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Is the Future of mmorpg bleak ?
admriker444
Member Posts: 1,526
Im starting to wonder if mmorpgs in general are in serious trouble. Even WoW is starting to show cracks in its armor as players quit after reaching cap.
The so-called next gen of mmorpgs arent really innovative. The information leaking out of latest ones in beta arent sounding good. D&D is heavily simplistic, Face of Mankind is a joke, LOTR has been in development forever, Vanguard also isnt breaking any molds, and D&L is a huge disappointment.
The most recent mmo to launch havent exactly been success stories. Matrix is a total failure. SoR isnt going to break any records.
Even award winning EVE just now broke 100k players and thats due mostly to SWG refugees looking for a replacement.
With mmorpgs costing 20-30 million to develop, it seems developers are afraid to take risks. Take a look at STO, everything you read from PE sounds safe. Level based system centered on quests. And no other faction besides the federation. I get the feeling they dont want to spend a fortune developing a large universe until after launch to see if the game is a hit.
Thus we reach the old "chicken and egg" scenario. Will players play next gen mmo if they are incomplete ? Will developers be willing to spend 30 million to completely develop a mmorpg only to risk total failure ?
I truly fear for the future of my fav type of game.
Comments
True, there have, are and i guess forever will be cookie-cutter fantasy MMO's-simply because devs are taking the easy way out.
However, I have ALOT of hope for Pirates of the Burning Seas, being created by Fly Labs. The game is in closed beta, hopefully to be released sometime this year. The devs are AWESOME, they *gasp* listen to the community, one of the key things was the addition of player avatars for launch. At first, launch was to be only ship-ship combat, players requested (many times) avatars, and FLS put them in (and it wasn't a half-assed effort, they are some of the best i have seen, and character creation rivals even the best MMO's)
Very PvP centric, although PvE is supposed to be strong as well. The graphics are simply incredible (some of these ship models have 50k-60k plus polys, with the biggest (the 104 gun) coming in at over 120k I think)
All in all, I am hoping that an indie developer can help spark a revolution of sorts in MMO's, to show all these big companies that it is good to take risks.
PC gamer has an indeapth article of the up and coming issue and updates on soon to be releases and updates on already out there mmorpgs.
In answer to your question in some ways yes and it may take a few years before anything really different or interesting again comes along, depending on the areas of interest you might have.
Its not looking good I can tell you that. The reason is basically all the ideas have been used, and are now starting to just be rehashed and scrambled over and over again. Developers are having to look at popular big names to make games, like SoE did with SWG, then came the Matrix...and now Star Trek, which btw is looking rather promising compared to the other 500 typical A-Z fantasy genre MMOs in developement right now...and that statement is comming from a big lifelong Star Wars fan, i despise Star Trek but im willing to give the game credit.
And this trend will continue into the future, espically now with SoE doing the DC Comics mmo and Microsoft doing the Marvel one, both companies are trying to leech off NCsofts major success from CoH/V, both companies will fail at doing this but its just how it is, basically all origionally has been used up and shit back out over and over.
"There's no star system Slave I can't reach, and there's no planet I can't find. There's nowhere in the Galaxy for you to run. Might as well give up now."
Boba Fett
What is different in all reality is us. If we choose not to show interest in there beta if they put out a cruddy beta that plays bad to many bugs pushes a game live to early and NONE of the so called carrots intrest us any longer then truly it is us that have changed .
In many recent cases we the community just weren't willing to accept sloppy releases and sloppy products even if it meant taken a break from mmorpgs for a while.............
Since the industry will not police themselves on game experaince may change maybe it is time the consumers do, on what is acceptable and what is just plain NOT
A decade from now I think MMOPRG's will finally be breaking new ground in terms of creativity and world immersion. For the next several years though, I think most developers will just be inching away from the old MMORPG templates.
I hope it doesnt take that long, but with the amount of time, energy, funding and risk involved in creating an MMORPG today, I'll be surprised if a developer lives up to their genre's potential sooner rather than later.
Now wouldn't be nice if I had done research to actually backed up my POV? Meh, toss me in with the other lazy posters.
Or what if instead of doing research, I just got really flowery with it and said of bunch of crap that doesn't make a lot of sense. Like an emokid trying to be deep:
The future of gaming hangs in the air like, tendrils of a curious scent.
Focused and tense, you wait for clarity.
Not daring to move, the moment remains undisturbed,
Until you finally place its ethereal direction and purpose.
"The future of MMORPGs smells like *sniff* *sniff*. . . Noobs and Redbull. Maybe some BBQ sauce too. "
-- I need a nerf --
I hope companies stop doing MMO´s.New mmo´s dont bring nothing new,they are just franchises or copies of other games with a difrent name.
wen a new mmo comes out will canibalize other games.
