Been taking a break from MMOs...

Nipashnaka

So recently I've taken a bit of a break from MMOs. There's a number of reasons: I'm fairly bored with what's out there (there are a lot of games I want to like, but I can't); I'm waiting to be greatly disappointed by the next batch of launch titles; and the time sink was cramping my irl style.

What have I been doing to fill my time? I've been playing a lot of great single player RPGs. Considering I got hooked on MMOs with Ultima Online in '96 (and before that I played MUDs), I found the single player RPG genre which I had largely neglected in the last decade to be a lot more fun than I remembered. Then something dawned on me:

MMOs have become bad single player games with a chat lobby and a subscription

See, what drew me into Ultima Online was the massive multiplayer aspect. I was willing to accept that in strict RPG terms, it was a lot worse than its single-player contemporaries, because what I got out of it was the amazing group play. I could have a castle with a lake-side view. I could decorate it, and other people could visit me. I could even raid other player's compounds. The world was a brutal place, and I had to make friends to survive. I could sail around the world and claim my own island, and kick other people off the island. Conflict was part of the fabric of the game.

Since those halycon days of MMOs past, something has happened. We no longer have MMOs being about group play. The 2nd generation MMOs had group play as an option the game steered you towards to get the best rewards. The 3rd generation MMOs has group play as an option as a path to get some of the best rewards.

And now it seems the trend in the industry is that:

• 
  Everything is soloable
• 
  Everything is easy (or trivial)
• 
  Everything is obvious / guided
• 
  Everything is a skinner box - you get "rewards" for the most innane and obvious actions. Hey, you ran from point A to point B... here's your XP!
• 
  There is an expectation no matter how bad you are at the game, you should get rewarded for effort rather than accomplishment. These days, you don't even get rewarded for effort... you just get rewarded for paying your dollars.

What we have is no longer an MMORPG as I understand the term. What we have is a poorly made single player RPG where you can pay to get out of having to actually play the game. What is the point of that?

It suffers from latency (a fact of playing a game on a server). It suffers from lower graphics (due to having an unknown amount of polys on the screen at any given time). It suffers from demanding payment from customers above and beyond the box (to put it mildly). It suffers from having to be multiplayer compatible in the sense you can't as easily "change" the gameworld as in a single player RPG. These are all costs, that we as gamers pay, for the benefit of playing in a massively multiplayer world.

There are so many things design-wise, and tech-wise, and art-wise, and story-wise that make MMOs more challenging at a fundamental level to develop. And these challenges we pay for as gamers - buggy releases, imbalance, etc, etc. So why have we accepted a situation where we still pay these costs, without having all the benefits that are supposed to come with it: "living, breathing worlds" "player housing" "shaping the landscape" "choosing your destiny" "customizing your online identity" etc, etc? Basically, why are we still playing MMOs when they don't offer anything that a single player (or online co-op) RPGs can't do 100 times better?

Thoughts?

 

zereelist

We won't get anything like you describe from new games simply because WoW didn't do it .  Investors hardly know what the people are getting tired of, and since WoW is still going strong,  they think clones will make money, and they do.  Also many people's first MMO's is WoW, and many of those players expect the same type of game.  It's a downward spiral. 

It's going to take a big company to make the ultimate sandbox game that's as successful as WoW to change the direction the genre is going in.