What a lot of people fail to understand is that them getting tired of the game and stepping out is the natural order of things. Someone new will step in and because the new people stepping in are FAR more likely to play for longer than someone tired of the games that the newer players will be the ones they are trying to please.

Now, soloability is a big thing these days and it seems to escape most people as to why. This is because they immediately assume that anyone playing an mmorpg is there for the social environment and that is NOT the case. People who go to the gym go for 3 possible reasons. The first is the soicial reason. The second (not really applicable here tho) is that they rent the equipment instead of buy it. The third is that it doesn't matter if you are at home or in a building somewhere else, it's still a gym and the other people there are entirely coincidental. It may be a single one of these reasons or any combination, but it doesn't have to include the social factor.

The same can be said for MMORPG's. Not everyone is here because it's a social occasion. They are here because it's a game they like to play and no other reason. They don't particularly care to play with other people, just to play the game. Argue that all you like but as soon as someone says "killstealing" they want to play the game with no-one else around so they can kill what they want, when they want with no interference from other people. That's not an MMORPG. They specificly want to remove the MM part of the equation.

People have systematicly wanted to remove that MM part of the equation for quite a long time now. It's why Guild Wars is entirely instanced and the only persistent portion of the game is towns. So, the first person who wants to say that no-one wants to remove the MM from MMORPG can stop in their tracks right there.

In the last few years Soloability is becoming a very big ussue because of this. Why is this? (and yes, this is where I get back on-topic).

Because so many players are "burnt out" on MMORPG's, they need to tap into a new market. The most obvious choice is the Offline RPG playerbase. You have the right formula exactly except for the MM part which in theory shouldn't matter because it's extra.

So they scale back the difficulty, up the game, class, item and skill structures in relative power to provide the soloability that offline games have and tap into that market. It's exactly the same reason the games got smaller. It's exactly the same reason why certain aspects of TR resemble the Third Person Shooter in many ways. To try to bring in extra palyers who aren't "burnt out".

And it's all based on a fallacy. A few years ago there was a couple games that made the grab for the market and a few of them did VERY well. They made a LOT of money rather quickly so brain-dead marketing people said "that's the way to go, make more of those".

The problem is this: If you strip the frontend from TR (the graphics and combat system) it's exactly the same crap that people have been saying they are tired of for over 2 years now. A playable story driven by quests where your level decides what you can wear or use which comes in 4 different "colours" that you loot from corpses alongside a simplistic crafting system that is nothing more than an extention of the loot system (you can't actually make anything just add mods and making someone go to a specially named "crafting" terminal doesn't make it "crafting" it's still only a mod system), with some base "clan" system that pretends to make it social that culminates in either repeating PvP or Raids to extend the life of the game.

start thinking right now exactly how many games fit the exact above scenario once you remove the GUI and graphics and you will figure out why we are all "burning out".

You can give me Chow Mein in a box, on a plate, in a bowl or wrap it in newspaper for all I care, the only difference is presentation (and possibly some light reading while I eat).

Even if you go right back to the start of all this "Innovation" in MMORPG's started by Mr Garriot himself, they are all trying to give me chow-mein in a different box. They love to talk about putting in the FPS element, platform element (the guy who said that needs to play more MMORPG's), this element, that element into the genre and it's all the flaming box.

Simultaneously the industry has gutted the MMORPG inside the box. Yes, my takeout box gets prettier and prettier, sometimes it's cardboard, sometimes it's plastic, sometimes it's printed in one colour and just text other times it has a pleasing motif and a catchy phrase on it, but it doesn't change the fact that all the time I'm getting more and more noodle in it and less and less meat.

Then I decide to try the Sci Fi instead of the Chow Mein (fantasy) and it's still all noodle which I'm already sick of. So I leave and look for Indian instead of Chinese where I can at least get a Pappadam instead of a noodle.

Until these incredibly smart and knowledgable people get it through their thick heads that they aren't innovating a damned thing by giving me a prettier box and more noodle we are going to keep burning out. An MMORPG is not like chinese food. I have to eat, but I don't have to play an mmorpg. There's no biological imperitive in play on this one.

On top of that you are playing in the realm of intelligence because there's no biological imperitive to sit down at a keyboard. If you leave a sheep in the wild it will eat different grasses, leaves, barks, shrubs, fruits and seeds. Stick them in a paddock and they eat nothing but grass, hay (dried grass) and maybe a grain or 2 if you really care about them at all and give them some.

There is a biological impertaive for eating, but no part of that dictates the necessity of a rigid construct. A person will stand in that paddock and say "....? Grass again? ARE YOU INSANE??? No, a few oats twice a week isn't going to cut the mustard buddy" jump the fence and be gone. This is precisely the reason why prisons have walls. Putting in all those flashy effects are the equivalent of sticking a strobe light and a mirrorball in the middle of the exercise yard which is more likely going to be taken as the new form of mind control and rallied against yet we swallow it and say "wow, that's so cool".

Now I'm not talking any specific game here I'm talking the industry.

To take a look at TR in specific, we've had so much chow mein but we will still want it every now and then. TR delivers Chow Mein in a way sufficiently different to make it mildly appealing for a while but not that far in we are going to remember it's just chow-mein.

TR fits that above formulaic outlay just as well as a lot of other games. It's just like those Korean MMO's that are just the same game with a different front-end designed to be played for a few months and discarded by the masses as they move on to your next product so you have to micro-pay for all of your goodies and items all over again without actually realising that's exactly what you are doing.

