Finally a chance for an MMO that wants to be a Specialty Store and not a One Stop Shop

Kuldebar

There's nothing wrong with going to Fred Meyers or Walmart,. You can find a lot of variety in those stores versus that small country store a mile down the road. The problem with the mass merchandise type places is always in the details; those specialized items you are looking for might be hard to find. Whether it's that certain original XBoX Conversion Kit or a specific computer part or a particular brand name of ice cream; if it doesn't have mass appeal, you may be screwed.

MMO's have always promised us change, just like every four years in America, we hear the same thing but this time it's different for several reasons. Those reasons are being well laid out on the official website's growing list of Foundational Principles.

So, enter Project Camelot Unchained: It doesn't want to be your Walmart of Gaming, it wants to be your specialty store.

A recent article by Syncaine, aptly titled, "Return to Sanity" illustrates the importance of such a move to the MMO genre at this time:            

More importantly, Camelot Unchained and others show that the future of the genre is, finally, not in chasing the mythical WoW unicorn, but in reproducing what actually worked; delivering a measured product aimed at the crowd that actually wants it. And if that crowd is only 30k strong, as Mark Jacob’s estimates will be the case for CU, so be it. 30k people paying you each month is more than doable from a business standpoint; you just can’t spend 300m to get there.

Mark Jacobs gets this concept. This isn't a WoW is evil and niche games are good argument; it's more subtle than that -they are different things and don't share all the same goals.

For too long people have treated the MMO genre like it's just purely a  general store enterprise, when it really should be viewed as being capable of simply being a hardware store, or electronics store, or clothing store or maybe, bookstore. Just because Walmart sells books doesn't mean it does it better than Barnes and Nobles or that old Mom & Pop Book Nook down off Main Street.

Sure, one of them is bigger and has more name recognition or cash flow, but does that mean the experience of shopping there is necessarily superior?

It's not a perfect analogy, but it's a relevant perspective on how MMO's have been viewed in the last 10 years.

So when Tobold asks the rather heavily crap laden question:

 If today a game released and got 250,000 players, it would be considered a failure. There were "WoW is dying" posts in response to the news that WoW was down to 9.6 million players. But Dark Age of Camelot, which only ever got 250,000 players at its peak, and is now well below 50,000, is by some still considered to be the holy grail. And that was for a mixed PvE / PvP game, while Camelot Unchained will only have the PvP part. Does anybody really believe this is going to be a huge success? Especially since Mark Jacobs previous attempt to make a new DAoC-successor, Warhammer Online, was such a big success ...

One should consider if Tobold's definition of success is truly accurate. Because just maybe it's exactly that type of thinking which got us into this whole rut of an idea that requires all MMO's to be Walmart.

They don't.

 

cd3925

This is a great point! Nice read.

Lore84

Well yeah, i think people are fed up of jack of all trades master of none MMO's....CU will be a breath of fresh air.

Raagnarz

I couldn't be happier that a single focused game is coming honestly. In the last decade, other than WoW, there hasn't been a good "please everyone" MMO ever made really.  I"m not really a fan of wow but it is well made and I won't hate on it. The MMO's that try to include everything to please everyone, especially at launch, all end up souless hollow shells imo.

 

When I think back to smaller MMO's older school MMO's I smile. I'm not looking through rose colored glasses because there were plenty of things wrong with them. They did however try to focus on one or two things that make a playerbase happy. EQ focused on PVE.  DAOC while having pve was much more heavily focused on pvp. Shadowbane was small and pretty much all pvp. These games all had one thing in common though, community. Kul your OP analogy was pretty spot on with big box stores and little mom and pop style store. This will be that local mom and pop shop where the owners know everyone and the customers all know each other as well. Smaller in a lot of ways is better.

Hokibukisa

Amen, this is very well said.

 

From my perspective, CU's niche will be community.

 

Community community community!

 

 

Father_Jack

I think it's a good anaology. I live in Portland OR and its a town where the small artisinal stores are very popular and sucessful, wether it's coffee, beer, meat, fashion, et al.  There are people who want something more individually tailored to thier tastes. I think it can be the same in the game world.

Kuldebar

"When I think back to smaller MMO's older school MMO's I smile. I'm not looking through rose colored glasses because there were plenty of things wrong with them. They did however try to focus on one or two things that make a playerbase happy."

That's really a great pont. I would never claim DAoC had great PvE, because well, it didn't.

I didn't realize that point at the time, grinding mobs in the Ruins of Avalon City in order to get to level 50 was simply a practical challenge and I wanted to get to 50 so I could be an effective part of the RvR.

RvR was where the "real" fun was for me and the people I was grouping with even though we did have some fun in the process. Power leveing was desired for a reason, a means to an end.

Asheram

Originally posted by Lore84
Well yeah, i think people are fed up of jack of all trades master of none MMO's....CU will be a breath of fresh air.

Planetside 2 is already what this is claiming-just pvp same 3 faction,no pve just pvp leveling its just not in a medieval fantasy skin and has a fps combat system and the capture the base,capture the base,capture the base,recapture the captured base got old fast.I dont see how this will be much different imo.

I found it fun in small doses, jump in play for a bit and move but that was it.

Kuldebar

Originally posted by Asheram

Originally posted by Lore84
Well yeah, i think people are fed up of jack of all trades master of none MMO's....CU will be a breath of fresh air.

Planetside 2 is already what this is claiming-just pvp same 3 faction,no pve just pvp leveling its just not in a medieval fantasy skin and has a fps combat system and the capture the base,capture the base,capture the base,recapture the captured base got old fast.I dont see how this will be much different imo.

I found it fun in small doses, jump in play for a bit and move but that was it.

I didn't find PS2 appeal as approachable, it was more action oriented and it appeared and less role-play driven. 

Also, I don't think there is a full crafting system or player housing in PS2, those two things bring a lot to the table in a big RPG sort of way.  

 

OgreRaper

Originally posted by Asheram

Originally posted by Lore84
Well yeah, i think people are fed up of jack of all trades master of none MMO's....CU will be a breath of fresh air.

Planetside 2 is already what this is claiming-just pvp same 3 faction,no pve just pvp leveling its just not in a medieval fantasy skin and has a fps combat system and the capture the base,capture the base,capture the base,recapture the captured base got old fast.I dont see how this will be much different imo.

I found it fun in small doses, jump in play for a bit and move but that was it.

 

All the vehicle combat ruined PS2 for me.