The Frontier of the MMO Genre 92
Eurogamer is running a feature about what they call "frontier" MMOs, games that are on the fringe of a market flooded with attempts to replicate the success of Everquest and World of Warcraft. Many publishers already have more MMO projects than they know what to do with, and often leave the more unusual and unique games out in the cold, preferring to stick with familiar IP or a tried-and-true approach. "Like any gold-rush, the MMO market also attracts a different kind of adventurer: the fearless, inexperienced, determined and solitary dreamer, making a go of it on nothing but their own resources and pluck. The online distribution and direct revenue streams — be they subscriptions or micro-transactions — make it theoretically possible to make a mint in MMOs without any help from the gaming establishment at all." They take a brief look at several such games currently in development, including Earthrise, Gatheryn, and Global Agenda.
Time sink (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Just give me massively detailed dungeons with tons of routes, twists, and challenges. Not since EQ has there been challenging dungeons in any MMO.
Re:Time sink (Score:5, Insightful)
I fully agree. I usually get each new MMORPG just to give it a shot but, really, no one's touched EQ's dungeons. They were challenging, required strategy and planning for the worst (trains, etc), crowd control, a variety of skills, skilled players, and most importantly they were fun. Then you had the high level Planes and Raids that were all of that bumped to the next level. And then Lost Dungeons of Norrath was released and it once again reinvented itself.
It's a shame that people are in such a race to hit the finish line in these games that they don't want to stop and smell the roses on the way and enjoy them.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's a shame that people are in such a race to hit the finish line in these games that they don't want to stop and smell the roses on the way and enjoy them.
Your Smell does 448 physical damage to Rose.
Rose dies.
You gain 1022 experience (425 rested).
If what you described went down like this, I'm sure a LOT of people would stop and smell the roses.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm a little bit curious, because I've played all of one MMORPG, but have you tried Requiem:Bloodymare? (The reason it's my only MMORPG ever is that it's free to play, and I've always resisted shelling out $15 a month for a game. )
If you have, how would you rate its (fairly limited in number, I guess) dungeons?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So how do you control one world vs another? If I get a powerful weapon in one realm and find that another realm is handing them out like candy (or your weapon is useless), what's the point of going through the one I originally did?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Then you essentially start over from realm to realm? What's so different than having different games today? Carrying a name? That's about all you could carry from game to game without giving someone an advantage or messing with the content of another world. How incredibly unfitting would it be to have a Tauren Shaman in Anarchy Online or Tabula Rasa? These realms can be varied. Even if you did allow that, how do you handle the models and armor? If you take a Dark Elf from Everquest and put it in WoW,
Re: (Score:2)
It would have to be a complete set of worlds. I could only see that as a new game, or set of games, not something trying to string together existing games. That would simply not work.
I think it could be very interesting to see a transfer from, say, a Warhammer MMO to a Warhammer 40k MMO.
What I'd envision would be some sort of game where, instead of expansions, you get a new subgame every year or every other year. Today it's medieval fantasy. First expansion, ultra high tech future world. Next expansion, som
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You need more than that. You cannot simply switch from medieval fantasy to ultra high tech. Care to explain how my legendary sword of awesome should hold out against a simple laser blaster that melts it (and me) before I even come into reach?
At best you could create a basic ruleset (like some standard attributes and a few core skills), and you have to travel naked. That way, you could become the ultimate high tech hero but can't really fight well when you decide to go medieval instead (you couldn't fight wi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In a setup with multiple, interoperable, independently controlled environments, there would be constant competition between environments("come to instance X,
Re: (Score:2)
Freerealms.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The key word is content. You need it. Your players want it. And it's hellish expensive.
What I'm really waiting for, and I'm really amazed it didn't surface yet, is some sort of "Web 2.0 MMO". I.e. an MMO following the Web 2.0 creed, "you make the content, we make the revenue".
