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On The Over-Saturation Of MMO Games
An anonymous reader writes "Stratics has an editorial discussing MMO market saturation, specifically triggered by the recent closure of Microsoft's massively multiplayer PC game, Mythica. The piece argues: 'But there is a dark realization that is now being considered, just when does it end? When does the genre hit the ceiling and all that ends up happening is [that] companies resort to passing around subscriptions with no real growth. This is a question that is haunting corporations who have potential products laid before senior management - just how long can it continue? When does the opportunity cost grow larger than any potential earning?'"
I could be totally wrong, but whoever puts out the first MMO that's fun to play without investing ludicrous amounts of time in it will make a pretty penny. Something along the lines of online PS2 game My Street, except, you know, good. Problem is, it's a lot easier to make some more shitty monster models and yet another barren wasteland in EQ than to make some interesting content.
So far all I've seen is leveling with swords, leveling with light sabers, etc. Who is going to innovate first?
I'm on top of my game like I'm standin' on Xbox.
The main problem for me with these games - except for this I could probably see pitching in for maybe two a month - is the absolute time suckers these games are. Now some games I can spend a lot of time on don't get me wrong, but the problem with a MMOG is that you can't just hit "pause" or save and quit when something IRL comes up. There's always a battle to finish or a safe spot to find. The publishers are so worried about the cheaters that they place ever more demanding conditions on the player exiting the game.
:)
Now clearly if my son starts crying or something like that I can just pull the plug and attend to my RL responsibilities, these are after all, only games. But what fun is it to return at a later time, stripped naked, missing hard earned XP, and with a corpse to find?
Ironically Mythica might've been a bit better - as I understood it, it revolved around shorter, pocket dungeons, making it easier to pick up and play and leave.
Ah well back to X2
I was never very attracted to MMO gaming because of my ego I guess. For the same reasons online FPSs aren't very fun to me unless it's with people I know. It's the little fish, big pond story. IMHO MMO games need to have some sort of mechanism besides keeping track of kills, experience and money that lets you know you've made a difference in the world.
Pretty widgets? What pretty widgets?
Companies need to pitch something totally different that'll set them apart from the others. Having weekly events. Set up contests. Have the dev team make their presence known in the game and then give the players a chance to kill them (a la Ultima Online). Come up with a totally different cast of races to play as (humans, elves and dwarves are overdone. Get over it.) Let monsters be proactive, instead of being reactive. Maybe even let monsters roam into town and destroy if players don't kill it. TRY SOMETHING NEW.
MMO games are changing IMO. The problem is by the time they become good enough to earn my money, chances are I'll be playing CS2 and Quake 4.
One real problem is that as newer MMO's come out, the cost of entry is getting very high. Not in dollars, but time.
My cousin used to be a pretty fanatical Everquest player. As new expansion packs would come out, he'd have to spend hundreds of hours leveling his character up just so he'd be strong enough to try out the Planes of Power, or whatever the new hotness was. All his friends played, and played a lot too, so if he wants to quest with them he has to be fairly close in levels or he'll be pasted in any combat.
So with any new MMO people have to start over. They have a new character, no skills, and lose all their previous investment of time. If their friends don't switch, then it's another reason not to embrace a new MMO. Why go play if all your friends are still playing EQ?
The only MMO coming out that says they plan to address this is World of Warcraft. According to early interviews and alpha impressions at Gamespy, it seems that Blizzard wants you to be able to jump right in and have fun, regardless of what level you are. No more spending a few hundred hours killing giant rats and spiders so you can be tough enough to actually try doing something FUN.
So I don't know if MMO's will be inherently limited if they have proper design. The current crop of MMO's is getting very saturated however. Lowering the cost of entry (level treadmills, money, in-game loot) will certainly allow newer MMO's to compete however.
--
"Hands and feet are rarely discovered from these periods because they are usually the first thing carnivores eat. They make a tasty snack and are easy to eat."
- Dr. Graham Baker, South African Journal of Science
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. - Anais Nin
But not because MMO's have hit their peak. It's that all of the MMO's are the same. As another poster pointed out, they all have the same classes. But on top of that, they pretty much all have the same rules. No, or very limited PKing. Horrid point and click combat systems which don't appeal to the mainstream gamer. I think MMO's will really take off when they are blended correctly with fps games. Picture a MMO where combat is like Quake or Unreal but you can gain experence and new items/powers/gold from killing people/NPC's ala a RPG. Sure your level 60 character might be able to kill that level 1 guy, unless level 1 guy happens to be thresh.
Most of the MMO's now cater to the care bears, have too many rules, are overly complex, have poor combat systems,and are a time sink. Once this stuff goes, MMO's will really go mainstream.
MMO makers need to get off their high horse of "Creating Virtual Worlds" and focus on the fact that they are creating games. The thing to remember when making games is "Easy to play/learn, difficult to master". The current MMO's are "Difficult to learn, easy to master" (as long as you are willing to spend the time)