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General: Why a Horror MMO Won't Work
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Ouch. First time I ever remember disagreeing with one of your posts. Joss Whedon is the best television writer out there, although it's true I wouldn't call his work horror, except in the sense that, if you scratch the surface of the storyline you get to the real horror underneath, and that's all about being human in a human world.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Consider:
When Hellgate:London shipped as a horror MMO it did with an end game, hardcore modes, scary demons, and insanely powerful and interesting bosses.
Point #1: Horror needs storyline
Horror movies are notoriously devoid of story. Plot-less 80s horror movies were insanely common and insanely popular. Remember Evil Dead? What was the story here? Bruce Campbell goes into the woods with friends and random demons attack him.
That was the single most popular indy film of all time.
Horror is usually devoid of storyline specifically because our own imaginations will make up for the lack of storyline and create terrors far worse than we can imagine.
Anyone remember Arachniphobia? That movie scared the shit out of me, all it needed was an invasion of mass spiders for no reason or cause.
#2: No end game content
This is a big mistake. The FPS survival genre (Left 4 Dead, Payday: The Heist, Dead Island) is devoid of end game content and instead focuses around high scores and playing with friends.
It's easy to create end game for any game, a horror game can be especially potent because unlike gay ass elves that need to fight dragons or stupid space monkeys who need to fight aliens or big ships... horror can literally fight anything you want.
Want to watch Jason kill people in space? They made a movie about it!
#3: There are no scary monsters left
Really?
All of the resident evils have featured scary ass super creations that wrought terror on the public.
Maybe you should watch more horror movies:
Jeepers Creepers, Stigmata, Poltergeist, House of Wax, The Hills Have Eyes, Chain Saw Massacre, and 28 Weeks Later
Afraid of sparkly vampires? There are literally over 70 films featuring zombies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_film#Other_vampires_in_films
If you want to see some gruesome vampires watch 30 Days of Night and Daybreakers.
Sparkly vampires are nothing new. Anne Rice has written about gay ass vampires a century before Twilight. I mean Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt are vampires.
I think your article is poorly researched and poory orchestrated. None of the reasons you have listed are valid reasons for a horror MMO not working.
The only one that comes to mind for me is that the market is already flooded with horror-themes, a horror MMO won't survive unless it is better than all the horror survival and horror RPG games out there. This is the same reason I think End of Nations won't work... won't be as good as other RTSes on the market.
Website: http://www.thegameguru.me / YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/users/thetroublmaker
The problem is that in Fantasy games the mind-set is "you are a hero" where Hero is a near demi-god of awesome powers. To create a sense of fear your character would need to be, well, ordinary, vulnerable, even weak. Where then, in a horror MMO would you generate "progression" the staple of MMO's?
There could easily be a horror MMO, but it would be so far removed from the tropes of the genre that it would almost by default box itself into a rather unique niche, it just could not function on the same mechanics existing right now as the mainstay.
So in my opinion, the industry has set-up how players expectations are, it would take a extraordinary development team to breakfrom so many norms to craft a horror MMO that would be able to function with "vulnerable" player characters.
An enjoyable rant, and I agree with most of the points presented. I don't agree with his opinion of The Walking Dead, I freaking love that show, of course I haven't read the graphic novels so my opinion might not count for much.
I remember playing a lot of Call of Cthulu and Unknown Armies up at college and loving the experience. It was such a refreshing change of pace from D&D (not that I've grown weary of D&D, it was just nice playing something different) and I remember thinking how awesome it would be if there was ever a video game (single player or MMO) that managed to immerse players as much as the P&P games did.
I think the closest any video game has ever come was the older Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth video game that came out for PC and the original Xbox way back when.
OMG, please actually pay attention next time you watch evil dead, theres nothing random about it.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
Play The secret World,end of the OPs problems.
I think that making Horror MMO is possible (Horror and Supernatural are different genres).
Think about predator in dark room where your sight is very limited. You can't see him, he can't see you. But you can hear (you must hear). And they can smell blood. Even more scary is that predators are cooperating with each-other.
More people = More defense + More risks.
If you want it to be RPG, then all professions are craft-type (not combat type) and you gain experience for crafting (not for killing), but side-effects of crafting is sound and smell, and there is no stats reward for leveling - only better production.
Higher level = Higher convenience + Higher risks.
And there is also "respawn radius" - predators and convenient items respawn only outside such distance from players and players respans outside such distance from predators. And this radius is much shorter for sleeping (logged-off) players. It means large cooperating groups of people can fortify areas turning them into relatively safe places, but they would still be forced to take raids in unguarded areas to gather materials and items.
In such situation characters can't speak normally (outside safe areas) - they should use simple sign language to comunicate with each-other. It allows introduction of AI controlled NPC capable of cooperation based on such simplified communication system which would massively enrich game-world.
That is how I see it.
I don't know why I keep coming here & reading this crap. I'll say this to you Coyote, maybe a horror MMO might stand a chance if you the the rest of the trolls don't show up to play. you try to pass this bile off as satire but the contempt that you have for your own audience is obvious. I for one wont be coming back to read any more of it.
MMO fans have been clamoring for a horror-themed game for as long as the genre has existed. In today's Coyote's Howling, we take a look at why we don't believe that a horror MMO won't work -- not now, not ever. Check it out and see if you agree. Let us know what you think in the comments........
Does this mean that the whole story is saying an MMO-Horror will work?
I am sarcastically confuzzeled.
The Stranger: It's what people know about themselves inside that makes 'em afraid.
Am I the only person who found this column entry mildly misogynistic?
As evidenced by ESO. The Edwards and Jacobs in that game are hilarious.
Hilarious, well written and so true on many counts. Except for the collectors edition comment saying it should contain tampons and glitter. I am a woman and loathe what Twilight has done to the genre. So sir, I say a hearty FU for that one. Oh and I want my World of Darkness MMO. I would like to consign CCP to the lowest regions of hell for buying out Whitewolf and then killing it.
My idea for a horror MMO could include a lot of people in the world, randomly (well as random as it can be with coding) a Public quest occurs, except this public quest works differently, when there are about 6 people in an area there's a chance (minus certain areas where people can talk in safety (think town)) that when this public quest occurs it pulls these people into an instance (yes instance) where "bad" stuff happens, you must work together to win and get dropped out of the instance. No you don't get to choose who, or the amount, that's the idea of a horror game. You get thrown in to a situation and can't choose who is with you.
you can't really do much with names, but it shouldn't be a reason to not make a game in a genre because they make games in fantasy settings that destroy "immersion" as well but that doesn't mean fantasy can't work.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I'd be more in favor of having a queuing system in place, and when enough people have been gathered they get thrown into some scenario.
Of course I'm hard pressed to think about the rest of the world design. It'd be incredibly immersion breaking to be wandering around bashing mobs in the head along with several dozen players running around near you like headless chickens as they race from quest to quest (and the occasional village idiot that streaks past naked)
Maybe a design à la Guild Wars 1 would work... all in all I'm very skeptical about how "horror" an MMO can ever be. At least without the use of heavy instancing... but then it might be better off as a multiplayer game rather than MMO.
The most horror-ish MMO out there is probably TSW at the moment, and that is largely due to heavy instancing.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
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