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General: The Winds of Change
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The world of MMO development is moving along and progressing whether we like it or not. New innovations are being shown off by developers and ambitious plans are in the works for upcoming titles. In today's column, MMORPG.com Lead Writer Bill Murphy talks about the winds of change in MMOs. Check out his thoughts and leave a couple of your own in the comments.
But to ignore the other emerging trends in the industry would just be folly, and like or not the blending of genres is where the MMO is headed. Look at End of Nations, Firefall, the new SyFy MMO Defiance and so many more. All are looking to shake things up in how these games are played and experienced. It’s a trend we should all be welcoming. Haven’t we decried the stagnation of the industry? Haven’t we been begging for people to try new things? And then when someone does try something new, it’s dismissed because it’s either too new, or not the kind of new we meant.
Read more of Bill Murphy's The Winds of Change.
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Comments
Oh, I see what you did there: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Winds_of_Change
Was it on purpose?
It seems, so far, that only one formula that has been tried has resulted in a game that many are willing to stay subbed and keep paying for. That's not to say that there aren't others that will work, but they haven't been found... yet.
I still think, that for those games that want to try something "different", they should go with the Guild Wars price model.
"All are looking to shake things up in how these games are played and experienced."
They really aren't, the most innovative thing I've heard about is CCP's World of Darkness MMO, a social progression based MMO, every single MMO I've seen thus far has the same bland combat, the same bland questing design, the same lack of interactivity, the same generic story, translated into any number of settings.
We're at a point where you can just churn out another very generic MMO, polish it, and get an 8.0-9.0 across the spectrum in Rift, you know what happens when you put out a Halo clone? No one cares, a Command & Conquer clone? You can't MAKE anyone care, a Diablo clone(DarkSpore)? Most of my gaming friends have never heard of it.
But MMOs? You get awards, recognition, money, devoted fans for churning out something generic and well polished.
Peace and Beaverly Love
Well said.
It just seems like we can't get a company with the commitment, stability, creativity, content, and forethought.
Let me explain.
Commitment: Things can change in a development process but a basic scope is planned early on--you know what your after. Story matters very little in the production of a game as long as you know how many factions the story will involve.
Stability: A lot of games coming out aren't stable and virtually bug-free. They have alphas and betas but as is more and more often lamented, the ability to patch has caused a lot of developers to prematurely release a game. Little bugs are going to happen, and that's fine but some of these games... well you know, as many gamers do.
Creativity: This goes hand in hand with forethought which I'll explain later, but the game must do something new and unique, or at least some of us think it should. Your point in this article though is that change isn't accepted so well. One of the problems we have is games like FFXIV at release...made some stupid changes. There was a poor production lead. There's a thread about WoW stagnating innovation, but it is games like XIV stagnating innovation with dumb changes (sorry, no AH/centralized marketplace is just dumb. Limiting how much you can do to level in a week is just dumb. The list goes on.).
Content: Early release games, like EQ, UO, WoW didn't have much competition so there wasn't much of a benchmark. Of course WoW was a gateway MMO for many players and for those players, there was no benchmark, but now a game needs to be released with at least as much to do as say Cataclysm had at release, and a lot of games (DCUO namely) aren't living up to that. If it is possible, there will be people who are level capped in 3 days and you must be able to entertain those hardcore people til your first content patch. WoW for instance, cheated in Wrath with the rehashing of Naxxramas. They're cheating in 4.1 with the rehashing of ZG. Sadly they're big enough to cheat.
Forethought: Companies should be thinking about where the industry will be in <production time> so frequently 3-4 years. It must be a scary task and so they take the stale route. Hate me for saying it or not, but RIFT for instance took the "safe route" and just made sure to keep up with WoW in mechanics. As I said in another thread, they didn't find and paint on a blank canvas, they bought and filled in a Paint-by-number.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
I think "mmorpg" still covers all the mmo-type games I will ever be interested in
It's the rpg bit, as in: a persistant world + long term character progression + freedom in gameplay options that is crucial for me. Sure, I would enjoy faster paced combat, 1st person view, or managing underlings ... as long as that immersive rpg bit won't suffer.
