Okay. In advance …I absolutely hate the idea that my first ever post on this board is going to be a huge and boring rant. Still worse, it’s a post that doesn’t really contribute anything to the conversation (except flame fodder), but here goes…
I hope that Paizo doesn’t sink too much energy into this. Well, let me clarify: I hope that this doesn’t become a distraction from what Paizo has been doing very well so far, which is –for the first time in a long time- making D20 not suck.
More than a decade of high hopes is all I’m willing to give any concept. No -I do not have high expectations for PFOL. I don’t have high expectations for any MMO. Here’s why:
1) PnP mechanics do not work in the MMO environment.
PnP game mechanics work with PnP, because PnP games are abstract, and because there is a neutral arbiter (the GM) to guide gameplay. It is hard enough even in PnP to develop game mechanics that do not implode upon themselves at some point in the character development arc. Taking them into the electronic arena is like trying to build a house out of hammers and saws using lumber for tools. The thing quickly becomes something that is unrecognizable to the original concept, and all you can try to do is keep it balanced. Eventually, even that becomes impossible.
Even if you were to cede the idea that the rules are there to mimic “reality” (gravity makes the rogue go “splat”) and take them for what they are (shuffling numbers around on a spreadsheet to make a* x < y/61), the little holes in the fabric of the game make it impossible to balance. Try to balance an overpowered class for raiding castrates that class for PvP. Removing a class’ PvP exploit makes it play like a sack of wet garbage in PvE. Why does this happen in every MMO? -Because the mechanics that were imported as the building blocks of that MMO are inherently “broken”. To exacerbate the situation, designers put more levels in. They like to think it adds a finer graduation to the mix. What it really does is exaggerate all of the flaws. Every class gets to hold the “awesome button” for a patch or two until they give it to someone else, and the cycle never ends.
Which brings me to levels. Here is a concept that is, if not perfect, then at least perfectly tolerable in PnP RPGs. Move it into the electronic format and it devolves into nothing more than a tool to ration out content. And hey, why not? This is a massively multiplayer game, after all. What would a massively multiplayer game be without a universal mechanic designed to prevent people from playing with one another?!
2) MMOs are excruciatingly and mind-numbingly boring.
Static mobs, static NPCs, static quests. …The whole damn way. It’s a 17 of 100 orc knuckles collected so far snooze-fest from beginning to end. Once the exploration and initial immersion wears off, it’s doing laps on the hamster wheel. Moving the grindstone one more revolution. Gotta get that next set of gear! Why? Well, to grind out the next set of gear, of course!
Why is it that every company goes to great pains to hand script every NPC, spawn point, tree, and rock into the game -every quest text with every cute little obscure pop culture reference, only to have the players carve a ravine straight through the path of least resistance. Why do the players do this? Because the only manipulable element to the whole damn experience is your toon is why!
Is it that hard to make a game that can spontaneously and conditionally generate persistent content or -God forbid -get the hell out of the way and let the players generate their own content? Instead of hand coding the thing one brick at a time? Seriously?
Which is easier in the long run: hand making ten million nails, or building a machine that makes nails? How about building a machine that builds nail-making machin- …Okay, you get the point.
“Hey, how about a dynamic and fluid faction system that interconnects players, guilds, and NPCs?”
“ Hey, how about a quest system that gives out tasks according to demand in the economy or based on the current threat?”
“Hey, how about an AI system that can, depending on how bad a players reputation is with a faction, send mobs to track the player’s toon across zones …maybe give quests to opposing players to hunt the player down?”
-“No, we can’t do that! We’re all so terribly busy picking up every pebble in the river and painting it -one at a time!”
3) MMOs have little to no challenge.
Just about every game out there relies too much on gear and level to determine success and too little on your actions or decisions in the moment. What’s worse is –should you actually fall asleep and manage to pass out on the wrong macro and get killed, you can sleep like a baby. There is usually no penalty for failure at all. Get the right stats …autopilot. Stare into your monitor for long enough and a piece of raid gear pops out.
And here comes the brainwashed cookie-cutter response… Ready!?
