So why did this game crash and burn...

So why did this game crash and burn? From what I was reading it was basically made by ex-WoW devs trying to recapture what made Vanilla WoW great and hardcore. So why did it so quickly fall flat on it's face when everyone still loves Vanilla WoW today?

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The only good thing that came out this game is the gay chua porn.

Nearly every MMO crashed and burned post-2004. There's a reason the genre is fucking dead.

Because it is not called "World of Warcraft"

It failed because, while they might have tried, they just didn't recapture the feel of Vanilla WoW at all. They had all the trappings of modern (at the time) WoW, just with bigger raid sizes and a longer end-game.

I agree with MMO Graveyard in that it's setting just wasn't appealing and P2P in the modern day just doesn't work for MMO's anymore.

>From what I was reading it was basically made by ex-WoW devs trying to recapture what made Vanilla WoW great and hardcore.

Because when we try and "recapture" and old video game experience we get bored of it insanely fast because we've already played it.

You know that whole
>You think you want to, but you don't
Well, literally that.

Nah, man. It's more like
> We think we're giving you it, but we're not

That's not why at all, actually.

So you never actually played Wildstar. Gotcha.

Is there a name for that type of game? With the shit areas in front of characters for every single attack ever? I played for a bit and didn't like that. Tera was more fun if they were trying to go for dynamic combat instead of standard "lock on and smack your keyboard" MMO combat.

Too bad Tera had race and gender-locked classes. Mfw I could never log into Tera without seeing some Elinfag go on and on about what a lonely neckbeard pedo he is for Elins.

It's just fucking ugly. Like what the fuck is it even trying to be? Sci-fi? Fantasy? Western?

I've looked at Wildstar stuff and I still know jack shit about the setting or what the fuck it's trying to be. That is where they fucked up.

Oh also no marketing campaign whatsoever.

Because wow had a fantastic universe to go along with it. One of the best the genre has to offer.

I tried it when it was F2P and dropped it pretty quickly

Shit was so bland, blander than other Korean MMOs I've played
Writing co-written by 9gag and reddit
Shitty artstyle with no appealing races besides exaggerated females
Bland sci-fi setting

WoW had a lot of traction because it was a pc exclusive released in November 2004 based in the already popular Warcraft universe. It snowballed from there and various mmo devs have tried to capture that without realizing it was a massive game that became even bigger and then even bigger from there because at that point pretty much everyone and their mom played. It was video game phenomenon like Pokemon R&B or Xbox live on the 360.

Crowfall is going to save the genre.

>pre-alpha
why is there not a picture of some early artwork?

I would of tried it if they did not charge full price for the game. I was already balls deep in WoW and disappointed by FF14.

>ex-WoW
>ex-Blizzard
>ex-ex-ex

Stop giving these faggots credits, Hellgate was promised to be gud after Diablo 2, well it JUST'd.

There are tons of games JUST'd because they ride the glory faggoty rainbow of EX.

I really enjoyed this but dropped it a while after i reached cap. There wasn't a huge end game and what was, centered around pretty hard content and large raids, pvp was bad and filled with bots.

You wanna try not talking like an underage meme spewing faggot for once in your life?

>Studio with no real pedigree creating a new MMO IP
>Went with opposing factions but neglected to give one faction a race to mirror the popularity on the other faction.
>Tried to market itself to an era of MMORPG players that honestly doesn't exist in meaningful enough numbers to make a venture like this profitable
>shipped with too many bugs and poorly implemented features(like just about every single MMO released post-WoW)
>Chua are pure fucking cancer
>Chua are pure fucking cancer
>Too much content split between the hilariously imbalanced faction lines
>By the time they added features/fixes people had been clamoring for the playbase had all but left

Why can't we have a good action MMORPG? Tera comes close but the F2P bullshit and frequent OP new FOTM class pls keep playing our game makes it garbage.

Most people don't want to waste their lifes on game like they used to. I know, crazy.

Shit optimization at launch was a pretty big reason.

You already explained it. They tried to create yet another WoW clone. That was bound to fail.

