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Your predictions on the future of mmorpgs
(banned)
Member Posts: 5
I tried to post this same topic up in a community that had completely concluded their converstaion about the issue (unbeknowst to me) and the thread was deleted instantly. I tried to search the forums for a related topic here, but I havent found one. Plus, this seem like the place that would like to discuss such things. So if this topic as been handled elsewhere please post a link. With that, my subject to discuss:
I once thought that mmo games would be the future of gaming. More and more Im beginning to think just multiplayer online games will become and stay dominate as mmos have some inherent issues that are hard to overcome. I was reading an article..
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060222/sirlin_01.shtml
A few points in the article that were made that I agreed with.
Mmorpgs attempt to encourage player interaction with grouping and rewards for grouping. Consequently, in a lot of cases .
[QUOTE]You see a living world around you with people doing their business, laughing together, and arguing. You can group with people when you like, or not if you don't feel like it. It's an experience wholly different than a single-player game, and no serious person could think otherwise. The best way to put it is that it captures the concept of "being alone together" with other people. Going to a movie by yourself so you share the experience with the others in the audience. Going to a study hall where other people are studying, rather than staying in your room alone. There is a very big demand for the ability to "be alone together" in a shared social environment that allows grouping and social interaction, but does not force it by making almost all end-game content in the form of 40-man raids. [/QUOTE]
Mmorpgs attempt to create conflict amongst players to conquer and resolve. This attends to lead to .
[QUOTE]Unfortunately, they create a social situation totally alien to me in the real world: a constant "us vs. them" mentality in Warcraft, I live in a world of "guild-only events." You're either with a guild, or you're nobody to them. I can't imagine being in only one IRC (chat) channel at a time, or choosing only one gaming community, yet I can only join one guild at a time. It's a very weird social environment with the same dangers as nationalism and flag-waving. [/QUOTE]
Few community based games seem to create the means in which all loopholes are either embraced or completely fixed.
[QUOTE]A game should be a system of rules that allow the player to explore. If the player finds loopholes, then the game developer should fix them. It's never, ever the player's fault: it's the game developer's fault. People who currently make deals with enemy faction (Horde or Alliance) to trade wins in battleground games are not really at fault. They are playing in a system that forces anyone who wants to be rank 14 to do exactly that.[/QUOTE]
Heres what someone in the industry thinks could happen in the future of mmorpgs.http://www.gamespy.com/articles/688/688964p1.html
[QUOTE]GameSpy: So what's going to change?
Richard: In my mind, what's it going to take to get to the second generation? We see little tastes of it in things like City of Heroes or Guild Wars, and we'll see more of it in Auto Assault and hopefully the pinnacle of the second generation, Tabula Rasa... We're doing things like saying, "look, you can't expect people to take an hour to log in and get connected to their friends." You've got to be able to get in, find your friends, and go on an adventure, accomplish it, feel like you've done something worthwhile, and get out -- all within 30 minutes to an hour. [/QUOTE]
He has a point. It may seem like a good idea at first, but it is soon realized that the virtual world continues to move ahead when one is not logged in putting one behind. Also for most mmos, part of playing the game is preparing to play the game. The faster preparation happens the better. Its also important to note that the casual gamer should be able to compete fairly with hardcore grinders in a match of skill.
These are my top ten predictions (with good examples if possible in parentheses) as to what future mmorpgs will have if they continue to progress towards appealing to large audiences.
-Base level stats and equipment for all classes, skills and abilities. (Guild Wars)
-Flexibility in character creation and ability as you progress through the game. (Guild Wars)
-Sandbox type world where creativity in character design and use of virtual property is rewarding. (Eve Online)
-Rewards individual accomplishments equal to group accomplishments. (?)
-Large quest tailored to the individual, pieced together by missions. The ability to accomplish them solo or contracting the help of another talent for a particular mission is possible. Sharing missions and teaming with others is possible too. (?)
-Small quest tailored to groups. (maybe World of Warcraft)
-Frequent scheduled events for large gatherings for either combat or other socialization. (Linage 2)
-An economy that expects and tailors to real world money transactions. (Second Life)
-An economy that supplies unique item designs and virtual property, but not game winning items. (Second Life, Guild Wars)
-PvP balanced for 1 on 1 combat, probably from the ground up. (?)
