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[Preview] General: The End is Not Remotely Nigh
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
People have been sounding the death knell for the MMO genre for years but is it a reality, a thing certain to occur somewhere in the misty future? In today's Fair Game, we take a look at the notion. See if you agree with our assessment before heading to the comments.
We hear it every day. We read it here, we read it there, shrieking from one gaming site to another. There is a Thing coming and this Thing is so terrible, so destructive, so very pernicious at its very core that it will sound the death knell for MMOs as we know them.
What is it, you ask? What game-destroying, apocalyptic nightmare is even now hurtling toward an Internet connection near you? Well, that hardly matter, does it? It’s a Thing! A new Thing! And it’s the end, the eeeeeeennnd!
Read more of Lisa Jonte's Fair Game: The End is Not Remotely Nigh.
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Comments
I don't think anyone has ever said the mmo genre is ever going away - I think what most people are saying is - the mmo genre is stale, repetitive, lacking in innovation and boring.
Do we really need another bad Asian ftp mmo?
Do we really need another WoW clone?
I think most people would say no.
EQN and TESO will probably be big tests in that way. Too casual and people will be off in a month.
I'm okay with casual players, they have the right to play, but I don't want devs to dumb the game down just to appeal them. I know more "noobs" means more money, and it's a tough choice, but I'd rather have a solid and somehow complex one than a dumbed down one.
Make it easy at first, work on the learning curve, but don't simplify mechanics just so people don't have more than 4 buttons. Noobs can learn like every people. Build the tools so they can become better players instead of reducing possibilities.
I just don't see this MMO genre dying . From what I can see this is the heyday of MMOs and possibly the early period. Look how many people are playing and look how many different MMOs are out there to choose from. Dying? I see no evidence myself.
You see older gamers on here lamenting the "olden days" but this happens with everything. "In my day I had to walk 5 miles to school in the snow AND IN JULY". You get the idea.
MMOs today just seem to continually improve and we are getting EQ Next and another generation of games that are trying different things.
Long live MMOs. I just wish I had the time to play them all.
Death of the genre caused by:
I think that the real downfall of MMOs will come at our own hands. I find that we often use vague references like "WoW Clone"
Does this mean faction-based Fantasy MMO with skill trees, action bars, tab targeting? Or are you talking about any MMO that implements an action bar? At one time or another, I think that I've seen just about every MMO accused of being a WoW Clone. Or at least the majority of them. It's kinda like saying that Spec Ops is nothing more than a CoD clone. Well, yeah, it's an FPS. How else would you like us to develop an FPS?
Furthermore, when someone DOES deviate from the "mold" or "clone" people get all up in arms. They ruined X by doing Y.
Then there's the whole "Casual Player" reference. Does this refer to my commitment to a particular game? Or am I allowed to play other games? Does it refer to skill level? If I am playing a game for 2 hours a day, then well over 10% of my waking LIFETIME is spent playing that game. I would take offence to someone telling me that I'm casual. Maybe I just suck. Does that mean that we shouldn't cater to people who just suck at something? I play slow pitch during the summer. My bones are getting older and I really don't get excited about having a ball hurling towards my head at 80mph any more. Doesn't mean that I don't want to play, though.
Point is, I think there needs to be a balance. Sure, there is a fan base who will be "hardcore" and want content that challenges them, but the same way that those players don't want these casual players ruining their gaming experience by catering content to the more casual, the casual players also don't want to feel like there are barriers put in place which specifically prevent them from progressing in the game.
It's a delicate balance, but there are games that have this balance mostly figured out, or at least show that they are aware of it and want to cater to both camps.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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F2P, cash shops on every corner, easy mode play, arcade style play, and now... now, they are letting the console kiddies play them.
I think the end is nigh, may not be the death throws, but it sure isn't the same RPG style MMO's of old.
To me that is the end, it's a lost cause and the fat cat's love it... More money on throw away games that last a month. MMO's are history!
No trials. No tricks. No traps. No EU-RP server. NO THANKS!
...10% Benevolence, 90% Arrogance in my case!
