things fresh.

I hate grinding it's so boring and repetitive, well sometimes I do like it but it really depends. Anyways I pretty much stopped playing mmorpgs because they're too frustrating lol.

TheBizzle1 said: I associate MMO's with grinding. The problem is there just needs to more variability to the grinding through different and unique questlines that may have completely different gameplay mechanics to keep things fresh.

I agree with this. To keep the game fresh is as to update the game to a better standard through almost every perspective.

If you complain about grind, you should just get rid of the idea of leveling up. That's what RPGs do. What we as gamers hope for is developers thinking up of new ways to present these elements.

I think that its the MMORPGs that need to change, because its the role playing part that gets reppetative and boring. Unlike League of Legends and Worlds of Tanks which are both Great MMOs but dont feature the traditional game playing. I think the future of online gaming is in these types of games and MMO battle Arena games.

MMOs are fine as long as they figure out a way to keep players happy with their end game. People get bored from not having anything to do so they stop playing the games. Content and the rewards is what keeps people not the way they leveled up.

grind isnt necessarily bad, but to much like runescape is horrible

I have to side on MMO's focus primarily on grinding. It's a bad long-term blood clotting mechanic but that's what made it the way it is now. Unless a title presents a new way of playing like battle arena's or unorthodox methods, it'll be stick in that endless loop of grinding and monthly paying.
One major change I would love to see is the monthly payments because as many have already mentioned, there's no way every player will spend ever last second of their paid minutes. Perhaps redeeming day passes or something of that nature where you get to pay for the days you want to play instead.

im actually big on grinding, im not big on grinding quest's. i like games that give you lots of exp when you sit down for an hour just killing enemy's instead of being forced to do quests in order to get any viable exp. like perfect world, you get GARBAGE exp for killing enemy's that are even higher levels then you, but you will get like 5000 exp for killing ten of them in a quest. but in maplestory, when i do quests i dont level up for hours, but when i jsut sit in a high level area and grind, ill level up almost three time as fast... when i play an mmo of any type... i dont to go talk to this guy, kill this rat 5 times, and then go talk to this girl and kill 10 giant rats, and so on... i just want to kill the freakin rats... but ill get like 2 exp from each kill which in high levels is bogus.... but for some reason this women can give me 5000 exp for killing 5 rats instead of the ten i would get for doing it on my own....

RDemon15 said: I have to side on MMO's focus primarily on grinding. It's a bad long-term blood clotting mechanic but that's what made it the way it is now. Unless a title presents a new way of playing like battle arena's or unorthodox methods, it'll be stick in that endless loop of grinding and monthly paying.
One major change I would love to see is the monthly payments because as many have already mentioned, there's no way every player will spend ever last second of their paid minutes. Perhaps redeeming day passes or something of that nature where you get to pay for the days you want to play instead.

In other countries, they do time cards. not by months, by hours. So say you want to pay 20 bucks you get x amount of hours.And it is fair.

ub3rchief said: im actually big on grinding, im not big on grinding quest's. i like games that give you lots of exp when you sit down for an hour just killing enemy's instead of being forced to do quests in order to get any viable exp. like perfect world, you get GARBAGE exp for killing enemy's that are even higher levels then you, but you will get like 5000 exp for killing ten of them in a quest. but in maplestory, when i do quests i dont level up for hours, but when i jsut sit in a high level area and grind, ill level up almost three time as fast... when i play an mmo of any type... i dont to go talk to this guy, kill this rat 5 times, and then go talk to this girl and kill 10 giant rats, and so on... i just want to kill the freakin rats... but ill get like 2 exp from each kill which in high levels is bogus.... but for some reason this women can give me 5000 exp for killing 5 rats instead of the ten i would get for doing it on my own....

I know what you mean. I hated Perfect world for that. I just want to kill monster, but in maplestory the quest give horrible experience other than the PQs. There should be equal amount of experience. Im playing aiona and its great. When I grind, I level up just as fast if Im doing quest. And bot has its vaules. If I do grind, I get drop and good exp . When I quest, I get experience and currency. Its win win. the only reason I want to grind in that game is to collect the vaulble drop. The drop I aiming for is selling like hot cakes. Saw some in the auction house and there is barely any left. Only those ridicually ( this word doesnt explain how ridculous how overprice it si) item. It annoys me, but hey, it helps me sells mine faster. XD

Oh, it's not just the endless supply of fetch quests - there are a great many other traditional MMO trends that outstayed their welcome long ago.

The PvP combat that's completely rigged against any class that isn't a Wizard. The extortionate amounts of gold needed for regular shop items coupled with the mere handful of pennies a tough quest offers. The instant death rats around every corner at every single level. The item/level-robbing death penalties that more often than not make any and all attempts at progress completely pointless. The nigh-impossible mazes always placed directly outside the starting newbie areas, overcrowded with monsters 50-odd levels above you and incomprehensible to even try and make out on the map. The utter lack of genuine co-operation that comes as an unintended side effect of the anti-killstealing mechanics.

That's why I'm looking forward to seeing how Guild Wars 2 takes all these elements of crap design and gives them all a much-needed boot to the throat.

SithHunter said:
I think the biggest problem is that they force you down a single path for advancement, you have to kill everything. Why, as a healer for example, would I become a better healer by killing 8000 boars?

This is one thing that Star Wars: Galaxies did amazingly well; you advanced in a particular skill by doing it, what a concept! I'm not saying that it was the be all and end all for everyone and I'm not trying to start an argument about it's strengths vs weaknesses. I'm just saying that if these games gave you some choice and flexibility in how to progress your character they wouldn't become stale so fast.

Also, do away with levelling in the common sense. Just because you're a level 50 and I'm a level 1, doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to kill you if you're AFK. It should let you have new abilities and stat buffs definitely, but being unable to hit a character that is a certain number of levels above you just because of the level difference is BS. The worst culprits of this are the random wildlife that are high levels just to make an area inaccessible to new characters. Suddenly these deer and cows will smell you a mile away, come charging for no reason other than the level gap and one shot you. Yup I feel heroic.

Do away with these 2 things and guess what.... you've got a game that will give people a reason to play other than to go chop chop pew pew for hours and hours to get xp so that they can go chop chop pew pew for hours and hours for gear.

Guess you haven't played EVE Online ;)

me likey

May be Survarium will become a normal MMORPG

an MMORPG where there are no levels for base advancement... all things are learned through using and exploring !!