“Endgame!”
Endgame is where it’s at! You don’t really learn your class until you hit cap! You don’t really start playing the game ‘till ya hit sixty… I mean seventy… erm …eighty ...five! After spending quite a bit of the last ten years at “Endgame” …wherever that is, all I can say is poppycock!
True, it is somewhat challenging –but it’s the ten year-old trying to do the hokey pokey on rollerblades kind of challenging…
Ya put yer deeps in!
Ya get yer healz out!
Ya stop ta wipe yer aggro and ya shake it all about!
Ya do the hokey pokey and more pointless crap drops …again!
…That’s what it’s all a-bout! …ZZzzzZZzz
Okay. I’m exaggerating . It wasn’t that bad. Still, are we all sold on the idea of paying $50 +fees on a game which is kinda-sorta okay and might turn into something at cap –at least until the next expansion?
I remember a conversation I had with a random guy in Everquest, both of us plying our wares at 6 A.M. one Sunday morning. We were talking about the untapped potential of online RPGs and he said “Yeah, as a social playspace, EQ is kinda cool. As a game, it kinda sucks.”
Hey, at least EQ had the decency to be a little bit challenging. At least it respected you enough to grief you a little when you did something really dumb.
…And look how far we’ve come since then! We’ve rolled up our sleeves, dove right in there and dumbed MMOs down so much that we’ve created an entire culture of loyal lobotom- I mean "customers" who will gladly pay every month to stare into their monitors until shiny stuff appears –groaning and griping when it isn’t handed to them on a silver platter.
Alright, I’ll have to confess. In their current state, MMOs are just not my thing. I’ve tried a ton of ‘em. I hope I didn’t offend anyone. I have lots of friends that still play, I just don’t see what they get from it. I sincerely hope you all get something that you enjoy.
I wish Paizo and Goblinworks the best too! Heck, Blizzard made that colossal abortion that they dare to call an RPG, but it made them a ton of cash. Maybe I’m just being pessimistic and PFOL will be a real genre changer. I have to admit, when I saw “sandbox” slipped into the tag line, I felt a little glimmer of optimism. It lasted about as long as it took to read the top few posts, though.
Okay, how about meet me halfway. Have a permadeath server as an option (and game mechanics that can accommodate such a thing), and I’ll give it a shot! Just don't let it distract you from doing what you are doing right now. ;)
Oh ...and sorry for the rotten punctuation! :D
Goblin Squad Member
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I hear you Zychon, but I'll just say this -- it's possible for them to make an outstanding MMORPG, if they can muster the right resources and have the right creative talent designing it intelligently.
Personally, I'm much more afraid of the former than the latter being a problem at this point.
I hear you Zychon, but I'll just say this -- it's possible for them to make an outstanding MMORPG, if they can muster the right resources and have the right creative talent designing it intelligently.
Personally, I'm much more afraid of the former than the latter being a problem at this point.
Yeah, it's not so much the idea as it is the team, right? Honestly, I read the press release and it's music to my ears. It's just that envisioning a concept and getting the little 1s and 0s to line up to make that concept a reality are two different things. After 12+ years of being promised "layered RPG and RTS elements" and "dynamic environments" and getting summonable vanity pets and additional talent spec slots instead, I'm not holding my breath.
On a positive note, the PFRPG is a testament to the fact that this company can find the good in a less than imperfect idea and work with it when "others" walk away.
Hey, I love being proven wrong! If you happen to meet me in game, feel free to throw rotten fruit at me and drive me out of your settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Great post.
I too find it odd that almost no attempt has been made to create a true sandbox social platform.
Popular MMORPG culture laughs at any massive deviation from the norm, when in fact online games need bear no resemblance to any of the titles of the last decade.
The potential for an MMORPG which exists as a tool for player invention is very possible. What's less likely however, is a company attracting investment with a product which has never been attempted before, whilst the industry is currently booming with a tried and tested system we all pay for and hate.
On one side of the coin you have Xsyon, Dawntide...MMORPG games you can respect for their vision, yet are crumbling around themselves as money and resources are simply not available. On the other, you have Bioware and The Old Republic, tens of millions of dollars and more of the same.