I made a post a while back saying the genre is dead. At the time, it looked that way. Now we have themeparks getting more intricate crafting systems and housing is starting to become standard again. Virtual world genre is the most popular on consoles these days. Id say lately, things are looking up.
It was touch and go for a minute there though heh
I think a similar entertainment analogy can be found in television...
the expansion of premium (e.g. HBO, Showtime) and good cable networks (e.g. FX and AMC) was supposed to signal the end for the core networks...in America anyway. Instead, we have a significant increase in content that appeals to a wider audience, but also dilutes the participation (viewership) for most singular programs.
Now, we have those who still can watch decent quality television for (basically) free on the networks, and then another demographic that chooses to pay for expanded cable service (for those that want/wanted to watch Breaking Bad or Justified), and then another group that is willing to pay even more for the premium content (Game of Thrones, Homeland).
The MMO game industry is not terribly different in the current form. If you want to pay more, then you will have more options. This is the way the free-market system is supposed to work. Unfortunately, this kind of competition means quality products die (e.g. Glitch and Firefly).
The MMO as a genre will not die anytime soon, but will continue to evolve based on the developers' ability to adapt to the desires of the audience they seek to entice.
Heavily quest based casual friendly level based MMORPG with group content mostly pushed off into its own little instance. To me that is a WoW clone. It describes 95% of the MMORPG to come out in the past 5 years. It does not describe EQ Next or Star Citizen which are two games I'm looking forward to.
I took heat for this in another thread but GW2 is still a WoW clone. It hides it better than almost all others do but it still is a soft clone of WoW. Rift and LOTRO are examples of hard clones that are basically a reskinned version of the same exact game.
This gives me pause:
This is the total aggregate number of subscriptions and active accounts tallied across all MMOs by MMOdata in 4.0. Notice, it shrunk from its peak in 2010/2011. It is at about late 2008 levels, and I have no reason to suspect it is growing. What this tells me is that consumers around the world are leaving MMOs faster than new customers line up to replace them.
If we are to look at the MMO business as a pie, where the publishers are trying to get as big of a slice of the pie as possible, then what these data show is that the pie itself is shrinking. This isn't a growing industry anymore. It's a mature industry where the easy growth is over, marked by ever-fiercer competition over an ever-shrinking pool of potential customers.
So why is it shrinking? Well, the genre itself has to compete with other genres, who do the things MMOs used to do exclusively, but do them better. I bet you that this decline of MMO subs and active accounts can be directly related to the rise of League of Legends, World of Tanks, and other online games with "MMO-like" gameplay. We may laugh at Facebook games, but they are taking the players this genre has left behind in games like Farmville. MOBA has taken MMO combat and achievement, packaged it in a more user friendly form, and dumped all the remaining MMO stuff that slows the action down. Single player RPGs, with some online components, have the "deep immersion" MMOs used to have, plus a lot of replayability and customization that has been lost in MMOs.
In short, players don't need traditional MMOs to get the gameplay they used to get from MMOs. They can find them in a more accessable, user-friendly, cheaper and more satisfying way outside the genre. So where does that leave the MMO? If your customer base is shrinking, you squeeze the ones you have for more cash to make up for the ones who are leaving. Which is exactly what we are seeing in terms of freemium and cash shops. MMO publishers are like stars in the red giant phase: the easy hydrogen (the new customer) is in short supply, so you end up pressing the harder helium, lithium and so on (hardcore MMO junkies).
What we are seeing right now is something we should have predicted, when we started seeing these stripped down MMOs come out after the WoW-era. At some point, the only way you can make the MMO more accessable is to remove the remaining MMO elements altogether: the common zones, the chat bubbles, visual customization, and so on. So why buy an MMO, when you can get everything you like cheaply and more conveniently in other games? That's the 4.5 Million subscriber question (the gap between the peak on the chart and where it is today).
__________________________
"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."
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j/k.
To me that chart says we haven't had a good MMORPG released in a few years. There just hasn't been much to get excited about or to stick with for a few years now.
