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How come in the post WoW era no MMO has ever been even remotely as close as the old MMOs, like Tibia or Ultima, to fulfilling the promise of a shared, persisten

How come in the post WoW era no MMO has ever been even remotely as close as the old MMOs, like Tibia or Ultima, to fulfilling the promise of a shared, persistent, virtual world?

pjc50 5y ago
Negative scaling: the bigger it gets, the more potential for people to cause problems, on a larger scale. This leads to features being removed to sanitize the world and make it more manageable. The community governance - among the players and between the players and the owner - becomes worse. For the overwhelming majority, making a game more like a theme park is better. That said, I think 2nd life is still going and mostly delivering this?
- awelxtr 5y ago
  What about Eve online?
  - wink 5y ago
    EVE is kinda different than most other MMORPGS, I guess that's why it's hard to compare. I mean, of course it shares certain elements, but it's not a lot of RPG (except parts of the character progression) and just not "fantasy + walking around" makes it a non-starter for a huge part of the classical MMO player base.
  - Bayart 5y ago
    Eve's selling point is people causing problems. I guess that's a way of dealing with that.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    It survives in a niche. It seems to have about 30k players online max per https://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility https://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility It's not nothing, in fact it's quite an achievement to have survived so long as a PVP MMO, but it's never going to take over the world. People who want that very particular blend of nothing happening interspersed by moments of sheer terror and the risk of losing something you've sunk a lot of time/money into know where it is.
hombre_fatal 5y ago
Does Minecraft count? What other MMOs are people playing and why don't they come close? I've dabbled in some post-WoW MMOs over the years and they are no less "shared" and "persistent" than WoW—they're basically the same thing. Tibia and Ultima were brutal games that can't really compete in the sea of choices people have in modern gaming. Just look how many games reduce any sort of grindy or hardcore mechanics they had in an attempt to appeal to a wider, modern audience instead of just the few people who want and have time for a more hardcore experience. I saw an interview with one of the high level people involved in the modern Pokemon games who said as much when asked about the complaints of the modern Pokemon games being easier and less grindy and less complicated. Should modern MMOs always cater to a wider audience than a smaller one? Well, just imagine you were the one bankrolling such an expensive, risky project.
- duskwuff 5y ago
  Minecraft doesn't really hit the "shared world" part in the same way. Most players play alone, or with a small group of friends. There are a couple of Minecraft "anarchy" servers that come close, but playing on one of them is a pretty deliberate decision.
- ajxs 5y ago
  I recall reading the developers of (the ultimately aborted) 'Fallout Online' remarking that Ultima Online's player mechanics were pretty close to what they'd expect from the reality of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I can't find the source of this quote right now, unfortunately. I felt really gratified hearing that, as I'd been trying to explain the savagery of UO[2] in the 2000s to people talking about Rust's gameplay in 2020. I think it's really interesting to look back at UO's design from a modern perspective. The designers have stated over, and over again[0][1] how absolutely wrong their predictions of player behaviour ended up being. It was such an ambitious, pure, and innocent idea. Its gameplay style may not have stood the test of time, however it was undoubtedly an important learning experience for game design as a whole. I'm tempted to say its a shame that games like UO are a thing of the past. However when I look back at my time playing it, the thing that sticks out the most is how much time and effort was spent just avoiding abuse. [0] https://www.raphkoster.com/tag/uo/ https://www.raphkoster.com/tag/uo/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFNxJVTJleE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFNxJVTJleE [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20050214050928/http://looter.4t.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050214050928/http://looter.4t....
Globz 5y ago
There are MMOs like this but they come once or a twice every decade and fail miserably, full loot PVP MMO are built for a specific mindset of players and there comes a time where the “sheep” are all gone and only wolves remains. This situation creates a dwindling effect on the population and you end up playing with a few hundred players at best in a matter of a year. In “recent” years I played Darkfall Online and Mortal Online which are very rooted in the early days of persistant virtual world ala UO but sadly they both failed to keep an healthy population. Have you tried Mortal Online 2? the game just came out and is a true successor to UO in many ways, sadly they had massive problems scaling the game so they had to mirror the main persistent world and added 4 instances of the main world to cope with the demand. The vision is to have a one big persistent world with no instance/loading screen and keep adding more and more continents to spread out the population. If you liked playing UO I recommend you check it out, its a unique gaming experience which may sadly go extinct in the future!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

