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The Frontier of the MMO Genre
Eurogamer is running a feature about what they call "frontier" MMOs, games that are on the fringe of a market flooded with attempts to replicate the success of Everquest and World of Warcraft. Many publishers already have more MMO projects than they know what to do with, and often leave the more unusual and unique games out in the cold, preferring to stick with familiar IP or a tried-and-true approach. "Like any gold-rush, the MMO market also attracts a different kind of adventurer: the fearless, inexperienced, determined and solitary dreamer, making a go of it on nothing but their own resources and pluck. The online distribution and direct revenue streams — be they subscriptions or micro-transactions — make it theoretically possible to make a mint in MMOs without any help from the gaming establishment at all." They take a brief look at several such games currently in development, including Earthrise, Gatheryn, and Global Agenda.
Given how much of a time sink these games are the more that are on the market the more diluted the user base becomes. What we could REALLY do with is something like a generic engine where users can interact with subgames, something like second life but more... fun? That way people can go off and fight goblins in one subgame or go off and fly space craft in another sub game. The benefit being everyone is interacting in the same online "world". Although who controls this one "master" MMO i have no idea. It needs to be opensource and distributed somehow.
The whole point of an MMO is to be, in fact, massively multiplayer. Playing an upstart game without any players isn't fun at all, which is why people flock to large games like World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. The more "MMOs" companies try to push out, the more the user base will be diluted, thinning out each game until they all starve to death due to lack of players.
Going with "tried and true" IP may or may not be worth it(you'd have to balance cost of hit IP, which isn't cheap, vs. cost of creating and promoting something new); but going with a "tried and true" gameplay formula seems like utter suicide. Big game publishers have something of a reputation for preferring mediocrity, but it seems stupid even by their standards.
To a fair degree, MMOs are subject to network effects. Friends on the server, social ties through guilds, corporations, etc. buzz, people writing online resources/guides, and so forth. Thus(barring gross mismanagement, failure to scale, or other sins on the part of the incumbent) the current leader, which is to say WoW, will automatically be superior to any new challenger using a "tried and true", which is to say derivative, gameplay model. Incremental improvements aren't going to cut it. In single player games, this is less of an issue, so you can often get away with it there.
Novel gameplay models are quite risky, to be sure; but they are the only realistic alternative. The problem is, on average any new MMO is going to get crushed by WoW. Any "tried and true" model MMO is going to have roughly average performance, which means that it is dead on arrival. A novel model MMO has a better chance of delivering other-than-average performance. It'll probably be below average, which makes it deader on arrival; but it might also be above average, which would give it a chance of survival.
The problem with a lot of upcoming MMOs is that they try their best to best WoW in size, spouting about how many servers they have. How much content they're going to have, while saying "we're not interested in how WoW does things, we do it our way." Its a lie, they want to be wow and whether its conscious or not they fall into the 'trying to be wow' trap.
You can't beat wow by being a better wow. Beat wow by being a better game.
If you build it, subscribers will come. If you build it and try to be like wow, you'll be merging servers in under a month.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Until someone comes up with the next MMO with the depth of World of Warcraft it will remain in first place. As a player of the game I enjoy the world events and achievement system. You have other things to do besides grinding for levels. Plus some of the people (I stress the word some) are really nice people who enjoy the game and are willing to help out new players. I am in the middle of that as a player of less then 1 year but I help out new players as I can. The only drawback is the time it can take to get to the end game content. With all the different races you can create a different character and the story lines are different until you go "out in the world" then things become more familiar.
it is the lowest common demoniator.
It's telling sign of the intelectual state of the US that in China the statistical physics and noncommutative harmonic geometry MMORPG Xhing Phu Rin Ding Ding is much more popular than WoW.
Guess who will be economy no. 1 in 10 years ?
As someone who is testing out lots and lots of games, I'm tired of the "WOW formula". Been there, done that, thank you.
There is a small number of interesting twists that I quite like, but no one game has dared to deviate much, so far. I like the addition of a second "game mode" where you can use a ship (space or sea, depending on genre) in addition to land-based missions, for example. Several titles have tried themselves in that area, some good.
I also like different advancement schemes, classless etc. Very few good implementations of those.
And I like different game concepts, like EVE (ruthless PvP, stop whining because it's all fair game) or A Tale In The Desert (no combat, just a social and building game).
But, only a tiny fraction of MMOs think they can do without the mindless grinding that's come to define the genre. Very few deviate from the usual "class, levels and crafting things" formula, though many succeed in covering it up somewhat and painting it differently.
I'm really looking forward to stuff like the GTA MMORPG that may or may not be in the works, for example. Things that have the potential to break with the real fundamental concepts of MMOs. In the end, if you call if "skills" or "abilities" doesn't make much difference. But an MMO without grinding, that I would try, just to see it.
And yes, I'm posting as an avid gamer who nevertheless has other things to do and other games to play. I simply can't and don't want to put in the time investment that's necessary to be anyone with all the current major MMOs.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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I prefer Guild Wars. It's a one time subscription fee that's getting lower over time. Currently, you can spend $20 to get the core game. I own all of campaigns and play them like a casual game. I don't want xp, material, or gold grinding. I want a compelling environment and story that doesn't hold me back because I didn't reach level X.