Maybe Ive missed some predictions that you think will happen in the future of mmorpg gaming. Maybe my examples in parentheses are not the best in these situations.
Make corrections and/or add your own predictions as what you think there will be.
Comments
LOL, i just made a post in the Vanguard forum that covers almost all the references you've just made:
Lol that article you linked to is a joke. I mean, the guy compares street fighter to an MMO... sounds like he just needs to find a nice FPS and forget MMOs. Its funny how he quotes Raph on a few things. This is what Raph posted on his site:
Dave Sirlin rips WoW
February 22nd, 2006
and does so whilst invoking my name.
Oh boy.
you can find his full comments here: Dave sirlin rips WoW
Personally, while i hold alot of respect for Raph for what he has accomplished, I highly disagree with a lot of his views.
LOL also check what Lum has to say about the article: http://www.brokentoys.org/2006/02/23...-wrong-things/ great read and i fully agree with him
Also check this guys site (Dave Sirlin's) to see exactly what type of (competitive gaming) view he holds...http://www.sirlin.net/ He even has a book titled "playing to win" lol well it seems to me he is just frustrated that he blows at MMOs. They are not a pick up and pwn type of twitch game, which is what i beleive he is really whining about in his article. One thing he does say though that may be of intrest is this:
I think Blizzard locked and later deleted all the threads on the worldofwarcraft.com forums that had to do with my article. I see censorhip is their solution (not censorship of me, but of all the players who wanted to talk about the topics I raised). Is it their right to delete these threads? Of course it is. It seems like a pretty juvenile thing to do though. Either the ideas have merit and should be discussed or they don't and should be attacked by the other players. Either way, censorship is a pretty unenlightened way of solving a problem.
that is about the one thing he says that i agree with.
~Dunadurium
"Silly rabbit, WoW's for kids"
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I think that trying to fight WoW is a mistake for any serious developper.
You have to take different approachs, not completely different, but you have to offer some better stuff.
Any MMO heading for a END GAME not resolving around grouping/soloing is seriously mistaken. Most news MMOs are going to go that way, and most are going to crash in a wall. Peoples want to SOLO & GROUP. Hard stuff? Sure, but as long as it is in SOLO & GROUPING, PvE style of course. I am surprised at how neglected the Solo aspect is, considering it is the "easiest" aspect to developp nicely from a technical point of view (from a design point of view it is challenging, you have to beat Morrowind and all the nice solo games).
Just think about it 1 moment...5 millions players select WoW mostly because it is solo friendly and group friendly and they discover that it end in raiding and PvP...The market is bigger than ever, but it is more adamant than ever against those END GAME that suits minorities of players. Don't tell me you doesn't feel the hatred from the WoW players, even I cower in front of it! Real solo & grouping MMO is long overdue!
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I predict there will be more of the same.
I don't think (and I hope) that mmo's don't die out. It only takes one good mmo to hook a player for life - kind of like that one good golf shot. Once a player has experienced the interaction that mmo's provide, it's hard to go back to non-mmo games.
Now to answer your question (and no i don't agree with the Garriott Bro's):
The state of the industry
Where is see MMORPGs heading. It has been estimated that by 2011 the gaming industry will have fully doubled, going from around $31B to well over $60B in revenue. The interesting thing is that it is also estimated that by 2010 the vast majority of the industry will be in the MMO/online market. The gaming industry is also slated to over take the movie/television industry as a main form of entertainment for millions of people in the next few years.
What does this all mean?? Well for one thing the game space is going to grow immensely, creating huge opportunity to further MMOs into different fields as of yet unattempted. People will begin to see the huge profits made in this industry and people will jump on it like flies on... thinking that its some easy money and with new media education becoming rampant throughout the world there is cheap labor to be found around every corner. The problem though of course is that making a game..especially an MMORPG game is not as easy as it may sound. As competition grows it will drive the quality of these games and continuously push the boundaries of what is possible (this in general is a good thing for us gamers) The problem arises though that a developer with a lot of money that wants to capitalize in the industry is going to be overwhelmed by the mechanics and complexity of one of these products. They are not some thing you slap together in a year and expect to make millions. So there will be some hard lessons learnt and also some huge losses for some unwary people.
