Okay this is fact a huge pet peeve of mine, MMOs have almost never attempted to challenge the WoW formula. OR they did but so barely it made no difference. OR they did but so drastically that it technically was not possible with the hardware and server space peeps were packin.
I just wish someone would shift the paradigm--everything is based on WOW, even if it isnt! It's critiquing it or purposely distancing itself without ever finding its own mechanical identity.
And I'm so sick and ****ing tired of action bars, I do not want to see another action bar in my life again.
EDIT: I wish something like Foxhole or M&B's cRPG mod had MMO numbers--it would change everyone's idea of what an MMO is and what is possible/fun to do
WoW didn't start the action bar thing, everquest is the first game I remember that from. But of course they did cement it.
The problem with WoW is that it was insanely wildly successful without even really trying that hard. The competition just mostly sucked really bad. So it's hardly a masterpiece of game design, but clearly it didn't need to be to make money hand over fist.
That's what the copycats don't get. WoW succeeded so well because it was released into a world that didn't already have WoW. You can't copy that formula because WoW exists already.
EVE Online is a very different game, and shows hardcore economics and PVP can be successful... but are they making much money at this point? And honestly, it has worse PVE combat than most MMOs. At least in WoW i gotta hit the hotbar icons during the fight...
I think to beat WoW you'd need to get away from the classic D&D in the background setup most MMOs have. It's turn based fighting in real time, featuring two or more combatants just standing toe to toe and beating the shit out of each other until someone's dead. I don't think a new game is going to iterate on that idea and come out ahead.
I personally think a real action RPG (I don't see any way around MMOs being mainly RPGs) MMO could take the crown. MMO combat is not satisfying at all. Target, auto attack, clickity click on the hotbar, 1 minute later it's done and you repeat. Boring.
Of course the reason MMOs go that route is because it's a billion times simpler to just have turn based combat in the background with very little collision detection or worrying about latency as opposed to actual hit detection and all the netcode insanity that goes with it. But computers have come a long way from the 90s, and if they could halfway manage it back then you'd think by now they could scale it up to MMO levels.
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Topic: Gaming Pet Peeves (Read 523403 times)