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The Massively Multiplayer Online Game
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Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
So I was reminiscing a bit today. More specifically, I was thinking of all the MMO's I've seen come and go. It kind of got me thinking that the MMO genre is nowhere near where I had hoped it to be today.
The first MMO I played was Everquest, circa 10 years ago or so. It made me think the genre could have endless potential, with all kinds of brilliant games released as the formula for "massively multiplayer" was perfected.
Unfortunately, here in 2010, I find the genre lacking, to say the least. Most MMO's are only modern copies of the ancient ones, and often times not even as complex or involving. There is very little innovation and creativity within the genre. This is strange, since it is perhaps the broadest defined genre in gaming.
Whatever little innovation there is within MMOs, it's usually only attemped by smaller studios and often results in a product the general public forgets about rather quickly.
I am curious to hear what you guys think. Are you content with the genre as it is? Are you disappointed with it? Are you excited about it?
I also provided a list, showing off any MMO I could think of and its status today:
[*] Asheron's Call
[*] Ultima Online
[*] EverQuest
[*] Anarchy Online
[*] Dark Age of Camelot
Cancelled MMO's
[*] Tabula Rasa
[*] Asheron's Call II
[*] Trials of Ascension
[*] True Fantasy Live Online
[*] Auto Assault
[*] Earth and Beyond
[*] Face of Mankind ]
[*] Mourning
[*] The Sims Online
[*] The Matrix Online
[*] Hellgate London
[*] Dark & Light
[*] FURY
[*] Motor City Online
[*] Horizons
MMO's In Decline (Skeleton crew developers/diminishing subscriptions/less influx of new subscriptions/in maintenance mode etc)
[*]Ryzom
[*]Ragnarok Online
[*] PlanetSide
[*] Final Fantasy XI
[*] Star Wars Galaxies
[*] Pirates of the Burning Sea
[*] Vanguard
[*] Age of Conan
[*] Warhammer Online
Hard-to-tell where they are now MMO's
[*] Lord of the Rings Online
[*] Lineage 1/2
[*] EverQuest II
[*] Guild Wars
[*] City of Heroes
Relatively new MMO's
[*] Aion
[*] Global Agenda
[*] Fallen Earth
[*] Champions Online
[*] Star Trek Online
(western)MMO's with documented recent success
[*] EVE Online
[*] World of Warcraft
The first MMO I played was Everquest, circa 10 years ago or so. It made me think the genre could have endless potential, with all kinds of brilliant games released as the formula for "massively multiplayer" was perfected.
Unfortunately, here in 2010, I find the genre lacking, to say the least. Most MMO's are only modern copies of the ancient ones, and often times not even as complex or involving. There is very little innovation and creativity within the genre. This is strange, since it is perhaps the broadest defined genre in gaming.
Whatever little innovation there is within MMOs, it's usually only attemped by smaller studios and often results in a product the general public forgets about rather quickly.
I am curious to hear what you guys think. Are you content with the genre as it is? Are you disappointed with it? Are you excited about it?
I also provided a list, showing off any MMO I could think of and its status today:
[*] Asheron's Call
[*] Ultima Online
[*] EverQuest
[*] Anarchy Online
[*] Dark Age of Camelot
Cancelled MMO's
[*] Tabula Rasa
[*] Asheron's Call II
[*] Trials of Ascension
[*] True Fantasy Live Online
[*] Auto Assault
[*] Earth and Beyond
[*] Face of Mankind ]
[*] Mourning
[*] The Sims Online
[*] The Matrix Online
[*] Hellgate London
[*] Dark & Light
[*] FURY
[*] Motor City Online
[*] Horizons
MMO's In Decline (Skeleton crew developers/diminishing subscriptions/less influx of new subscriptions/in maintenance mode etc)
[*]Ryzom
[*]Ragnarok Online
[*] PlanetSide
[*] Final Fantasy XI
[*] Star Wars Galaxies
[*] Pirates of the Burning Sea
[*] Vanguard
[*] Age of Conan
[*] Warhammer Online
Hard-to-tell where they are now MMO's
[*] Lord of the Rings Online
[*] Lineage 1/2
[*] EverQuest II
[*] Guild Wars
[*] City of Heroes
Relatively new MMO's
[*] Aion
[*] Global Agenda
[*] Fallen Earth
[*] Champions Online
[*] Star Trek Online
(western)MMO's with documented recent success
[*] EVE Online
[*] World of Warcraft
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And you forgot Ragnarok Online on the declining list. They had to merge all three premium servers just to scrape up enough users in one place to be bigger than the biggest private server.
