How can we save the World of Warcraft and MMRPGs in general?

How can we save the World of Warcraft and MMRPGs in general?

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you can't save something that's lore has been r*ped into the ground.

Noice. I'm an amateur dev researching making an MMO. What kind of setting do you find most appealing for one?

You started from the wrong place.

Its going to be DOA like 99% of other indie multiplayer games that require large playerbases.

You can't. People are getting tired of playing with other people (see: Holla Forums, non main stream YouTubers, non main stream Twitch users). They love the grind whether they admit it or not, but when you start introducing other players, you heighten the entire party's chance of success or failure. A lot of people would rather stick to trial-and-error gameplay or a strict power grind.

In other words, focus on that grind and make it something NOT IN A TOLKEIN-INSPIRED FUZZY FAIRY PIXIE FUCK WORLD FOR ONCE, CHRIST WHY IS THIS THE GO TO FOR FANTASY FICTION WRITERS ARGHHHHHH

And additionally, don't do a top-down isometric. It will be thrown onto the pile.

Mercy killing.

The setting doesn't matter as much as one thing, the gameplay.
For the love of fuck, if you make it please don't copy the WoW style of combat. Go with something actually fun and original.

He'll make either a hack and slash or grand strategy by your words. Or a third person j-inspired-rpg. That's how this often goes.

By not copying WoW.

That's why I said researching.

I'm definitely keeping that in my mind. I've only ever played Runescape and Guild Wars. I hate the post 90s Blizzard art style so I think I'm in no danger of copying WOW.
Have you seen Lost Ark?youtube.com/watch?v=aAwWd87J450 The combat looks way more engaging than most RPGs I see out there.

Ancient India.

While the gameplay does matter. I still think the setting does too. Something that inspires curiosity and exploration over minmaxing and rushing to the end game. And reading the actual quest text instead of following markers.

Another question for everyone, expecially the more experienced MMO players: Is turn based a major turn off for this genre? I don't think I've ever seen one, but that advantages seem obvious to me(lower connection speed needed) but I've never seen one. People seem to still love turn based in offline RPGs. (Pokemon, Disgaea, Persona etc.)

Thought of another question. How important is PvP to you? Do you like some DayZ type kill who you like whenever, wherever, type of rules? PvP only in certain areas, badlands, or even just an arena? Would you play a MMO that's purely PvE?

Ok so it'll be completely different, you'll have [WoW feature], [WoW feature], [WoW feature], with [WoW feature] and [WoW mechanics] blended with [WoW gameplay], but unlike most MMOs it'll use [WoW feature] with [WoW mechanics]! So as you can see it's completely different than WoW and be completely new and fresh experience.

t. literally everyone who thinks they know how to fix MMOs

This post isn't just about setting but overall what a game needs to work.

-Good, original setting, doesn't matter what.
-Lore and worldbuilding. Really throw yourself at crafting this world you want to become reality.
-Serviceable gameplay.
-If unable to make good gameplay, make the statcrunching fun and different builds across the board.
-Make it clear what your fucking stats do so you can calculate them, god damn.
-Loot that's fun to grind.

Always remember that you are not trying to one-up WoW, but are trying to become your own thing.

If your MMO has such a concept as "rushing to the endgame" then your MMO is fundamentally flawed and your mentality is still stuck on the WoW formula.

Quest markers, same thing. A quest marker implies that you're again designing your quests as a themepark, the game is literally telling you where to go and what to do. It's not a "quest", it's a merry go round ride. MMOs are like the epitome of open world freedom, it's a massive open world where you can do whatever the fuck you want and go where ever the fuck you want and join with people and meet strangers along the way while you explore, so why the hell are you putting the player on rails with some quest shit?

I actually considered making a game with that setting. Not MMO but some kind of RPG based on The Mahabharata.

Good points.
Definitely focusing on these two. I dream big so I'd like a franchise so I'm going extra hard on fleshing out a world I could to multiple stories in multiple formats in. Comics, shows, merch, etc.
Good point. The question is how to not turn off the casual players who don't want to put that kind of effort into playing a video game.
What makes loot fun for you?

I definitely agree with this. That whole "you are the chosen one who the world needs to complete this epic quest!" never worked for me in an MMO because 1000 other people on the same loop as you on the same server really breaks the illusion. My ideal MMO would be akin to Mount and Blade in that there is no 'main' more a system of reputation building and dynamically created quests.

You don't. You let them die.

Sci fi wild west with a touch of lovecraftian horror lurking within.

Why would we want to? MMOs are inherently cancerous, unless one was made by a dev who really didn't want to make money.

Make another party based pseudo MMO like Guild Wars 1. It's less risky and probably easier to make than a proper sandbox MMO, and doesn't have the same pitfalls of trying to beat WoW at the themepark MMO game (If making a 'good' themepark MMO is even possible). There's a nice open niche for that type of game on the market right now.

