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General: Forum Spotlight: The Future of MMOs
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
This week in her Forum Spotlight column, Community Manager Laura Genender takes a look at a thread that suggests that MMOs are dying.
On the MMORPG.com forums, we often take time to discuss the industry’s immediate future: Will Age of Conan be good? Will Marvel Universe or DC Online win the hero show-down? Is WAR a WoW clone? What’s Bioware’s new title? This week on the forums, though, user outlaw101 turns his eyes further into the MMO future: what’s going to become of our industry?
“MMO gaming has been around for nearly 15 years now, commercially,” states outlaw101. “My question is, do you think it has a future. The MMO industry makes up under 5% of entertainment online, with the PC singleplayer and Multiplayer games in their prime, where will MMO games be in 15 years? 30 years? dead? alive?”
Outlaw101 himself doesn’t think the industry will be around long. “The MMO industry wont make it, with the amount of linear titles we have out today people are getting put off.”
Read the whole column here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Ummmmm....read the "whole column" where?
It appears the link is broken.
Not so much "broken" as simply "not linked."
Dead? No way. Just like any game the fun isn't playing some AI, it's playing against or with another real human. That's where MMO's really shine.
The genre is branching out from post apoc FPS's to pirates on the high seas to even adult only titles. As technology and bandwidth improves these games will be on par with any off line title in terms of performance/graphics. As dev tools become more user friendly and accessible we will see indy dev's creating those niche worlds that cater to every gamer sub group you could imagine.
Why play Oblivion if I can play the same thing where the NPC's, enemy's, etc are all controlled by real people making it dynamic and far more interesting? Just look at the target markets that swarm to these games. They are suppose to be anti social "nerds" for lack of a bettter term, yet they eat these games up and feel right at home.
Once it hits mainstream it's just going to get bigger. I see Madden Online where you create and develop a QB to play in a permanent league. I see Halo Online with large virtual landscapes where the covenant and space marines battle for supremacy. I see Harry Potter online where..umm...everyone tries to hook up with granger.
You get the idea.
WAR will allow Dwarves to grow their beards as they level? Not only is that cool, but it is innovative. I've never considered or liked being a Dwarf (who wants to be short and ugly anyways?), but this innovation alone is enough to make me consider it. I wander if the other races offer anything similar.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR
Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
I think the genre is far from dead, though it's getting bloated enough to use a little pruning now and then. Although, with the costs of managing an online game, the pruning is done for us in a lot of cases (^_-) The only real problem MMOs are going to suffer- based on the current models- is that most people are only going to be able to afford one or two hardcore MMO titles due to subscription fees and a finite number of hours in the day. This is why I've been happy to see some MMOs trying out the play-for-free model or PFF but you can subscribe for perks. It allows me a lot more flexibility in the games I can play rather than being limited to just one subscription game and Guild Wars with my budget. With more large game studios putting forth top-rate MMO titles, I don't think the genre will die, but it will definitely change.
Oh yeah, I think MMORPG's have a future. While UO, EQ, and some others pioneered the genre, WoW brought it to mainstream society. WoW itself isn't a failure and really is one of a kind. If you look at this long-term like, you will see that you have the pioneer MMORPGs, then you have WoW, then you have the games who try to mimmick WoW's success. Next you will see developers that learn it is the quality and name of WoW that made WoW successful. These developers will make a name for themselves by releasing a quality product and will offer the quality product as something different than the norm these days.
Is the future right after WoW bleak? Yes, but is the future as a whole? No, because while WoW caused an immediate urge in the genre to replicate it's success by copying its game play, developers are stating to realize that it is the quality that we all liked. The important thing WoW brought to the genre is quality and since WoW, players have not accepted sub-par releases and games anymore.
To sum this up, before WoW was innovation and poor quality. WoW was quality without innovation. WoW aftermath is the cloning of WoW's game-play, which means both quality and WoW's game play and WoW's game play w/o the quality. After the aftermath will be the quality + innovation. I expect to see these quality+Innovative games after 2010.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR
Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
The MMOs I knew in the 90s aren't the same MMOs that I still like. At first, I was attracted to just RPGs. And then as time went on, I got attracted to more casual games. Strangely enough, the game I find myself still attracted to and a major part of is Albatross18. And I don't even really play golf! Not something I would have imagined when I was trying it out a long 2 years ago.
Best Wishes,
Pokota
I [take a pretty optimistic approach to the subject. I don't think we will be given the linear stories and level based grinds for much longer...the games that do this are aimed at people who like single player games and not gaming communities as such. Obviously not all gamers...but some.
I think we will see a turn towards the sandbox...the UO's and the Eve's where people create an online world that is defined by their terms and not by the constraints of a level based game which in my opinion cannot offer what most people are looking for.
Only time will tell...but the end is deffinitely not nigh.
Notice: The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the reviews of MMORPG.com or its management.
Neil Thompson
Staff Writer
MMORPG.com
Like any industry, there is always going to be successes and failures. The industry is going through some growing pains right now. Like any other industry, investors are funding the games that copycat Wow's success, but other games like Eve are showing that success does not have to be confined to the Wow clone market.