AoC is releasing an expansion soon so it may have a small burst of life fairly soon (though once the Cataclysm Beta launches I imagine all bets are off).
But I think the immediate universe for MMO's is kind of bleak. The recent history of declined and just plain failed MMO's is that if your middle-to-end game content isn't good, then people won't stick around. The problem, of course, is that you'll have to spend a lot more time on development to make sure this happens. If you wait too long, you risk people forgetting about your game or simply getting farther behind something like WoW idea-wise. If you launch too early, then you may get a lot of box sales, yes, but those subs are going to drop like a rock really fast.
The Old Republic is the only game, I think, that has a chance to make a significant impact on the market. Anything else that launches should launch with very, very low expectations.
The recent history of declined and just plain failed MMOs is that if you try to be a generic MMORPG in a sea of failed generic MMORPGs with dreams of Blizzard success you will probably fail miserably.
What about Guild Wars? It's kind of old and I heard it still has a decent player base(?)...which may not be surprising since you don't actually have to pay for it every month.
I personally never played it beyond the demo.
Depends on your perspective. You can go to common areas where masses of people are, but the bulk of the game occurs in maps instanced for your party.
Global Agenda is listed, may as well list Guild Wars, they are both on par with each other as far as the term MMO is concerned.
Guild Wars 2 will be different then 1 in that it will be less instanced, more persistent and have a equal emphasis on group and solo play. It will be technically be a lot more of an MMO then 1 was.
That list is good, but I almost feel that successful MMO list is too short. There can't be just 2 MMOs that are recently successful, really? It's not totally surprising but honestly, with all the MMOs out there, can there seriously be only 2 MMOs really successful right now?
Both WAR and AoC saw success in their first few months, but then went on a pretty strong decline. There are several free MMO's that are doing well now as well, though I chose not to list them as most of them are pretty obscure.
Then there are even more MMO's with cash shops and such like Dungeons and Dragons online, and afaik they're surviving well.
Steam: pandas_gota_gun
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
One of the most notable changes to the classic MMO format GW2 is introducing is the events system. This will replace quests. So instead of finding a quest hub, picking up some quests, going out and completing the quests, and returning to the quest hub for rewards, you'll just be wandering wherever and if you see something Bad happening -- maybe a dragon smashing a bridge -- you just join in if you feel like it. Then the outcome of that event determines the outcome of the next one: either the dragon finishes smashing the bridge and goes on to attack a town, or wild animals come to feast on the dragon's carcass and start attacking caravans trying to cross the bridge.
So the world is going to be very dynamic, and feel much more like a world than most MMOs.
Edit: Also face of mankind isn't canceled. It's back now.
Trials of Ascension
[vidURL="
In Decline
Istaria (formerly Horizons)
http://www.istaria.com/
Horizons was the first "Big" MMO I was interested in post-Everquest. It promised big things but after a media blackout and developer reshuffling, it was finally released as a very different beast. Only things kept from the original design was playable Dragons and a few of the other races. I remember being a good advocate for it pre-blackout on the Lum the Mad and IGN Forums. I did buy it and played as a Dragon, but the lack of content had be quitting before the free month was over.
Trials was very similar in concept to Horizons and promised to Do Things Better, with open PVP and limited amount of lives a character had before dying for good. But it ended up losing funding and was canceled a few years ago.
I really liked what I saw and read about True Fantasy Live, but delays and a falling out between Level5 and Microsoft ended the project.
