Post by Morreion on Oct 20, 2014 15:52:25 GMT -5
Working As Intended: But I already have that game (Massively)
The fact that "being a newbie in an MMO" has a reputation as a long and painful slog worth avoiding is a problem all to itself, of course, and it's part of why so many MMO gamers stay in old games in spite of the mockery of their progressive, try-everything peers. I won't say it's never about aversion to old things or aversion to new things, but once you toss out obvious generational trolling, you're left with the dread of the newbie grind and the depressing sameness of modern MMOs that keep people playing the one they already have (or retreating to the one where they're already a big fish once they've dived into a new pool and found the experience wanting). When studios release MMOs and MMO patches with such frequency, oftentimes copying each other's features so assiduously as to provoke the word "clone," it's not hard to understand why people would simply look at the new one and shrug. They already have that game. It's where they keep all their stuff...
So yes, it's easy for us, we people who write about video games for a living and you people who love them so much that you read and comment about them for fun, to have nuanced conversations about whether ArcheAge is a true sandbox, how Star Wars: The Old Republic is more like a single-player game than an MMORPG, or what exactly WildStar borrowed from WoW because we see them as distinct worlds defined by their subtleties. But we're not most people or most gamers. We're not even most MMO gamers. And most MMO gamers, the PvE "casuals" who make up the bulk of our extended community, really don't see all that much difference between the titles that roll out every year, these games that are asking them to pay again to basically do the same things with the same types of experiences for the same rewards, over and over and over. That's a perception that keeps the MMO genre stagnant and makes it harder and harder for games that do dare to innovate in one direction or another to gain a foothold (outside of a few insane outliers with crossover appeal). Traditional MMO gamers are stuck in a feedback loop where our gaming comfort zones and accumulated personal MMO prestige are directly at odds with the innovation we say we desire.
The fact that "being a newbie in an MMO" has a reputation as a long and painful slog worth avoiding is a problem all to itself, of course, and it's part of why so many MMO gamers stay in old games in spite of the mockery of their progressive, try-everything peers. I won't say it's never about aversion to old things or aversion to new things, but once you toss out obvious generational trolling, you're left with the dread of the newbie grind and the depressing sameness of modern MMOs that keep people playing the one they already have (or retreating to the one where they're already a big fish once they've dived into a new pool and found the experience wanting). When studios release MMOs and MMO patches with such frequency, oftentimes copying each other's features so assiduously as to provoke the word "clone," it's not hard to understand why people would simply look at the new one and shrug. They already have that game. It's where they keep all their stuff...
So yes, it's easy for us, we people who write about video games for a living and you people who love them so much that you read and comment about them for fun, to have nuanced conversations about whether ArcheAge is a true sandbox, how Star Wars: The Old Republic is more like a single-player game than an MMORPG, or what exactly WildStar borrowed from WoW because we see them as distinct worlds defined by their subtleties. But we're not most people or most gamers. We're not even most MMO gamers. And most MMO gamers, the PvE "casuals" who make up the bulk of our extended community, really don't see all that much difference between the titles that roll out every year, these games that are asking them to pay again to basically do the same things with the same types of experiences for the same rewards, over and over and over. That's a perception that keeps the MMO genre stagnant and makes it harder and harder for games that do dare to innovate in one direction or another to gain a foothold (outside of a few insane outliers with crossover appeal). Traditional MMO gamers are stuck in a feedback loop where our gaming comfort zones and accumulated personal MMO prestige are directly at odds with the innovation we say we desire.