It's amazing that MUDs, one of the key predecessors of MMORPGs, actually had that feature (i.e. "experienced" players getting the opportunity to add their own parts of the world to the game), that various FPS and RTC games have "map bu
Re:Time sink (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't played it myself, but from all accounts it appears to be a success.
Re:Time sink (Score:4, Interesting)
Mission Architect is fun... really fun.
In about three hours I built a mission called "Dorothy is Dangerous", fleshed it out with a Wizard of Oz theme, had the wicked witch as a contact and had a team of supers taking on munchkins, flying monkeys, the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Lion, and a massive boss battle to take down Dorothy. I've been tweaking it since to make it better. Other people send me input on my mission saying if they like it or not.
Since then I've played one story arc after another... most of them seem to be focussed on leveling the toon as fast as possible, but that's just one aspect. A LOT of them are simply fun little adventures to run people through.
Right now, I'm working on a Fairies vs Goblins battle where I expect to have a dozen flying fairies helping me defeat the goblin king at the end.(as you can tell, I have an eight year old daughter assisting me in my design choices).
I'm having a blast.
Re: (Score:1)
I believe user-created content is the future of MMOs. It's a paradigm whose time has come. City of Heros is starting the trend, and other MMOs will have to incorporate user-created content or risk losing customers to those that do. I've already seen many user-created story ideas that trump the developer-created ones. Conversely, there are lots that suck--but that's to be expected!
Re: (Score:2)
So far, Mission Architect has been an absolute madhouse (in a good sense).
By developer accounts, there are approximately 3800 developer-created mission arcs in the game since its inception.
In the month or so that issue 14 (Mission Architect) has been out, there have been over ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND player-generated arcs created thus far.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not quite the same, but the WoW addon community kind of works like this. We develop addons for a variety of reasons, though often it's because the default game does something we don't like or doesn't do something we want it to do.
Some addons end up only being useful to the original authors, many are complete crap, many are duplicates of other functionality, many are quite useful for their intended purposes/niches, and a few of them are absolutely game-changing.
Two MMO-type worlds I can think of that do
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ryzom (Saga of Atys) has had such abilities for 2 years plus now...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Raph Koster's a step ahead of you [areae.net]. That's exactly what he's spent the last couple of years working on, in the form of metaplace [metaplace.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Minions Of Mirth lets any premium player design his/her own realm or realms, and even set up their world as its own server. There were a number of such, for a while. Gradually, they died off, because the main world was better (and professionally hosted). OTOH, the long promised upgrade was (is being?) worked upon by
Re: (Score:2)
The MMO Ryzom added user created content with the Ryzom Ring [ryzom.com] update back in 2006.
The key part of MMOs is the "MM" part. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The key part of MMOs is the "MM" part. (Score:4, Insightful)
You could say the same thing about real-world dance clubs. Lots of people think they know what a good one should look like, customers are only interested in coming if they can expect a nice sized crowd (not too crowded, but not too empty), and new ones open all the time. As an industry, dance clubs have survived this model for quite a while.
If MMOs starve to death, it will be because people got bored with them, not because mass entertainment only works with limited options available.
Re: (Score:2)
If the same psychology applies to MMOs they're going to h
Everquest (Score:1, Interesting)
The hard part is reaching and maintaining that critical mass. You see this with a lot of FPS servers. Most of the servers you see are either within a few players of capacity or completely empty. You don't find too many people playing on a server with only a handful of others. I've seen servers just suddenly empty when numbers drop below about 2/3 of capacity. It's like suddenly everyone decides the server is dying and they just move on to a new one.
If the same psychology applies to MMOs they're going to have to work hard to keep people coming back.
Usually when a server empties like that, it's due to one person starting a GCH (Game Changing Hack). Like "Cartillery" in BF2. It can destroy a server, and people will not come back for hours.