There's only so many people who are invested in the MMO market, and a huge chunk of them are on WoW. They're not going to leave WoW to play another WoW. If they wanted another vanilla WoW experience they would just go to a private server.

Because of that fucking announcer spamming you with bullshit every time you kill multiple mobs or level up.

Wish the taxi driver didn't talk on-stop as well.

Because setting and artstyle were shit. That's literally the only reason.

There are plenty of videos on youtube. It's an MMO so it's probably gonna be shit, but so far it seems interesting. No leveling, craft-heavy, cartoony design not too awful for once

ahhh wildstar, the only game to rival tortanic.

Quite a few good MMO's look to be coming 2017/2018

Crowfall, Camelot Unchained, GloriaVictus, Chronicles of Elyria.

The only thing that I'm worried about is all these MMO's are starting to become "Sandbox" RVR focused MMO's instead of PVE. Every single major MMO coming out next year has castle building, sieges and RVR as their main features.

I'm worried that they'll all just cannibalize eachothers populations and then get decimated by Mount and Blade 2 when it releases.

Oh you also have Star Citizen, but we'll probably be in space in real life by the time that releases.

>then get decimated by Mount and Blade 2
not gonna happen

maybe to GloriaVictus, but for me personally M&B setting is dull as fuck and I know a lot of other people looking for pvp experience want their mages as well

I can already tell by this screen alone that it's gonna fail

This is pretty common for most MMO launches. FFXIV had a terrible launch too and a lot of people were locked out of their account because of errors.

Its easy. The reason the game died were lying players. What I do mean you ask? Well, in the development process the devs took a lot of player feedback and tried to build the game around it. Which, in itself, is a good thing, right? The problem was that there were so many people who never fucking raided in Vanilla or TBC, who didnt know what raiding 40men meant, what farming access to a raid meant, what properly challenging encounters meant, that they deluded themselves into believing that they like all these things. Essentially what happened was that there were so many liars, who pretended to have played Vanilla and TBC, that the devs got fooled into believing that people actually liked those things.

Then Wildstar came out, had tough dungeons, a quest-line that consisted of two dozen things to do to even get access to raiding and finally 40men raids and suddenly all the modern-WoW mongoloids realized: Well fuck, I dont even like either of those things. And happily moved on to the next title or back to WoW.

>ONLY PVP
BOOOOOOORING

The biggest flop of an MMO that had everything going for it was Warhammer Online.

Great setting, great ideas behind it, well known beloved universe and franchise, first mainstream major RVR focused MMO.

Released like 1/3rd complete, buggy as shit, terrible animations, no end game, no content basically past level 30. Everyone just ended up playing 1-10 RVR.

All thanks to EA rushing the game out to beat Wrath to launch by a momth, instead of just allowing the game to continue development and release when players get bored of Wrath.

>only pvp
wrong

gotta do pve to build up your castle

someone else can come up and steal your shit though

It was a good experiment for future MMOs to take note of, that making a hardcore paradise doesn't work because even hardcore players don't want it.
>You think you do but you don't
Also the body proportions were fucked like BattleBorns. They ran out of budget to make female gremlin midgets so they're all gay.

Even if you get somewhere, it will all be destroyed by LULUNDEADS and you'll be forced to start over again. Shit will crash and burn so hard.

As a disgruntled MMO fan who's bounced between almost every title and even had a crack stage of trying gutter Chink MMOs it dawned on me.

MMOs subscriptions were never popular but necessary. Yes vanilla WoW was the standard at that time, it 'was' fun and much more enjoyable, comfier and developed than others at that time - if any MMO was worth paying for it was WoW - then BC hits, not only do you have to subscribe but now also pay separately for the expac. Still many did and apparently did not for the next one, and the trend continued.

Call it bad, normie pleasing development targets and changes, call it jewing out for more shekels when sub fees weren't particularly the cheapest to begin with. Either way things went sour.

At this time, versus actual vanilla, MMOs in general had quadrupled. There were so many being put out, many of which surprise surprise Blizzlike. But not only this, one thing which everyone loved but would ultimately lead to the downfall of the genre... >F2P

The incentive to substitute a subscription in place of a cash shop was daring in the beginning, there were no assurances it would be financially viable so in the early Wild West days of cash shops the term P2W was on a whole other level.