Steam: YOU FACE JARAXXUS| Twitch.tv: CainLoveless
The problem with LOTRO is that they never release any numbers so no one really knows how well or how poor they are doing.
EVE did release numbers though, and it was around 300.000+ active subscriptions last year and has since grown, which I think dwarfs LOTRO anyway.
But yeah it's hard to tell when there is no data on a specific game, which is why I put them in the "who knows" section
EVE is successful because it's the polar opposite alternative gameplay model to WoW: the open sandbox, devilishly hard learning curve, space fighter sim game where anything can happen and where the game's player driven drama and corporate politics are often more fun to listen to then the actual game is to play. It can't generate WoW numbers yet, not that any MMO can really at the moment, but it's certainly there and being a great game for those who can get into it.
LoTRO notoriously has few concrete numbers when it comes to subs but they have stated that over a million copies of the game sold and that the majority of those translated into subscriptions that have stood up to time, but we can't really verify what exactly that number is and we can only guess at how successful it is from looking at server population, which is decent. I'm guessing that LoTRO is doing good, but maybe isn't quite as good as they want us to think. Who knows.
They must be turning a profit considering how much dev time gets devoted to it, and extras etc, and it has a fantastic playerbase.
Subs are a rolling snowball, WoW hit 14 million subs because it got to 1-2 million and everyone else went 'wow that looks like a good game to get into'. If Lotro's only got 100k they're much better off letting people assume they have 300k.
Having played CoX and lotro, I would say both games are in a pretty good, stable spot. They may not have massive sub numbers but they're definitely bringing in enough to keep the devs working on them.
I use to make fun of Everquest with some chums back in highschool. Only, these chums were actually playing the game. I guess they were aware of things. I got shown the character creation screen once, and a bit of running around in some village, but that was it. I didn't realize how potent the bite of MMOs could be once you actually play them though.
The first one I ever really got into was Ragnarok, which is unfortunate, but at the same time it gave me perspective on what the bottom of the barrel is. Everything else seems better for the most part. I've tried out various MMOs through this forum (one started with an 'R' and I can't remember it). A legal private Ultima server, running an old version, was played for a while. I've tried Lineage 2 back when I lived in California (and a roomie insisted we all play - what a shitty game).
Only three MMOs have sunk their teeth into me enough for me to say they're positive experiences - WoW, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and City of Heroes / Villains. With CoX I feel fucking awful that I missed out on the game for the most part, it's hard to come across people that are 1) into it and 2) willing to teach a guy who hasn't had much time with it the ropes. Some guys from SE++ helped with that though.
They have such a massive subscriber base, earning them millions per month, and now they're slowly moving into the micro-transaction department while still earning a monthly sub fee.
Everyone wants a piece of that success and, unfortunately, that means trying to duplicate Blizzard's recipe for success.
I've been playing MMO's since EQ's release in 1999, and honestly I never knew what to expect from the future of MMO gaming. When WoW was announced, I believed it was the next evolution in MMORPG's.
And it sure as hell was, but it was/is such a bloody success, instead of trying to improve, everyone is trying to get a piece of those profits.
With all the flops and failed attempts to challenge WoW as King of the Hill, its really no wonder so many companies are being lazy about MMO creation.
A lot of games have been released in the 5 years I've played WoW, and some of them even took my interest for a time, but not once have I seen a game released yet that looked like it honestly had a shot of competing with WoW.
I did think Lord of the Rings would do a lot better (not that its doing badly) if just purely because of the IP's popularity.
Battletag: Kain#1658
If Renewal brings it back to life, I'll retract that. But everything I've heard about it makes me think it turns the game into an ordinary Korean MMO grindfest with hundreds of levels and very little flexibility in leveling spots.
Maybe I want to level a swordie on Raydrics, Gravity. Did you think about that?
That's what the game is now. <_<
I'm impressed with what their plans are. They're actually going to build the world in a smart way - leave town, low level enemies. The further out you go, they get stronger. Rather than now, where some directions out of town will dump you into getting your ass kicked.
