Ever wonder how big MMOs are going to get by 2012? Who about what MMO company is also working on Facebook games? At the MMOs panel at this year's Comic Con, our own Carolyn Koh found those answers and more.

The MMO Panel at Comic Con this year was chaired by George Chronis of DFC Intelligence, a video games and entertainment research and analyst firm who put the members of the expert panel through their paces. On the panel were Min Kim, director of Game Operations for Nexon America, Hendrik Strandberg, Executive Director of Product Development for Turbine, John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment, Leo Olebe, Marketing Director for Bioware, and Dave Brevik, Studio Director of Gazillion.

George kicked things off with a recital of statistics drawn from their research, one of which was the projection that between 2008 and 2014, the number of players of online games would increase by 45% to about 516 million players. The questions to the panel revolved around the challenges they faced, the changes they hope to wrought and the changes the industry was going through as the MMO genre begins to mature.

Read the MMOs Panel Report

While it is probably good to look at all aspects of the market, throwing facebook games out there as a MMO competitors is more humorous than anything else.  You are lucky to get a player to play a facebook game for 30 days let alone the 90 days for most MMO's.  So you have to get your money fast.  Secondly you are extremely limited in what you can do with a game in a browser.  The browser maket is a tough one to get into as it is very competitive and what is hot one week is cold the next.

I am still waiting for a studio to show some hutzpah and design a decent MMO outside the EQ/Wow model.   We will have to wait and see if Bioware's offering will provide at least some competition in the market.  I don't see anything that is announced challenging Blizzard in the near future.

 "World of Warcraft proved to us that Easy was what the majority of players wanted." Said John and Leo summed up the recipe for success succinctly, "The goal we have," he said, "is to capture the core, but captivate the masses."

Not sure what anyone is saying here.  Is it: let's all do what WoW is doing soe we can "capture the core" and make lots of money?  Is this a shameless admission, that because of WoW's incredible numbers, that they're throwing out originality to try to duplicate these numbers?

/confused

Is there a place for creativity in MMOs?  Is it worth targetting a niche audience?  How can I access a designer to share ideas?  Where's my niche, or am just going to have to resign myself to playing WoW clones or gank-fests?

Originally posted by Ozmodan

While it is probably good to look at all aspects of the market, throwing facebook games out there as a MMO competitors is more humorous than anything else. 

 Why, wel first of all I don't use or play facebook, but still WHY do you feel it is humorous?

You are lucky to get a player to play a facebook game for 30 days let alone the 90 days for most MMO's.

Again you are saying something I read so many times from people not into MMORPG's that can not understand how people can play this genre, so what makes you think people will NOT play facebook games for 30 or more day's?

So you have to get your money fast.  Secondly you are extremely limited in what you can do with a game in a browser.  The browser maket is a tough one to get into as it is very competitive and what is hot one week is cold the next.

Compare browser games 3 years ago with them now, you just have to think alittle outside the box, I will fully admit I am very suprised at the quality of them, again I am not into them but occasionally I test or try one, just to find out they not for me, but that doesn't make them bad games.

Let's face the fact that regardless what market someone is in, it's always hard.

I am still waiting for a studio to show some hutzpah and design a decent MMO outside the EQ/Wow model.   We will have to wait and see if Bioware's offering will provide at least some competition in the market.  I don't see anything that is announced challenging Blizzard in the near future.

I will admit I have become more excited about SW:Tor due to the full voice overs, but still just excited in a GAME way not so much in a MMORPG way.

Overall the panel makes me question where MMORPG's would have been if either WOW was never made or if WOW had simply failed. I would think still in it's niche, just better polished, more content and even more choices. So it sure would be in it's niche cause I've seen the majority does not like to much choices.

I also believe something created out of passion will become much more worth then something created just to creat more money.So CCP you have my admost respect, even though I am not even playing your game. If only gamecompany's like SOE would do it the CCP way instead of the majority "I want it ALL and want it NOW" way they might have been the true market leaders instead of just being market leaders in amount of games only, unfortunaly inpatient comes on all lvl's

One more thing I really hope that by 2012 this genre has indeed expanded more, but also hope it has changed from what it is today.

Originally posted by Stradden  The questions to the panel revolved around the challenges they faced, the changes they hope to wrought and the changes the industry was going through as the MMO genre begins to mature. 

Ugh.  Talk about your typical short-sighted, presentist naivete.  The genre has LONG since matured.  Quit being so damn slow and thinking the MMO marketspace is "new" and just "beginning to mature".  It was maturing back in 2002, after UO and EQ had been out for years.  The genre has since EXPLODED by leaps and bounds (with 10s of millions of patrons!), having matured just fine, and it'll probably continue to grow.  But saying the genre is "beginning to mature" is just hilariously poor thinking.

Let's see: the huge open world Vanguard model has failed; the Darkfall model is pure vaporware & boredom, the nichest of the nichests. EVE online is succesfull because its high quality, but is a case apart, there will be no new-EVE but EVE.

Well, we should have into account the korean grindfesterings, they will have always an audience, but they are the same game with differing names.

The model WoW-WAR-AoC-EQ2 is showings its efficiency. It is what people wish. Give it to them. The panel is right.

At least I will follow playing EVE, with such no restrictions. The Future of MMO's is what they say. No way out.