Anyway long story short, time passes, more MMOs, a large percentage of trash titles over time with a few decent ones in between all diminishing the impact of their cash shops.

Then the MMO crash, as I call it, occurs. Previously still subscription based MMOs bite the bullet and switch to F2P. First one mediocre one, then two, then one big title, then five big titles and you know the rest.

The MMO consumer at this point now who's experienced it all since EverQuest is now totally fucked from this whole experience.

>cont.

Many people won't understand but there is a reason countless people adore vanilla WoW and want to go back, it was a simple and fun time - everything just werked and yes there was a standard, tall paywall but in retrospect to how things are handled now with free basic access, capping, pay 'incentives' but also this top off, booster, 'paid consumable' business - it's also turned the MMO genre into one indiscernible from a mobile game.

Where does this leave Wildstar? Well I liked it for the while that I played it. It was a good example of a well developed game with a sensible fiscal set up. P2W is not existent, which is good and i. It's place aesthetics have become the focus... However that itself again is no solution. No one really want to spend money on virtual clothing and furniture - if they do it becomes quickly apparently what a gimmick it is.

In reality we started with games that simply needed a fee to play, then to get more players they made it free but incentivised buying from the shop, then realising the movement of people disgruntled from the impassable P2W wall, they made cash shop items less powerful, but still it wasn't enough, so then the marketing to appease people became focused on no P2W, which meant realistically no one was buying anything from the cash shop as it was worthless.

Here lies the reality, MMO consumers are like children who think taxes are stupid. The degeneration of society from that is obvious, why wouldn't it be applicable to MMOs given that's exactly what happened when people stopped paying and developers had to become 'efficient' and 'economic'.

>cont.

Finally in Wildstars case - at least in my personal experiences - there are too many options between MMOs these days, although not many as good as Wildstar. Yet although I did play for a solid week I found myself getting turned off, I couldn't put my finger on it but it became trivial and felt almost hollow. I did not feel anything about my advancement or progression. But that's just me, it deserves success for it's ethics and quality in comparison to other big name MMOs.

Ultimately I hope to see a resurgence in well developed, no shenanigans, fresh concept MMOs with subscriptions that cover all, no cash shops whatsoever.

TL;DR

>announce 40 man raids
>people were hyped about this because it brought back good memories about 40 man raids back in vanilla WoW

>game comes out
>people get to the point where they can do 40 man raids
>the raid was terrible
>it was too hard to get 40 people to coordinate with each other
>people realized that 40 man raids was never good to begin with


its kind of a shame the game died so quickly. i kinda liked the ratchet and clank style humor and the art style, i thought, was pretty neat.

also, the female aliens were top fucking notch. best ass and tits in a non-anime mmo.

I feel sorry for people who backed Crowfall since it's going to end up shit.

Yeah, 40 man raids was never good. 10 man raids are boring/too small scaled, but 25 man raids is just perfect.

>Humor is fucking stupid shit 99% of the time
>Both factions are unlikable douchebags
>Race locked classes are fucking garbage
>Telegraph combat is an interesting concept that's never expanded on or better utilized in any way
>Boring skills
>Boring builds
>Healing is still boring
>Tanking is still boring
>Crafting is still boring
>Gathering is still boring

Only good things in the game were the occasional physics shenanigans like that early rebel area with the superjump puzzles and the mail quest system preventing a fuckton of unnecessary backtracking. The scientist/settler/soldier/explorer profession system was a neat concept that's sadly kind of underutilized, with scientist clearly being the best one (but only if you're into lore), soldier best if you like arena challenges, and the other two being fucking useless.

Wildstar is overall a great example of one step forward, one step back.

Action-oriented combat is good, everything-is-aoe is bad.

Humor is good, "OH SH*T... YOU JUST LEVELED UP!" is bad.

Dual class specs are good, dual class specs requiring two full sets of gear be lugged around is bad.

