GW2, Wildstar, SWTOR and ESO were all hyped to hell and back as the next big thing for MMOs a few years back.
(Side note: RIP EQN)
Where are these games now? With the exception of Wildstar, they all seem to be relatively healthy, but that's from an outsiders perspective. Are any of these worth checking out, or are they all just mediocre?
I've been playing GW2 since release, it's a very solid MMO.
I've played SWTOR and hated it, it was after playing GW2 and it felt really terrible, dated visuals and gameplay.
TESO felt very clunky, I didn't get too far, it feels like an Elder Scrolls game with even worse quest design and limited skills.
GW2 is ok, not really the revolution they promised but good enough. Also the game survives on the costumes they put in the cash shop and new content is slow to come by. Story is ass garbage but what do you expect.
theyre all shit
Legion's a great mmo and the only one worth playing right now
The allure of a "big open world with thousands of other players!" faded when players realized it was just a tightly controlled theme park, those that actually liked that shit just stuck to the most popular as the alternatives weren't unique enough to switch to.
the AP grind sucks
random legendaries too
I miss playing an MMO, but the current ones are bland. I'd love to try something new; there's been an MMO draught for a long time now. Even the upcoming ones look questionable at best though... might take another 10 years for the genre to experience a resurgence.
maybe if you're a casual
Yeah I agree
ESO is kinda ok, especially if you like the elder scrolls but don't take it too seriously
SWTOR is actually a very solid mmo, but the most wow-like one, so it doesn't have anything special.
gw2 is meh, core gameplay is ok, but very little content requiring skill. ironically it has most mindless grinding of the tree
I tried ESO during the free week. Having 16k health at level 1 as a mage threw me off a bit, but for the most part it's an elder scrolls game with hotkeys and inconsequential quests.
You also can't mod it to hell and back, obviously
I'm a sucker for good map design and GW2 has the best ones, Wildstar is a close second.
It's totally casualified.
I am gonna start Neocron when my new laptop comes.
gw2 is pretty solid, but the open world is piss easy, so if you don't do fractals or raid then you wouldn't have too much fun if that's your aim, since most progression is horizontal. That said, it scratches my classic maplestory itch with the way that groups are and the exploration
SWTOR, aside from the titanic memes, seems alright too
This, GW2 has fantastic world design. Sadly everything else about it is pretty mediocre.
And I really enjoy Wildstar and I'm glad it's still chugging along, but the game is mired in incompetence. It is its own fault it is failing.
Nice sense of scale. Too many games have tiny little areas with invisible walls. Or just one single plane and nothing in the way of high mountains or deep caverns.
SWTOR is a single player game. The players know it, the devs know it. Nobody does anything as a group except when absolutely forced, and they'd prefer not to be. They'd prefer if they could just do the story on their own, at their own pace, without having to be bothered by others.
And if you play the game as a single player game, it's not that bad. It is a servicable, albeit distant, sequel to the KOTOR series.
TORtanic was a case of BioWare drinking their own kool-aid and listening to all those biodrones who insisted people would pay a monthly fee to bioware for content churned out by and increasingly shoddy, shitty developer. The same drones who insisted DA2, DA:I, ME3, ME:A were all good (they're not.)
I've played GW2 since launch and I can safely say the game is dead now. Anet is a really shitty developer and would rather work on another expansion instead of giving you content for the one you bought. Also 5 man dungeons will never come back and fractals will always be shit.
Atleast the game is easy to hack in.
For all the shit it got SWtOR was the best MMO on the market for nearly a year when Cata released for the sole reason that they were still copying Wrath.
Guild Wars 2 *almost* had it.
The biggest challenge was a) making fights competitive/challenging without a tank/heal/DPS mechanic, and b) maintaining a constant stream of content when not funded by monthly subscriptions.
The expansion was worst than the Star Wars Galaxies revision. Grind upon grinds, minimal content, shitty storyline.
WoW still has millions playing, but its mainly out of habit + churn of old players. If 1-2% of your playerrbase return every year or two, that's 1-2m people out of the 100m accounts over the last 12+ years.
GW2 would be ten million times better if it had guild vs guild pvp and multiple skills per weapon to choose from
SWTOR is absolute dogshit, even as a single-player game. The story is 90% bumblefuck retarded 10% alright, what little combat there is is piss-easy, and that's on top of customization options getting more and more restricted behind a paywall with each passing patch.
They all found their niches, except Wildstar. There's a dedicated fanbase that loves them and keeps them afloat, although nothing will match WoW at it's peak.