But I like this aspect.
And I mean a worse grindfest.
I'll load up my swordsman on Valkyrie when it launches in however many weeks to try it out, but I'm not expecting much.
I look at the list presented and am immediately reminded of a subject that was on my mind a short while ago and has been touched upon in this thread. Back in the olden days, the "ancient MMO's," each game was quite different from one another and provided completely different worlds and gameplay experiences. Since WoW came about that has changed. Everything I could say on that topic has been said so I won't go on about that.
The MMO genre has fallen into severe stagnation. The WoW formula has gotten stale. People are tired of the clones and the source itself. The only way for the genre to survive is if new games decide to take wildly different approaches and directions in world and gameplay design. The rush to max level then raid for eternity design philosophy was flawed from day one and those flaws are more glaring today than ever.
Luckily some new games on the horizon look to be challenging that philosophy. Final Fantasy 14 is looking very good and very different in its approach, and Star Wars: ToR is also making its advances with its personal story system (which was originally a feature of Hero's Journey, the game from which ToR gets its engine). I truly hope developers have realized the MMO audience is sick of the same old same old with a new coat of paint.
Oh and something about LotR Online: I think this game's major strength is also its major weakness. The Tolkien style fantasy in this game comes off feeling bland and generic, at least when I play. That isn't because it actually is bland or generic but because so much fantasy that came after is a derivative of LotR that it makes the original seem bland and dull by comparison.
I think I loved EverQuest as much as I did because it felt like they just took a MUD and added pictures to it.
At least, until they started adding all the flashy gimicks and shit.
Battletag: Kain#1658
I mean, I loved Mutants! and L.O.R.D. but the advent and popularity of MajorMUD is what caused me to give up on door games altogether.
I think in the early days they were actually accused of copying some code or something from DikuMUD. Yep, here's some info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DikuMUD#EverQuest_controversy
I never got into EQ. Computer I had died shortly after I started it. Was an Asheron's Call man back in those days. Tried Ultima a couple times but became horribly ill each time.
I wish Turbine would re-release Asheron's Call 2 under the same type of free-to-play model as DDO. They still have all the resources (I hope) so they should at least try to make some use of them rather than letting the game rot.
That sounds pretty darn cool actually. There are times when I just want to wander and explore and can't be bothered with questing. Having events like that pop up would be awesome!
Hey now, you have to at least respect the effort they put into making travel outside of towns as hideously, randomly dangerous as possible. Oh, the times I laughed when I entered a map containing nothing but porings, only to get one-shotted by an MVP boss summoned by a dead branch!
I know rite
I'm really looking forward to it. The best part about events is that it becomes fun rather than frustrating when passersby join in: the event scales itself in difficulty to compensate for the number of people participating, and everyone is rewarded according to individual effort. So you don't need to worry about killstealing or ninjas or waiting in line for a mob to respawn.
As someone who seems to be constantly burned by that type of mechanic getting in the way of me being able to experience those aspects of the game, I may be a bit bias. :winky:
The problems were thus:
1. Once you got outside of the starting zones, there were far too many public quests and far too few people to do them, thanks to people being spread out across several zones, plus some being in RvR lakes, and some being in scenarios. This made certain public quests impossible to do. Even at launch this was the case, so imagine how it is now.
2. Contribution (what determined the rewards you got) seemed to be somewhat weird. I'm not sure exactly what it turned out was wrong or messed up with it, but from my vantage point it seemed off somehow and had the unfortunate tendency to discourage people from messing with the PQs they could find enough people to do.
Nowadays yes. I still remember when something new and shiney was happening in one zone and passed through one of the other zones and there was a Lusca at every possible spawn point.
That's not developer effort though. <_<
The free servers are notorious for that shit. There's always an MVP running around outside of towns, and not necessarily just outside the gates since that'd make things too obvious and easy to hunt out. They're like out in the wilderness, by the exits to the next maps. It's like, HA, home free! And then OH SHIT THAT CATGIRL BITCH RUUUUUUN.