As for MMO's, I play Everquest (hence Anonymous Coward, I mean seriously, who plays EQ anymore?). I like EQ more than WoW or EQII because I can play allied with any other player, it's a huge amount of space to run in, and when I can get a group together it's a ton of fun.
EQ is old, they are trying to keep a fanbase
Re: (Score:2)
Usually when a server empties like that, it's due to one person starting a GCH (Game Changing Hack). Like "Cartillery" in BF2. It can destroy a server, and people will not come back for hours.
Oh, sure, I've seen people clear out because of hacks but the servers I play on generally have pretty active admins. Hackers are rarely a reason for the server to clear out where I play. People get kicked/banned/reported or votebanned before they annoy anyone to the point that the server is ruined.
EQ reminds me of a similar story I have about SubSpace (Continuum). I come back to that game every year and a half or so and I always get addicted to it all over again. It's simple to pick up, tough to master a
Re: (Score:2)
haha subspace, biggest shit talking community in history. Amazing game... though SSCV (or whatever standard subspace rules) zones never hit critical mass enough for me to ever enjoy it like it was back in its hey day, or i'd be on it everyday... Give me back t-20 battles, please!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually I'd say you'd be pretty surprised just how many people have hooked up via that game.
I wont say anything about the quality of potential partners or said unions, but I've got a good few mates that have found partners in online games (some now married, others long since declared glaring mistakes) and read about many others.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Dance clubs are a crappy choice for comparison.
Why? Permanence. You might prefer permanence in a dance club, but you don't *need* it. It only needs to exist on a per-event basis for you to enjoy it.
MMOs on the other hand are *all about* permanence. If MMOs are born and die too fast, then you never get to see the endgame (or even some of the midgame) content for any of them. None of your stuff carries over from game to game, and probably not much of your social contacts carry over either, yet persistent stuf
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And that's why MMOs often shrink down to "least common denominator". Take a look around at some of the more interesting and envelop-pushing MMOs: Aside of EvE, they all eventually died.
Usually what's left are MMOs that are easy to learn, fairly easy to master, don't require a lot of "point distribution", or at least don't offer a lot of variety, one setup that's good (and can be looked up easily) and forget about being creative. Gameplay has to be easy (point and click interface, the easier the better), gra
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Good point, and this can be a problem for upstarts. But beyond a few thousand players per server, most established MMOs put up multiple shards, and the world is not more populated than if you have a newcomer with 10k subscribers, all on one server.
The big exception I know is EvE Online. That MMO actually has all players on one server, often with more than 40,000 simultaneous log-ins.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Expected population should be addressed in the design of game areas. When you have a small userbase, you can provide lots of space for adventuring, but you need to concentrate players for socialization and trade. UO failed to realize this as it added new continents in every other expansion even while the player count was dwindling. WoW knew what it was doing when it kept auction houses out of the expansion continents.
Stupid, Stupid. (Score:2)
To a fair degree, MMOs are subject to network effects. Friends on the server, social ties through guilds, corporations, etc. buzz, people writin
2000lb gorilla (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with a lot of upcoming MMOs is that they try their best to best WoW in size, spouting about how many servers they have. How much content they're going to have, while saying "we're not interested in how WoW does things, we do it our way." Its a lie, they want to be wow and whether its conscious or not they fall into the 'trying to be wow' trap.
You can't beat wow by being a better wow. Beat wow by being a better game.
If you build it, subscribers will come. If you build it and try to be like wow, you'll be merging servers in under a month.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
additional:
also, why not be satisfied with a niche market. Why aim for wow's 70-something percent of the market?
Re:2000lb gorilla (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:2000lb gorilla (Score:4, Insightful)
You try to impress a VC with "yeah, well, we don't wanna dethrone WoW, we just wanna make a good game that gets, hopefully, about 5% market share..."
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Get involved with VC's and you're already screwed. Either you fail and they sue you, or you succeed and find they were the backers behind behind the law firm the assured you that the VC's contract was fair and legit, get turfed out on your ear and sued if you ever open your mouth about it or attempt to make a career in any related field again..