CASUAL/HARDCORE...other
The current situation right now is of course the whole casual vs hardcore debate. This is a very complex issue and one with a lot of passionate views and opinions. Now the good news is that if the market for these games grows even half as fast as predicted there will be a lot of choice as to the type of game you want to play and plenty of room for both types.
my opinions: I think the "casual" model for these games will thrive no matter what. As much as the old schoolers hate it, there will still be casual friendly games. WOW really opened up a whole different can of worms, and introduced the casual game to us. Before it, there wasn't even the term "casual gameplay" as it exists today. It really brought this type of game to the scene. Now whether you think WOW is a good game or not is besides the point. It pulled in more new players to the industry as any game had ever before it and that did a lot of good (a lot more good than the bad it caused IMHO). whether it was because of Blizzards good name and reputation or because of its marketing model around the world, or if it was indeed the type of game so many people wanted to play is also rather irrelevant now. Dev companies have seen its success and think that the formula for success is in the casual gameplay. What do i think? I think thats a bunch of BS.
First I think we need to take a look at what the term "casual" game entails. It is sometimes used as a word with automatic negative connotation that is thrown around to discredit a game or playstyle, but do we all really hold the same meaning to such a new word? To me, casual describes the simplification of games in the name of playability. It is what WOW made its reputation into by eliminating (IMHO) such key elements such as travel and a death mechanic in its game. It is the "simplification" of the quest system. And all this while unintentional, and really just done in the process of trying to take out the negatives from early games, what we really have now is missing elements that make these games challenging and entertaining for such a long time. Look at EQ for example, it has been running for about 7 years now and it still holds its subscriber rate relatively high.
The thing is that now that there is the trend started into the "casual" field of games, it is likely that there will be a large group of games trying to take that model and innovate on it. The problem that i see though is that the model is flawed from the beginning. What could happen though that i see very likely is that the turnaround rate for these games may completely change -by design. more on this in a bit.
Back to the unbiased prediction though, I think in the coming years we will see a dividing of the genre into sub-genres. This includes casual, hardcore, core, a mix of the two and even many niche games will emerge as profitable enterprises. Instancing will continues down the road its on with a few games no doubt but hopefully it will begin to be used more wisely and its creative possibilities will become visible. Games like WOW will flourish, but on the other hand a return to more challenging aspects and maybe slightly more time consuming will also be there. I see games like ATITD becoming widely played and there will be a market for them. This is true and evident already from the different advancement types we are seeing games incorporate, A large one being more complex and intricate crafting systems that add a whole different way to play a game. These different features could be individually used to base a game on and take the ideas to new levels. This being said we will also see a lot of experimentation with different themes and styles such as FPS(planetside) or different sports type genres. How these new themes will fare is very hard to forecast at this time. There are definitely some pretty new mechanics that would have to be implemented.
Turnaround rate/quality/quantity/market saturation
This is again a big issue right now. Can a game like WOW hold its player base for years to come? The main thing that is incorporated by design or by chance is that leveling in WOW really takes a fraction of the time it does in other games. Does that mean it has less content? To an extent maybe. Or maybe its the way the content is structured that allows players to fly through levels. Blizzard is trying franticly to get content into the game and the first expansion is due out soon. Ultimately though players are and will be going through the game at a much faster pace. This is not a bad thing though if you look at the direction that casual games are going. It may be in the future, completely viable to have a game released, rake in profits for a year or 2 and then hand the game over to the players as it wanes. The casual game really helps in this way.
The truth is that until WOW burst to the scene there were very real worries about market saturation and the extent of games that could be brought to the game space. If there were too many games, gamers may be spread too thin and new games simply could not be profitable. This is where the above comes in. Does it really matter if a game make $500M over 5 years in subscriptions or if it makes $100M in a year in game sales and subs? In all honesty it is probably a lot safer too from the perspective of a publisher to quickly push out a casual game in 2 years that will make that than to put 4+ years into a "hardcore" or longterm game that you will need to tend for many years to come, and the long dev time provides greater risk for failure, or cancelation. We already start to see this trend with releases such as DDO and the older Guild Wars.
Games like Vanguard:SOH though are bringing the "oldschool" to the present and really putting it to the test to see if it can be built on instead of only the casual games. The success of these games will really determine the direction of the industry, how large will the "hardcore" side be, or will the casual be the largest part of the industry? There will be both really as the 2 main types of games i think and there may be a struggle and competition to pull players to either side.