How come in the post WoW era no MMO has ever been even remotely as close as the old MMOs, like Tibia or Ultima, to fulfilling the promise of a shared, persistent, virtual world?

pjc50 5y ago

Negative scaling: the bigger it gets, the more potential for people to cause problems, on a larger scale. This leads to features being removed to sanitize the world and make it more manageable. The community governance - among the players and between the players and the owner - becomes worse. For the overwhelming majority, making a game more like a theme park is better. That said, I think 2nd life is still going and mostly delivering this?

awelxtr 5y ago
What about Eve online?
- wink 5y ago
  EVE is kinda different than most other MMORPGS, I guess that's why it's hard to compare. I mean, of course it shares certain elements, but it's not a lot of RPG (except parts of the character progression) and just not "fantasy + walking around" makes it a non-starter for a huge part of the classical MMO player base.
- Bayart 5y ago
  Eve's selling point is people causing problems. I guess that's a way of dealing with that.
- pjc50 5y ago
  It survives in a niche. It seems to have about 30k players online max per https://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility https://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility It's not nothing, in fact it's quite an achievement to have survived so long as a PVP MMO, but it's never going to take over the world. People who want that very particular blend of nothing happening interspersed by moments of sheer terror and the risk of losing something you've sunk a lot of time/money into know where it is.

hombre_fatal 5y ago

Does Minecraft count? What other MMOs are people playing and why don't they come close? I've dabbled in some post-WoW MMOs over the years and they are no less "shared" and "persistent" than WoW—they're basically the same thing. Tibia and Ultima were brutal games that can't really compete in the sea of choices people have in modern gaming. Just look how many games reduce any sort of grindy or hardcore mechanics they had in an attempt to appeal to a wider, modern audience instead of just the few people who want and have time for a more hardcore experience. I saw an interview with one of the high level people involved in the modern Pokemon games who said as much when asked about the complaints of the modern Pokemon games being easier and less grindy and less complicated. Should modern MMOs always cater to a wider audience than a smaller one? Well, just imagine you were the one bankrolling such an expensive, risky project.

duskwuff 5y ago
Minecraft doesn't really hit the "shared world" part in the same way. Most players play alone, or with a small group of friends. There are a couple of Minecraft "anarchy" servers that come close, but playing on one of them is a pretty deliberate decision.
ajxs 5y ago
I recall reading the developers of (the ultimately aborted) 'Fallout Online' remarking that Ultima Online's player mechanics were pretty close to what they'd expect from the reality of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I can't find the source of this quote right now, unfortunately. I felt really gratified hearing that, as I'd been trying to explain the savagery of UO[2] in the 2000s to people talking about Rust's gameplay in 2020. I think it's really interesting to look back at UO's design from a modern perspective. The designers have stated over, and over again[0][1] how absolutely wrong their predictions of player behaviour ended up being. It was such an ambitious, pure, and innocent idea. Its gameplay style may not have stood the test of time, however it was undoubtedly an important learning experience for game design as a whole. I'm tempted to say its a shame that games like UO are a thing of the past. However when I look back at my time playing it, the thing that sticks out the most is how much time and effort was spent just avoiding abuse. [0] https://www.raphkoster.com/tag/uo/ https://www.raphkoster.com/tag/uo/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFNxJVTJleE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFNxJVTJleE [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20050214050928/http://looter.4t.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050214050928/http://looter.4t....

Globz 5y ago

There are MMOs like this but they come once or a twice every decade and fail miserably, full loot PVP MMO are built for a specific mindset of players and there comes a time where the “sheep” are all gone and only wolves remains. This situation creates a dwindling effect on the population and you end up playing with a few hundred players at best in a matter of a year. In “recent” years I played Darkfall Online and Mortal Online which are very rooted in the early days of persistant virtual world ala UO but sadly they both failed to keep an healthy population. Have you tried Mortal Online 2? the game just came out and is a true successor to UO in many ways, sadly they had massive problems scaling the game so they had to mirror the main persistent world and added 4 instances of the main world to cope with the demand. The vision is to have a one big persistent world with no instance/loading screen and keep adding more and more continents to spread out the population. If you liked playing UO I recommend you check it out, its a unique gaming experience which may sadly go extinct in the future!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]