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.

Comments

The key part of MMOs is the "MM" part.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The key part of MMOs is the "MM" part.

[Another, completely]

You could say the same thing about real-world dance clubs. Lots of people think they know what a good one should look like, customers are only interested in coming if they can expect a nice sized crowd (not too crowded, but not too empty), and new ones open all the time. As an industry, dance clubs have survived this model for quite a while.

If MMOs starve to death, it will be because people got bored with them, not because mass entertainment only works with limited options available.

2000lb gorilla

[acehole]

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.

Re:2000lb gorilla

[wjousts]

Ultimately, I think WoW may actually be bad for the development of MMOs as a genre. So long as WoW controls so much of the market, it's going to be nearly impossible for new MMOs, especially from smaller companies or based on original IP, to get any traction.

When it comes to MMOs, they face a chicken and egg problem (or maybe chicken and chicken problem would be more accurate), players won't join if there are no (or very few) other players. You need players to get [more] players. And when most of your potential players are in WoW, what do you do to pry them away?

Re:2000lb gorilla

[Opportunist]

WoW is certainly not beneficial for MMO development, but not because of its sub numbers, but because of VC expectations. 5 years ago, before WoW was launched, getting 200k subs in a year was already great. Today, it's a reason to fold.

The 70% market share of WoW don't hurt the other games too much. Sure, the big players of their time lost subs, but they were reaching their life expectance anyway. WoW hit the market right when the market needed something. But their often toutet 70% market share are to a sizable portion, and I'm wagering 80% here, subs that didn't exist before, not subs "stolen" from other games. 4 of 5 WoW players didn't play an MMO before.

What really hurts new games are expectations. The "must be like WoW" mantra that's chanted throughout the marketing halls. So every single game that comes out looks like a cheap (or rather, expensive) WoW knockoff. Sometimes so blatant that it outright hurts.

And as it has been stated before, you CANNOT make the new WoW. Do you remember what WoW was like when it was launched? 2 days per week almost assured downtime. A good 30% of quests that either didn't work, weren't finishable under certain conditions or were simply impossible unless you were a specific class. And let's not start about balancing. A game that was started like this today would meet the bargain bin 2 months after release (at the same time, their servers are merged down to 4-6), and a year later it's closing time.

In a nutshell, do not try to beat WoW on their own game. You cannot. You would have to sink YEARS of development into it, polish it to the point that WoW is today after almost a decade of development and millions of gametesters (who also pay to do the work). Make another game. And most of all, aim lower! If you cannot survive on 200k subs, don't do it at all. If it takes off like WoW, great. But don't hope for it or, worse, outright require it.

Re:Time sink

[ProppaT]

I fully agree. I usually get each new MMORPG just to give it a shot but, really, no one's touched EQ's dungeons. They were challenging, required strategy and planning for the worst (trains, etc), crowd control, a variety of skills, skilled players, and most importantly they were fun. Then you had the high level Planes and Raids that were all of that bumped to the next level. And then Lost Dungeons of Norrath was released and it once again reinvented itself.

It's a shame that people are in such a race to hit the finish line in these games that they don't want to stop and smell the roses on the way and enjoy them.

Re:Time sink

[PotatoFarmer]

There is at least one taker that I know of - City of Heroes recently released the ability for players to create their own quest lines, via a tool called Mission Architect

I haven't played it myself, but from all accounts it appears to be a success.