Combat can be simplistic for all I care. I want good player interaction, economy and crafting systems. I like the formula Runescape went with, it's mostly pretty good for non-sandbox MMOs.
No auction houses for fuck's sake.

Sorry that wasn't about the setting, but I'd take a general medieval whatever with different looking biomes and areas.

I'm only the player. If I don't care about the setting, I wouldn't be inclined to read quest texts and explore areas either.

Fulfill just one of these, and you will have already surpassed WoW

I don't mind the idea of quests in MMOs personally, but you'd have to forget about how other games treat them as some epic story bullshit.

Personally I'd make a quest something that isn't really a thing. You talk to an NPC, and they tell you about some predicament or interesting thing somewhere, and nothing happens. No popups, no quest logs, no "Quest started!", no [QUEST ITEM]. It's just information that you can follow if you feel like it. Or maybe it's not even an NPC, maybe there's a huge locked magical door and it's up to you to look around for information about it if you want. I like the way Runescape did many of the quests. They were more like extra challenges you can take when you reach certain point in your skill levels, and you get a bunch of lore in addition with some unique reward or shortcut at the end or unlock a new area for skilling/killing.

Procedural quests are also shit, that's just you pretending that you have quests when you don't. Why not create procedural events instead if you want to give players something to do? A nearby goblin village is sending an army to attack a village and there's a war between the two for a while. Some wizard created a rift and demons are spawning out for a couple days. A volcano erupted and there's some gems scattered around the world in ground and bushes and crates and shit. NPCs will tell you where these things are so you can go check them out. When you think about it the Slayer skill in Runescape is kind of like your stereotypical MMO quest, the only difference is that there's no half baked excuse of a story behind why you need to kill 20 boars. That's a good example of how to re-invent some common system for an MMO.

Vampire Hunter D/Trigun online? That'd actually be pretty tight.

Here's my thoughts on that: everyone loves to shit on micro transactions but literally every online game has them now, so I think the genie is out of the bottle with that. SO THEN, if the game is truly fair all the in game money and items you can accumulate through spending real money should be attainable through not putting in extra money. BUT what is the equilibrium point between rewards earned by 'grinding' in-game, rewards earned by throwing some cash at the game. I definitely would never want to make people 'grind' like they do in a lot of these game out there. I hate that term even. If your game is grinding and grating I feel like you've already failed.

Kind of where I'm landing at when I really take into account how much work it would take to make a sandbox MMO. I still want to make a sandbox-MMO where I can be a real-time DM like Westworld at some point tho. Like be able to look at the world map and be like. "This area over here looks boring right now. Let me send in some squads of bandits to throw a kink in their plans." I'm not sure if that's been done before.

Yeah I feel you on the crafting and non combat gameplay. Runescape was pretty fun way back in the day. I think once I found a good hustle in the game I would often grind it out to build up money like it was a real job if I remember correctly.

No it isn't.

You don't have any items in the shop. Why the fuck are you giving players a way to pay in order not to play the game?

Fucking what?

Warframe and PoE does this. What you get is a chat channel spammed with trade offers constantly and players eventually making their own approximation to an auction house.

Old RS also did it and it was far better than any sort of auction

I don't remember too much of old RS. I only played it briefly. I'm guessing it's because there was no global trade channel to spam, and the trades were solicited locally?

A "trade channel" is not much better than an auction house. In fact any kind of global chat aside admin announcements is cancer.

I know what you mean about procedural quests. My dream game for a sand-boxer is something where the various NPC factions and player factions are actually at war with each other and actual progress and developments happen in their campaigns from day to day. So what that means in terms of the procedural jobs/quests. The factions are battling out like it's a super long play Civ game, and then from this upper level moving of armies, sacking of towns, etc. jobs are created which either mercenaries, or soldier,s or whatever can take that will all add up to the collective war effort of whichever faction.
I'm not sure if you've played FalloutOnline: youtube.com/watch?v=opgbus6ZRk0 youtube.com/watch?v=iO0j5Mud4fg or Tides of War: youtube.com/watch?v=GSsv2zDiDCY for freelancer but people would setup up massive PvP battles that actually shifted control of the world map to various factions and really RPed the hell out of them. I never really got too far into Fallout Online. But I thought it was cool how there were the out players of course who would just rob whoever in the wasteland and then there were people who RPed as lawman who would just hunt down the most notorious outlaw players.
I'm sad to say I'm completely ignorant of how the guilds/clans/factions work in WOW/Conan. I need to do more research. I just never found WOW that appealing and I don't want to pay monthly for shit.

Gondolas, lots of Gondolas.