The virtual world
The virtual world philosophy is really what MUDs were built on. On D&D-like rules, yes, but those rules were tools to create the "boundaries" in a world if you will. There were ideas that these games could evolve to such a level that they were "realistic" fantasy worlds. Could this still happen with all these "suspension of disbelief" elements in games today? Sure there is a chance, actually there is even a higher chance than before if the game space evolves the niche markets, and one of those may be games for realists. The technology has a ways to go though to get to a level of "realism" that some people envisioned back in the day. There have been things like "DAWN"- the vaporware dream of many gamers, that was supposed to be such a realistic game. Of course this has not happened yet.
Payment structures
In all honesty this interests me very little. Weather i pay 15$ a month or $3.50 a week. I don't care as long as these companies don't start scaming people by charging $50 in some devious little pricing system. For example, if a game charges only 50cents per hour, what will happen to the hardcore people playing 40 hours a week... thats $20 a week, 80$ a month..ouch.
Other games based on the secondary market or the trading of game property for real cash could alo survive of alternate revenue streams(such as second life). For games that are not designed on this idea though, it is very bad, especially for the long term game.
Anyway im gonna wrap it up because its getting sorta long(i know i only covered a few issues). The thing to remember though is that the gamespace will grow and accommodate a wide variety of games, so we should all be happy
.
~Dunadurium
"Silly rabbit, WoW's for kids"
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I wasn't actually rooting for the article, and I was looking for points to bash them on. But I completely agree with the article.
I really want to get into mmo design after I put in a decade of work as a game artist; and what he mentioned is really what developers should be thinking about when making mmo's, and the thought about how to make a game fun solves alot of the problems that players encounter in game.
When I started Worlds of Warcraft my single goal was to explore every fathom of the world, and when I finally finished the game with my final triumph; I finally felt I beat the game. The very first mmo I ever beat to. Then I sent in my screenshot of the End of the World. Since I found it after several hours of jumping on a cliff face for several hours. After that I learned it was a bannable offense to explore and find the end of the world. What annoyed me was that I discovered the end of the World when I was level 56; I could really achieved my goal of traveling everywhere in worlds of warcraft at level 20, cause I already explored all the legal area's to go to by then.
My opinnion is that current major MMORPG developers creativity has been stuck to "class-level system loop". If you remove graphics, game world and quest - and compare for example: EQ, DAoC, EQ2, Lineage 2, WoW, DDO, Vanguard and AoC you will see that all those games are basicly same.
When developers want to add content to game, they are normally doing following: add new levels to game (moving advancement metric further away and "expaning story") and add different kind means to get more xp (quests and dungeons). It is safe way to develope "new" content. You can easily estimate how many new quests, dungeons and monsters you need to add game if you are going add N more levels to game. It is risk free way to develope, because you don't need to really invent and research anything new.
I believe that in next 10 years new MMORPGs are going to repeat same pattern. There is going to be better graphics, maybe bit more character customization, variations of PvP schemas, housing features and variations of game economies. But in essence, MMORPGs are going to be same. There is no need for developers to start thinking out-of-box, unless there is financially succesfully game that is breaking this class-level system.
Because games are going to repeat same basic pattern, players are going burn out to games faster. They might stay in game one or two month and then move to another - or just start playing other kind games. Either game companies are going to develope palette of games (like SOE and PlayNC have) that allows them hold players longer or they are forced to merge with other companies.
"I know I said this was my last post, but you my friend are a idiotic moron." -Shadow4482
hopefully a step away from ocd syndrome play and more focus on not only enhancing gameplay, but making a world.
I find that all things understood in life are structures pulled together from abstractions. MMORPGs are just the same. They can be ... anything, but they consistently follow patterns because thats how we think they HAVE to be.
The best mmorggs will respond to desires of the individual, as many individuals as possable. Some good points here. People will grow bored of the game, quicker and quicker, that is the same game they have played before but with a face lift in graphics in a different setting. The only things holding them together are the addiction to grind, the community and the pvp challenge, with maybe a few people intrested in the finer machinics and coding of games themselves.
It is happening that all of these seperate people with seperate ideas of fun cause games to split, some focusing on one set of people in mind, others focused on another set of people in mind. That split will continue to grow and divide better as designers learn to engage their targets intrest. Im not knocking this one bit. They are games and they should be fun by any means necessary.
