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The Quest To Build a Better Warcraft
Red Herring tackles the rush into virtual space, talking about the MMOG goldrush and the business consequences World of Warcraft has had on the games industry as a whole. Though sometimes it doesn't seem to fully understand the difference between a single player game and a Massive one, the article still touches on a number of important points. Lots of folks are looking to cash in on WoW's success, and they're importing or licensing every Massive game they can find to get on the bandwagon. "The problem is that no one knows what the next WoW killer will look like. Creating a hit video game, which combines strong characters, a compelling story, and top-notch production values, is part art and part inexact science. Making a hit game can be much more difficult than producing an Oscar-winning movie. After all, the hit video game must be compelling enough to keep players coming back for more." Even if a lot of their conclusions are odd, and they call Puzzle Pirates silly, it's worth a look. What do you think it's going to take to crack Blizzard's deathlock on the Massive genre?
The content is all that amazing in World of Warcraft, but the game engine is second to none. Make a game engine as good as WoW's, with the character animation, UI and scripting support and you've got a WoW-killer. Until then they are just bad immitations.
Give me an MMO with the quality of WoW and a higher caliber of people to play with, and I'm there.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
I don't play games at all, but I had a look at Second Life recently and I think that it (and the systems which will come after it) will appeal to a much broader market than games like Warcraft.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Compelling story ? Strong characters ? We re not talking about MMO games here...MMO aims to the "lowest common denominator" between players to attract as much people as they can. WOW did it so well that they managed to attract people who hardly ever played video games before...and that's also why hardcore gamers tend not to play WOW.
You don't need FedEx quests, level grinding, and fairytales to have an MMO. All you need are lots of players interacting online. Yet for some reason the major studios don't get this. They feel that every MMO needs dumbassed level grinding, quests, etc. The same stuff we've seen over and over. There's no reason why a game as simple as Team Fortress Classic couldn't be an MMO.
WoW dominates the "traditional" MMO market right now. It's foolish to directly compete with WoW unless you have a strong IP, huge marketing budget, and gameplay that makes players to give up their WoW timesink for your timesink. Most startup MMO companies lack at least two of those things...
But you have a chance if you create an online game that appeals to other gamers. What do Half-Life 2, Halo, and Gears of War have in common? They're shooter games and they're best-sellers, yet no one has created a successful FPS MMO. That market is a potential goldmine...as long as devs steer clear of the traditional MMO crap.
Imagine a MMOFPS similar to Guild Wars. No monthly fee, but frequently-released expansions. There would be a co-op campaign where you and your party fight the baddies and advance through the game's storyline, all while gaining access to new weapons/skills. Add in some arenas for on-the-fly PvP combat, territorial conquest zones, and a some sort of guild structure. Now you've got yourself a game. Simplified, I know, but a competent studio could easily pull that off.
"World of Warcraft" is the MMORPG.
On the issue:
Building a World of Warcraft successor is easy. Look at what they do, copy it and do it better. Improve the things that aren't good and add the things that are missing. Generally the japanese do this sort of things when it comes to electronics. It's the very same way people could build an iPod killer. It's just that somebody still hasn't built a single device that can compete with it on the most simple specs (large memory, video capability, ease of use, decent looks).
Same goes for WoW. Look at the game. Play it. Aside from Monopoly sucktion it's advantages are very real and obvious.
1) Runs easily on older hardware without looking like crap.
2) Runs on Macs and plays nice with mac users. (potential universal opinion leaders when it comes to nice gaming and fun stuff)
3) Takes 90 seconds for the most ultimate n00b get into.
4) Slowly reveals it's complexity bit by bit without overwelming anybody at any point.
5) Has a powerleveling 'grind option', but not an omnipresent one.
6) Has an optional powerquesting stance.
7) Is beautyful and content laden enough for all who just like to run around and are not to interested in 5 or 6.
8) Has a super addictive end-game that even amplifies the underlying 'diabolo collectors habit' subnote of the entire career in conjunction with strong multiplay / competetive play.
9) Has subtle Humor made by the actuall builders, doesn't take itself so serious - important if your offering a full-time imersive VR.
10) Builds on a world that is not and doesn't have to be realistic or even plausible when considering distances between regions (this is why LotR online will fail. The Shire is 25 minutes away from Mordor - how weird is that?)
11) Dedicated company and team with sufficient cash and corporate strategy backing. Blizzard made a decision and came through with it all the way. No half-assed stuff. And, look, a miracle! They've got a game that works and people like! Unbelieveable!
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The article seems to imply that WoW has somehow paved the way for indie games. I quote:
"Things were much simpler only a few years ago, when practically all video games were developed or published by industry giants such as Electronic Arts, TakeTwo, and Activision.... Then came World of Warcraft...."