How can you win?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Legit fears all around. Myself, I'm hoping for something as robust and "sandboxy" as Skyrim. An open world that does NOT railroad you into certain areas or certain quests. I would love for the game to be a sandbox of Golarion. Imagine Skyrim(except with Golarion as the map) except online where there are just as many PCs as NPCs. Where you could collect your money and buy a house. Where you could go out together and clear out a castle and set up your own rule in the surrounding area, possibly like a Kingmaker with robust world dynamics. I'll continue to hope until the actually fruition of PFOL. Of course as my father used to say, you can hope in one hand, and crap in the other see which one fills up first.
Hehe... Okay, I got a bit liberal with the facts there. I've been peripherally involved in some design, and know just a smidge of programing. Still enough to know it's harder than it appears to pull that off.
But conceptually, getting that to work would increase the depth of a game exponentially compared to bootstrapping yet another statically scripted expansion to the end of a title. If you can endure the design process, it comes out to a lot less work in the long run.
There's still plenty of room for scripted-in content, but that stuff could be reserved for the broad over arching story that the entire player population can participate in.
Ah damnit, y'all went and got me all optimistic again! Okay back to my hole!
If you can endure the design process, it comes out to a lot less work in the long run.Sure, if you can somehow completely revolutionize emergent game design, it'll make less work for scenario developers. You're going to need a more specific plan than "endure the design process" and "make the game deeper", though.
"Completely revolutionize emergent game design" is more than a bit of a stretch there, Bud. Most of the pieces are there, just not in place. Some projects are just waiting for funding to finish. If by that you mean "do something that no one else is doing, because they're all busy telling their backers how they're going to make them the next World of Warcraft" then you'd be closer to the truth. ...and that is a very real and serious factor.
That aside, you seem to use the phrase as if it wasn't not too long ago the norm to do so. It's true that this business is more of a big boy's game nowadays. The risk is higher, but so is the yield. As far as a specific plan, one of the hurdles was getting servers to dynamically handle and exchange traffic. Even that has been hammered out by one developer, which sadly rode that pony right into the grave, so we may never know.
I'd love to elaborate, but -snowballs chance in hell that they have, I respect my friends, and their NDAs.
I didn't mean to rouse you, though. Sorry about suggesting that it might be a good idea to break the status quo. Go back to reading Gamasutra, and enjoy the microwaved bento box happy meal games that, thanks to that type of attitude, will surely dominate the industry for the next fifteen years.
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Is it that hard to make a game that can spontaneously and conditionally generate persistent content or -God forbid -get the hell out of the way and let the players generate their own content? Instead of hand coding the thing one brick at a time? Seriously?
Not so much. For inspiration, check out Shores of Hazeron. It's a difficult concept to market, and it's somewhat risky. Shores of Hazeron is sci-fi, and the graphic design... well, it leaves a lot to be desired. But it's doing some very core things correctly, things that are sometimes claimed to be prohibitively difficult to accomplish.
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Not so much. For inspiration, check out Shores of Hazeron. It's a difficult concept to market, and it's somewhat risky. Shores of Hazeron is sci-fi, and the graphic design... well, it leaves a lot to be desired. But it's doing some very core things correctly, things that are sometimes claimed to be prohibitively difficult to accomplish.Is it that hard to make a game that can spontaneously and conditionally generate persistent content or -God forbid -get the hell out of the way and let the players generate their own content? Instead of hand coding the thing one brick at a time? Seriously?
Now ask yourself a simple question: how much does Shores of Hazeron earn per month, and let's call it a day.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So just curious. Has the OP read anything at all about this specific MMO? Because while there is plenty to rant about, it's not any of the OP's points. I'll sum it up for those that can't bother to read the official FAQ:
1) No OGL. This game has zero basis in the PnP mechanics. There aren't even classes and levels FFS.