But I think the holy grail to this whole mmorpg thing is for a game so universal anyone can log in and play and admit that it was a fun experance. This game has to anwers so many different outlooks and still look like "fun" towards all of them. I think its possable but such an idea is too abstract for us to pull it together as of yet.
My first statement was that mmo's will fade away to mulitplayer online games. Give it ten to fifty years down the road or whatever. If they will continue to florish they will have to change fundementaly over time. My top ten predictions where some of the fundementals I guessed will start to emerge in a single mmorpg, based on what I thought would be fun for me while being reasonable to others at all times when I logged into a virtual world.
So my next question is: What would be fun for you to do in a virtual world based game and how do you think a game could add such mechanic for you to have this fun?
I'm going to hopefully predict that monthly subscriptions will be overtaken by the Guild Wars payment method.
It clearly works. All it takes is for the punters to wisen up.
I play WoW and DAoC. And I can tell you that, to me at least, the grouping situations are totally different. It seems weird that an older game would have the whole grouping/socialization thing down better than a newer supposedly better game, but that's the crazy world we live in, right?
Anyways, DAoC has these things called alliances. I'm kinda new to the gaming world, so sorry if any others have them too. But seperate guilds can join with other guilds and form a kind of alliance network. The guilds leaders have complete control over who can participate in the alliance chat, so it keeps the nitwits in each guild from making their guild look silly.
It works. It keeps people from being isolated inside of their guild. Another thing it does is reward you for working with your guild in order to get the priviledge of alliance chat.
Just thought I'd post a way that the whole alone together thing could be at least a little bit solved.
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My prediction is that we are at a critical crossroad right now concerning the future of this genre.
If we were here at the beginning of 2005, I would have been one of the ones who argued that we were going to double as far as the player numbers, that this was a potential money maker ready to explode, and that online games would be the games of choice for most computer and console gamers.
But its 2006 now, and I would think that anyone who looks at the events of the past year realistically would have to question whether the bright future once predicted still holds.
I think that its hard to imagine when we hear stories of 5 million subscribers in World of Warcraft, that MMORPGs are still a sort of "cult phenomenon" that is not even close to be what we'd consider to be "mainstream."
Yet its the truth. A survey conducted by Perpetual Entertainment revealed that nearly 55% of those who would be interested in a Star Trek MMORPG consider it "too expensive."
http://startrek.perpetual.com/2005/08/survey_no_1_results.html
I don't think this is going to change anytime soon. For while we can tweak the way people do pay (like create "velvet ropes," or a commission on the sale if IG items, or pay for expansions ala Guild Wars style), I don't think that the real problem goes away, and the problem is, and always will be this:
What is the reason the gaming public will pay more for a game that is not their's to own, when they can pay so much less for a game that they can use in any manner they choose, for as long as they choose?
Its a question that was always very easily answered before 2005. You pay more for MMORPGs, because MMORPGs can give you more of a game than any similar experience, and its a better value for the money.
The things like live updates, expansive an open ended gameplay, and huge environments are what MMORPGs do better than their single player or limited multiplayer (like KOTOR2, or Freedom Force) counterparts. Yes, MMOs are expensive for the consumer, but this has always been balanced by the fact that one MMO is supposed to give far more enjoyment than the same number of other games one may purchase and play in that time.
This is what scares me though, and why I am skeptical. The things that were supposed to sell us on MMOs are turning out to be the very things we are hating about MMOs.
Live updates are good when they give you something extra. They are really bad when they take the form of an NGE. It makes one question the wisdom of even playing these games that are not owned, when the developers can change the experience in a way that negatively impacts the experience. This is something that the gaming public just don't have to deal with in console games, or RTS games, and they are also much cheaper, and promise fun right out of the box.
Nobody really has to be concerned with buying and selling gold on eBay, or hacks and cheats, or being too "casual" to compete in a limited online game, like Madden NFL, or KOTOR2. These problematic aspects are things that neither players of online games, nor providers of online games, have been able to stop. Some like Entropia and Station Exchange, embrace it. But one wonders if the public is going to buy into it. Especially when we consider that other computer and entertainment options are more diverse and available now, are cheaper to develop and purchase, and promise fun right out of the box.