I loved golden age wen people didnt add afraid if their game will die cause a newer version is coming to stores
Huxley, amazing looking fast action mmorpg (fps hybrid).
Heroes Journey, focus on complex interactive environments.
Conan looks like they are pushing for a better combat system.
Some major potential in that batch.
DDO, not sure what you mean by heavily simplistic. For the first time in a very long time DDO feels like something fresh when I play it (very important to not group with power gamers or people who are rushing through the game, play it like a good old PnP dungeon crawl where every turn may kill you).
I do find lots of merit in what you are saying, $30m+ is lots of money to risk. Not just money, its lots of time you could spend focusing on something else. I have been watching the indie games dev world but for the most part the quality just isn't there. They can take the risks but don't have the money to product a top end AAA product that we all expect. Sad to say it but gamers obsession with better graphics are the reason no one can take risks. Of the $30m to make a game I expect a very very large chunk is spent on art to keep us happy. Make the perfect mmorpg but stick old eq graphics on it and it wont sell.
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 theorecticaly 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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Not totally. It doesn't cost the for an Indy Company to create games such as CCP or even the ppl who created your Sig.
Granted Black Isle went backrupt, but that was due to poor business tactics, they pushed the RPG Genre forward w/ their Fallout Games. The same w/ the Theif Games. I think the MMO Genre is feeling more of the same w/ games like EVE, pushing it forward not backward like Blizzard in terms of quality.
If Blizzard did anything right, the turned a HUGE crowd of new MMO players onto MMOs who will eventually leave WoW for another Blizzard MMO or most likely another game totally. EVE Online has seen MANY WoW Refugees as well as other games.
A Work in Progress.
Add Me
[quote]Originally posted by SnaKey
[b]
Heheh, thats true about Eve. Just go onto the rookie channel and say "LFM UBRS raid - full on rogues, PST."
-- I need a nerf --
Another big step forward kaneva game engine is a mmorpg game engine, they provide everything you need to make a mmorpg (servers, billing..the lot). Given tools like this we may start to see indie mmorpgs far more often.
Also look towards the Nintendo Revolution. A controller in a mmorpg where YOU swing the sword or wave the wand? Revolution has the potential to push the games industry to new levels if people just get over the "it looks like a TV remote, I hate it" (yet I have never played it or even tried to think about the amazing things it could do). Gotta love Nintendo for going all out, hope the risk pays off for them.
The next MMO I am excited about is Huxley.
Until then there isn't much I'm keen to play.
There is however plenty of MMO's out there and new ones launching and in development.
Each of these new games will bring innovation to genre. The game may be playerless chod, but each one will do something right.
When enough new games have made enough new innovation a title like WOW will come along again and amalgamate enough of those advances (and add a few of it's own perhaps) to dominate the market again.
Also MMO's are going to reach new audiences this year as they will launch on X-box 360 and PSP's.
With the uber profits made by Blizzard and Vivendi formost in everyones mind, getting investment to make an MMO can never have been easier than it is today.
The next 6 months looks pretty uninspiring, but in general the overall picture for MMO's is looking very bright to me.
I've been preaching about this for months and months now...Yes the future looks pretty phuckin dismal for MMOG players, especially the Sci-Fi fans.
As I said in another thread "I am completely confident that I could turn my back on MMOGaming 'till 2010 and not miss a single thing!"
The main problem is that the majority of MMOGamers are undemanding, uncritical, hedonists who will acquiesce to whatever developers tell them is best, so long as there is the promise of pleasure. These types of people will buy anything; P.T. Barnum spoke of there ilk at length.
Another major problem is that most MMOGs are designed with the lowest commom denominator in mind (i.e. those that have old computers, dial-up internet connections, etc.) so that publishers can slurp-up as much profit as possible without having to go to all the trouble of producing a quality product. Why should developers go to all the trouble of making high quality MMOGs that target the discriminating gamers, who are much fewer in number, when they can make MMOGs that are just barely good enough to satisfy the millions of simple-minded gamers far more easily?
For me there is only one solution...actively boycott the entire genre! Plus I have written letters to AMD, Nvidia, etc., letting them know that I will no longer be buying their top of the line products because it's just not worth it! Lol, why on earth would I spend $5,000. on a cutting-edge rig when there aren't any games worth playing on it? (Hehe, Nvidia just anounced their Quad SLI set-up...4 video cards!)
My only hope at this point is that the PS3 will have a Sci-Fi MMOG or two available soon after launch.
Nonsense - the MMO industry has a great future, greater than the movie industry have had in the last century. Actually the MMO gaming industry will be the fastest growing market in future with plenty possibilites to grow due to new technology available in future. It is like when the movie industry made it from silent movie to modern movies.
We are in a kind of "silent MMO" phase yet and what will come is like the revolution of modern movies compared to silent movie times. We will see interactive movies in about 10-15 years (with all photo-realistic graphics and real time physics) and intelligent and self-conscious NPCs will revolutionize the industry in about 20-30 years from now and make virtual realities really happen.