Even when other formula's will rise and claim their niche, we have yet to see mmorpgs themselves truly evolve beyond the cookie cutter mold. There is plenty of room for evolution within the mmorpg designation itself. The ride has only just started.
My brand new bloggity blog.
As long as I find the game fun i could care less what category someone wants to put it in.
Utter, complete nonsense. You won't find as many clones as in the shooter genre. Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare, Halo 1, 2, 3, Dead Space, Medal of Honour, really the fps genre is bursting with clones, all games that have the same generic mechanics and are praised with devoted fans and recognition.
Just proves how skewed some people viewpoint is when it comes to MMORPG's, when they ignore the vast similarities and copying of the same mechanics over and over again for years in most of the top single player games.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Possibly because they don't play that genre of single player games?
On the topic though, my only obejection is to the way the industry has latched on to 'MMO' whatever as a buzzword for sales and marketing. It is practically impossible to find a true "single player" game these days because of how they are all linked via Games for Windows, Steam, etc and most offer some form of online play...which has led to the debasement of how the games are talked about. Lots and lots of players playing simultaneously does not equal the kind of shared world that a true MMO used to be. The degree to which that line has been blurred and deliberately obscured is behind a lot of the present dissaffection with many games that otherwise would be considered "good" if not for expectations they never really tried to live up to.
As for the different "ways in which we play these games" it's just even more buzzword bingo and marketing BS. Unless someone manages to perfect direct neural connection or something, the keyboard and monitor will stay the staple of how we interface with games for a good long while yet. Why? Because they remain multi-purpose; you simply cannot do as much with a cell phone app as a real PC/home platform nor is everyone going to have kinetic controllers anytime soon. They are the "flight joysticks" of the 2010s; some games will use them and the rabid fans will have them while everyone else shrugs.
Wow, you are actually more cynaical than me. Impressing.
Yes, you can do exactly what everyone else do and still earn money on it. But you frankly want to do something new if you want to go up against Wow and similar games. Just copying and pasteing will nly get you so far.
Rift got so high score because it is actually well coded, and it was a long time ago a good coded MMO released last. It wont become the new Wow, more like the new EQ2 and the same go for any game using the same model.
For a new MMO to become huge it needs to feel like you play a new game, a new experience. My bets for games in developmenty offereing those things are WoDO and GW2. GW2 might be a bit too traditional for you but looking on the thief vids I still say that active dodge and moving while you fight just might be enough for us to feel that we don't play Meridian 59/EQ/Wow anymore. After all is combat 90% of a MMO.
I must admit, I am TOTALLY uninterested in anything but mmoRPGs. Emphasis on RPG. MMORTS, MMOFPS or sportsMMO... nothing of these even remotely interest me.
On an analytical level, I have the greatest doubts many of these things will work. You have existing RTS, FPS and sports games. Most of these have online multiplayer function, and all of them have a robust single player part, for the time none is online. So why should anyone pay a monthly fee for a MMO where he gets what he gets "for free" + single player part otherwise? What would people DO in a baseball MMO? I can't imagine. Somehow I have the feeling this is more a pipedream. I have said that many times about so called MMOFPS. A lot of FPS fans just play Team Fortress or any similar game. Maybe Homefront, or whatever and then play that with friends multiplayer. They don't need persistend online worlds. I just don't think there is a big enough market for that.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Well Guild Wars creators flat out said it wasnt an MMO and didnt try and charge more. People loved it instead of crapping all over it.
DDO passed itself off as an mmo to charge a sub fee, and it bombed.
We're gonna call it whatever we want to, no one bothers with what marketing and media say. so maybe charge what is justified and a good game wont fail because of a marketing gimmick or an agenda.
Why does the Industry tell us what the future of MMO's is? We tell them. Period.
Can't they just make good games we want? We would throw money at them.
Or purposely NOT make games we want to keep us wanting that next title. But the media would never allow that right.
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
Did you even read what he wrote?