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you build it, subscribers will come. If you build it and try to be like wow, you'll be merging servers in under a month.
Truth. Whenever I hear the latest up-and-comers claim how much better they're going to be and how the hype claims it will kill WoW, I smirk and expect that game to hit the liquidation discount bin within the next six months. History has yet to prove me wrong.
Re:2000lb gorilla (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately, I think WoW may actually be bad for the development of MMOs as a genre. So long as WoW controls so much of the market, it's going to be nearly impossible for new MMOs, especially from smaller companies or based on original IP, to get any traction.
When it comes to MMOs, they face a chicken and egg problem (or maybe chicken and chicken problem would be more accurate), players won't join if there are no (or very few) other players. You need players to get [more] players. And when most of your potential players are in WoW, what do you do to pry them away?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:2000lb gorilla (Score:5, Insightful)
WoW is certainly not beneficial for MMO development, but not because of its sub numbers, but because of VC expectations. 5 years ago, before WoW was launched, getting 200k subs in a year was already great. Today, it's a reason to fold.
The 70% market share of WoW don't hurt the other games too much. Sure, the big players of their time lost subs, but they were reaching their life expectance anyway. WoW hit the market right when the market needed something. But their often toutet 70% market share are to a sizable portion, and I'm wagering 80% here, subs that didn't exist before, not subs "stolen" from other games. 4 of 5 WoW players didn't play an MMO before.
What really hurts new games are expectations. The "must be like WoW" mantra that's chanted throughout the marketing halls. So every single game that comes out looks like a cheap (or rather, expensive) WoW knockoff. Sometimes so blatant that it outright hurts.
And as it has been stated before, you CANNOT make the new WoW. Do you remember what WoW was like when it was launched? 2 days per week almost assured downtime. A good 30% of quests that either didn't work, weren't finishable under certain conditions or were simply impossible unless you were a specific class. And let's not start about balancing. A game that was started like this today would meet the bargain bin 2 months after release (at the same time, their servers are merged down to 4-6), and a year later it's closing time.
In a nutshell, do not try to beat WoW on their own game. You cannot. You would have to sink YEARS of development into it, polish it to the point that WoW is today after almost a decade of development and millions of gametesters (who also pay to do the work). Make another game. And most of all, aim lower! If you cannot survive on 200k subs, don't do it at all. If it takes off like WoW, great. But don't hope for it or, worse, outright require it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"5 years ago, before WoW was launched, getting 200k subs in a year was already great. Today, it's a reason to fold."
This is an important point. Everquest peaked at around 500,000 subscribers. Many successful games of the time such as City of Heroes had numbers a lot less than that. Everquest was the monster MMO at the time.
WoW expanded the number of players in the MMO market significantly - particularly in the US and European markets. The truth is a lot of these people are just WoW players. Most of them hav
Re: (Score:1)
If you build it, subscribers will come.
Your advice is far too vague to be useful.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
What would really shake up the market is another big player with deep pockets AND creativity to spare came up with a new IP.
Such as.. I don't know... Valve?
Sure they're famous for FPSs, but that doesn't mean they cant branch out. After all, Blizzard was famous for RTS before WoW.
Will it happen? Probably not.
Wow is still #1 (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You have other things to do besides grinding for levels.
The only drawback is the time it can take to get to the end game content. With all the different races you can create a different character and the story lines are different until you go "out in the world" then things become more familiar.
Take no offense in this, but I hate people like you. ;) Why do you feel the absolute need to "grind levels" and "get to the end game content"? Why not just enjoy the alternate story lines, take in the local environment, quests, and enjoy the unfamiliar?
Re: (Score:1)
After not finding any of those guilds on my server, I just continued to level. Once you're at max level, or at least approaching it, you'll probably join a guild with a goal to tackle some end-game content.
