Today, Warcry published their final article from former MMORPG.com editor Dana Massey as he leaves to pursue other opportunities. The article samples a number of MMO professionals about the state of the MMO industry today.

Titled "State of the MMO: Industry Luminaries On The Genre, Its Future", the article touches on everything from innovation to business models.

The MMO industry has grown from a two-horse race at the turn of the century to one of the largest segments of the gaming industry and perhaps the last true foothold games have on the PC. Yet, during this same period, there have been innumerable failures, and many questions remain wide open. Can MMOs truly be global? Is the subscription model in decline? To what extent should developers innovate or evolve gameplay? What role should established IP play? Have these games gotten too expensive to make?

To answer these questions, we spoke to cross section of people from around the industry to get a handle on the true "State of the MMO". We spoke to SOE President John Smedley, ZeniMax Online Studios General Manager Matt Firor, Themis Group CEO Alexander Macris, GamerDNA.com Director of Community Sanya Weathers, EVE Online Game Designer Chantel Zuurmond, IGN PC Executive Editor Steve Butts and the former Executive Producer of Star Trek Online Daron Stinnett to get their thoughts on all these issues and much more.

Read the article here.

I would have read the article had this name not been listed...

.. and the former Executive Producer of Star Trek Online Daron Stinnett ...

What is that forum cliche... oh right,

"I stopped right there."

Well I can't blame this entirely on Stinnett, Smed was the first for me to stop reading, but decided to give it a pass...

"It seems like many people learned the wrong lessons from WoW," commented Sanya Weathers, formerly of Mythic and now Director of Community Relations at GamerDNA.com. "[They] are busy spending ungodly amounts of money on what amounts to feature creep with bonus graphic bloat."

Her deadpan delivery aside, it's become a valid point that many in the industry agree with. The simple fact is that World of Warcraft is an accessible game, both in gameplay and system requirements, and most of the forgotten MMOs of yesteryear failed at one or both of those things.

The basic fact is that all these trends are being driven by exponentially growing development costs. MMOs were once merely expensive; now they're multi-million dollar endeavors that dwarf some movie productions. The risk is huge at this price point, and investors need to take whatever precautions they can against failure. That means big budget games are less likely to try anything unproven.

Well the gameplay of WoW is not my thing 2 things they did that sets them a side from other games coming out now is the low system requirements meaning most 5-8 year PC can play it, and second it the fully customizable UI, I don't know of any game that has a scripting component of the UI that the end user can access.

One of the MMO's I still play has alot of the models/textures it had then It came out in 2002, and a lot of them still look good IMO, there has been a few articles about the future of graphics and how to progress and one said that a lot of games are spending a hugh portion of it's cost on graphical content.

While I  do enjoy a story line to games, I get feed up with the way most simple quests are done, I don't want to read a NPC's Life story for every little quest that tells me to go kill 20 rats, I rather go to an NPC and all he says to me is "Hey you I will make it worth your while if you go kill 20 rats" and away ago. Ok I still like some of the Story Line quests that explain the game world.

Interesting story, only breezed through it right now, but a couple of comments kind of stood out:

I think we're seeing the emergence of a massive amount of non-traditional MMOs, the Barbie.coms, the Club Penguins," said Smedley. "The emergence of the much more casual player into the MMO-space."

I disagree with Smedley on this one. I think what we are seeing is the first generation MMO core getting older and not having the time to dedicate to the MMO like before now that families, jobs, paychecks and bills have a larger priority.

"I think horror will be a big genre in this [MMO] space; I know that's something we're looking at," said Smedley.

Really? This is the first time I know of that Smedley has mentioned this. Anyone else have anymore info? I know posters on here before have mentioned how much they would like a horror MMO.

Originally posted by Dracus

I would have read the article had this name not been listed...

 

What is that forum cliche... oh right,

"I stopped right there."

Well I can't blame this entirely on Stinnett, Smed was the first for me to stop reading, but decided to give it a pass...

 

.. and the former Executive Producer of Star Trek Online Daron Stinnett ...

Well since you didn't read it, I'll share this gem with you. Those of you that followed STO, may get a chuckel out of the following.

"However, it may be about more than "cajones". Sometimes an IP just doesn't allow the kind of freedom a developer needs, and it isn't always because of the licensor. Stinnett's last project was Star Trek Online, where he constantly marveled at the amount of flexibility they were given to do what they wanted. The question then becomes, will the hardcore fans accept it?"

Where's Dana moving on to?