"So in closing on this winding and somewhat pointless rant, there are two ways in which the industry is changing. We’re seeing it first in the types of revenue models on offer. "
Who says they HAVE to charge a fee. TF2 has made a killing selling fluff items. Piracy is also a motive for developers to move to a more online presence. I think B2P/F2P and cash shops with fluff items will be the future for a lot of mmo's. Only the very top tier of all the MMO's will keep charging subs imo.
As for saying people who like FPS'ers dont need a persistent world i'm sure fans of Planetside would disagree.
There are so many people now playing games, online or single player, making plenty of room for a variety of different types of games. It's been a long time since I've had an ongoing fun experience in an MMO game. They start out interesting, and quickly become grinds. So many new games lose their customers after they've played for the free month.
The gaming experience I miss is the sandbox type, like SWG was. There's something to do for everyone according to their preferences. Friends made in that kind of game tend to become long time friends. It becomes a real interactive community. You don't need grind in that kind of game because people are finding so many things to do, they don't have to concentrate on leveling. The combat leveling is there for the people who prefer that, and actually leveling is part of advancement for professions and class abilities.
I'm just trying to look at game types that can get away from the unfun grind. I guess there are players who like grinding, but not enough to make a game popular in this country. I'm thinking about games such as Aion. There are other reasons games fail, besides grind. We need immersion to keep us interested in playing. That's the point I think developers need to zero in on, the immersion that keeps us playing.
MMO is like the bacon of video games. You can put it on any genre and it will be better.
Here is the thing about change. Changing is great, but you need to do one of 2 things. Listen to the base MMO players and give them what they have been asking for for years (rift does this very well), or change it up to target different people (I think this is what GW2 is trying to do).
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
I think what people are decrying is that lots of companies are shoving "MMO" in front of game genre titles in order to make the game sound better when it's not massively multiplayer in any way, shape or form. That's the irritating part. We're decrying companies making a very obvious and solid concept into a buzzword to attract more players (or at least viewers to the game). Guild Wars was not an MMO and Arena.net happily admitted that. I LOVE them for that. And yet games like Huxley or Global Agenda or (hell) even Age of Conan claim they are MMOs and it's bullcrap.
You're talking about the "Winds of Change", but all the companies that have tried to do things "differently" are doing them so stupidly that you can't help but scratch your head and wonder what these idiots are up to. They are doing random, directionless change. They don't attempt to fit mechanics together smoothly or mesh together a solid experience. Many of the companies do change for the sake of change instead of the sake of a better gaming experience.
Change can be random chaos or it can be directed and used. We're getting far too much noise and not enough signal in our games and THIS is why people are annoyed. We feel like companies have no idea what we want from companies and we're getting irritated at this.
Add me on Steam!
Me and a Friend are Bad At Games
Exactly.
This is the only genre, as far as I can see, that the players get in a hype froth about a game simply because 'it works'.
That should be a given imo... The very least of what a game should offer. it's shocking that our expectations as MMO gamers has dropped to this imo. It's an astonishingly bad comment on our hobby, and us as consumers.
Odd article, I really don't agree.
Most people don't bash mmo genre-mixes because they are "new" or "unfamiliar", but because they simply aren't mmos. F.e what gets called "MMOFPS" is usually an FPS with bigger maps and more players, and a social hub with a bit of crafting and trading. These games are even less of an MMO than Guild Wars 1 was, but unlike GW1, they will officially use the term "mmo" to draw attention to their game. Naturally, mmo-fans are dissapointed all the time by these genre-mixes and will start to simply ignore all of them.
Firefall is an exception that is currently flying under the radar for these reasons.
Hype train -> Reality
It's quite simple really. Fire the bean counters and hire more creators/Writers. The games of recent have all been about su.cking the most money outta their player base.
A Game for it to truly be new , has to have the creative dedication that the old games had.
Dev's have gotten lazy, only because the players have accepted the rehashed hypeboled outdated games recently and blindly throwed money at them for their lameness.
I don't think you knew of Planetside, that was clearly an MMOFPS.