Then you realize that your guild needs ano
Re: (Score:2)
"Why do you feel the absolute need to "grind levels" and "get to the end game content"?"
Because killing 20 fishmen because Marduk the mercilous says it's the only way he'll stop his horde from rampaging feels about the same as kill 20 pigmen because Glinda the swell says she needs pig bladders to mix the potion that will save the village.
Both are just meaningless bits of text. You can kill the 20, or not, and nothing in the world will change.
However, there is some fun in gaining new abilities. That way yo
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I feel MMOs are designed wrong in the first place. Skills should be obtained by playing the game and completing the events and areas. Guild Wars had a feature of skill learning where you had to fight the monsters that used those skills to learn from it. It was crude, but if implemented well, could open up a wide assortment of game play.
Personally, I'd love to have an MMO that you started off a blank character and had to gain your skills by adventuring, training at the local guilds or finding
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
WoW is very well polished, easily accessible, fun for the casual gamer, and... well... it carries the Blizzard-tag. This is what makes it hugely succesful.
Vanguard, EQ and more offer more depth than WoW (and a much MUCH longer grind to end-game content), but it turns out this is not really what the majority wants.
WoW became succesful by catering to the non-MMO-crowd. Back when I was active on EQ, they boasted subscriber-counts in the 400
Re: (Score:2)
You haven't even tried any other MMOs, have you?
Many of them have achievement systems and world events. Many of them are deeper than WoW, and many have less of a grind.
The reason WoW is on top is because Blizzard programmers are top-notch. Their games are polished to perfection and brilliantly designed to induce addictive response. Because of that, Blizzard has a huge, ravenous fanbase which enabled them to start their game out strong.
It's not because WoW is a better game than other MMOs. It's because t
Re:Wow is still #1 (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as other MMOs, it is purely a matter of taste. I tried Eve. If you like PvE combat, that game is a total grind. You fly in to a mission, make your ship fly towards somewhere you can dock in case you get in trouble, and hit f1-f6. Then fly for a long time until things are dead. Then fly to a gate to do the next part. When you are done, get in to another ship and fly around a long time to pick up the loot. PvP would be great if you didn't have to find other people to group with to survive and then sit at gates for hours. Warhammer is fun, but the PvE is severely lacking compared to WoW. It was more like playing TF2 with a subscription fee. After running the same BGs over and over to level, it gets boring. World PvE is a little better but still wasn't exciting.
Obviously, these are my opinions. Other people might love these games. But I do think WoW is a better MMO than the rest because it has the best PvE which is what I enjoy. But just because you don't think WoW is better, doesn't mean that the 12 million playing don't have that opinion or haven't tried other games.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't say that you worshipped Blizzard. It was the huge number of Blizzard worshippers that gave their game a huge initial population, which lured in more people. MMOs live and die by their first year, and that's when Blizzard's followers gave them an immense advantage.
I did say that you didn't seem to have tried any other games. Glad I was mistaken, there. I haven't tried Warhammer myself, but I agree with you about Eve. I play City of Heroes, which is as deep and grind-free as WoW, if not even bet
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that there are a lot of people who love Blizzard games and that helped them get that initial fan base. But Blizzard has actually earned their fans by consistently putting out very good, very polished games.
I think there is a huge market for a WoW-killer. A lot of people are tired of it. AoC is a great example. People flocked to the game but it was incomplete and n
Re: (Score:2)
"I play City of Heroes, which is as deep and grind-free as WoW"
CoH grind free? What? I don't know how much as changed but I consider repeatedly running randomly generated instance mission maps with one of 4 possible overall type (kill all, escort, click things or kill boss) pretty grind-oriented. Hopefully they've done away with XP debt by now a mechanic that did nothing except increase the need to grind.
Level 40-50 was an excruciating grind only mediated to a degree by overpowered classes ability to pull e
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You haven't even tried any other MMOs, have you? Many of them have achievement systems and world events. Many of them are deeper than WoW, and many have less of a grind.