You have to appreciate the time Runescape came out and the site it was on. When you're at the library after school and you're trying to pick a good browser based game in 2001 your options are limited. It's like Runescape or Habbo.

I dunno, it floats some people's boat I guess. If a handful of rich dudes can subsidize the game for everyone else who actually just want to put the time in, why not? I say this too as someone who has never made a micro-transaction ever. I don't really understand it and never felt compelled to. But all this, "boo hoo, why do people with a lot of money get a shortcut in life?" also makes no sense to me, that's just how money works..

The fact that you have an item shop with ways to skip playing the game implies that your gameplay is shit. If you can't make grinding fun enough to BE the game and/or if you have an "endgame" to begin with, there's a very good chance you're making another trash grindshit WoW MMO that everyone forgets about in a month.

So you're in favor of items as a pure badge of honor for questing. There's also the possibility of selling purely cosmetic shit like all the FPSes do nowadays. But then the challenge is: how do you combine cosmetic, gear with functional gear like you'd have in an RPG game. I don't like that chest shit they do either in CS. That shit is way more annoying to me because they keep harassing you with those shitty things like a bad banner ad from 2000. "YOU ARE THE 1000TH VISITOR, CLICK HERE TO GIVE US YOUR CREDIT CARD INFO SO WE CAN GIVE YOU YOUR PRIZE" I don't think I used the word end game. I mean skip playing more like you have steeds for sale in the game. It costs 1000 in doubloons for the champion War Horse. You can for example, grind it out for X hours catching fish and sell it at the marketplace and earn 1000 doubloons, or you can toss like 5 bucks at the game. Not that there would be no game left to play, it just like, you get to start with more capital to make in game money with in the first place by buying some shit with real money in the first place, but nothing you couldn't get by playing longer. Like if we both decided to get in the Cupcake game in real life, you start your Cupcake business with $10,000 I start mine with $1000 we're going to have different experiences. It doesn't mean the guy starting with 10k is going to not be running a cupcake business, it just means they have extra legroom to curtail the experience to their liking. Some people like the 'started from the bottom' bit and some like taking the easy road I guess. Like what do you think of Star Citizen? The difference in price between the lowest tier ships and the highest tier packages is astronomical. I'm not even sure you can earn up money to buy a capital ship if you don't put in the real world cash for it.

pretty much. There was no chat save for the local (was just what you would see on screen plus a small bit past that, IIRC) and whispers to friends

I wonder if its possible to have a system like Divinity Original Sin in MMO form, where it's turn based combat and you only enter initiative when you get close.

There's dozens of MMORPGs that are gonna be released, the market is saturated and everyone has their piece of the pie, dunno what type of "saving" you want OP, but everyone is doing their own thing.

Change Wow to completely alienate casualism.

To do this, you have to go back to the tabletop routes of WoW and restablish the cut content, dedicated, underpaid workers, use effective resource management/recycling, and bring in much of what the RPG has, as well as utilizing the community to the fullest extent.

pandering and signaling to the biggest spender (coincidentally the most autistic) fanbases starting with furries and bronies and ending at lower spender (but equally autistic) bases like fnaf or cuphead. Make special skins for these bases that are free for very basic models but become paid once you want to make your character more specific. Paying for items makes you better at combat by increasing your stats beyond what any free gear offers. Special pay plans (>6 months) allow you to automate some processes like walking or mining with built-in bots, for free players it has to be made as tedious as possible. That's a start.

Don't design your whole game to try and eat as much of my free time as possible. Doing so to push microtransactions or justify a monthly fee will just ensure I never touch it to begin with.

add some semblance of platforming; thrice as much as WoW had before TBC is okay, but don't make floating platforms where it'd be unrealistic
like if theres a dungeon with a platforming segment with falling platforms that don't respawn and has a lever at the end to open a door somewhere, and a one-way portal or something to take you to the other side of the platforms, then thats i guess a good example of platforming

also make sure that all classes are equally good at platforming unless you decide that some classes should be "good" at platforming while some should be "bad" at it; in such a case make the "good" platforming classes equally good unless theres two+ kinds of "good" ones, and make the "bad" ones equally bad unless theres two+ kinds of "bad" ones, or something