2) Themepark dungeons/raids aka WoW endgame are a sideshow in this game. The "real" content comes from players building up and competing as groups across various methods, such as economic, political, and yes combat. Conflict and content are thus generated by players, with the computer's role merely to provide systems that promote interesting player conflict. (rather than generating random content)
3) Since the game is directly or indirectly about PvP, there's definitely going to be challenge somewhere. You don't win unless someone else is getting ground into the dirt.
This above isn't what you would assume from a game labeled "Pathfinder Online" and not knowing anything else, and plenty of people (including me) have gone off on that point. They however have decided it was a good idea to do a small amount of research before posting an ill-informed wall of text.
Agreed. I'm getting tired of seeing the same arguments over and over by people who obviously haven't read any of the FAQ yet or done any research to see if their gripes have already been addressed.
Agreed. I'm getting tired of seeing the same arguments over and over by people who obviously haven't read any of the FAQ yet or done any research to see if their gripes have already been addressed.So just curious. Has the OP read anything at all about this specific MMO? Because while there is plenty to rant about, it's not any of the OP's points. I'll sum it up for those that can't bother to read the official FAQ:
1) No OGL. This game has zero basis in the PnP mechanics. There aren't even classes and levels FFS.
2) Themepark dungeons/raids aka WoW endgame are a sideshow in this game. The "real" content comes from players building up and competing as groups across various methods, such as economic, political, and yes combat. Conflict and content are thus generated by players, with the computer's role merely to provide systems that promote interesting player conflict. (rather than generating random content)
3) Since the game is directly or indirectly about PvP, there's definitely going to be challenge somewhere. You don't win unless someone else is getting ground into the dirt.
This above isn't what you would assume from a game labeled "Pathfinder Online" and not knowing anything else, and plenty of people (including me) have gone off on that point. They however have decided it was a good idea to do a small amount of research before posting an ill-informed wall of text.
So... did ya read the thread or just hit reply?
Yeah, I understand the pitch, I've given it. How many here have sunk real time and money into trying to kick one of these projects off instead of just posting about it? -can't be just me. If you did, then you've heard this same pitch over and over again, and you've probably also given it yourself. I've read your "research" a thousand times. When it's time to sit down and talk real money (Realtime Worlds ring a bell?), these ideas rarely survive the second or third cut, and this game isn't even close to that point. When it does survive, something else usually sinks the project. And yet we have the same arguments over and over:
"It will require a revolution in game design!"
No, it won't. That was true five years ago, it isn't now. It's everywhere. The problem is no one has managed to forge it into something profitable. -at least not with the kinds of yields Blizzard is getting, which are the kind of yields a venture capitalist that is about to cough up tens of millions of dollars wants.
"This idea is different ...and this time we mean it".
Nope. Same idea. No levels. Sometimes no classes. No static faction system. No static zones. Dynamic, non-consensual PvP playspace ...maybe twitch based. Some combination of the above. I love it! I live for it! It just doesn't ever pan out.
"They're just laying the groundwork. The dynamic content is coming. Heck, they're just getting started!"
Meet Dave. He has money. Dave and all the guys at TDP Asset Group are simply going ga-ga over this "morp-herger game thing". Dave has a buddy named Tucker. He's just another M.B.A. who works for an insurance company, but back in college Dave watched Tucker beat dozens upon dozens of games on his X-Box360. I mean, his gamerscore was off the charts!
Tucker is your new best friend. Dave just hired him to "keep an eye on the money", and since he's also a gamer, this qualifies him to make calls on game design and content. You know ..."Just to make sure it's what the kids really want", and all.
"Hey dave, we just finished the concept art for the core characters."
-"What does Tucker think?"
-He ...uh likes it! Yeah, he really does!"
-"Okay, sounds great!" -Click.
That doesn't sound like the situation here, but it's a big reason "dynamic sandbox persistent game world thing" has been sloshing around at the bottom of the barrel for quite a few years now, gasping for breath.
I want to see this happen. I really do! I once told a fellow conspirator "I don't want shares. I don't want a position in the company. Now, I just want to see someone pull this off". A little while later, I cashed in my chips. That was in 2008. I'm not holding my breath.
God speed, though!