Yeah, and this is my biggest issue. I think that it began much like you indicated in your last sentence. These so-called hard clones are definitely a nuisance, unless you enjoy the lore, I suppose. I just found that Rift was all too familiar and cliche, so I think I quit after 30 or 40 levels.
However, the issue is with things like GW2. We can class it as a WoW Clone, or we can provide feedback on what we do and don't like. I give kudos to GW2 for their attempts at progressing the Fantasy MMO genre towards what they thought we wanted to see. Same with SWTOR. It's like Space WoW, but I appreciated that they had deeper story telling and a fully-voiced experience.
As you said, I think we can break down just about every game to a WoW Clone, but we actually do more harm by not providing the constructive criticisms needed to progress MMO game design as a whole. Then, those who actually do have something constructive to say are drowned out by the boos from the peanut crowd.... know what I mean?
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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I do provide feedback but it doesn't change the fact that I'm sick of the WoW clones~. Age of Conan was not a strict WoW clone. EQ, UO, AC, AO, DAOC all pre-dated WoW but I don't consider WoW a clone of any of those. The closest would be EQ but WoW and EQ did not feel the same at all. WoW has a very distinct build that is just being copied way too much instead of games going down a different path. It is like every game has to start with the WoW system and tweak 1 or 2 things instead of just making their own game.
Lets see how about we have a quest based world and then some dungeons and PvP in instances. Oh crud they are going to call it a WoW clone. Well instead of ! we'll use a heart and then we'll let you dodge attacks and make you aim your AE. Whew, now we aren't a clone.
It is still the same game I've been playing for 10 years or whenever beta 2 started for WoW. I'm just really tired of it. I don't want them to improve on it, I want them to rebuild it. I appreciate that they are adding pseudo dynamic content like GW2 events and Rifts etc. They are improving on the base that they start with for sure, I just want some games that start with a different base.
It's shrinking because wow made mmos mainstream and most of those players are getting too old to play an mmo anymore, getting a family or busy job.
Wow is like power rangers or pokemon, has a huge effect but only on that generation. There is nothing to bring in huge chunks of mainstream teenage players to the mmo market as when wow was popular.
MMO market isn't dead or dying, it's just reverting to normality before WoW blew it into space, it's happening very slowly though.
Yup, we're in a gap between releases and it's a pretty big gap. Spring is when ESO & Wildstar launch so there should be another peak during that time frame.
I don't see the death of MMOs, but I hope that somebody really does take note that a large majority has "been there, done that" on MMOs as they stand. Most will not keep a high base of players past 3 months because it is rinse and repeat.
It takes a long time to build an MMO, but by the time they've got the foundations in place they're ready to launch. There's no expansion on the basic model - often there's a small tweak. There is so much more than can be done. We've seen in games like minecraft that players will play for no reason just to build something. The MMO world is perfect for that and so houses should appear in the world (like UO) but with great customisation.
Then there is the economy/crafting side of the games, which are always poor. Why isn't there a big focus on sorting this out? Stop dropping items everywhere and make buying them (or crafting them) off other players the priority. Get players to set up contracts for newer players to supply them with materials so that they can sell crafted items to others. Get rid (or have a large charge) on auction houses and replace them with player/guild run shops.
Keep some open world areas for PvP, but allow guilds to declare war on each other and set no loot, some loot, full loot on the battles.
Combat should be more like the Loremaster in LOTRO, where you are constantly switching between attack, defence, crowd control, heal, etc. No more 1,2,3s!
Have skill come into it more by things like... having a crosshair which grows larger or smaller depending on the level of your opponent. You can fight someone 10 levels higher, but you have to be damned accurate, or fight someone 10 levels lower and get a big advantage with a larger crosshair... be prepared to be beaten by a weaker player!
Turn large scale battles into multiple smaller battles - where the zerg does not have an impact and skill and teamwork can win the war.
Every area can be looked at and expanded on. Improved so much, but nobody seems to bother. They all seem to get the basics there, get a story about elves, dwarves and humans, put your tank/healer/dps/support in. Game done!