Maybe I'm behind the times, but how has WoW made it more possible, suddently, for indie games to make it big? That might be the case if Blizzard were a small-time developer, but we know that's not true. Blizzard might not be as massive as EA, but they're one of the biggest names in gaming, a company who makes games that are universally expected to be good. How does their making WoW change the scenario the author talks about? Just don't get that.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Anyone looking to make the next WoW killer would be well advised to look at the way Blizzard went about it. A MMORPG is not something that can be turned out in a couple of years with a standard development team to make use of some film licence; it takes significant investment, in terms of time, manpower and cash. Of course, that's not to say that using existing fictitious worlds as a starting point is a bad idea - MMOs need a lot of content to sustain them and getting the appropriate intellectual property owners on board could make sense. I think a lot of the obvious licences have already been used for MMOs though (Star Wars, the Matrix and Lord of the Rings spring to mind). End-user involvement is critical to the success of a MMO game. Any MMO game that is developed behind closed doors and then unleashed on the world is doomed to failure in my opinion. Extensive alpha and beta programmes open to anyone willing to participate are something the industry are going to have to get used to. If your game is any good chances are that the guys you had playing in beta will spread the word and you'll have a ready made subscriber-base when you go live.
What do you think it's going to take to crack Blizzard's deathlock on the Massive genre?
As per the subject line, World of Starcraft.
Well, not exactly that, but it would be good. The only thing I see breaking the MMO market now is something that gamers love (FPS), rolled in to the same detailed and compelling game we return to day after day (MMORPG). What I see is an FPS come RPG title based in a world that thrives on people banding together to achieve goals, but leaves the door open for PvP combat a-la the WoW style PvP servers.
The key factor would of course be the ability of the developer to work out some sort of faction / race / class based system with the familiar leveling / gearing requirment, and rolling in an FPS front end. Three way battles like those in Starcraft would be awesome, as the current Horde vs. Alliance system in WoW is getting a bit tired.
I still play WoW nearly 20 hours a week, down from over 40 to sometimes 60 a week last year, but would jump straight in to World of Starcraft if it were to miraculously appear in the above stated incarnation.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
I only played WoW briefly, but I know enough as a regular player does to know no other company at present will "beat" WoW. Why? Their personal limitations.
Other companies, won't take a chance. How many MMO's can claim they offer player based scripting for god knows how many in game effects? Or any of the other features WoW has? Despite the fact I dislike WoW, Blizzard did do that that right; Instead of coming up with some super special features of their own that other MMO's didn't have, they cherry picked what they thought were the best features. Not stolen content mind you but just things that an MMO should have. Case in point, umpteenth kinds of filters for the various chat huds. You'd be amazed that not every MMO offers a good deal of filters like WoW, or hell even any filters at all.
And the engine itself, of WoW, is the killer. Sure it's not really some supreme graphical eye candy people expect three years later after it's release but that is the point. Blizzard took a chance. They released a game engine that surprisingly works very well on low end hardware PC's which people tend to forget makes up the majority of gamers. Ever wonder why Counter Strike 1.6 is probably the most popular first person shooter, still, to date? Cause Half Life 1 can be run on some very low end hardware (if I remember right, the HL1 engine is a modified Quake 2 engine). Point being, no other MMO company is going to cater to low end PC users. More and more MMO's have such huge graphical requirements. You think Vanguard is going to topple WoW? No. Even if the gameplay and options of the client matched that of WoW, they'd still be eliminating a huge chunk of the 7 million WoW base (asssuming Vanguard had 7 mil) simply cause a good portion of those people wouldn't be even able to run the game.
Blizzard rolled the dice and won. They took a chance on merging a ton of features from various MMO's and a game engine that wasn't exactly the top of the game when it came out, and it worked. You find me another developer that will take those chances, and you'll find yourself a candidate for a WoW successor.
Aw Frell this
Pokemon MMORPG.
I'm being serious here. It's one of the most popular game franchises, and well-known to non-gamers as well. The consept and playstyle lend themselves well to MMORPG gameplay. All that's needed is to take the good stuff from popular MMO's, mix them together with the Pokemon brand, and you'll have a game that'll get ten times the amount of players WoW has.
Is it perfect? No. Could you make a game that simply improves on its mistakes? Possibly.
But what are its mistakes, and are they really mistakes or are they fundemental parts of the nature of MMO gaming.
It would be easy to think that you simply visit the WoW forums, note down the complaints of gamers and ex-gamers and then fix these in your game.
But wich to follow? Do you cater to the PvP haters or lovers?