I've played City of Heroes/Villains and D&D Online in the past, and currently play WoW. I guess I would have to see what you mean by "deeper"... it seems that term would be purely subjective. WoW has five times the content of the other two games put together (at least that was true prior to the City of Heroes "Architect" update). The Heroes/Villains series content is certainly no more deep than WoW (go kill this boss and anything else that gets in your way) and up until "architect" you basically h
some change, please (Score:2)
As someone who is testing out lots and lots of games, I'm tired of the "WOW formula". Been there, done that, thank you.
There is a small number of interesting twists that I quite like, but no one game has dared to deviate much, so far. I like the addition of a second "game mode" where you can use a ship (space or sea, depending on genre) in addition to land-based missions, for example. Several titles have tried themselves in that area, some good.
I also like different advancement schemes, classless etc. Very
Re: (Score:2)
Other MMOs (Score:1)
I prefer Guild Wars. It's a one time subscription fee that's getting lower over time. Currently, you can spend $20 to get the core game. I own all of campaigns and play them like a casual game. I don't want xp, material, or gold grinding. I want a compelling environment and story that doesn't hold me back because I didn't reach level X.
Besides, I tried WoW and didn't like it. I like Blizzard. I love the Diablo series (mostly because it was unapologetic about being hack and slash, though I'm usually a
Re: (Score:1)
Correction:
(mostly because it was unapologetic about being hack and slash, though I'm usually a fan of hack and slash)
(mostly because it was unapologetic about being hack and slash, though I'm usually a NOT fan of hack and slash)
Re: (Score:1)
what?
Took me all of about 1 month between that and the limited time
A Tale in the Desert (Score:2)
A Tale in the Desert [atitd.com] definitely falls into the category of one of those fringe games. I played it for a few months back around the second Telling, and really enjoyed it. Unfortunately that particular telling progressed too slowly, and since then the population has dropped down too much for the game to have the same impact it once did.
What made WoW special was having such a huge population early on--the population itself, not what drew it in to begin with. I personally enjoyed doing 40-man raids and other
Best Kept Secret: Eve Online (Score:1)
It's epic, highly polished, and there is no other MMO like it:
* 50k players online at the same time, on one server :)
* Sci-fi, not fantasy
* Real-time skill learning, not grinding
* Consequences for your actions
* The ability to take revenge for grievances
* Your own spaceship
Check this one out before some of the more obscure "up and coming" titles suggested here. I wish them well, but MOST new MMOs will fail. If you're just looking for something a little different, Eve Online is the way to go.
FWIW, I play ma
Re: (Score:2)
Um, calling EVE Online "a little different" from WoW would be like calling your mother "a little different" from a crack addled mugger. One will coddle you and protect you from yourself as long as you let them, the other ... not so much.
Re: (Score:2)
I want to fly to a planet and set up a mining outpost with Ion cannon emplacements.
I want story lines dealing with AI civil rights.
I want to load so many cyber implants into my avatar that he can carry a howitzer into battle but can only function for an hour away from an external power source.
I want a game that just is not Eve.
Re: (Score:1)
I totally agree with this. Shadowrun MMO anyone? Also, I think I heard somewhere that they were coming out with a Fallout MMO. Is this true? If so, I see this as possibly turning into something similar to what you were describing... though I've only played Fallout 3 so far so I don't know if the previous ones would fit.
Nice article (Score:1)
Problem is the max I'm willing to spend per month (Score:2)
I'm only willing to spend ~$15 a month in MMORPG monthly fees, so that pretty much just leaves WoW (as occasionally my friends will all want to do something in WoW).
So if I do buy a new MMORPG, that gives me a month of play time, which doesn't seem worth it to me. So either all my friends need to move over to the new MMORPG, or it has to be free, or it has to be so good that it justifies an additional $180 per year (+game purchase price, +price of any addons already released).
Re: (Score:1)