Oh well, I can’t make you believe me. As I mentioned before, I was merely a small player on the periphery for a number of years -probably one of hundreds, in hind sight.
Everyone has roughly the same idea when it comes to spontaneous content. The press release for PFOL sounds like the beginning of meetings I have attended from 2005 to 2008. Anyone can walk into a room and say "I have an idea that takes modular sections of terrain and assembles them based on a set of essential variables to spontaneously generate ‘unique’ terrain". It's not even converting that into code that is the big obstacle most of the time, It's making it marketable to a broad enough audience –or at least some poor slob with enough cheddar to pony up for all of the art.
Then, there's that mere trifle of creating every other element that makes up the finished product.
WoW was initially conceived as a hybrid RTS and MMORPG. Guild Wars initially promised a drastic break from the established mindset. Rifts was another one that pitched RvR as a core concept. Black Prophecy?! –Don’t get me started on that one. Sooner or later, the idea gets compromised out or is diluted down to minigame status. What came close? Pirates of the Burning Sea? Mortal Online? Not really commercial heavy hitters. The idea just hasn’t had enough momentum to reach escape velocity.
What I hadn’t read until very recently are Ryan Dancey’s posts here. I’m not a big fan of some of it, but he seems pretty committed to a few core ideas that I think are vital to pulling the general concept off, and that is promising enough to make me regret the tone of my OP, yes. -My apologies for the hasty pessimism.
I disagree with your take on PnP glue and stitching, though. Just because they aren’t cut-copy-pasting OGL does not mean nontraditional RPG mechanics.
“Characters in Pathfinder Online don't have levels in the classic sense. They develop skills over time, and as their skills develop, and as they meet various prerequisites, they unlock new abilities similar to class features or feats from the tabletop game.”
-That can mean a lot of things, from complete skill-based advancement to functionally “levels without numbers”.
Likewise, “No classes, but archetypes” can mean everything from a skill buy system with a point cap to something which is indistinguishable from what Rifts did. Even in a restrictionless point buy system is no sure thing. If only a handful of the possible paths translate into a huge advantage on the battlefield or in the markets, then those are essentially classes.
I’d like to see something that uses the Pathfinder IP, but which otherwise has little similarity. I would rather see rock solid mechanics than see my pet feats included.
Time will tell. I have changed my mind enough to happily admit to a bit of foot-in-mouth. Even then, some of the responses to Ryan’s comments are disheartening. Not because those people are wrong, but because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of support for the idea. Everyone has their own idea of fun, I suppose. For me, PvP and sandbox are the keystones to actually having something that merits the label “Role-Playing Game”. Not because they are ends in themselves, but because they seem to be inescapable prerequisites. I simply cannot see the point of all the effort sunk into “virtual paper doll dress up”. That is what, regardless of the initial hope or hype, most MMOs devolve into.
Fifty million Elvis fans can't be wrong, I suppose.
Number 1 rule, do not only listen to the no lifers, the A-Types, former\current WoW players (wishes he had a WoW filter), and old school DnD players.
Listen to EVERYONE!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Number 1 rule, do not only listen to the no lifers, the A-Types, former\current WoW players (wishes he had a WoW filter), and old school DnD players.
Listen to EVERYONE!
Listen to reason and good sense, and above all be conscious of the difference between a popular concept and a vocal minority with an unpopular agenda.
Number 1 rule, do not only listen to the no lifers, the A-Types, former\current WoW players (wishes he had a WoW filter), and old school DnD players.
Listen to EVERYONE!
I wish I had a filter for prejudicial idiots.
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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To address the OP, I don't plan on allowing Pathfinder Online to distract measurably from the people who have been running the Pathfinder tabletop products from day 1. While my staff is available to consult and Pathfinder Online is based on and inspired by the material created for the tabletop game, the Pathfinder RPG and Goblinworks creative staffs do not overlap, and I do not intend to divert significant creative resources to the new project, since it is being done by a different company.
Listen to reason and good sense, and above all be conscious of the difference between a popular concept and a vocal minority with an unpopular agenda.
