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The Future of MMOs
IGN has some interesting coverage of a panel at GDC 2008 that featured some of the top names in the MMO world who got together to discuss the future of the genre. "On hand were Jack Emmert of Cryptic Studios, Mark Miller of NCSoft, Min Kim of Nexon and Rob Pardo of Blizzard Entertainment. MMO newbie Ray Muzyka was also on hand to share his thoughts as BioWare moves into the MMO arena. [...] The conversation got a lot more heated when the subject of micro-transactions was introduced. This is a popular revenue model in Asia, where the games themselves are free to play but charge a premium for a variety of premium extras, from vanity items to additional content or abilities. It's a model that's working well for Korean developer Nexon but hasn't been adopted by many American developers."
Making your games so awesome that people pay for 5 days straight and die from exhaustion is also popular in Korea. Let's not import that, though.
Because I have a wife, and kids, and a job, and all these MMOs are just lurking around in local stores, threatening to take it all away from me. Fortunately, none have been good enough to get me to play, but someday... someday...
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Micro-transactions aren't as popular here because they tend to give an advantage to people with more money. Most American gamers prefer games that emphasize skill and reward players for that, and would tend to be put off if you could simply buy an uber-item and win every time. On the other hand those same individuals wouldn't want to shell out money for only a slight advantage, so you have almost a cache 22, where you need to make the items powerful to get people to buy them, but limit them so that skillful players would still have the advantage of those that merely have a lot of money to spend on the game.
Personally, my suggestion is to eliminate the grind by allowing players to buy levels. That preserves the skill because at high level they still need to be able to use the character, and there would still be items that must be collected, but eliminates the tedium of grinding and is compelling enough that many people would be willing to pay for it.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
You've listed just a few of the current genres in MMOs. I predict in the future you'll take on the role of a denizen of a tough world. Initially you'll barely be able to do the simplest of things, but as you spend time, you'll level them up. Strange and arcane rules will be placed upon you, but as you level up you'll face less and less of the, until you hit the 2nd stage of the game where you rapidly level up abilities, but just as you're about to make use of them and rule the world, a new set of rules is placed upon you, and even tougher bosses appear, many of which you can't directly attack, unless you want agro from the mega boss force. Eventually after years of struggle, you'll slowly get promoted in whatever job you've chosen to level in - but the great thing is that you're almost unlimited in what 'jobs' you want to take, but various characters have aptitude for certain jobs based upon training and the options at character creation.
Of course they're already predicting that people will complain this is far too similar to 'life' and not want to play it, but that's expected to take a fair amount of time.
I am not an expert. If I am misled in something, please correct me.
I think it would be better if the average wisdom increased, and that requires everyone reaching the highest possible age.
I think one of the fundamental problems with MMORPGs is that the world never changes. Cities are never overrun and burned to the ground, quest givers never die (or if they do, they respawn quickly), trees never grow, the seasons never change, even things like weather and time of day are mostly cosmetic and don't impact gameplay much if at all. Monsters always spawn in the same places and if you kill them all, they'll be back in ten minutes. The modern MMORPG, it would seem, was designed with Sisyphus as the target audience.
A related problem is that too much is abstracted away; players and NPCs don't need to eat, they don't need shelter, items spawn magically in the vendor's shop and money spent disappears into a black hole. Animals spawn, they aren't born in the natural way. Species can't become extinct by killing the last breeding pair. A town does not trade with the outside world, it does not suffer if it is besieged, and there are no famines if the year's harvest is poor. The terrain can't be altered.
Designing a mmorpg around a realistic world would be much harder than the current crop; it may be too much to ask for a MMORPG to be able to support any of the events of the preceding paragraph, but couldn't the world be at least slightly interactive? Like, maybe we could plant a tree every once in awhile and watch it grow, or maybe the grass could be worn down by the passage of many feet? I've played WOW and I'm currently playing Lord of the Rings Online, and I just don't feel like I'm part of the world. It feels more like an amusement park.
The questing/leveling/grinding rut is a big problem too, I'm not disagreeing with you there, but it would take a book for me to say what I want to say about that.