I forgot to note another thing they're doing in the game is changing how stats work out. I forget all the details but it was really impressive. Especially since 99 isn't the stat cap.
David Allen, the guy who mainly behind Horizons(at first) was recently deposed from his head honcho spot on Alganon and replaced with Derek Smart...heh. I wonder if he'll just give up on mmos now.
I had hoped the genre would be farther along by now too. And some neat things happen but meh, I want moar!
I had hoped for much better siege battles in Warhammer than what was delivered. I thought they were just awful. Open quests were kinda neat, but flawed like other people said. One thing though was that too many were flat out broken. In tier4 Greenskin area there were three(out of nine) that were broken. And another that would sometimes strand you in a room until other people came along to that stage of the quest so you had to wait or hope your port home was up.
Arg, I could ramble and complain for ages. I think the thing I've thought most about lately is mob/npc behavior and how I'd like that to progress but that's another ramble. Guild Wars 2 looks like it addresses a lot of my complaints with GW1. I'm afraid to hope much for The Old Republic, and supposedly there's another EQ project in the works but who knows what their even going for with that. Isn't Blizzard doing another mmo in an original setting? God knows they have the money to do something revolutionary but that's not really their style I guess.
I will now justify that statement.
1. People, in general, do not like change. Once you know how something works inside and out, you feel comfortable. Why go to a different game where you have to work at learning everything all over again?
2. Advancing in an MMO takes a lot of work and people are loathe to give up on all that time and effort even if a different game is better. While yes, games are supposed to be fun, MMOs take work to be successful at.
3. Expectations. People build up every new game to be the next "WoW killer" then when it doesn't complete it's mission, they get upset and do what? Go back to WoW. Along with "WoW killer" expectations, people expect newly minted games to have the same level of content as WoW, a game that has seen 2 xpacs (3rd on the way) and been out for almost 6 years. If that isn't an unrealistic expectation, I don't know what is.
4. Popularity. The other major point is that people want to play a game that is popular. Just like sports have "fair weather fans," that only care about a team while it is doing well, and the second they aren't the fans latch onto a new team that is. MMOs are just like this, cept that the only "team" doing well is WoW, and it has been for a long time.
What can developers do to counter any of those things? Nothing. The only game that will "kill" WoW, is WoW2, and that is only if you can port your characters and all their loot over to it. Basically, WoW 2 should be WoW with a major graphics overhaul and it will be golden. I understand that Blizzard is improving on the graphics with Cataclysm, but until they start using a new engine, you can only tweak so much.
I will also say this: I don't like WoW, never have. I find the game to be too simplistic and I do not care for the art style at all. I do however appreciate the amount of Lore and background the game has. I honestly feel that if the graphics and art style were better, specifically the character models, I could become a WoW player.
HOWEVER - I will say that people who do not like change, which ironically many partake in Blizzard games, really need to wise up and blame themselves for being frustated at MMOs, not the developers. Change is a function of MMOs.
Again, a bit broad sweep. Some people.
People need to stop measuring everything compared to WoW, I'll agree to that. I've seen people call other MMOs failures because they don't match WoW's subscription rate. WoW doesn't set the standard, WoW broke the standards. It isn't a measuring tool, it breaks the measurement. When contemplating an MMO's success or potential success, people need to analyze all the other games in the market, not the one that stands out by a huge fucking milestone. It's an irregularity, everything else is bound to fail.
Again, some people. Though at this point I'm sure it's what you meant to imply.
My deal specifically isn't what's popular, it's what's alive. Whether or not I enjoy an MMO doesn't mean shit if I don't have people to play with - people whose company I enjoy when needed in the game.
I'm not going to argue that you should like WoW. All I'm going to say is everyone who doesn't like WoW or has left it should recognize the points that made it popular. And not through the rose-colored glasses of "ITS 4 NEWBZ, LOLZ." Maybe accessibility is bad to some people, but those are people who have a sense of entitlement in a fucking video game genre, and are probably irrelevant as such.