A popular concept is not LOTRO, or DDO, or WoW, or SWTOR, or EVE with Pathfinder history, monsters, and etc.
1. WASD is a popular concept.
2. Inventory based on strength instead of 65 spaces is a popular concept. I have to clear my space-based inventory more so than my weight based.
3. It sounds like non-skill-based system is beginning to be a popular concept but of course, it is still in the beginning phases.
Sure, it will have similarities from the above popular MMOs, but it HAS to have UNIQUENESS and a Pathfinder feel to it.
I understand Erik but also DDO is a MMO that is using similar DnD features but no, it is not an exact duplicate of Dungeons and Dragons - Eberron setting. HOWEVER, it feels like Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 and not a huge sidetrack from it. I will have an open mind to see what Goblinworks develops and I understand the PnP team will have little to do with the MMO. At the same time, I do not and sounds like others, do not want a mirror copy of popular MMOs with a Pathfinder flare.
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A popular concept is not LOTRO, or DDO, or WoW, or SWTOR, or EVE with Pathfinder history, monsters, and etc.I'm having a really hard time understanding what you're saying, here.
May be that a clone of those MMOs (or taking on major elements) would be a bad thing and it would probably bomb?
My interpretation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A popular concept is not LOTRO, or DDO, or WoW, or SWTOR, or EVE with Pathfinder history, monsters, and etc.I'm having a really hard time understanding what you're saying, here.May be that a clone of those MMOs (or taking on major elements) would be a bad thing and it would probably bomb?
My interpretation.
Right, I get that people think that. What I don't get is how he's tying it to my post.
Either way, though, I'm seeing a lot of this:
Guy 1: "Don't make PFO like WoW!"
Guy 2: "Why not?"
Guy 1: "Because a lot of stuff about WoW sucks!"
Guy 2: "Like what?"
Guy 1: *lists a bunch of stuff*
Guy 2: "But most of those are things that designers accept as good things in MMO design! Why not focus on these things:" *lists a bunch of stuff*
Guy 1: "I don't care about those things!"
Guy 2: "But that's the sort of stuff that PFO can actually do differently without turning into a terrible game no one wants to play..."
It's a little worrisome, especially coming from so much of the game's initial "fan base."
It's a little worrisome, especially coming from so much of the game's initial "fan base."
Welcome to the die hard Pathfinder fan base forums. We are here because the game we love took a path in which we could not follow. And this is one reason why we are passionate about how Pathfinder Online should be developed. Our only MMO alternative is DDO and DDO has its faults as well and NWN 1 Persistent Worlds are becoming quite dated.
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I think it should be called Golarion Online (GF) as it will have little if anything, by the initial sounds of it, to do with PF (i.e. the game as presented in the Core book, APG, etc). Unless what I have been reading is wrong, this is a game that uses Paizo's setting only. Sort of like if I used the Forgotten Realms of D&D, but used the World of Warcraft game engine. Technically NOT D&D, but having the familiar setting.
S.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think it should be called Golarion Online (GF) as it will have little if anything, by the initial sounds of it, to do with PF (i.e. the game as presented in the Core book, APG, etc).
Again, Pathfinder was a campaign setting first. When the Paizo folk set out to create Pathfinder (the product line), the idea that they'd eventually publish a set of rules to support it was just one possibility among many.
Saying that the setting of Pathfinder isn't really Pathfinder is simply revisionist.
I can understand the OP to some degree. I do not agree on endgame content being where it is at as I don't do too many raids/dungeons. I enjoy the content before endgame. The fishing, crafting, adventuring places. I like to RP now and then as well.
That being said, I do agree on static mobs/quests, those are interesting ideas. To build upon that, they should have mobs/NPCs that slowly build up "camps" near cities over time. When it gets big enough, they attack. Maybe it takes a few RL weeks or months to build up, but once it does it can mean danger to any player built cities. This would create a little more dynamic content that players can control by keeping the population down.
What can be claimed without proof can be dismissed without proof.
I can't imagine why it would be difficult, and you can't explain it why it should be.
What can be claimed without proof can be dismissed without proof.
