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We NEED a Revolutionary Post-MMORPG!
Consuetudo
Member UncommonPosts: 191
A great modern MMO needs to be nothing less than revolutionary.
The fact that we have gone ten years without substantial improvements to the genre or any noteworthy games to claim the mantle from Warcraft is pathetic. Like Aristotle to Aquinas, World of Warcraft is really just "the MMO." It is the Beatles of MMOs, or like investing your money in a bank rather than the market. Games rise and fall, shatter and fail, but still World of Warcraft is there going strong. You know that if X game fails, WoW is still there for you. You will go through stages of life, lose interest in MMOs totally, come back, and WoW is still there. No matter what other game is hailed as being the new thing, WoW is always triumphant.
What is required then is something radically different. Not just moving the focus to the future, or adjustments in content: no, I think that an MMO can be revolutionary to such an extent that it could even be a new game in the Warcraft universe itself. What I'm speaking of is basically an MMO modernism, expressionism, romanticism, etc. If WoW is the Old Masters, Mozart, or Bach, we need something that will challenge what it means to be an MMO, and completely reinvent it.
When we fail to grasp that WoW is "the MMO," we will find ourselves in an endless cycle of indistinction and failure. The MMORPG has been perfected, and we cannot recreate the same experience. To try and make another MMORPG is the same as someone trying to compose music in the style of Mozart or writing in the style of Milton. But despite the brilliance of Mozart's music or Milton's writing, we would even tire of their styles if it was perpetuated in the same way for years on end.
At the heart of it, an MMORPG is a work of art, and its developers are artists. They are presenting to the world their composition, and we are appreciating it. WoW is the Mona Lisa, and every other MMO is different women sitting in the same pose drawn in the same style. What is required is a true artist, one who bows to the excellence of his predecessor but injects his own genius and makes something completely different and revolutionary. A dark, troubling MMO. The mechanics need to be amazing in their difference. If WoW is Absolutism, this MMO must be akin to Socialism or People's Democracy.
Within each of us MMO veterans is an idea for the revolutionary post-MMORPG that is rather unable to be articulated. It is something that must be immense enough that it really sweeps the existing order off the table. People will remember WoW as being an archaic remnant of a time past, but this new game will have revolutionized everything. There will be little comparison with the games of the old style: it will be its own candle to which it will be held. An MMORPG of the modern times.
Comments
You're talking about MMOs as art when the reality is they've become big business with large publisher companies ruled over by teams of accountants and marketers. It's the same reason most blockbuster movies aren't really revoluutionary or highly artistic. In that kind of situation risk avoidance becomes far more important that revolution.
Maybe things will change when one guy alone in his garage can work for a few years and produce a viable MMO. I think those days may actually be coming in the near future but as long as huge companies control the industry I expect more of the same type of games to come out.
Revolution! Off with WoW's head!
Of course, one of the problems with revolutions is that it's unpredictable ahead of time who is going to be beheaded by the end of it. There are good reasons why revolutions never last long.
I do think there is a need for games to design something such that someone who has played WoW enough to be sick of it isn't as a result 90% of the way to being sick of your new game.
Maybe Everquest Next will be revolutionary. Players could shape the world like in Landmark and do anything they like.
In a regular typical mmo not much can be improved to make a game with big difference to others.
In my opinion next step to making better MMORPG is to make SMORPG. Then instead of massive multiplayer we could get Single Multiplayer. This game would be like single player with large, detailed world with many things to do and beatiful graphics and great customization with limited amount of maximum players like 8-10. Where players could join or disconnect from your world anytime, to help you with something or do something against like PVP. Here you can imagine games like Skyrim where some players could join with you and some of them fight against you. Imagine where you could control a monster or a bird in Skyrim in a game of another player.
That concept where you can play single player game or even offline and develop your character and later go with your character and equipment to visit different player world is coming from games like Terraria and Starbound. But they are 2D games.
Games with procedurally generated world or with many random events, items are also the future.
Now even if you play mmorpg with hundreds of players anyway most of the time you play alone like in single player game. They have to stop making mmo's where there are hundreds of very similar boring quests.
Good idea started in Ubisoft games like Watchdogs where player can visit other player world and where you can join to a player world using a tablet and control a helicopter in the game. In the future upcoming game Tom Clancy Division using the tablet you will be able to join the game and control the drone to support your team. This technology is new and there are still problems with connections. In the future players could take control over many things in the game of another player.
I'd love to support the OP's idealistic stance on what could be a revolution in the MMO industry, but that's just saying a lot.
I think the reason the industry's pretty stagnant at the moment is because the economics and the saturation. Too many game developers are just trying to get their own shot at the cash cow much like how WoW did (and yes I agree with you on that - that is the dilemma). It's difficult to get away from that shadow.
But we can always dream, can't we...and maybe a "philantropist / visionary" will set the gears moving...forward.
I'm still waiting for the term 'Reboot' in older mmorpg's like their doing in the movies today
Dark Age of Camelot Reboot, Ultima Online Reboot, Anarchy Online Reboot, Shadowbane Reboot and my favorite Star Wars Galaxies Reboot
- well you get the picture. Milk something old, new again.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
No, the Beatles did a lot of new and innovative things better than anyone else.