Planetside Next and Firefall will be MMOFPS too, Huxley was supposed to be one but didn't make it. Blizzard's new MMO project Titan is rumored to veer into that direction.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
The Winds of Change can be summed up in a few things:
Playstyle:
Past - with less tech and latency issues, (target) 1,2,3,4,5 was the epidemy of combat. Most people playing have tons of time, so more grinding/"pitting yourself against the world to get stronger".
Present - moving towards the "twitch" mentality supporting a more action oriented game. Platform based controllers to simulate the same actions with physical movement. Wider audience and gaming vets now with families (less time) lends to different and more types of focused gameplay.
Future - Virtual reality. Laugh if you like. Greater freedom of character control and progress, allowing more and more to be done in games, from relaxing to stimulating to exciting. People log in to "feel something" as much as play, escaping from the real world into places with less accountability, responsibility and the redo/undo button so very lacking in RL.
Theme:
Past: fantasy based mostly riding on the popularity of D&D and Tolkien. Mostly focused on those with the technology to play them (geeks). Social aspects geared towards common goals (grouping).
Present: A wider range of themes attempting to broaden the scope of players and reach more audiences. Fantasy has become the institution. Sci-fi has roots, but not highly developed ones. Modern day/realistic present/future coming onto the scene. Social "MMOs" becoming more prevalent as essentially upgraded chatrooms.
Future: Thematic scope will be broadened to include most every demographic as the tech becomes more and more mainstream. MUCH higher emphasis on the female gamer and social atmospheres. "Sim games" where you are the Sim. City building games you actually live in. War games that are just as dark and devastating as the actual thing. Social games where you can be who ever you want to be in a global community. "Fighting games" that pit you against a theme based world filled with both PC and NPC adversaries, built on the backs of todays MMOs,
What I could really go for right now is for someone to come out with a steampunk based true MMORPG with twitch based action, split-game design for balanced PVE/PVP (changes based on target) in an original graphically-pleasing partially-player-atlering world. but thats me...
What I could really go for right now is for someone to come out with a steampunk based true MMORPG with twitch based action, split-game design for balanced PVE/PVP (changes based on target) in an original graphically-pleasing partially-player-atlering world. but thats me...
Furthermore, talking about MMOFPS and MMORTS as games that fall out of the categorization, is utter BS. Whatever comes after MMO does not matter. What matters is how the game is being built. Is it really massive? Can you potentially log in and play with thousands of players at the same time, or do you in reality enter an instance with 7 other people, making the game undistinguishable from a standard game+lobby (now a 3D lobby, which is used as the sorry excuse to call it an MMO).
Is the game really massive? Is the world really persistant (instances collapse after use)? Does it matter if you play or not? Can you affect the world? Can you make your mark on it?
These are questions you can start answering in your definition, MMORPG.com, and stop bullshitting around with FPS and RTS arguments, that get nowhere near to the root of the problem.
Changes that are observable:
1. Pricing
2. Platform eg Mobile MMO, Web-based MMO (improving quality), multiplatform etc
3. Hybrid genres eg Firefall (FPS) eg More spg RGP elements such as TOR and some in GW/GW2 etc
4. More Online gaming eg Minecraft etc that feels like a spg/multiplayer sandbox that could become more mmo.
Definitely a lot of room for cross-pollination!
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
The reason why it is expanding is in direct response to piracy. Many of these MMO-style games would have been released as offline or multiplayer stand alone games. However, since piracy is crippling the PC market, it's easier just to tack on a cash shop and give it away for free.
This is altering games for the worse. An FPS hostage to a cash shop or charging a sub fee will include progression based mechanics to get people to spend money. This has the side effect of making very wide powerbands, where premium players either spending money or time will get hard advantages unrelated to player skill. Same with other games.
It's sad, and I think we are going to see games lose their luster under this new economy.
I want mmorpgs to be like AC1 or AC2 if not i play RPGs but they are changing also look at DA2 i wont buy it, its made for new generation of console players, same go for new mmorpgs i wont buy them or play them, only one i maybe gonne play is xsyon but not sure yet im i thinking of stopping, im rather burned out again(second time sinds 99).
There will change alot more then you sum up here mobile gaming social network games or games where players get more control over character and not game who deside what you must do so devs make games and leave up to you how story go or what to do.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.