I can't imagine why it would be difficult, and you can't explain it why it should be.
Then make it for us, Aunt Tony, if it is so simplistic. We'll be waiting.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I just want to point out something: It is not the offering side the one supporting the market, it is the demanding side. If there are so many themepark MMOs following the same tried & true formula developed by EQ and then perfected by WoW, it is not because developers are scheeming against our enjoyment; it is because the players are sending them the signal that that's the kind of game they want.
After all, there are lots of MMOs that follow quite different routes, with rarities such as A Tale in the Desert (an MMO entirely about crafting and politics set in Ancient Egypt) or the well-meaning but ultimately unsuccesful attempts to reinvent the UO vibe that Darkfall and Mortal Online are.
Products become stale when the demand for those products becomes stale as well. Innovation doesn't just happen overnight: One thing is to have a good idea (which are aplenty; creativity is everywhere these days), and something much different is to innovate. If I remember my class on the Theory of Innovation from university, in order to have an innovation you need:
1.- A creative idea, either radical (which creates a new class of product) or gradual (which improves an already existing product).
2.- A feasible invention that materializes said idea.
3.- Market aproval.
Without those three things, what you have is either a nice but otherwise useless idea, or a nice but otherwise useless invention. And that is simply because ideas do not cause a real effect unless people want to get involved with them.
And it just happens that the MMO market seems to be, on the grand perspective, demanding mostly gradual ideas that build up on what it knows, and that's why we get all these games that offer essentially the same experience under a different dress.
Rift is a good example of this situation, a game which for all purposes is WoW with extra sugar (and I mean no disrespect. I devoted 5 years to WoW, a game I still love but that I don't play anymore out of burnout, and I've been playing Rift since launch): The game had a good start and, after a bit of uncertainty, seems to be doing pretty good, at a time where everyone was predicting the death of the EQ-WoW Themepark Geargrind Model.
Why did it work? My guess is that the market is still very hungry for these games, and the reason others have been falling along the way seems to be more related to technical or design reasons rather than the gameplay itself: WAR, a game I truly enjoyed for several months (go, go Dwarf Engineer with grenade spec. Best fun I had in years), was doomed from the start due to shortsight in the way an endgame centred almost exclusively on two factions battling over the exact same map over and over was designed; AoC had a tremendous functionality and content debacle very early on that took years to -partially- recover from; same thing happened with STO; Alganon was just a bad joke.
My point is, that while I agree that new stuff would be great, I think you are mixing personal opinions with facts that don't quite seem to support themselves in the current MMO stage. It's like asking why are there so many D&D clones: Because that's what we roleplayers demand the most.
Changes to the MMO market will happen along with changes on the playerbase. Right now, we are undergoing a mass influx of casual, tolerant players that are not very demanding in terms of complexity, but rather seem to want something familiar with lots of polish (which is why I think Rift had such a good start, and why I think SWOTR will do pretty good as well, even though after trying the beta I am certainly not going to sign up myself).
Games like PFO need to be aimed at niches, because right now, grinding themeparks are the locomotive driving the market (and so far we've only talked about the big names in the western market. The eastern one is made of Grind Elementals at this point). And it is good to see the people in charge clearly know this way better than us.
Goblinworks Founder
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Rift is a good example of this situation, a game which for all purposes is WoW with extra sugar (and I mean no disrespect. I devoted 5 years to WoW, a game I still love but that I don't play anymore out of burnout, and I've been playing Rift since launch): The game had a...
Rift is already bleeding despite the fact that they made a truly solid game. I was heavily involved in testing Rift every day for nearly 7 months prior to launch and I have to say it was one of the best experiences I have had with testing. The early access was a bit sketchy but the launch was the best I have seen for an MMO yet. Rift delivers everything that WoW does and more, yet it still cannot retain subscriptions. I moved to Rift with a guild of over 1500 members, casual, hardcore and everything in between, yet every third post on our forums is a thread saying "goodbye, see y'all in GW2 or TOR".
PFO's direction couldn't be more right. There is nothing on the market that offers what Pathfinder Online is offering and there is a legion of people waiting for it.