The MMO market has a great future, no doubt.
Ragosch
Soon folks soon.
Hopefully the future will be as bright as what Ragosch, myself and others believe.
FOR IT WILL ROCK!
MMORPGs are going better than ever.
Consider this, RPGs are a portion of the games industry...MMORPG are a portion of the RPGs. If the OP would have written this in 1998, peoples would have think he was on a drugs or something.
Of course, most MMORPGs won't succeed that much, like most games doesn't succeed that much. If the average game is a mitigated success at best, why do you expect MMORPGs to be any differents? Blizzard is playing safe. Microsoft by hiring Brad is playing safe. SoE is playing safe.
I would be ready to wage you that in the 3 next MMOs to beat WoW (however how long this take), 2 will be from small companies...maybe companies that goes unoticed and release their GOLD before this forum even put them on. Genius are often unsure, folks who are unsure doesn't want to goes openly in the marketing before the product is kinda ready.
I don't know the secret of the industry, but I can tell you that the next big MMO won't be raid, PvP or tradeskill centered, of that I am sure.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Ever year I kept saying to myself this is going to be the one to come out grab me and have me playing for years, and with the exception of WOW(when it first came out), AO(pre shadowlands), and Planetside (when it first came out) nothing has really came close.....Im 3 for 25 here, literally...
Three MMORPG's out of about 25 I have probably tried and enjoyed is not a good ratio and frankly only 2 or 3 games comming out in the future really look good to me now, and the chances of all 1 of them actually being any good is slim let alone all three..
As Far as I'm concerned bleak is a optimistic view of the MMORPG world right now...I used to be picky and wanted to play something that had certain aspects (A good PVP/PVE/RVR mix w nice graphics) now I will just settle for something that doesnt put me to freaking sleep after 2 months.
------------------------------
You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
I don't think the Nintendo Revolution will be anything "Revolution"ary in the MMO sense. Looking at the direction of the DS, where you have to have friend's codes and connect with only your friends. Or if you can connect to random people you can't speak to each other, it won't be good for MMOs. They play it too "kid safe" where XBox and PS2 tend to play it more realistic.
Though for Nintendo if they do jump off the pier, I can see them making an FMD like in .hack and going full force with the experience.
As for my opinion on why MMOs aren't doing so hot, I think it has to do with the separating the comsumer from their money. Most people that play MMOs have already found the game they want to dedicate their paycheck to, and the newer games aren't enticing people to part with any more money considering they aren't offering anything new. Also, many people have gotten into games that are Free to Download, Free to Play online (like Guild Wars) or free to DL and play online like some of the Chinese and Korean games that have real-money shop that offers exclusive goods for your cash instead of a monthly fee.
I certainly don't want to pay for any more MMOs, I already have one that is my "main" while the rest are free to play when the servers are down on the others or I get into a slump.
There is only so much variety availible in a carebare grinding game.
I think people fail to realise that what makes MMO's TRUELY unique and FUN is the interaction between players. The more you limit this the less fun the game is.
At the end of the day a PvE game is gonna be a grind fest. Pretty much ALL the games mentioned by the original poster are like that. What else can you expect from such games?
The only place where there is room for something new and to innovate are PvP games. Games that offer players freedom and the consequences that go with their decisions in game. Games that allow a living breathing community, not the hollow mini communities you have in games like WoW.
The problem with the current crop of MMO's is that they are missing the single biggest element that is at the core of playing games. Challenge and variety. Scripted AI encounters can and will only go so far. And PvE games have pretty much exhausted the realms of innovation and are unlikely to bring out anything new.
The beauty of a PvP game is that they don't need to invent anything new. Because the players do it for you. Playing against an intelligent human who is trying to outsmart you will provide a different and challenging experience time and time again. That is what keeps games fresh. That is why a game like starcraft is still played by so many players even 10 years after it's release.
Imagine that, a game you buy once, pay for once, no subscription fees and you can still get a fun experience out of it 10 years down the line. Simply because the game has well balanced and fun competition.
Honestly - the genre's never been more popular and people are writing it off..what nonsense!
There's all sorts of new ideas arriving for MMOGs. Look at Auto Assault - may be not great but it's different. Then there's Test Drive Unlimited, where you can race around realistic streets with others or just pose in parking lots. People have already mentioned Pirates of the Burning Sea.
I have issues with PvP because people just won't play sensibly meaning that developers end up having to impose silly restrictions which ruins the whole experience. But then what can you do about human behavior? - especially that of boys (immature by definition) and young men, many with questionable maturity. May be some young women too, who knows?
I see a future of small-medium specialist games like Eve for the thinking hardcore and big generalist games like WoW for the masses.
Is the future bleak? No, it couldn't be more exciting! .
Raymondo