I feel like I’m beating a dead horse when I say this, but it feels like all the good MMORPGs came out a decade ago. This bothers me a great deal because I’ve been looking for something new and fresh, yet the same as it was? Something that has that old school je ne sais quoi while having the same modern feeling. This sounds contrarian but it isn’t the point, the point is that I want an experience familiar to me that isn’t alienating to my target audience- me.
There are days when I will venture back into my games of old. Runescape, AdventureQuest Worlds, DC Universe Online, whatever might have you and it feels the same as when I left them. Newer games lack this indecipherable hook that I’m looking for. I’m not talking about the ooooh-rusted-shiny, I’m talking that the game might feel more like it’s on rails, it might feel like it lost the same charm it had when I left due to changing or removing an element that I enjoyed with other games. A lot of changes for games, I really do enjoy, after all… what good is change if it isn’t allowed to happen?
Now, I don’t mean to sound cranky or craggy like an aging fogey. It’s like games have evolved not to keep you playing, but to give you that short term euphoria and have you move onto something else. Player retention for most games seem to just not exist and ultimately? That’s not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for a game I can sink one, two, three thousand hours into and call it my online-home. What happened to that? Player Loyalty? Be as predatory as you want, just give me an excuse to stay.
If a game doesn’t have lasting power, why show it a shred of loyalty and spend money on it? Why even try?