Besides, I tried WoW and didn't like it. I like Blizzard. I love the Diablo series (mostly because it was unapologetic about being hack and slash, though I'm usually a fan of hack and slash). I thought WC was ok, and SC was pretty darn cool. I can't wait for D3; that's gonna be awesome.
BTW: GW just celebrated 4 years, updated tons of content (though I'm concerned about the rather large "micro" payments for some of it), and have surpassed 6 million units sold. I don't know how that translates into active players though. Plus, they just went live on Steam with all three main campaigns for $50.
Just my $.02 (the non Verizon math 2 cents).
... there is nothing that has not already been thought
...I must say that I am not that impressed, yet. Although they have been updating the game often, and the combat is starting to be fleshed out, it is not what most people seem to think it will be. It isn't going to be planetside 2, not by a long shot.
It feels more like Unreal tournament combined with Guild Wars or Diablo at the moment -- people meet in "city" areas, make groups, and either go on PvE raids or play another group in a PvP game-- Base raids will allow you to capture areas on a hex board that gives your agency benefits.
So it isn't going to be a large, open world at all, if that is the impression that some of you got. I think it will end up playing very well, but I don't really think it will be worth a fee of 15 bucks a month.
The hard part is reaching and maintaining that critical mass. You see this with a lot of FPS servers. Most of the servers you see are either within a few players of capacity or completely empty. You don't find too many people playing on a server with only a handful of others. I've seen servers just suddenly empty when numbers drop below about 2/3 of capacity. It's like suddenly everyone decides the server is dying and they just move on to a new one.
If the same psychology applies to MMOs they're going to have to work hard to keep people coming back.
Usually when a server empties like that, it's due to one person starting a GCH (Game Changing Hack). Like "Cartillery" in BF2. It can destroy a server, and people will not come back for hours.
As for MMO's, I play Everquest (hence Anonymous Coward, I mean seriously, who plays EQ anymore?). I like EQ more than WoW or EQII because I can play allied with any other player, it's a huge amount of space to run in, and when I can get a group together it's a ton of fun.
EQ is old, they are trying to keep a fanbase enthusiastic, with their most recent addition of mercenaries (allies you can buy if a "Looking for Group" goes unanswered). But they keep people coming back, because it's fun, you can roll anything and play with anyone.
So why do people coming back to an old game that is Everquest? The quests? Very few of the quests provide decent equipment, little experience and almost no money (90% of the items my Pally equips these days are from Mob drops or crafted), so lets strike the "Quest" out of Everquest as the reason it's fun and popular.
The graphics? The graphics in Everquest are old and look like crap, you can't argue that point.
The fun? It comes from having 16 playable races that can group together. From having to avoid some cities because they don't like you. It comes from community members giving stuff away these days (If you need something, send out a shout, you would be surprised how many people are willing to help someone who is courteous.
EQ2 just isn't as fun, neither is WoW IMHO.
Just my little rant about EQ.
A Tale in the Desert definitely falls into the category of one of those fringe games. I played it for a few months back around the second Telling, and really enjoyed it. Unfortunately that particular telling progressed too slowly, and since then the population has dropped down too much for the game to have the same impact it once did.
What made WoW special was having such a huge population early on--the population itself, not what drew it in to begin with. I personally enjoyed doing 40-man raids and other activities in large groups, and it definitely gave the game a more epic feel. Unfortunately, between the move away from 40-man content and server transfers decimating my server's population, it was enough to make give up years of invested time and effort in the game.
I even did Warhammer for a while, hoping to re-live that first epic year or two of WoW, but between poor implementation of various aspects of the game plus server transfers destroying entire server populations, Mythic lost yet another customer.
Right now, I still play EVE. It seems to give me most of what I'm looking for. Deep down I still want to see the next WoW, the next truly epic high-population fantasy MMO, but I have no idea what (or when) that might be.
Play Mabinogi. It isn't WoW or Everquest. And there are a lot of people playing it. It makes money.
It's a cross between Ultima Online and Asian styled art.
It's epic, highly polished, and there is no other MMO like it:
* 50k players online at the same time, on one server :)
* Sci-fi, not fantasy
* Real-time skill learning, not grinding
* Consequences for your actions
* The ability to take revenge for grievances
* Your own spaceship
Check this one out before some of the more obscure "up and coming" titles suggested here. I wish them well, but MOST new MMOs will fail. If you're just looking for something a little different, Eve Online is the way to go.
FWIW, I play many MMOs, usually a few different ones every couple months. Of all those I play, Eve Online is definitely the most unique. And no, I don't work for CCP :)
Eurogamer almost always has quality writing. I'd also say that the analysis of the 4 MMOs is spot on. The Global Agenda gameplay videos speak for themselves.
I believe it's called RL.. You can pay money to play, and can even get real jobs to earn money!
Wether it's open source or not remains to be seen... ;)
I'm only willing to spend ~$15 a month in MMORPG monthly fees, so that pretty much just leaves WoW (as occasionally my friends will all want to do something in WoW).
So if I do buy a new MMORPG, that gives me a month of play time, which doesn't seem worth it to me. So either all my friends need to move over to the new MMORPG, or it has to be free, or it has to be so good that it justifies an additional $180 per year (+game purchase price, +price of any addons already released).
I think we all could agree that WoW may not even be worth the $15 anymore. Alot of the newer content hardly matches what it used to be. A new MMO would definitely be worth the switch.