When the industry started gutting the MMORPG it was to try to create a game that straddled the offline RPG and the MMORPG, not re-invent the MMORPG. It was specificly to tap into the unmined potential of people who wanted to play an MMORPG but didn't have the time or the attention span to play one.

When you look at the MMORPG as a pie, and you cut out a wedge, no-one is going to buy that pie. However, and this is the reason for this generation of thin MMORPG's, if you cut a pie in half you can sell it. And that's exactly what devs did up front. They took the MMORPG and cut it in half to make an appealing looking product. Half a pie is nice, neat and has obviously been cut in half with care and purpose. It is a marketable product.

There was reason and the product is no longer labelled as "Cherry Pie" it's correctly labelled as "1/2 Cherry Pie". The odd part is where they started to call this "1/2 cherry pie" a "2nd generation Cherry Pie". The insane part is where people believed it.

Now, having a gague on the average intellect of the average gamer (apparently somewhere near the cherries that went in the pie if you believe the publishing companies) they are going to cut a wedge out of the 1/2 pie, sell it to you, then post you the rest of the pie later.

They used to sell us a complete game, then add content and extras as an incentive to stay, thus creating the evolving MMORPG. They waited for us to accept that as the norm. Then some Person in the PR dept trying to sell an unfinished game come up with some great spin on it and said "this is now, you can play, we guarantee the evolution (rest of the content) thus doing nothing but dish out what was a deficiency as a selling point. Very intelligent person.

Now it is standard practice that they are selling us less than 1/2 a game, telling us it is a full game, and using the excuse that MMORPG's are supposed to evolve so that will fit into the gap. At full price.

Sigfreid and Roy would be proud of this bait and switch. It USED to be something they had to do to keep us there, now it's an excuse they use to be lazy and justify selling us 2/5ths of a game and we believe all the smoke and mirrors 110%.

Unfortunately the all-mighty dollar stepped in way too far. Investors want short term gains so to get the investors on-board that's what you have to offer. In order to do this you have to get a game out quickly and cheaply to make it short term and appeal to the masses to get the bucks to make the biggest profit.

Yes, that's right, I'm not saying it's all the Devs fault. They are people with a job to do in a given time to a given standard. They are not artisis that can take as long as they want and try to produce a masterpiece with every attempt.

The problem is that the artists are painting the roof of the sistine chappel, but they are forced to do it with a roller and a nice cream colour that doesn't show up too much dust. The best they can do is hope that they can talk the customer into some nice rendering or a contrasting colour on the moulding.

What this artist playing contractor needs to do is tell his employer that the job is done, but that his audience in this day and age is going to sleep. When they start looking around and tilt their head back they are going to go to sleep. However, if I put a heap of biblical stuff up there they will get isnpired (well, at least not go to sleep) instead and start paying attention again.

Then he needs to go to church. When people are tilting their heads back and going to sleep, before the pope can say anything to him about how boring his paintjob and how he should have done better and he'll never hire him again, he needs to step in and tell the pope "I told you so".

Now, TR is a good version of the gutted MMORPG. The genre is too flooded to produce anything particularly spectacular unfortunately because people are just looking for far more than it can deliver. If he's smart, Mr Garriot will go to NC soft and say "here's the game you wanted, watch the similarities between it and Auto Assault as it goes along. This genre of the gutted MMORPG is near tapped out".

Then, when TR isn't the next biggest thing and only doing marginally he should jump in and say "I told you so" before NCSoft can lay blame. Then, while they are reeling trying to find someone to blame and can't blame him, he should say "Now it's time for me to put moses and the apostles and other crap up there".

When this happens and the artists instead of the accountants are in control of the products we will start seeing new and innovative games that refresh us, grab our interest and make us want to stay. We will again be excited about the game we are playing instead of playing it because we like the genre and at least this new one has different scenery.

And, no. Games will not evolve to become better, they will evolve to become bigger. You will get 6 new instances offering an extention of a storyline with new armour and new guns that look different but are still bound to follow the underlying code. They may optimise code all they like, but they rarely ever replace it. So, a year down the line it runs smoother on hardware that is now so overpowered for the 2-3 year old code it's not funny and barely necessary. The hardware performance gives far more gain that optimising code does.

So, 6 years down the line, 3 expansions later providing 3 new storylines and 3 new worlds and a billion new items, you are still playing the same game code. Ok, there's now 1000 new craftable items but you will still be crafting them in exactly the same way.

In 6 years time, are you going to be sick of walking up to a crafting terminal and adding a mod to something for the millionth time? Mod a gun,. mod an armour, the process is identical. Walk up to the terminal and press "T". Stick in the item, stick in the recipe, press the button. click the Tab and grab the completed item. How many times can you do that before you just don't want to do it anymore?

The rest of the game is the same. As long as they keep serving us up with the generic:     

QUOTE: A playable story driven by quests where your level decides what you can wear or use which comes in 4 different "colours" that you loot from corpses alongside a simplistic crafting system that is nothing more than an extention of the loot system (you can't actually make anything just add mods and making someone go to a specially named "crafting" terminal doesn't make it "crafting" it's still only a mod system), with some base "clan" system that pretends to make it social that culminates in either repeating PvP or Raids to extend the life of the game.

How long do they really expect us to stick with the game when it's everything we already did in the last generic offering? How long do they think they can cover it up while at the same time there is Guild Wars shoving it in our face? "Guild Wars 7!! Same game, new levels, new items new classes, new skills!!" Of course some of us are getting burnt out. Of course some of us are getting ready to pack it in. We have been playing the same game for the last 4 years. For some of us it's wearing very thin.

The accountants just confuse the fact that we are paying for a re-hash with the "fact" that it's what we want.