WoW was a product of it's time and there just isn't as big of a market for MMO's anymore. Back in 2004-10 online gaming still was this big novelty, especially among people who didn't play many video games and there was a place in the market for WoW as this unique world that you could explore with other people. Most of the people I know who really got into WoW weren't too into gaming and only played WoW. Gaming wasn't their hobby, WoW was their hobby. My dad would play vanilla up to Wrath and it was basically his thing in the evenings, some dads would watch TV to defrag at the end of the day and my dad and his friends/guildmates would get on WoW.
That niche has been filled by other games that do a batter job of appealing to that kind of player. Nowadays that kind of demographic would be playing CoD on console or something like Hearthstone or LoL on PC. They fulfill the same "need" that WoW fulfilled during it's time but with a smaller commitment and barrier to entry. I gotta log onto WoW daily to keep up with the grind, so I can do the really cool stuf like raids with my guildies, while in League I can log on and get into a match whenever I feel like it.
The only people still playing MMO's are people who legitimately love MMO's for what they are and not for the social aspect.
>WoW was a product of it's time and there just isn't as big of a market for MMO's anymore
the market is still there
it's just that nothing is as good as it was at its peak
BRING BACK 2D MMOs
i play ffxiv and wilstar and i enjoy them both
>SWTOR is actually a very solid mmo
What in the fuck are you on? It works as a single player game with an online co-op element (and even then, not very well), but as an MMO it's terrible
A great deal of old WoW's market was just people who liked online gaming, and nowadays there's a lot more variety in online games. WoW would not have gotten as big as it did if there were as many mainstream online games like there are now.
Yes people have been playing games online ever since they figured out how to get two computers running on a network but it was a more niche nerdy/kid thing until Halo and Call of Duty propelled online gaming into the mainstream, especially MW2 with how they started to market games like blockbusters.
i wish i could relive all those swtor memes
>5 man dungeons will never come back and fractals will always be shit.
What am I supposed to do in endgame then? I just got to 80 the other day and have no idea what to do. I dread starting another character because that takes forever to level.
GW2 is good if you want to just run around exploring and chilling with other players with some casual PvE. The presentation of the world is pretty good, and the combat is sort of a "high speed, low drag" style that facilitates bulldozing through zones at a rapid pace if that's your thing.
PvP is a complete shitshow, though, and ArenaNet has completely forgotten that WvW even exists. The combat would be perfect for a PvP-focused affair like GW1, but ArenaNet's hilariously slow rate of releasing balance changes, as well as their complete inability to actually create non-PvE content, has left PvP stagnant and dead. WvW is lucky to even get a section in the patch notes more than twice a year.
tl;dr GW2 is good if you want well-delivered casual PvE, but don't mind half-baked PvP or devs that work so slowly that you'll be taking breaks between content drops rather often.
GW2 has constant content updates, like new maps, with its Living World thing and a second expansion is coming likely later this year or early next year, there was a massive leak recently
GW2 is by far the least bad but people will treat it as the worst MMO ever because it's not GW1 with better graphics.
Don't listen, 5 man dungeons are shit but give them a try anyway, fractals are great.
Then there are all the level 80 maps and the expansion stuff like raids.
Fashion Wars or uninstall
least bad does not mean good
on Sup Forums it does
give up on mmos until WoW dies completely and allows developers to actually be creative again
TFW Runescape is actually a better MMO than wow in 2017
No, people treat it like garbage because they ensured to both violate the writting and the difficulty of the game steadily into just a platform game with cero challenge whatsoever.
It's okay.
But nothing more.
In the trash. Where they belong.
theres raids and map farming. Getting into fractals for new players is shit because of agony resistance. I really wish anet would stop redoing fractals and actually give us new content.
Either way there isn't really much to do at end level. You have your weekly raids, daily fractals, and whenever map grinds. I hope you like having 20 different currencies because HoT is shit and the next expansion will most likely give you the same experience of big empty maps with nothing to do in them.
>ctrl f
>eve online
>0 results
as it should be, RIP eve you piece of shit
>tfw wildstar will never get new anything anymore
Time to enjoy maintenance mode.
GW2, Wildstar and TESO are dogshit
The Old Republic is shit
>They all found their niches, except Wildstar.
Wildstar's niche was supposed to be hardcore mmo players who like challenging content. Turns out that niche doesn't really exist.
>SWTOR
Racking in that sweet ass whale dosh after it failed to "kill" wow.
Wildstar and GW2 are close to Matrix Online population numbers. TESO and TOR are doing fine but all four are very bad games.