HIs is one of the few voices that comes across as both unbiased and informative in MMO journalism.

Originally posted by BaronJuJu

. . .

 "I think horror will be a big genre in this [MMO] space; I know that's something we're looking at," said Smedley.

Really? This is the first time I know of that Smedley has mentioned this. Anyone else have anymore info? I know posters on here before have mentioned how much they would like a horror MMO.

  

 

This follows what SOE has been pushing for every year.  More veriety of genres in thier mix of game for the Station Pass. They have Fantasy covered 3 times over with EQ, EQ2 and Vanguard, Sci-fi with SWG, Matrix and Planetside, Spy with the Agancy, Super Hero with DC Universe Online and Family with Freerealm.

Smedley is probaly starting to stump for a new secret MMO that is in developement.  At any rate, for SOE, its quanity over quality.  Lets just hope they start to see the error of this with Blizzards example.

Originally posted by boinged

Where's Dana moving on to?

HIs is one of the few voices that comes across as both unbiased and informative in MMO journalism.

Somewhat onto the "dark side" I've gone. You might have seen the announcement about Jeff Anderson's company Play Hard Sports. I'm there now as Network Director.

Originally posted by Keogh

Well since you didn't read it, I'll share this gem with you. Those of you that followed STO, may get a chuckel out of the following.

"However, it may be about more than "cajones". Sometimes an IP just doesn't allow the kind of freedom a developer needs, and it isn't always because of the licensor. Stinnett's last project was Star Trek Online, where he constantly marveled at the amount of flexibility they were given to do what they wanted. The question then becomes, will the hardcore fans accept it?"

And from the posting of others (and thanks to them too), I'm glad that I didn't read it.

I think that question should have been, "When will developers stop thinking what is best for a given IP and actually engage the community of the IP?"

What is it with these developers.  How come we can only get the developers of dead or dieing MMOs to post this sort of information.

Its crazy,  but you never see WoW developers telling us what players want.  All of those other developers seem to be thinking the industry is going in one direction but WoW is doing things completely differant.

You can't say Microtransactions are going to kill subscription based for one reason.  With the way subscription based MMOs go.  You subscribe to it and never have to deal with the transaction really except to set it up initially.  With Microtransaction you are going to be presented with the 'Do you really want to do this Option.'  Every time you make one.    Like,  If I made a MT today tomarrow I would be less likely to do it.
As in I spent 7 bucks yesterday can I justify doing it again today.

Regarding IPs.  The fact is there are many more current MMOs based on IPs that have been failures or becoming failures than even MMOs that aren't based on an IP at all. 

I think basing a MMO off of a movie based IP is even riskier than using a home grown IP specifically for the MMO. 

In the realm of IP based MMOs  WoW vs SWG/LotR/Matrix/Star Trek  wow seems to be the only one based off of a game.  Which is why I think WAR will be a huge success. 

I also think MMOs based off of Shadowrun, MechWarrior and Halo would be huge successes.  I think people are looking a good MMOFPS.  I bet if you took PlanetSide technology and put it behind a Halo MMO you would have a game that could potentionally hurt WoW.   ShadowRun and Mechwarrior would be good because they are SCI FI oriented but with a lot of fantasy elements.

In general I don't think developers know what we want.  The biggest thing players have been asking for lately is 'more options'  with the developers they seem to link more options with more ways to grind.  By more options I mean.  When I get my character to max level and fairly well equiped I don't want the the end game to be the choice of grinding gear/gold or just PvP. 

At this point I should have the option of social progression.  Meaning I need to be able to make my character known in the world.  This is why I think MMos are getting too massive.  WoW has millions of players but how many of those players know more than a hundred people or are known by more than a hundred people.  The only character I think of is Leeeeroy Jeeenkiiiins!!!   But that is because of youTube exploits not ingame exploits.

I used to play DAoC.  Way back in the day before spell crafting.  On Nimue there was a nightshade named Jander who terrorized everybody in the game.  He was known because of his reputation in game not because of his board warrior skills.   At this time NS were probably the hardest class to PvP with but this guy or guys managed to kill everybody. 

In other words I really think there is room for small scale MMOs where players don't want to be just another Forsaken rogue or Night Elf Hunter.   

MMOs have really lost that RPG feel because your character cannot permanently affect the world.  Jander didn't change the world phsically but anybody who played DAoC during that time can probably remember what a terror that character was.  Really the feeling was not unlike UO where PKing was rampant.  You were either looking for this one individual to try your skill or hoping your stealth ability was better than his so you wouldn't get your face kicked in.