The fact that we have seen such questionable practices on the part of compainies like SOE, or Limitless Horizons Entertainment, or Farlan does not bode well for the future, at least in the near term. Had Origin, or Verant did these things, we wouldn't be talking about MMOs as a big affair, because it never would have taken off.
I was just watching a show on battleships on The History Channel. At the height of their popularity in World War 1, everybody was so certain that power at sea would be determined with big guns, on big ships, that nobody ever stopped to consider that they'd simply become too big, too expensive, too much of a hassle, and too vulnerable to be worth it in the long run.
Nobody has any battleships anymore, not because they didn't work, but that there are simply better, cheaper, and less problematic ways to do the same thing.
Like battleships, MMORPGs are big, impressive, expensive expressions of a software company's coding and creative might. But just as the Bismark was sunk by one torpedo, so too can these MMOs be sunk by better, cheaper, more numerous high quality games.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Ok, im not sure if this was said already (i jsut finished writing a huge speech and dont really feel like reading everything) but it popped in my head immediately after i saw this thread.
With the new generation of gamers, the first MMORPG's they saw(more than likely) were FFXI and WoW. and for them to want to play anyother type of MMORPG, they expect an almost exact copy of one of those. So to them, if its not like WOW or FFXI, its not worth playing. its magazines arent all over, its not worth playing. IMO, this is whats gonna happen:
1) Either everyone is going to use the same formula and everthings gonna be the same
or
2) People will continue to create new things and noone will pay attention until a new style floods the market. ( i personally hope this one happens [in a way]. i want people to create new styles of MMORPGs but i also like the current style. i dont want one to outshine the other, i just want some diversity in the mix).
This is what i just posted in another thread (which btw i think was inspired by your post Beat..lol good job
)
Well, lol I'll tell you one thing: this amount of pessimism can't be good for your health. I mean, this is ridiculous.
No, i don't think we have anything to worry about. This is the way i see it: say there are 20 titles planned for the near future, of those there has to be a FEW that turn out ok and advance the industry.
Notice i say advance the "industry" and not "MMORPGs". I don't see why people are trying to re-invent the wheel...The wheel we have now works just great and i think its not the tech and features we need to try and "revolutionize" but rather take the good ideas from the past and GET CREATIVE, maybe innovate a bit on those. "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" as Sigil says.
To expand on the "wheel", just look back into ancient times, to when the pyramids were built, and the types of log "rollers" they used to move huge slabs of stone. That is what MUDs were, and they worked fine, and theoretically still can... EQ was the emergence of reinforced woodwork wheels that also served their purpose well. Where are recent games seeming to go? Hool-a-hoops, lol yep, recent developed games are turning toward hool-a-hoops and they are losing the original intent and things that let a wheel perform its function well. The sad thing is though, that we already have hool-a-hoops, so why take the wheel in that direction?? Well the thing is that the wheel is still there, beside the hool-a-hoops maybe, but still there. And this is my point why start going toward something that already exists (fps's or complete twitch gaming). I will tell you now though that these games can and will follow down the path of evolution and take the wheel to new places: high performance racing tyres, also the monster truck tyres, or even extreme performance bike tyres. Lol, while is not the best example, you can see my point. We still have a long way to take what we currently have before we really need to worry about "revolutionizing" anything to make it fun.
One very important thing also to remember for developers is not to just take "what works" in other games and use them in a game, but to take a logical look at the game your making and seeing which of the old fun features will work in the game YOUR MAKING.
I also don't think there can be a game for every person...while you may want to include as many playstyles as possible, i think its pretty important to have a vision or target audience for a game and stick with it, working on ideas that suite that goal.
Lastly, take criticism of games with a (large) grain of salt as no game will ever suite everyone so there will always be whiners.
~Dunadurium
"Silly rabbit, WoW's for kids"
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I dont think we have anything to worry about either. We just talking about mmorpgs. And the future may not be bleak for them at all. I really think dreaming a new dream in this brand new industry is easy. Sharing it, getting people to invest in it, and creating it as envisioned are the major obsticales. Certainly, if we identify issues with these kinds of games investors and developers do too. So what would logically happen is, these issue will stop showing up in mmorpgs if they continue to grow in popularity. So it can go either way. It can become less popular or more popular depending on how they continue to address the psychology of the people.