>Legion's a great mmo
HAHAHAHAHAHA
That's what happens when you hire nu-males.
I love mmos and would give anything for the genre to be revitalized, but I've come to grips with the fact that the genre is dead.
also guild wars 2 is a shit and destroyed my love of videogames
MMOs will never come back as long as devs remain convinced that the trinity isn't worthwhile.
I have no clue where everyone got the idea that getting rid of traditional mmo roles made sense. When your character can do everything it takes the flavor of the game away and you feel no different than anyone else.
Why did devs think this was a good idea and the future of mmos?
Our only hope is for either Pantheon or Camelt Unchained to deliver
They won't.
Yeah, I know.. :(
>dude, remember when people used to literally defecate in a sock because boss fights took so long? Wouldn't it be great if mmos went back to that golden era style?
>no terminal velocity
Dropped. When will games stop acting like cartoons?
>Why did devs think this was a good idea and the future of mmos?
Because waiting 45 minutes for the one cuck/bitch that plays a healer is shit.
Chronicles of Elyria too maybe.
having roles and making roles necessary to complete content are two different things
equating them is where MMOs run into problems
I hope WoW dies soon. It has to die for MMO's to get better.
That's why having separate dps and support specs is good.
It exists, it's just that Wildstar had nothing else going for it and it had awful performance for a while to boot.
ESO is pretty much the best MMO on the market right now as far I'm concerned. Sup Forums loves final fantasy but its just WoW with a jap coat of paint.
Wildstar is the Battleborn of MMOs, actually a good game with major flaws that keep it from gaining players
Guildwars 2 is for ERPfags who don't want to go off the deep end with Tera or pay a subscription fee for FFXVI
Star Wars TOR is possibly one of the biggest fucking casualfest of MMOs players to ever exist and people play it for the story
ESO is doing fine and actually has a massive playerbase on consoles with devs that know how to get it on the right tracks, Garbage launch and I'm really surprised it recovered as that's a very rare thing to do in this genre. As B2P I'd actually recommend it.
Yeah, good point. Years ago I used to wonder what they could do to make healing more appealing and less of a cunt's job. Stuff like "do damage to heal" or "play a sniper minigame to heal" but fuck it, it doesn't matter. I quit MMOs and nobody has bothered to try and make healing attractive.
Either make healing as fun as the other playstyles or just ditch the trinity.
Everyone got bored of the carrot on a stick.
Now MMO's are just casual large scale multiplayer games where the end-game is completely unimportant. And this is a good thing. The whole gear treadmill days are over thank god. I think only WoW still tries that. And it's probably not long before WoW goes into maintenance mode because Blizzard are too busy raking in the cash from Overwatch and Hearthstone.
>It exists
It really doesn't. After playing enough mmos you realize the majority are boneheaded idiots and the "hardcore" people are tryhards who just regurgitate and copy what the other tryhards are doing.
>equates Battleborn to a good game
Didn't read the rest of your post my friend
Is ESO alive and well on PC? I have a capped character on my console and am considering making the switch to PC
Hi Liz
Are you always in these threads?
>Wildstar is the Battleborn of MMOs
That's low even for a shitposter on Sup Forums.
MMO's are finally where they should be. Just neat massive games where there's also tons of other people you can run into. Queue simulators like world of warcraft and ffxiv are a dying breed. People just want to run around the world and do shit and naturally fall into groups of people to tackle harder stuff.
The gameplay was there, the presentation was a fucking 0/10. UI, voices, should have been 3rd person ruined it on the spot. To boot you had to grind for heroes in a game you had to play.
It had fun gameplay, but fuck it was behind a wall of shit. Overwatch was gorgeous and seemlessly well polished and prevailed because of that and marketing.
I think the typical MMO is outdated. We probably will never see another very dominant game in the genre in a long time. It would have to be some incredible game.
Two problems with MMOs are:
>Combat/gameplay is boring/mediocre (outdated)
>Balance endgame
Many MMOs had good combat for their time when they were released, but you cant get away with that today and expect praise. We ahve seen some companies try different approaches than the "standard" formula with varied success. Its gottab easy, fun and reward good player but also newer ones. Combat getting tedious after longer session is also scary. There is also the endless struggle of how to balance the endgame and keep the players interested.
If the game got PvP its also a headache. Balance according to PvP will influence how the classes do PvE. Abilities, gear etc.
GW2 is currently the best MMO on the market, despite failing to live up to their pre-release manifesto.
Yeah it's fine on PC with the major benefit of Addons. ESO is fun playing on consoles with rednecks and dudebros constantly bitching and dueling each other in town. You also will be around much more competitive players on PC PVE and PVP wise.
