An MMORPG has to cross three major hurdles in order to be a success.
(Success as defined by retaining a subscriptions past the initial month and continue growing in numbers instead of declining)
Those three hurdles are the following:
1. Most provide some innovative feature that differentiates the game from others.
2. Must be initially successful while producing a positive first month experience.
3. Must provide a positive end game experience to keep players interested past the initial month.
Failing any of these condition will in most cases leave a terrible stigma upon the MMO that will cause players to never return, despite how many improvements have gone into the game. The game truly will have to revolutionize itself if they wish to recover from failing any of these three conditions.
Examples:
SWTOR: Passed number 1 and 2, Failed number 3 miserably.
FFXIV: Was incredibly vague with number 1, and even the fans of the game packed up during number 2.
Despite all the flack WoW receives, it passed all three brilliantly.
1. It was a total war game with open pvp and commradery unlike anything that was seen before with many innovations and improvements to MMO UI and controls schemes alike.
2. The first month was huge. Despite many server failures and major bugs, the game was constantly sold off of shelves and everyone was raving about it.
3. Despite everyone who screams that WoW had no end game, they were wrong. Gear was no where near as easily to get in vanilla WoW, and people spent months getting blue pieces from areas such as Scholomance just so they could go to Blackrock Spire(which was a 15 man area at the time) It was many months before any large quantity of people were doing Onyxia or even Molten Core.
Now the game is many years old and everything is of normal MMO conventions, but at the time, it was an incredibly well done project.
MMO devs need to step it up and make more risks without sacrificing other aspects of the game.
Tera passed number 1 with flying colors in it's combat system. This system is amazing and kept me interested through two characters to 60 despite how poor the rest of the game was. Unfortunately, due to the fact they seemed to just hurry through the rest of the game, the combat system can't hold up the whole game by itself, especially with the poor pacing hump that starts near level 47 and doesn't end till 58. They also failed number three miserably with a very narrow end game and one of the most RNG heavy systems for gearing that I have ever seen in my life.
Tera started out in the right direction, but they stopped too soon. The game could have been good if it provided the rest of it's game with the same quality it provided to it's combat system.
(Success as defined by retaining a subscriptions past the initial month and continue growing in numbers instead of declining)
Those three hurdles are the following:
1. Most provide some innovative feature that differentiates the game from others.
2. Must be initially successful while producing a positive first month experience.
3. Must provide a positive end game experience to keep players interested past the initial month.
Failing any of these condition will in most cases leave a terrible stigma upon the MMO that will cause players to never return, despite how many improvements have gone into the game. The game truly will have to revolutionize itself if they wish to recover from failing any of these three conditions.
Examples:
SWTOR: Passed number 1 and 2, Failed number 3 miserably.
FFXIV: Was incredibly vague with number 1, and even the fans of the game packed up during number 2.
Despite all the flack WoW receives, it passed all three brilliantly.
1. It was a total war game with open pvp and commradery unlike anything that was seen before with many innovations and improvements to MMO UI and controls schemes alike.
2. The first month was huge. Despite many server failures and major bugs, the game was constantly sold off of shelves and everyone was raving about it.
3. Despite everyone who screams that WoW had no end game, they were wrong. Gear was no where near as easily to get in vanilla WoW, and people spent months getting blue pieces from areas such as Scholomance just so they could go to Blackrock Spire(which was a 15 man area at the time) It was many months before any large quantity of people were doing Onyxia or even Molten Core.
Now the game is many years old and everything is of normal MMO conventions, but at the time, it was an incredibly well done project.
MMO devs need to step it up and make more risks without sacrificing other aspects of the game.
Tera passed number 1 with flying colors in it's combat system. This system is amazing and kept me interested through two characters to 60 despite how poor the rest of the game was. Unfortunately, due to the fact they seemed to just hurry through the rest of the game, the combat system can't hold up the whole game by itself, especially with the poor pacing hump that starts near level 47 and doesn't end till 58. They also failed number three miserably with a very narrow end game and one of the most RNG heavy systems for gearing that I have ever seen in my life.
Tera started out in the right direction, but they stopped too soon. The game could have been good if it provided the rest of it's game with the same quality it provided to it's combat system.
Edited by: GreenEyedMonster
11 months ago