Story-based instances (like how upon completing a story line those enemies will no longer aggro you) are kinda good, story-based instances forcing groups to split up is bad.

Dynamic events are good, unwinnable-while-solo dynamic events that are required to complete quests are bad.

Professions changing how you interact with the world are good, professions where you contribute tiny amounts of shit for the sole benefit of other players is bad. Seriously fuck the settler profession.

Hopefully a competent developer can learn from Wildstar's mistakes and make the perfect MMO.

MMOs are entirely about player interaction and yet you choose the aspect that takes the least advantage of the genre. PVE belongs in lobby based coop games.

Fucking horrible art direction. The animations and effects were a complete cluster fuck.

>>Boring skills
>>Boring builds
pretty much this

Gameplay wasn't that engaging to begin with so then I had a look at gunslinger and warrior and looked at all the skills/talents I could unlock on my way to max level and I thought to myself, that's it? That seems fucking boring

and then I quit

The worst thing about crowfall is forced pvp in anything that will give you any kind of sensible progression and cyclical season shit, which iterates gameplay ad nauseam.

Please don't forget to like and subscribe.

Are there any MMO's that take the actual point of the genere (massive amounts of online players), but actually applies the idea to other formulas or genres?

1. Developers were stuck in the past.

2. Developers exaggerating the "difficulty and time-consuming = epic"

3. Executive meddling during development.

The server change/merge bullshit was also terrible. The server ate my lvl 40 character.

You haven't actually conveyed anything in your post, you've just meme spouted something nonsensical with some more meme words attached and used incorrectly.

Spot fucking on man. Muted the announcer as soon as I found out how to.

>Install game because I'm bored and its free
>Make Mechari Medic
>get told no one is dominion, if you want to do content swap factions
>get instance group(the academy one iirc)
>try to heal group
>heals are shit, still manage to keep group up though
>need a completely new gear set to play the classes main fucking role

I nope'd out pretty quickly. Can't be bothered with that shit in a game that wants me to buy cash shop shit to expand my inventory to carry.

Because novelty, timing, and a good bit of luck are what made WoW great. This was followed by slow but consistent refinement.

Wildshit decided to ignore every lesson WoW has taught since its inception and was, on top of that, optimized like garbage.

>I've looked at Wildstar stuff and I still know jack shit about the setting or what the fuck it's trying to be.
That's because you're an idiot though. It's just a more cartoony and overblown Star Wars.

>trying to recapture what made Vanilla WoW great and hardcore

Yet the game felt like a rip off of Cataclysm instead. I think the devs had forgotten what it was that made vanilla/tbc so great in the first place. Remember, this was back when private servers were still a joke so they would have had to base everything off of memory only. There is a lot more to Vanilla WoW than just 40 man raid sizes. Hell, WoW isn't even the only MMO to have large raids so copying that element alone wont make a game feel like WoW.

Also, shit setting/art style and it mimics GW2's shit combat system.

This.

>Tried to market itself to an era of MMORPG players that honestly doesn't exist in meaningful enough numbers to make a venture like this profitable

It was actually marketed towards casuals, and they paid twitch streamers to shill them heavily. Also, a MMO only needs 100-200k subscribers to turn enough profit and generate enough revenue to fund additional content. Then you can get by with just 30k subscribers if all you want to do is maintain the servers. The idea that every MMO needs millions of subs to be successful is exactly what is killing the genre.

As soon as I saw the first trailer I disregarded it because it looked like absolute horseshit. Who the fuck likes this Pixar/Disney artstyle that looks like it's aimed at preschoolers?

I'm not asking for edgy, gritty shit, but I can't stand this garbage. Somehow, some way, it managed to look even worse than the Disney tier crap Blizzard puts out these days, which is still somewhat tolerable to me.

...

>Hey Barry. What are the two genres most full of trashy clones that no one wants to fucking play anymore?
> I think that would be Survival sandbox games and MMORPGS
>Hey let's combine those two concepts everyone despises, doesn't that sound like a great idea?

I can't wait for this turd to release so it can be thrown right back into the grave it's crawled out of.