Only reason console populations are so big is because current consoles don't have many MMO choices.
MMO's are a crap genre and always have been. People got older and online games got more sophisticated, so there's literally no reason to ever play one anymore.
Can't speak for GW2. SWTOR I played again back in February. It's good for going through the Knights story once, and maybe one of the neat class stories, but Knights is where it really shines. The only thing left to the game is the spaceship PvP, PvP, and they'er slowly chugging out a new raid, bit by bit, but it's a walking corpse at this point, fueled only by the people who gamble away real money on the cash shop boxes.
Wildstar is still a walking corpse, but apparently it's in the green, otherwise NCSoft would have given up on it by now. It must make more than City of Heroes did to justify its existence. ESO on the other hand is up there with FF in overtaking WoW with more than a few million players (subscribers, even).
But nothing's really made big news, really. At the core of it, they're all pretty much WoW clones with a gimmick or two, and three of them are just using the name of their franchise to carry them halfway. Wildstar is the only new IP and it's the one that is the most dead, so we can see what cloning WoW does to a game in this day and age.
I'd like to see another City of Heroes type game, honestly. None of this halfway bullshit like DCUO or Champs. True customization. Pick things that might not be optimal and still be able to have fun. I don't even know if it can work in this day and age, but CoH (and other MMOs from that earlier time, pre-2004 and before) never balanced around what was optimal and that was probably what kept them alive. It made a proper community out of the whole game, not just the current content. MMOs are worlds, not just games, and ever since everyone tried to copy WoW, it's lost that. They're just shitty games now.
GW2 has okay gameplay, mediocre content, and abysmal story. This latest episode with the Balthazar reveal is complete nonsense.
I was around for day 1 of ESO on console because my PC couldn't handle the game at the time
>Walk into town
>BLARING NOISE OF EVERYONE TALKING AT ONCE
>Dungeon queues are full of people who don't grasp the concept of MMO roles.
>PC players ported their characters over and got a free cat mount. Anyone on a cat mount was unanimously hated by console players.
>The first night of vampires spawning where the entire server sat there and one shot them time and time again
Did they ever add in text chat?
Lobby/Hub games like Destiny, Monster Hunter, and The Division are the only way for MMOs to exist now on the grander scale. Personally I'm ok with this as MMO devs fucked themselves cloning WoW 1000x.
Yes
>This latest episode with the Balthazar reveal is complete nonsense.
t. someone with a learning disability
Seriously, there's literally nothing out there with it. While his identity wasn't very well foreshadowed, it wasn't completely out there either, as evident by people speculating it could be him 2 months prior to the release.
Well after WoW we are getting World of Starcraft
Hopefully it's dufferent from wow but expect everyone to try and copy it
You can plug in a keyboard. Only thing about the PS4 is that it only has two usb ports so you'd have to buy something to plug in to one of the others so you could have your controller, mic, keyboard, and whatever else all plugged in at once. And you'd have to be crazy to keep ESO on the PS4's default hard drive, so that's another slot filled.
>Lobby/Hub games
I'm perfectly okay with that.
>playing an MMO
for what purpose?
ESO is actually my favorite modern MMO, it was a fucking mess on launch but all of its major problems were eventually ironed out and it's a very enjoyable game now, give it a shot next time they do a free weekend or something
Everyone wants a game they can really invest time into, it's engaging
Or that's the idea anyway
>World of Starcraft
Please god no.
GW2 is still doing it's thing. Being NCsoft's third highest profitable game they have. Heart of Thorns was shit, but the living story that followed it is solid.
Game also have a ton of whales that need the new shiny things getting released on the cash shop, so it's not going away anytime soon.
Might try again if they finally patched in text chat. Didn't work at launch and people were begging for it. Was impossible to sell anything
the thing I hate is they force you to keep buying these fucking dlcs
fuck jews
>GW2 would be ten million times better if it was GW1
fixed that for you, friendo
I haven't bought any of them as of yet, and I'm enjoying it just fine. I saw that they packaged a few of them for like $20 bucks, hoping they do that with all of them eventually.
The price for the Morrowind expansion is steep as shit though.
I hope you're not implying that Vanguard was a WoW clone, user.
Why would Balthazar, GOD OF WAR, pretend to be a Mursaat? It makes no fucking sense. He stands virtually nothing to gain that he couldn't gain easier elsewhere.
If he were Menzies or something, then it might make an inkling of sense. But actual Balthazar? Shit makes no sense.
Legion? what the hell is that?