WoW currently caters to both PvP and PvE but that also means neither side gets exactly the dedication they want. So they complain. BUT would a game without one be that successfull? Just how big is the subscriber base that is satisfied with the current combo? People who are satisfied tend not to post on forums. They are to busy having a good time in the game.
Same with the crafting/loot system. Again WoW has sought the middle ground, essentially both systems of getting your equipment are competing with each other. This means that pure crafters have a reduced market while at the same time those who are looting get lots of useless materials they need to sell.
And again, would a game that focusses on one exclusively (SWG had a pure crafting system) be that succesfull?
You could create a MMORPG were levelling up isn't everything. Were grinding to X isn't the primary goal. That would make the RPG crowd perhaps happier but might loose you all the grinding monkeys who no longer have an epenis to wave around.
WoW in many areas seeks the middle road. It works. 8+million people think the bits they like are better then the bits they don't like.
If you are going to change anything in that design you need to realize that you are going to please some but most likely upset a hell of a lot of other players.
Go pure PvP and you MIGHT appease those PvPers who left but you are going to loose for sure every single PvE player. PLUS a significant part of the players who like a bit of both.
Just read every comment here that suggests an obvious improvement and then ask youreselve what the total effect would be.
Then again, until WoW entered the market, people said that the MMORPG market had been saturated and that any new game could only poach from other games.
So is WoW the final MMORPG or is it just a more succesfull EQ waiting to be dethroned by the next comany.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Unfortunately, Vanguard doesn't meet his first criteria of having the "quality of WoW" at this point. The animations in Vanguard are less than pretty, even if the environmental graphics are nice. You have to have a computer four times as powerful as you need for WoW with a specific type of video card to support those graphics...otherwise you're left with mediocre graphics with mediocre animation. Also, while it does cater to a smaller audience that would presumedly be more mature and interested in a more involved world, there were a wealth of noobs to be found during open beta. I will say that I absolutely loved the free-for-all PVP server in open beta while it was open...
I think part of WoW's success (part, not the biggest reason) is its built in framework for allowing users to customize the UI and create addons. It was a brilliant move to simply base a lot of the UI around previously existing script technology (Lua) and allow users to customize that. They have had to make some changes along the way to lock specific things down, but it is far better than any other MMOGs before, if I were forced to I wouldn't play with the default UI anymore.
That is why Second Life is so important, it will probably never amount to much on its own but the idea of allowing that next level of user created content will be integrated into other games. Second Life will influence games in the future as people borrow those ideas.
I think World of Warcraft has at least another two years of dominance before anyone else even has a remote chance of pulling away some of its player base, but I also think that any game that does will need to have a modifiable UI and robust scripting system in order to do it.
V:SoH is still in beta. It's a paid beta, since you have to pay to play a game that isn't that close to finished, but it's not done.
And I'm not sold on the older crowd thing. The game is more designed for the more hardcore "I want things to be difficult, with a lot of raid content and lots of more difficult tradeskills" crowd.
Blizzard did a brilliant job of making WoW very casual gamer friendly, while still being able to keep a lot of those that desire a faster gameplay style happy. That's why so many people play it. V:SoH is not very casual gamer friendly, imo.
The lack of instanced dungeons is eventually going to catch up to them, I think. Instanced content means that casual gamers can pick a date with other casual playing friends, and group/raid a target without worrying if it's "up". The total lack of instances means that the big guilds will start to lock down the better targets.
That was one of EQ1's biggest drawbacks, imo. So many times on our server (Xegony), the big raid guilds would take down the mobs necessary to gain higher planer access. Sure, it had pretty nice loot on it, but they also knew that if they kept other guilds away from Time, they had less competition for it.
The whole "We've got to kill X mob to gain access to Y zone" thing bites when that X mob will only once a week for EVERYONE on that server. That roadblock became a tool for those uber raiding guilds to hold others back.
Just from observing the trend of MMO's, we can see that everyone is constantly trying to re-invent the wheel when it comes to the enjoyable traits of gameplay. Despite Planetside's dismal failure, other company's are infact trying to re-invent the MMOFPS.
p a meID/197
http://www.webzengames.com/Game/Huxley/default.as
http://mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/overview/g
http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=1774
I've been following the details of this game since it was first announced at E3 two years ago. I'm an avid raider in WoW and this is the ONLY mmo that has caught my attention. I'm also a fan of paper based RPG games and for reasons I can not explain this MMO has a Rifts (Palladium) feel to it. If any of you are still on the search for a good MMOFPS, i'd recommend checking this out. It should be out sometime this year and will be running on the Unreal Engine 3.
If i wanted to hear bullshit, i'd go to church.