also don't forget to make one or more of the classes be a support class, or at least make specializations for classes that are mainly support
in this case support is NOT the same as healing, by support i mean classes that are complete garbage by themselves but are still good enough for killing same-level regular NPC enemies, and only shine when paired with other people
make sure that such a class can cast short-duration buffs and debuffs that are very significant
a not-so-good example of such a thing is a level 20 bard in neverwinter nights 1(based on D&D 3.0, not 3.5)
bards in neverwinter nights 1 are like a cross between the warrior class called fighter, and sorcerors
bards are less accurate than fighters with their attacks, don't get bonus combat feats, and get 1 less attack per round than fighters get by level 20, but bards also get to from a list of spells containing level 1-6 spells(whereas the deep casting classes can also pick lvl 7-9 and epic spells), only 3 of which deal damage(one of them a non-meaningful amount of damage after low levels), and they also get to cast healing spells, except for the ones that heal you and/or allies to full hp, which only clerics and druids learn
bards also get an 2 abilities that separates them from every other class in the game, bard song and curse song
bard song, at borderline low and medium and high levels, will increase the armor, damage, accuracy, and resistance to most debuffs of yourself and all of your allies, and gives them a small amount of temporary bonus hit points, which unlike healing can go above your max hp
they also get curse song, an ability that is the opposite of bard song in affect; it applies to your enemies instead of your allies

however bards aren't implemented so well in neverwinter nights, in comparison to fighters and some of the other deep combat classes
a bard by himself with 4 pre-epic levels in fighter or another deep combat class will get as many attacks per round as a character that only takes levels in deep combat classes(such as fighter), and that same multiclassed bard will also have just 2 less attack bonus(accuracy) than the fighter because of a bard spell called war cry, which gives the bard +2 to attack bonus and damage dealt for 6 seconds per bard level(12 if extended), then they can also bard song for more accuracy and armor and curse song for more effective accuracy and armor
bards can also, unlike fighters, cast haste on others(or themselves), which gives you an extra attack per round(at max accuracy, unlike the level 20 fighter's 4th hit), AND gives you 4 armor class and makes you faster; it lasts for 6 seconds per bard level(12 if extended)
so a 16 bard/4 fighter would be much stronger than a 20 fighter, AND still have a good bard song

er, so anyway yeah make a support class, and make sure that unlike bards in NWN they aren't actually better than non-support classes at ANYTHING that they do, though i guess you could also make them a type of "good" platforming class too

one more thing, allowing a player to take multiple classes like in D&D 3.0 would be a gigantic plus for an MMO

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You know NeoGAF is back up, right?

no

It also depends on how the Dev wants to design a game. If you're making a fantasy setting in a fantasy world, why the fuck would you ruin the fantasy by tying it all to REAL WORLD CURRENCY. Money doesn't have to 'work that way' in a fantasy world. Have people play the game to progress instead of buying their way to the top. Imagine if blizzard made a new MMO and allowed people to carry across their current gear and progress from WoW and get equivalencies of it in the new MMO. People would flip their shit. Do not mistake the ignorance that normal folks have towards microtransactions as a tacit acceptace of such bullshit.

Either make a game that's good so that people will want to play it to progress, or go all out and make an online shilling simulator that only exists is to wring money out of people. The worst thing you can do is become another EA and spend your entire career lying to people non-stop in an attempt to trick as much money out of them as you can. Be a great dev OR an incredible shill but whatever you choose atleast be honest about it.

also to clarify on the multiple classes thing, if you multiclass, like in NWN1, for example, if you take 20 barbarian and 20 sorceror levels(40 levels in total), you SHOULDN'T be a good barbarian OR a good wizard concerning level 40 enemies, and in D&D 3.0 you wouldn't be as good at attacking as a level 40 barbarian(until you cast haste and tenser's transformation which make it a bad example), and your spells would be far, far easier to resist than that of a level 40 wizard, and you wouldn't get any epic spells either, and you'd have less hp than a level 40 barbarian
also there are limits in NWN1 to how high your accuracy and armor class can be buffed

also if you're too lazy to figure out how multiclassing should work, if the maximum character level is 40, then you can(and in your dream MMO should) only get to take 40 levels between all of your classes combined, so you can't be a level 40 fighter and level 40 druid, but you CAN be a 9 wizard/17 rogue/14 druidbut that'd be a horrible build

also, don't have any items in an MMO that permanently boost your stats when used, persisting through death and also potentially qualifying you for skills and such via stat prerequisites
and also make crafting be meaningful at the maximum level; don't just have all of the equipment found in the endgame raids completely outclass everything or nearly everything that can be crafted
in fact, be sure to make raids drop high-end regeants that are "bind-on-pickup" like in world of warcraft, and are used to craft high-end items, SOME of which aren't bind on pickup
and also if theres a profession like enchanting or jewelcrafting, make sure that theres gems that only you can use, and enchants to equipment that can only be used on your gear and makes it "bind on pickup"
take the gear that you want to come out of a raid zone and divide it into three thirds:
one third would be gear that is equippable and is looted as-is
the other two thirds would be, instead of gear, recipes(and such) and the special raid-zone-exclusive reagent(s) that are required to craft them
one third of those recipes would be "bind on pickup", and the other third wouldn't be
THAT WOULD MAKE CRAFTING BE MEANINGFUL IN AN MMO

half, my bad

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