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The Frontier of the MMO Genre

Posted by Soulskill on from the they-don't-even-have-regular-socks dept.

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.

10 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Time sink by GordonCopestake · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Time sink by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The key word is content. You need it. Your players want it. And it's hellish expensive.

      What I'm really waiting for, and I'm really amazed it didn't surface yet, is some sort of "Web 2.0 MMO". I.e. an MMO following the Web 2.0 creed, "you make the content, we make the revenue".

      It's amazing that MUDs, one of the key predecessors of MMORPGs, actually had that feature (i.e. "experienced" players getting the opportunity to add their own parts of the world to the game), that various FPS and RTC games have "map builders" and whatnot, yet no MMO so far dared to step into those chilly waters and try it.

      Think of the opportunities. Thousands of players able and willing to be your content creators. For free. You'd just have to playtest and canonize it. Reward? Hell, name some super-epic crap that drops in there after them and a lot of your fanboys would already LEAP at the minuscle chance that their design gets accepted. Sure, of the 1000 entries you get, 900 outright reek, 90 are barely playable and 9 are just not good enough, but the last one is about that what your top paid content designers could have hacked out for a lot of dough.

      And all it costed you was hiring a bunch of college kids and an experienced designer or two to test it and an entry in the database to name the new super-cool drop.

      Why no takers?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Time sink by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You need more than that. You cannot simply switch from medieval fantasy to ultra high tech. Care to explain how my legendary sword of awesome should hold out against a simple laser blaster that melts it (and me) before I even come into reach?

      At best you could create a basic ruleset (like some standard attributes and a few core skills), and you have to travel naked. That way, you could become the ultimate high tech hero but can't really fight well when you decide to go medieval instead (you couldn't fight with broadswords, but you might have a slight advantage because of higher attributes and maybe a laser sword skill).

      Think GURPS meeting MMORPG.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:Time sink by Gnaythan1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Mission Architect is fun... really fun.

      In about three hours I built a mission called "Dorothy is Dangerous", fleshed it out with a Wizard of Oz theme, had the wicked witch as a contact and had a team of supers taking on munchkins, flying monkeys, the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Lion, and a massive boss battle to take down Dorothy. I've been tweaking it since to make it better. Other people send me input on my mission saying if they like it or not.

      Since then I've played one story arc after another... most of them seem to be focussed on leveling the toon as fast as possible, but that's just one aspect. A LOT of them are simply fun little adventures to run people through.

      Right now, I'm working on a Fairies vs Goblins battle where I expect to have a dozen flying fairies helping me defeat the goblin king at the end.(as you can tell, I have an eight year old daughter assisting me in my design choices).

      I'm having a blast.

    4. Re:Time sink by Asklepius+M.D. · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Ryzom is a great illustration of the difficulty of launching "new" games. I started playing it recently (now that it's working again) and found it took a while for me to get out of the "WoW mindset" of powerleveling and instance running. It felt a little weird playing a game that is neither quest driven nor aimed at a neverending chain of instanced play. (And yes, I've done the EVE thing. I found it strategically interesting but tactically as much fun as watching paint dry.) Quite simply, games more complex to master than WoW have a nasty habit of failing the "Massive" part of MMORPG. Most people don't want to think that hard. This is analogous to walking down the board-games aisle at the local toy store. How many strategy games do you see (chess, Risk, etc)? Now how many games don't require a whit of strategic or tactical ability to play and win? The majority of the market does not want complexity. They want to be virtual superhumans without having to work at it to play well. Those of us who enjoy depth and complexity will always try to find it (think of what you've done to "improve" Monopoly) by setting up artificially difficult group makeups, playing with one virtual arm tied behind our backs, or simply refusing to play with anyone below a certain caliber (so much for "massive"). But the games that have the potential to hold our interest rarely survive long due to a small playerbase and the pressure on the manufacturer to "improve" the game by catering to the masses. As for me? WoW has been deleted. EvE is waning. Here's hoping Ryzom gets some polish (and some players).

      --
      He who would be a man, must be a nonconformist. -- Emerson
    5. Re:Time sink by dwye · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What I'm really waiting for, and I'm really amazed it didn't surface yet, is some sort of "Web 2.0 MMO". I.e. an MMO following the Web 2.0 creed, "you make the content, we make the revenue".

      Minions Of Mirth lets any premium player design his/her own realm or realms, and even set up their world as its own server. There were a number of such, for a while. Gradually, they died off, because the main world was better (and professionally hosted). OTOH, the long promised upgrade was (is being?) worked upon by a group of player/volunteers, after the original two programmers decided they needed an actual income to live upon, after a few years of running the company.

      The problem is that all the things needed to create an MMO are difficult to do, together. One needs to be an author able to link multiple sides together (like Tolkein except with an orc's view, as well) while being a CGI modeler, and avoid the tendency to just Monty Haul everything, since putting the game on steroids is more enjoyable for users, right up until they get sick of it (look at post-Strike Major League Baseball).

      Blizzard can get it reasonably right because they have an actual company, with actual people paid actual money to get it right, and enough so that burned-outs can be replaced without killing the development team. Also, they have a decent business model and price point, especially vs. one-time-fee MMOs, so they can ride out new-player droughts.

  2. Re:2000lb gorilla by acehole · · Score: 2, Interesting

    additional:

    also, why not be satisfied with a niche market. Why aim for wow's 70-something percent of the market?

    --
    Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
  3. Re:2000lb gorilla by Drakkenmensch · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    Truth. Whenever I hear the latest up-and-comers claim how much better they're going to be and how the hype claims it will kill WoW, I smirk and expect that game to hit the liquidation discount bin within the next six months. History has yet to prove me wrong.

  4. Everquest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.

  5. Re:The key part of MMOs is the "MM" part. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Actually I'd say you'd be pretty surprised just how many people have hooked up via that game.

    I wont say anything about the quality of potential partners or said unions, but I've got a good few mates that have found partners in online games (some now married, others long since declared glaring mistakes) and read about many others.