"It's pretty bleak right now!" explained Daron Stinnett, formerly Executive Producer of the ill-fated Star Trek Online. "If you take a look at the games in the shadow of WoW, you'll find a pack of MMOs that have managed to hold onto one or two hundred thousand subscribers."

Right away, essentially the first line of the article, there is a problem. In my company they would call it "managing expectations", most people would call it a perception issue. When MMOs first got started it was almost like you couldn't fail. Why? Because the expectation was that they would. So simply by staying in business every month, you were considered a sucess. It seemed that most studios planned small, and as long as you did that, you would do better than expected.

This largely held true until the release of WoW, though I suppose the fall started with buyout of Verant by SOE and the development of SWG, but I digress. Prior to WoW, the most sucessful game was EQ, with half a million subs. After that came a smattering of games with maybe 200k. These games were basically the titans of the genre. And it's not like they weren't making money. It's pretty simple math really, even at $10 a pop, if you've got 100k subs well that's 1 million dollars a month in revenue. That's pretty friggin impressive. You can get a lot done with a million dollars a month rolling in, and as long as you didn't sink some massive amount in at the beginning you could expect a fairly quick return.

WoW comes along, and honestly the only thing it brought to MMOs that was original was accessiblity and the massive Blizzard name. That was enough to dominate the genre even if the numbers hugely over-inflated in most people's mind(only 2 million of those subs are from North America. Very few of the big NA hits before WoW ever tried to go into South Korea, which should just be renamed the Republic of Blizzard). 

And now everyone sees these huge monthly numbers rolling in and is says, "I can get a slice of that pie, I'll just throw 100 mil at it and come back in 4 years and collect 10x that". What studios need to realize is that WoW is so far beyond every other MMO that you can't get a slice of that. Blizzard essentially has it's own pie. When you try to take it away, you aren't just facing massive numbers, Blizzard has all the cards and every one of them is an ace. They're fully entrenched in Asian markets most American gimmicks can't reach. They fully own and controll what was already hugely sucessful IP, and the audience of that IP by it's very nature already have computers connected to the internet, something that can't be said about any non-PC game IP. They were a well known, sucessful, and almost universally loved multiplayer game maker from the beginning. Basically, no one else is Blizzard, and no one else really could be except maybe Valve.

But if you ignore WoW, the MMO market is virtually unchanged. There's plenty of room for MMOs with a good idea and proper execution to do well and maybe even do very well. Ironically, Eve is one of those games, a sucess according to everyone, even though it's numbers aren't much different from those of the "failed" MMOs. The difference is only in how much money was spent making them, and how much the guy spending the money expected to get back.

This thread here is already a much more interesting read than that article.

What does it really contain ? A general request for "quality", a request for low hardware requirements, and the analysis that MMOs are meant to be games where you can "flee reallife". Have I forgotten anything important ?

Thats all nice and dandy, but from the self proclaimed elite of MMO development, I had hoped for way more.

Like:

- no more boring "killing X of Y" quests

- more intelligent combat

- more non-combat content

- MMOs as a world simulation

- MMOs as a social environment

Originally posted by Adamantine

This thread here is already a much more interesting read than that article.

What does it really contain ? A general request for "quality", a request for low hardware requirements, and the analysis that MMOs are meant to be games where you can "flee reallife". Have I forgotten anything important ?

Thats all nice and dandy, but from the self proclaimed elite of MMO development, I had hoped for way more.

Like:

- no more boring "killing X of Y" quests

- more intelligent combat

- more non-combat content

- MMOs as a world simulation

- MMOs as a social environment

 

To be fair to those I interviewed, the interviews were not about the state of game design, but the state of the genre as a business. Most the people involved were not designers. I tried to get a good cross section of people for it, but the goal was really to look at what people need to do on a higher scale. The closest we came to design was the innovation/evolution question, which was really addressed from an overall strategy point of view.

Soon as I saw Daron Stinnett's name I was hessitant to read the article.  He made such a jerk of himself on the STO boards.  The man clearly has conflicting views of what is needed in an MMO to attract players and pretty much disagreed with everyone what STO needed.   I was surprised that he actually made a good point about the Wii.

Smedley can always point out SOE failures can't he, too bad he can't develop a bit of foresight.

I think Alex Macris is completely wrong about the subscription model fading away.  Why would anyone play a game where the big spenders get all the great stuff?  What is the point of spending time developing a character when someone with money can come along and exceed all your time spent by throwing some cash the developers way?  I think Mr. Macris is in for a rude surprise.  I know that most of my friends I play MMO's with would never touch a microtransaction game, not when subscription games still exist.