I also think the original poster was completely unaware of the asian market. MMO's are far stronger and more successful in that region than in US and Europe.
MMO's are very dependent on computer system restraints too. They are limited by the computer graphics cards, system memory and storage. It was not long ago, that many systems had less than 1gb of memory and came with 30gb hard disks. Today it is not uncommon to find 2gb and up memory configurations and 300 gb drives in most new computers. The standard graphics cards have improved immensely too.
When you realize it takes at least 4 years to design a MMO, it makes it hard for a designer to look that far ahead to anticipate what computer's their customers will have at the point of publishing the game.
Wow is not the end all, be all of MMO's. Something will come along and supercede it. When that will be I do not know, but I don't think it will be that long.
I touched on the industry on my blog today.
I think the industry is pretty ho hum.
My thoughts? Charge more, fewer people.
Lets get to the brass tacks. MMORPGs need to be less massive and more expensive. They need to be customized and niche specific. You cannot please everyone all of the time. Just some of the people some of the time.
Read the rest on my MMORPG.com blog or my personal blog www.brainproxy.com
While I do agree that WoW helped to pull the genre into the main stream, I certainly cannot agree that it raised the bar of quality in MMO's. Innovention and Quality are two things that we all see from our own perspective, and the games we enjoy make it hard to be objective. I enjoyed EQ for years, and I enjoy EQ2 now, hence, I feel WoW is a bit cartoon-like and shallow.
That being said(and it is just my opinion.. im not bashing WoW), quality to me is in content, emmersion in your environment and the ability to explore a vast world. EQ2 has what I look for. They have been innovative in many new areas of the MMO genre, but have not gotten away from their roots.
Is the MMO genre getting stagnate, stale or otherwise declining. No way. There will always be a game out there that will grab the attention of someon like me or JK-Kanosi. While we seem to feel different ways about the same game, we can both agree that these games will only get better over time... and there is no getting rid of us MMO fans.
_____________________________
*This thread contains enough compressed stupidity to erase all science as far back as the middle ages.
I really hope the market will begin to diversify as a logical alternative to direct competition. We could use some variety! Decline, or death of the MMO industry is very unlikely... But it's also depressingly possible that the trend of "please everyone" games will simply continue, content with a steady growth. I'm crossing my fingers!
15 years. That's sick considering what is currently being delivered. I am a sandbox player. If there is a line to follow, great. I prefer to follow it a my own pace. Funny how the two "old men" in the circle are UO and EQ. UO which followed the idea of finding you own path, and EQ which says here, follow ours. Numbers are a bit deceiving though. As we watch SWG fail (sandbox, but failed by their own hand), and Ryzom on the auction block yet again in a year, one might think the sandbox is croaking. Then you look at the numbers provided in EvE and Second Life, and things don't look so bleak.
I think everyone aknowledges the 800 pound gorilla, but that gorilla is being fed by nearly 90% of the games listed on this site. Talk about the bastard child of the Korean grind mating with the North American quest. Every game before and after seems to have some context with Blizzards incarnation. Most of the new players the OP admires coming into fruition started in this game. I can't say I am looking forward to their contribution for obvious reasons. Well, obvious to me at least, I have seen this game copied and re-released quite enough for my taste, whether it be the shallow take: Guild Wars, or the PvE rip, LotrO. Not to mention the single mid-game rip, SWG, which sent many of us reeling, and made this site pretty damn popular.
Anyways, the big releases being what they are, it's encouraging that a few small companies with a vision have poked through to become major players (as mentioned above, CCP and LL). I am just afraid that they will be ignored in the future because they haven't amassed the 2M or above mark. I am also sad Ryzom is encountering it's current fate, and that the major players don't see fit to make a bid on such a well designed and playable game. Then again, it only reiterates my eventual point, the industry is falling into the same hands as the single player configuration. Make the same game, over and over, try to add a twist, add a little eye candy (AoC) and release the game knowing, like FPS game players of the late 90's, they will get it on boot.
Meanwhile, there are different players out there, and a lot of them (count in the hundreds of thousands) who want something open, challenging, that allows for individuality. They are playing separate, but equal games right now. If you give this group a chance, and give that game a chance, it's been demonstrated that they are the most loyal subscribing players in the industry.
Funny, they don't even need to raid.
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Tried: WoW, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Everquest, WWII Online, Planetside
Beta: Lotro, Tabula Rasa, WAR.
I think that there are two main issues to MMOs.
Once you have played one, there is no going back to linear games again; no matter how good the AI, PvP (RvR) is different every time - in ways that you can never predict. Plus you get to meet new people - and kill'em.
The second is that you can really only play one, and the time investment is huge. For me, I can manage about 5 hours a week, and typically advancement is 3-6 months for a high level character.
So I would conclude that MMO are here to stay and will grow and grow in addiction. But they are going to have to change, which they already have to some extent, in catering more to "casual" players.