WoW has never done anything innovative, and doesn't do anything better than anyone else aside from have the best marketing.
But gone are the largely group centric, virtual worlds, at least from modern AAA design. They are just not what th majority wants, rather they show complete willingness to pay for current designs so that's what we will keep seeing more of.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
whoa, whoa, whoa, you don't know what you are talking about if you are saying that. I think you used the wrong analogy and just don't realize it.
Heck, there is a beatles song that avoids the dominant chord for a good part of its length. Not many popular/rock songs can say the same thing.
Not to mention, compare Sgt. Peppers to anything that was going going on at the time or before it.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Kind of sad but true imho.
If we see something new mechanic / feature it is from some kickstarter game which basicly means people give away their money for free. If it is CUs pvp-only or island like pvp zone or the dual mode of tab target and action combat of Repop. If people expect a roi the game goes into a more WoW ish direction imho.
Articulation is not the problem. I can articulate MMO ideas all day long. The sheer difficulty of developing an articulated idea into an MMO is the problem, and that's influenced by the fact that we MMO veterans aren't going to all have the _same_ revolutionary ideas. WoW's reputation is based partly on the pro quality of the game when it came out, and nothing developed on a shoestring is going to be able to dominate the market - that's why Minecraft didn't take over as a revolutionary MMO, because the graphics and gameplay were only minimally developed, in a way typical of indie projects.
Care to explain then, how all the pre 2004 MMOs managed to have entirely unique and innovative ideas with new features, whereas modern AAA MMOs all had the same exact design in almost every aspect?
"Its better to look ugly and win than pretty and lose"
Modern AAA MMOs certainly have a narrower feature set than if you were including AA and indie MMOs, but even among AAA games Landmark and WildStar, for example, have very different feature sets and are set in very different worlds. ESO and ArcheAge (I think ArcheAge counts as AAA?) also have very different feature sets and worlds.
I see an inkling of what the 'post-MMORPG' looks like when I see games like Roblox, Minecraft, Space Engineers and so on; it's pure sandbox, where the true heart of the game isn't combat, but building the world. Combat is there, no doubt, but it's what you do after there is something worth fighting for.
To me, the post-MMO isn't about consuming content; it's about creating content. It is about inventing the world, inventing your world. But those games like Minecraft and Space Engineers are clunky. You can design pretty much anything, but you still can't design yourself. Emotes are non-existant. Character customization is nil, or only for technical experts who build mods.
The problem is that most games in the MMORPG genre start with the combat, and design everything around that. It seems like the post-MMORPG needs to start with the design tools, placing them at the center, and allowing combat (if at all) to spring from that.
The game that lets players design themselves and their world, both individually and collaboratively, is going to be more than an MMO...it'll be better than an MMO...perhaps the 'post-MMO' Consuetudo talks about.
__________________________
"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."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
That's like saying "What pre-2004 MMORPGs weren't RPGs?"
That's an idiotic straw man question.
As for which ones weren't about killing monsters, most of the sandbox ones had options of play without killing monsters.
That first paragraph is like saying they're all the same because they were multiplayer and online. Let's not play that game.
In the second paragraph you cite that they are different. Agreed, however they are different variations on the level-based class-restricted, fantasy-themed MMO which is a subset of MMOs. When compared within that subset they are different, but they are homologous and barely stray from their base design when compared to other MMOs.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I don't want anything revolutionary. I want them to fix what's wrong with the mmo now. I just want it to look like Skyrim and play like Sims only instead of having babies - hatch dragon eggs. And I don't want to get stuck on a world pvp server with a bunch of shithead gankers. How f*ing hard is that to make??
I WANT TO BREED COLORFUL DRAGONS YOU STUPID DEVS
I think the future of mmo's lies with products like the Oculus Rift etc.. The world has yet to experience a fully immersive virtual reality mmorpg. Granted, part of WoW's success was that it was easily accessible over a variety of pc specs due to its low system requirements. Games utilizing Oculus-like technology will have a limited consumer base at first until the tech becomes more affordable. Still, I look forward to the day when I can wear a headset and simply look around the room instead of having to use mouse/keyboard to turn my character's head. If Chris Roberts can succeed with the Oculus Rift integration in Star Citizen, I think there is hope for us to see more immersive mmorpg games in the future.
Just my thoughts.
Because your assumption is even wrong. Not any game before 2004 was revolutionary. Not even near to that.
UO was rather innovative, but nevertheless just a evolution of MUDs before it.
EQ was more or less a DikuMUD clone with 3D Graphic and larger scale and not a lot more.
DAoC was EQ with RvR added as one unique element.
SWG was a evolution of UO and not a lot more.
The only thing, which was actually unique for a lot of new players(in comparsion to today) was the internet, play with a lot of other players together, experience, which just a few MUD veteran got before. Nowadays you have hundreds of choices to make something with other people(worldwide) on the internet.. so that experience is hugely gone.