MMORPGs: Cutting edge games built on outdated concepts?
MMORPGs are undoubtedly here to stay. They have shown themselves as a wave of the future and many other games are taking up some of the many aspects of them, in an attempt to mimic their extended lifecycle and to attract a crowd that are drawn to RPG-like advancement and stat tracking. But while MMOs are influencing many other games, why do MMOs remain relatively uninfluenced by these other games?
I have yet to experience any of the cinematic greatness found in Call of Duty in any MMO, nor have I seen any of the moral dilemmas and storytelling prowess I experienced in Knights of the Old Republic. Why do I find myself more attached to a character I’ve played for 5 hours in Mass Effect than one that has clocked 200 hours in Everquest?
The answer, I’m afraid, is simply that you are not important to the game world. Your character is one in a thousand, and not in a good way. These games are built from the community they support, yet that community are largely supporting and affecting only themselves. When you get a large group of players together and are the first, world wide, to take down some epic monster, it rarely impacts the game at all. If you take your best set of armor out and manage to take down several opposing players at once, most will forget it even happened within a few moments. With so many players inside these games, why are there so few ways to accomplish something meaningful?
Originally, players were restricted from affecting the game world to prevent them from being able to negatively affect other players, however I think we’ve evolved past this. If a group of players ransacks a town, it should affect the day to day life of its inhabitants for some time, even after the raiders have left. When you are the first to accomplish something, there should be a way of letting it be known. Player interaction, in whatever form it takes, is vital to the success of any MMO.
Furthermore, why are there so many barriers in MMOs? Why should a maximum level player be completely uninterested in playing and socializing with a newly created player? How is an “evil” player incapable of associating with a “good” player? Why create these restrictions?
To me, these restrictions only seem to serve as a way to gate people from content; both social and game content. Creating content that is only useful and relevant for a short period of time seems to be a vast waste of resources. Opposing and restricted factions can also serve to immediately double the amount of content needed to satisfy both of these groups. Why make the same thing twice?
When you add content gated by location and content gated by level together you quickly see why MMOs require so much damn “content”. We should be trying to do the opposite of what is happening, taking one piece of content and creating multiple ways to use it. To give an example, take Call of Duty. There may be less than ten multiplayer maps, but when you add in several game modes, and differing weapon sets, you’ve created a map that will play differently virtually every time you load in.
An MMO should be about accessibility, socializing, and having an entertaining, meaningful game experience. To create a truly great MMO we need to support all of these fundamentals. Few MMOs seem to embrace more than one of these goals and, until they are, I think I will remain a spectator of the MMO world, rather than a player.
Tom “Daelus” Pettus
becuz gaming, especially mmos have become about the money, not the game. i completely agree with you, something must be done. We the players need a plan to take our games back from the money hungry corp
Mon Jul 28 2008 2:28AM ReportWell said and I agree. Though I will continue to play and 'make do', becauseI haven't found a game that really suits me 100% either.
Mon Jul 28 2008 10:15AM ReportI don't really think MMOs should be about accessibility, or socializing, nor do I think either of those are whats missing from MMOs. Companies are trying to make money, the only thing they're doing is going for accessibility, that's why every game is WoW with a different theme. As for socializing you can do that anywhere, you don't need some kind of special socializing game for it, all I used to do in Ultima Online was talk to people, and that was before every game had a retarded world spanning chatroom.
Mon Jul 28 2008 6:43PM ReportMMO's were brought about by the joining 2 game concepts. RPG's and Multiplayer. MMO's have to play to a different set of rules compared to most other games. Because not only are they about system requirements, they are also about netspeed.
Developers want happy customers. Happy customers means longer subscriptions. To keep customers happy they have to be protected. Like an endangered species that can no longer survive in the wild. Hence the single player "content". If one group were allowed to do something meaningful it would impact on another group of players negatively. If that happened they might cancel their subscription! Look at EVE, its subscriptions are so low because of its tough, rough universe. It isn't easy when only the law of the jungle applys. Most gamers dont want that experience.
I tend to view current "MMO's" as mearly the first steps in the evolution of better gaming. More and more gamers are going to feel like you, and me. Eventually there will be enough to make the games you talk about viable in a business sense. I hope.......
Mon Jul 28 2008 7:51PM ReportUncertantyP:
I don't really think MMOs should be about accessibility, or socializing, nor do I think either of those are whats missing from MMOs. Companies are trying to make money, the only thing they're doing is going for accessibility, that's why every game is WoW with a different theme.
So do you believe that MMOs should be inaccessible? By accessibility, I mean barriers to play. Whether it be a massive time requirement, excessive complexity, or unfair gameplay restrictions.
As for socializing, I find it hard to believe that an MMO player wants less people in their MMO world. The whole purpose of MMOs is to have other players to interact with; if it wasn't, why would you bother making it an online game? If you remove the social aspect of it, you merely have a single player RPG.
_Seeker:
Look at EVE, its subscriptions are so low because of its tough, rough universe. It isn't easy when only the law of the jungle applys. Most gamers dont want that experience.
I understand your point, but in this specific example, I would think it's more because of the complexity of EVE itself, rather than the harsh game experience that turns people off. For me, I was essentially thrown in to a game world with no direction, and no goal. EVE may have had meaningful and memorable gameplay, but, at least for me, it was too inaccessable to reach any of it.
Mon Jul 28 2008 8:16PM ReportMMORPG.com writes:
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