I've really come to the conclusion is that Sandbox is vastly overrated.

I think you need to find a balance between Sandbox features (Crafting, player driven content, World PVP) and Theme park (Dungeons, Overarching story, PVE content, Quests).

Action combat is a must in 2016, just steal Tera's.

A game must release polished as fuck with a lot of content for levelling and a decent amount of hardcore end game content. I feel what kills a lot of MMO's is hardcore guilds power levelling to max level then bitching about endgame not being there in the first week of launch, wanting something equivalent to WoW.

Also something very much overlooked is the art style, setting and theme of the game. The world must be one that players want to be in and want to look at, one they want to quest in and be a part of the story of. People overlook it now, but WoW was a very pretty game for it's time in the art style department. Really nice cartoony art style, beautiful environments (Teldrassil and Ashenvale still are incredibly beautiful too this very day), fantastic music, the first time you walk through the Stormwind entrance, never forget it.

If I was doing a MMO, I would try go with an art style that really stands out, probably something very similar to the Little Prince movie where everything looked like it was made from hand crafted fabrics and paper, or that "Snack World" Trailer for that Level-5 game where everything looked like little plastic Nendoroids. You have to have something that really stands out to people.

Honestly though, I think only Star Citizen has a shot at becoming a "phenomenon game" like WoW was. The MMO genre is over saturated at this point.

Pros
>great world with endless possibility to expand
>hard endgame
>engaging leveling experience (except for last zone cant remember the name)
>housing for downtime
>chuas
>engineers
>spellslingers
>possible to pay sub with ingame currency

Cons
>buggy as fuck
>lack of endgame content besides for dungeons
>last 3rd of the zone felt unpolished as fuck
>really bland armor/gun designed

It had potential to be a great MMO, I enjoyed it well up until the raid attunement BS. Inb4 casual scrub but it was too hard in the beginning.

Basically it felt rushed in the end.

>locked class with race

>Marketed toward casuals
>all the content is designed for MMO players of a bygone era

Yeah no. They lauded a throwback to all the things people who wanted Vanilla ba+ck would love, they subsequently either hated it/go locked out do to massive faction imbalances/or just gave up due to the numerous bugs and poorly optimized engine. And the casuals who wanted no part of the attunement process/raiding scene has fuck all to look forward to doing.

And who said anything about sub numbers? Ignoring the fact the sub numbers fell off a cliff after all the initial issues at launch. No one says mmo's need WoW numbers to be successful(although as a result of WoW's success every MMO looks at that kind of success as repeatable when it clearly isn't.) But Wildstar put itself behind the 8ball before it even got out of the gate, then proceeded to shoot itself in the foot every step of the way until they went F2P just to squeeze anything they could out of the game.

Why in fuck do all Asian MMO's look identical?

I'm looking at all these MMO's coming out next year and 99% of them look identical to TERA or Black Desert.

Because anime realism doesn't leave a lot of room for variation.

>Black Desert

Don't ever utter that fucking name in front of me again.

still dont understand asian mmos obsession with wings

You got that backwards. PVP belongs in lobby based games, where the additional lag of thousands of other players on the server wont noticeably affect the skill level. Just got play M&B.

>It was a good experiment for future MMOs to take note of, that making a hardcore paradise doesn't work because even hardcore players don't want it.

Or how about hardcore players will only player a hardcore game if it is also good too? DarkSouls is popular because it is both hardcore and a quality game in its own right. There are plenty of hardcore games out their that no one talks about because they are shit.

>Race locked classes are fucking garbage
>Dual class specs are good, dual class specs requiring two full sets of gear be lugged around is bad.

Fuck off filthy casual.

>hmm lets find out
>that art style

is it just cos of alpha or will it get better?

And most of that is low quality shit from JerseyDevil
So, Kinda defeats that point outright.

IS THAT A FUCKING RATCHED AND CLANK RIP OFF

SMALL RAT TECH GUY AND A ROBOT WOW US ONCE AGAIN FUCKING ORIGINAL HOLY SHIT IM TRIGGERED REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Too many things crammed down a noobs throat all at once and no real need to socialize. Also the presentation was kinda boring.