We can only hope that Titan raises the bar so much, because the MMO gaming world has stagnated.
i agree with Ms Jonte primarily because i have seen this same dysfunctional behavior in other areas of daily life.
someone always has some kind of drama, some kind of earth shattering or virtual world demolishing news and fears.
frankly, i think its because most people in our culture cannot seem to live without drama. they can't seem to live with the mundane world we inhabit. so they go to a virtual world. but in the end that virtual world becomes mundane in many aspects as well. so what then? well if you aren't being given the drama adrenaline rush you need you create it.
everyone was sure in politics that GWBush was the end of america, now its Obama. before them it was Clinton. every time things seem to be going well some group has to find what the secret drama is so they can then obsess unhealthily over it, get worked up on forums about it, and generally try to piss in everyone's pool in order to prove themselves right.
when you get older you suddenly realize that this is a rather large drain on what little energy you have left at the end of the day.
and when that happens you finally wave goodbye to the dramatis personae (except on occasion when you get really bored >.<).
basically, you get over the drama and you get over yourself and then the world doesn't have to be something exhausting.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
I said this for the past few years MMO's are dieing, I have ran a community for 14 years, I see more players playing FPS games and most that leave because there isn't enough good games and because they like different types of games. Heck I went to school to get my degree to help game production and wanted to make MMO's and been involved with them. Well sadly publishers want fast cash and will ruin any good chance at a good game.
Now we have indies, some people on this site make rude remarks because some don't look as pretty, they want some thing different, some indies do that but gamers want it all and for nothing, not all gamers but alot say this, I read , blog and listen to all of this.
MMO's are dieing.
Reasons are, Old gamers tired of the games we see, to easy... We are used to UO, DOAC, AC1, and EQ, when MMO's were fun, now they just suck.
New gamers want it all and for free, I listen to this even in my community, and when I blog, OH Sub base!! Never mind, really??? I have to pay are you kidding me, well F2P ruins it, because bad communitys most of the time, and cheaters every where and gold sellers, so people leave.
To many games with this so called end game when people hit max level they quit, and then every person in there guild follows to the next MMO a month or two later, I see that alot in most communitys.
Iphone and ANdroid is where the DEVS with any brains are going , because one its faster to make, and cheaper to make. You can play these games anywhere and cheap.. Plus you can play a silly game for a few mins and don't have to worry about some jerk on the net calling you names and being annoying, sorry but this is true the market is going this way. These are facts, check for your self...
I love MMO's and would like to see better ones , but if people want stop and think, that a good one takes time and money and gamers need to stop throwing fits like a 3 year old maybe a good company would make one.
I personally think it can be an Indie if people would lay off with how dated they look when in fact, AC1 was bad looking but an amazing game, best game I have ever played hands down.
My wife nags me to make a Modern Asheron call . Just maybe one day.
So you know many Indies have tried this, but people see full loot and don't want to play it, I have seen games take out full loot with insurance, and people still hate PVP..
The issue is you have people who love that style of combat were others hate it, some love hosuing, some hate it, there is no happy medium today, so that is the hard part.
I hate questing in most MMO's today to much hand holding, I perfer lore base like AC1, sadly we don't have this, if we did people would freak, heck even Secret World tried something like that and look how many what I call new gamers whined and said it was to hard, so I think todays gamers ruin it and make it so hard for devs to make games.
I have blogged and asked gamers what is the perfect game for them combat style,Game play Mechanics, housing or not, PVP or not etc. I get the dumbest comments.
I get make a good game, well what is a good game to you!!! Most people can't answer this because as the poster above me said I think people like to cry about what ever they can, because they can.. They aren't happy unless they can complain, I see this alot as well, I been playing MMO's since the very first one was made...
And the next genre is overdue and likely to arrive any moment now. (And if LoL is the first baby of the next gen, it already has.)
"My ancient favorite will still be around a decade from now, but I won't be playing it because I'll be doing [xxxx] instead..."
Old Blues Fans muttering about the emergence of Elvis...
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.