Elder Scrolls Online

[phazer11]

I played EQ2 but it didn't have much staying power for me and I'd only had a two week free trial (or whatever the longest one you could get was). A couple of my friends had the collectors edition so I got a little bit of a free ride. It's a bit deserted now from what I hear. They had stopped playing and we started playing league in a group and they came back to it and said it was a virtual ghost town.

[Neovalen]

Not surprised... was very active for a long time and once it started getting scarce I left. Running my own raiding guild for years was a lot of fun but I don't have the time or patience for the drama anymore now that I have my own kids. :)

[ibleedmonster]

ESO is something I hope does really well, I played almost every MMO out there and the newest generation of them seem really disappointing. alot of them you can complete the campaign

 

My favorite MMO was Everquest, I played that from launch till I think it was either depths of darkhollow or dragons of norrath came out, whichever was last. the monster missions while fun kinda ruined the game.

Then I played WoW for awhile like maybe 2 years on and off? and it just wasnt EQ, seemed too easy I guess. Also, like phazer pointed out.. it took the RTS games away :(

 

I blame the current state of MMO's on the new F2P model companies are migrating to. These models usually rely on "burst" income for the sake of instant gratification.

Then once the newness of the game wears off and people see how shallow the game is, they leave. Also the amount of trolls in F2P games are staggering cuz if they lose thier free account they just make another one. Theres no repercussions for being a tool.

 

During subscription gameing it seemed like the developers actually pushed content and the games had depth. there was alot of play time involved and the community while competitive were generally good natured and helpful to one another. Bans for bad behaviour or cheating etc actually meant something.

 

Then again this was back when MMO's were new, the 4chan/goon community didnt exist, and developers cared about the games they created rather than the dollars they made.

Perhaps I'm just old also ;)

 

I truely hope ESO keeps a high community standard, doesnt fall into the F2P model, and brings forth the rich enviroment with the content they already have access to.

LoTRO was kinda bleh, they had everything they needed to make a rich enviroment with alot of playability also but fell short on it.

[Aiyen]

It is not just the F2P model... it can be very good if implemented correctly.

Sadly that requires good gameplay for people to cash in.

 

The general issue is the MMO model in general.

If wow was released today (with updated graphics bla bla bla) then it would also fail horribly since its gameplay is so shallow.

 

MMO´s biggest weakness is that the developers always try to make sure that everybody have access to the same content, which then quickly turns the game into a grind with the same repetitive quest types over and over.

 

One of the reason WoW was great before the first expansion (And still good in it.) was that there was content that required effort to see! This made that content special, and it was a TRUE achievement to actually see it!

While I can understand the reasons for trying to make ALL content easily available... I just do not agree with it... since it hollows out the game.

Special content that you cannot just buy your way too should be a part of all MMO´s to make them stand out... sadly the developers can no longer do this because the marketing departments have forgotten that it was that sort of thing that made WoW big to begin with!