One of the easiest way to make character stand out, legacy of all the 2d top down mmos they had.

>DarkSouls is popular because it is both hardcore
Dark Souls is popular because its good and, more importantly, talked about often.

It is not hardcore.

>filthy casual
Dude what. That's not fun, it's not engaging, it's a stupid pain in the ass and you goddamn know it. At least it should have let you switch to a separately equipped gear set automatically when you changed roles, instead of forcing you to sacrifice 12 inventory slots for when your queue finally pops.

How a game is designed is not the same as how a game is marketed to consumers you fucktard. Please learn to read. In the vast majority of cases the people behind the marketing aren't even the same people who actually make the game. In ads they emphasized the reddit humor and cartoony graphics along with the fact paced action of the combat to appeal to casuals. The 40 man raids and things like class quest were never mentioned. The legion of gurl gamer twitch streamers given beta access and head start access sealed the deal.

People think it is and most people pretend to like the game because others think it is.

>It's a pain in the ass

Things requiring trade offs and effort is what made old school MMOs good. Stop being a casual baby.

>but WoW was a very pretty game for it's time in the art style department. Really nice cartoony art style

Yep. This is the main thing WoW got right. Ran fantastic on machines that were fucking equivalent to toasters due to low-poly models, but fantastic art direction made it really nice to look at.

So many of these new MMOs not only run like shit, but require high end computers to play anyway, so I'm not sure what market they are even looking to grab anyway.

>Race locked classes are fucking garbage
They really are, though.

There's two sides to the coin, of course, but way too often I see a class I want to play, only to find out I can't pick a good-looking race to do so. I simply can't bring myself to play a character I don't like in a roleplaying game. Sometimes I have to even pick a class that doesn't interest me by default because the race I want to play as only has 2-4 classes to it.

Just twist the fucking lore. Only hardcore autists care enough.

>dat feel when having fun with TSW

Going B2P and playing at my own pace was the best thing that ever happened to Secret World. It's also a complete steal in current Humble Bundle.

>Why in fuck do all Asian MMO's look identical?

Because they never really have a specific art style. All characters look like supermodels in some respect and backgrounds are just there. Even when both are done well they never really gel well together. At some point it just blends together with similar assets and engines.

PROS FOR W*
>The general feel. Play wow, it feels solid and grounded and not awkward. Same with wildstar, everything feels right. Go play SWToR or something, it just feels off and the animations suck
>The lore. Its really interesting and I liked both factions a lot, though exile got a lot more love and honestly the game would have done better if everyone was exile fighting dominion. (pvp due to everyone being a merc)
>HOUSING. BEST PLAYER HOUSING EVER. The shit i built. The amount of insane rp hubs user created. Entire bars, ships, hangers, all created.
>Music was 10/10
>Mounts were really fun. Hover board was just a blast
>combat was rewarding. Tanking was tough but if you knew how to mitigate and coordinated you could get the job done

THE BAD
>shit end game
>the world was way to split up, every zone should have been connected like wow. It goes a long way into world building
>attunement was stupid
>bugs and optimization issues
>class locked to 1 wep. I hated this design choice, i liked wow because the amount of different armor and weps i can collect and change up. I got bored of my 2hander sword
>poor pvp. It just was an AoE fest
>some of the later zones sucked
>Chuas
>humour was hit and miss.

Except right-clicking 12 times isn't a trade off, nor is it effort. It's fucking stupid and I don't know why any MMO does it. It's mindless busywork that's completely necessary should you decide you want to actually do the support part of a support class, but easily negated by just having an automatic gear switch.

>I've really come to the conclusion is that Sandbox is vastly overrated.

Not really. It's just that sandbox will never become a big thing because it requires you to get invested into the game and community, which is something most people don't really want to do anymore.

Fuck I wish the actual gameplay of TSW was better.
I enjoyed the world and story a ton, and the Vanishing of Tyler Freeborn was top, but actually playing the game always felt like a slog.