I wish there weren't quite so many MMOs and that MMOs weren't all so similar. A bad sign for the future is when innovation fails - Seed, Auto Assault, Ryzom and imitation prevails - LOTRO, any number of free grinders. I'm hoping AoC and WAR will break the mold - enough from both aspects to make a lasting game.
I think the problem with mmorpgs is that they realise too many too quickly. Since mmorpgs are genearlly quite involving and it takes a long time to get to grips with a new one, a lot of people spend ages getting their teeth into a game to then realise it's actually not that good; and move onto other more conventional genres. If they concentrated more on quality games which have a good support base and regular updates (Lotro, Wow, Eve etc) and are designed more for longetivity, rather than just firing off average games that then don't get updated and die a quick death, people wouldn't get bored of the genre so quickly.
While I do agree that WoW helped to pull the genre into the main stream, I certainly cannot agree that it raised the bar of quality in MMO's. Innovention and Quality are two things that we all see from our own perspective, and the games we enjoy make it hard to be objective. I enjoyed EQ for years, and I enjoy EQ2 now, hence, I feel WoW is a bit cartoon-like and shallow.
That being said(and it is just my opinion.. im not bashing WoW), quality to me is in content, emmersion in your environment and the ability to explore a vast world. EQ2 has what I look for. They have been innovative in many new areas of the MMO genre, but have not gotten away from their roots.
Is the MMO genre getting stagnate, stale or otherwise declining. No way. There will always be a game out there that will grab the attention of someon like me or JK-Kanosi. While we seem to feel different ways about the same game, we can both agree that these games will only get better over time... and there is no getting rid of us MMO fans.
You are misunderstanding me. I actually do not like WoW at all. I couldn't make it past level 41, because the quests are so boring and dull. The only thing in that game that entertains me is the instances and their stories. What I mean by quality and what I thought everyone's idea of quality is how they designed the game. WoW has very few if any bugs, has a great UI, and overall brought polish to the industry. What you call quality, I call content. WoW has it to where you can just click on name in the chat box and choose what to do with that person. They also brought about dressing rooms and many other features that just make things easier. To me, that is quality game design. If you are familiar with the history of software design, you will understand the following analogy. WoW is to Microsoft Windows, as pre-WoW is to the Command Window. MS Windows made navigating a computer very easy for the average person, whereas before MS Windows only the nerds knew how to navigate it.
My favorite MMORPG of all time is DAoC and the old SWG. I started DAoC in 2002. I also played Motorcity Online. So I know how UN-user friendly the UI really was before WoW came about. I also knew how buggy games were...although DAoC was pretty bug ree and they would bash all known bugs within a week.
So IMHO polish = quality and WoW whips the pants off of all games in the polish department. A game that has WoW's polishness and an innovative touch will win over the MMORPG crowd I think.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR
Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
I don't see how you can feel good about telling people that future games should cater more to casual players. I for one feel that "every" type of player should be catered to. Maybe not in the same game, but in the same genre for sure. I think it is pretty selfish to want the whole genre to cater to your play style. Before the casual gamers came around, the genre had a lot more depth to it and was more challenging, because they catered to the hard core gamer crowd. How would you feel if a hardcore gamer came on here and said that they think the future MMORPG's should cater to the hardcore crowd? Or that the future MMORPG's should be sandbox MMORPG's?
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR
Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
I think MMOs have a great future ahead, but they're going to have to be creative and flexible and player-friendly if they want to be competitive. There are key features I look for before I am willing to buy into any MMO.
(1) Subscriptions. Subscription-based MMOs need to be worth the subscription: the MMO game needs to be VERY service oriented and provide continuous update patches and new content to justify that subscription fee. If a game can operate subscription-free -- AND STILL BE GOOD (like Guild Wars) -- that game will have a definite edge. Most of the "new content" WoW offered consisted of dungeons and gear that my (casual) toon(s) could never hope to see, so I eventually cancelled. But I do give Blizzard high marks for earning the subscription fee they charge.
(2) Playstyle flexibility. A key feature of successful MMOs is (and will continue to be) playstyle flexibility. By this I mean a game should be fun to solo, small group, or mega raid. It sounds like a contradiction, but an MMO that is not to some extent "solo-able" is not going to do very well in the marketplace, imho.
(3) Quality content. One of the reasons I find the upcoming Warhammer Online so intriguing is that, from what I can tell, it looks really creative in design, combat, character creation, story, etc. Good writing and creative story design is going to be critical to the success of any MMO. I think good writing and creative lore and mission/quest design is essential.
(4) Free trial. Heh. I will not buy a game until I have had a chance to try it out. The best MMOs usually offer free trials at some point. If a product is fun, they'll hook me through a trial quickly enough. That is how I got pulled into both WoW and Guild Wars. A number of other games failed to impress me through their free trials, but I appreciated their willingness to let their product speak for itself (or not, as the case may be). COH is a case in point; it was a polished game, but it was just not for me. I am glad, however, that I had the chance to "try before I buy."
Chat + toon + a "common" goal
those 3 things we get with MMORPGs, i can't see why this genre to die or it is even starting to die anytime soon.
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