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Will MMOs Become the Entertainment of the Future? - Garrett Fuller - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Will MMOs Become the Entertainment of the Future? - Garrett Fuller - MMORPG.com
We are living in an interesting time as MMOs become more mainstream. Many here will say that the traditional MMO is not, but it is there, living within games like Destiny and eventually Anthem. Games are set up specifically to draw in large audiences on Twitch. Add in esports to the mix and you have a full viewing spectrum to enjoy.
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On the one hand, you are describing future MMOs that are actually massively-multiplayer, with large open worlds, player politics, meaningful actions within the world, guild rivalries and all that sort of thing. That would be awesome!
But that's not where we're headed.
You include Destiny and Anthem as a way of showing that the genre is growing and becoming more mainstream, but that's just wrong as both those games are not MMOs. Putting in twitch streaming, esports, social media integration and all that crap directly contradicts your wish for meaningful virtual worlds. The genre is shrinking, not growing. Player numbers are down across the board, retention is at an all time low, AAA developers in the west have left the market.
Maybe, just maybe, the batch of indie MMOs currently in development will stimulate the market. Investors have already determined that the themepark model no longer works so these indie MMOs will be acting as proof of concept for new ideas. If one of them works well and attracts a decent playerbase then maybe investors will be willing to re-enter the genre and we might start seeing some good MMOs again by 2025.
The video behind the link is no longer a distant future i'm afraid.
Before that happens MMORPGs will be a relic of the past
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
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Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/Yerp that's what this website does apparently. When you have games like Diablo III and Ark Survival Evolved on the same list there's something wrong here.
Online gaming empires are the way publishers and gaming studios are headed already. Huge franchises played in their world online. Some of this will be like AOL, but be a world of gaming. A MMO game will be the centrepiece but not as we know them now. They will be more like Second Life, and within them you can play all of say EA's games. This will allow shared resources on a yet unseen level.
Such Gaming Empires will be able to handle new formats like a new sort of Battle Royale with relative ease, keeping games up with the curve if not ahead of it. VR will be part of all this, but at a later date, VR keeps having issues which set it back, whereas these empires have little impediment.
I am not sure PC and consoles will survive this move, already consoles are more like PC's than they once were. Whatever happens there is likely to be only one platform, the push to drive down costs will see to that.
Will we as gamers like this brave new world? Well as I am not sure we are still playing games anymore, I am not sure the term gamer will be that relevant. Gambling Empires Online might be more apt, but the revenue model like everything else will not be static that's for sure.
WoW was the first MMO to break through 1mil of players, 20yrs ago you were considered very successful with as little as 100k, imagine that. Nowadays you're a "failure" if you don't maintain 1mil of playerbase at all times, which is absurd.
Traditional MMOs are dying, they are being replaced by modern MMOs that are finally worthy of the RPG tag. Wasn't the original point of MMOs to be basically an online RPG game? If you ask me, this genre has never been in a better state. We're finally moving forward with less "hack'n'slash" gameplay, towards immersive living worlds with great storylines.
MMORPG are the ultimate use of VR technology. We are a long way off from that so we will see much easier games transitioning to it first. If you think the concept of the MMORPG is dead you are flat out wrong. It was simply far ahead of it's time and only now are we seeing technology supporting the massive world concepts again through engines like SpacialOS and CSE's.
Don't be so narrow minded iwith your vision as to how the industry got here and where it can and will go. The sad truth is, with all of the streaming becoming mainstream entertainment, that virtual worlds will become the new Reality Television of the future and only fully socially constructed games like the true vision of a MMORPG will garner popular interest beyond hardcore gamer narrow focus.
You stay sassy!
You even said what I meant, the MMORPGs as we know now are being replaced. I don't know if I would call them worthy of the RPG tag though.
If you are watching the game more than you are playing a game, it's no longer a game. Whether it's considered a thing of the future or not.
I play games, but I can't stand TV. VR means nothing to me. Games make use of your hand and eye coordination when you are watching a game through VR, where is the skill in that?
Twitch integration and watching others play? I'll pass.
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I don't get it. But hey, all my life I never really got how people take personal pride in their favorite sports teams either, as though they were in any way responsible for those team's successes. You hu-... I mean, we humans sure are weird...
Agree, if that sort of "Ready, Player One" level interaction is the way things will go.
There's alot I wonder about when it comes to the popularity of watching people play. But I'm pretty confident that the direction an "entertaining to watch" game would have to evolve will be less in the direction of Destiny and more in the direction of games that allow the most interaction with, and in the game world.
Doesn't mean that MMO's will have to return to pre-WoW type worlds. But to go more mainstream, players will have to be able to do more than run, crouch, and shoot.
Fixed.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Watching the best compete makes perfect sense and is and always will be a cornerstone of most societies. I think fanatics stalking stars is far more sensible than people watching other people play video games for no reason at all. It is weird and unseemly. My kids do it all the time and it will never make sense to me. If what my kids are doing is the future of entertainment I would much prefer the world end in nuclear holocaust. Its seriously embarrassing to the human race. My oldest has, thankfully, grown out of this nonsense. She and her friends now prefer talking over watching some idiot play minecraft. They also prefer going out and watching real shows and doing normal people activities. This gives me hope that my younger two will follow suite and this is just a new subculture for pre-teens and a new outlet for nuts that isn't increasing the amount of nuts in the world but just pulling from older activities the nuts were distributed into.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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And given how pathetic the reality is for such a large proportion of mankind and how successful games already are, you can also bet many will completely choose to lose themselves into these worlds.
At this point in time, basically the only things that stay between us and that scenario are how lame VR is, how much it costs to run properly, and how low adoption rates are, resulting in basically no AAA VR titles. But at one point everyone with a PC will have some form of VR and standards/compatibility will be a thing. Imagine graphics on the 5th-10th generation of GPUs from now, and affordable VR, at least in the 'civilized" world.
Yup. It will happen. And it will be a sad thing to witness.