Personally, I want a game that does not put your character into a restricted skill line by using rigid class structures.    Guess I was spoiled starting out with UO and AC1, both skill based games.  I know they are harder to balance, but the extra freedom to choose is definitely worth it in my opinion.

I have been playing Eve lately and like their method of learning skills while either on of off line.  At least I can learn anything I want as long as I have time to devote to learn it.

mmos are corrupted to the core now. You can buy gold from GOld Farmers. You have bots. the Free to Play are out to grab your money. The Pay to play are filled with people who will do anything to get the things they want.

MMOs were great at one point but now I've grown to dislike them because of their many flaws. The fact that MMOs causes you to become addicted and causes you to Isolate yourself is reason enough for me to stop playing them. Just incase you ask why i still hang out on fan sites every once in a while. It is because I hoping for something different.

Originally posted by Quethel

"It's pretty bleak right now!" explained Daron Stinnett, formerly Executive Producer of the ill-fated Star Trek Online. "If you take a look at the games in the shadow of WoW, you'll find a pack of MMOs that have managed to hold onto one or two hundred thousand subscribers."

Right away, essentially the first line of the article, there is a problem.

...

But if you ignore WoW, the MMO market is virtually unchanged. There's plenty of room for MMOs with a good idea and proper execution to do well and maybe even do very well. Ironically, Eve is one of those games, a sucess according to everyone, even though it's numbers aren't much different from those of the "failed" MMOs. The difference is only in how much money was spent making them, and how much the guy spending the money expected to get back.

100k to 200k users is considering struggling to survive by those such as Stinnett... but yet what about Eve-Online?  Eve-Online is struggling, a failure?  Bah

Good read, nice article

Good luck with your future Dana

Originally posted by JYCowboy

 

Originally posted by BaronJuJu

. . .

 "I think horror will be a big genre in this [MMO] space; I know that's something we're looking at," said Smedley.

Really? This is the first time I know of that Smedley has mentioned this. Anyone else have anymore info? I know posters on here before have mentioned how much they would like a horror MMO.

  

 

This follows what SOE has been pushing for every year.  More veriety of genres in thier mix of game for the Station Pass. They have Fantasy covered 3 times over with EQ, EQ2 and Vanguard, Sci-fi with SWG, Matrix and Planetside, Spy with the Agancy, Super Hero with DC Universe Online and Family with Freerealm.

 

Smedley is probaly starting to stump for a new secret MMO that is in developement.  At any rate, for SOE, its quanity over quality.  Lets just hope they start to see the error of this with Blizzards example.

I agree, SOE's model is definitely quantity over quality. The more genres they can pump into that Station Pass the more folks will be hesitant to leave for other companies.  I'm curious though to see what kind of horror MMO they were thinking of, known IP or original?

Most seemed to believe that the two models could coexist, but it is notable that while some argued purely for microtransactions, not a soul dared to say subscriptions would win the day.

"I firmly believe that this space is going more towards the velvet rope, microtransactions," said Smedley. "Subscriptions will always be there as a component of that, but it won't always be there as the primary revenue generator in this space."

I'm really curious as to why some "industry leaders" feel RMT's are the future of MMO's - particularily for the western market. What exactly do they base this conclusion on? Is it simply to focus on games that attract the largest audience with casual gamers or do they anticipate that they can direct the market through their influence to make RMT's the industry standard - and therefore ensure greater profit.

For me personally I feel like this is what the industry wants - not neccessarily the consumer.

Originally posted by Suvroc

Most seemed to believe that the two models could coexist, but it is notable that while some argued purely for microtransactions, not a soul dared to say subscriptions would win the day.

"I firmly believe that this space is going more towards the velvet rope, microtransactions," said Smedley. "Subscriptions will always be there as a component of that, but it won't always be there as the primary revenue generator in this space."

I'm really curious as to why some "industry leaders" feel RMT's are the future of MMO's - particularily for the western market. What exactly do they base this conclusion on? Is it simply to focus on games that attract the largest audience with casual gamers or do they anticipate that they can direct the market through their influence to make RMT's the industry standard - and therefore ensure greater profit.

For me personally I feel like this is what the industry wants - not neccessarily the consumer.

There also is the whole allure of a "Free" game with the "option" of paying small fees for items to use in the games. They will quickly find out that they are paying the same, if not more, than the standard monthly subs for their games.