Why would you worry about things heading towards RvR/PvP?
It's a niche that needs a good game to fill it because the market is oversaturated with pve theme parks.
Maybe a couple of those will get a decent population and fill that niche while the others will flop.
I've been watching Crowfall closely and hope it does well, but I've also been keeping an eye on Camelot Unchained because the customisation seems cool

Can't believe I'm even saying this by Civilization Online actually looks bretty gud for a Asian MMO.

youtube.com/watch?v=JeuT0jkmZiE

Very nice art style and you help your team level up through the ages through questing and resource gathering and base building to attack other factions.

>Wildstar
>Tree of Saviour

What are some other massive flops that attempted to live on the "remember that old thing you love, well we're totally just like it" hype and utterly failed to?

Because the developers outright said they wouldn't even be able to put in bug fixes without a 6-12 month wait time due to how fucking retarded their internal processes were.

Basically, a bunch of lazy ex-Blizzard devs thought they could get away with acting like Blizzard aka being lazy incompetent motherfuckers and that a bunch of fanbois would just LET them do it.

No, FUCK you. Blizzard had built-in fanbois who would defend their slothfulness, but Carbine on the other hand had no built-in fanbase to let them slide.

WoW: Warlords of Draenor (look, it's TBC)
WoW: Legion (it's really TBC this time, guys)

Does MN9 count?

I was a core raider in the world first guild (Enigma) for almost all of the 25 man / 40 man progression.

The game had so much potential. The combat system was great and the pvp worked really well for the most part. Raiding was incredibly fun.

Here were some of the major problems:

- The game was launched 6 - 12 months too early. It was a buggy mess at launch, and Carbine was terrible at hotfixing them. many people grew impatient and quit because of this.

- The performance was shit especially on AMD cards. Some people couldn't get over 30 fps.

- The content was just too difficult for many players especially the casuals. The process to get raid attuned was incredibly difficult at launch for average / casual players. I won't go into it but it was a very lengthy and tough process. Dungeons were very challenging as well even when levelling.

- In terms of lore i'm not really sure if people liked that or not. I didn't really pay attention to story or anything.

Thats all i can remember for now but thats the main stuff. I know a lot of people hated the game, but it's the most fun i've had in an MMO since vanilla wow if not more enjoyable. lets not forget the stupid shit that vanilla wow had as well.

General game design question here, but which is better: total ease of movement to the point that travelling no longer means anything, or tedium in movement to the point that travelling is really something you'd rather avoid? Because it seems like MMOs tend to be at either extreme.

What do you mean?
Instant fast travel from anywhere is a no-no, if that's what you're getting at.

>99% of them look identical to TERA or Black Desert
I dont really see how Black Desert looks like any other MMO out there. The art direction is pretty damn distinct for an Asian MMO.

I remember that launch...

It depends. I'd rather look at why traveling would be preferable to fast travel and vice versa.

I can see two main reasons I personally support the idea of disabling fast travel. First, and maybe most important, is the fact that it promotes World PvP in games where it is a thing. When you give the players the option to teleport everywhere at a moment's notice, or the option to just use lobbies for content, you leave the world itself barren outside a few cities and other hubs which are impossible to attack into anyway. In forcing players to travel, you make the world more alive as players actually travel through the various zones even after hitting the level cap. This also allows for player combat all over the world, allowing players to make their own fun content.

Secondly, and already touched upon, is the fact that it makes the world feel alive. It's impossible to really feel like you're a part of a living and breathing gameworld when everyone sits in the capital zoning in and out of lobbies/dungeons. Whenever you leave the city you see a lowbie or two but the world is dead.

The only real argument for fast travel is convenience. It's far more important for casuals and average players than it is for hardcores. I still consider myself hardcore, but at the same time I hate wasting my time these days because I have less of it than I did as a teenager or college student. I don't care if I have to spend five or ten minutes walking to a dungeon in an MMO, but spending more than an hour trying to find a group and getting to the dungeon is a waste of time for me. Of course, having a group of friends or a guild to play with eliminates that issue.

In general, I'd rather always see traveling over fast travel, as it makes the game feel like a real world.