Originally posted by Reklaw

 

Overall the panel makes me question where MMORPG's would have been if either WOW was never made or if WOW had simply failed. I would think still in it's niche, just better polished, more content and even more choices. So it sure would be in it's niche cause I've seen the majority does not like to much choices.

I also believe something created out of passion will become much more worth then something created just to creat more money.So CCP you have my admost respect, even though I am not even playing your game. If only gamecompany's like SOE would do it the CCP way instead of the majority "I want it ALL and want it NOW" way they might have been the true market leaders instead of just being market leaders in amount of games only, unfortunaly inpatient comes on all lvl's

One more thing I really hope that by 2012 this genre has indeed expanded more, but also hope it has changed from what it is today.

What I feel will evolve from MMO's is we will see generes form within the whole.  MMORPG, MMOG, MMORTS, MMOFPS, MMOFlightSim, etc. etc. will become more defined and past offerings will find new identity among these peers.  With this, it will become difficult to compare 2 games carrering the MMO tag.

/agree

Watching APB, Global Agenda & The Agency is obvious that a new genre, the MMOFPS has settled among us definitely.

It´s only a matter of a short time that we see the MMOFlightSim with Starships, jets & freighters. I even believe that we will see a kind of Midway MMO or something of the kind, in the vein of CoD4. Time to time.

• "One of the items is Chatroom Moderator. You can become a moderator and do things like kick people out... and people buy it!"
  

• "You'll throw a bus on your PC and your friend on a console will catch it. We'll be taking stuff out of the game and into the social space."
  

• Min was of the opinion that games would turn more and more to bite-sized content....
  
  

• In reference to the hardcore MMO, an audience member alluded to the early days of EQ and asked if MMOs were watered down these days and if Devs would ever go back to the "hard fun" model. Hendrik answered, "Play Asheron's Call," to the amusement of the audience.
  

• "World of Warcraft proved to us that Easy was what the majority of players wanted."
  
  

• John and Leo summed up the recipe for success succinctly, "The goal we have," he said, "is to capture the core, but captivate the masses."

Looks like we've got it all in this article: Item shops, consolization, casual gameplay, departure from the deep, difficult games of yesteryear, everything quick and easy, references to World of Warcraft, and churning out games to satisfy the masses.

That's the future of MMORPGs, eh? All of this directly from the mouths of captains of the MMORPG industry, who additionally ridiculed someone who asked whether or not a return to the classics would be a viable direction to go in.

I can't say I'm surprised. Did anyone else die a little inside when they read this? I certainly did.

Originally posted by DoktorTeufel

• "One of the items is Chatroom Moderator. You can become a moderator and do things like kick people out... and people buy it!"
  

• "You'll throw a bus on your PC and your friend on a console will catch it. We'll be taking stuff out of the game and into the social space."
  

• Min was of the opinion that games would turn more and more to bite-sized content....
  
  

• In reference to the hardcore MMO, an audience member alluded to the early days of EQ and asked if MMOs were watered down these days and if Devs would ever go back to the "hard fun" model. Hendrik answered, "Play Asheron's Call," to the amusement of the audience.
  

• "World of Warcraft proved to us that Easy was what the majority of players wanted."
  
  

• John and Leo summed up the recipe for success succinctly, "The goal we have," he said, "is to capture the core, but captivate the masses."

 

Looks like we've got it all in this article: Item shops, consolization, casual gameplay, departure from the deep, difficult games of yesteryear, everything quick and easy, references to World of Warcraft, and churning out games to satisfy the masses.

 

That's the future of MMORPGs, eh? All of this directly from the mouths of captains of the MMORPG industry, who additionally ridiculed someone who asked whether or not a return to the classics would be a viable direction to go in.

 

I can't say I'm surprised. Did anyone else die a little inside when they read this? I certainly did.

I think it just confirms it's getting close to the time for me to "retire" from gaming.

Originally posted by Zorvan 

I think it just confirms it's getting close to the time for me to "retire" from gaming.

I'm starting to feel the same way.

In the late 1970s, computer geeks were already creating fundamental adventure games and dungeon crawlers on university mainframes. During the 1980s, interactive fiction (text adventures) really took off, and so did Rogue-like games. In the late 1980s, the golden age of computer role-playing games began, with the release of SSI Gold Box games such as Pool of Radiance and Champions of Krynn, meant to simulate tabletop RPGs, and also, naturally, the Ultima series.

Also during the late 1980s, the first multi-user dungeons began to appear, and even in their infancy, they were very sandbox-y. The prominent ones included gathering, crafting, intricate spellcasting, complex combat, player-driven economies, customizable houses, mounts, pets, buildings, areas, and cities that players actually shaped through their own actions.

The 1990s continued to see excellent cRPG growth, including continuations of the Ultima series, the Wizardry, Might and Magic and other similar series, the Black Isle line in the mid to late 1990s, and of course, the first noteworthy graphical MMORPG, Ultima Online. Other sandbox games followed in its wake, the most important one for me being Star Wars Galaxies five or six years later.

Thirty years of gaming heritage have now been destroyed  by what I see as three chief factors: The commingling of  console and home computer games (there have been ports back and forth for years, but now almost everything is developed concurrently for both); the prominence of World of Warcraft (which, as stated, proved to everyone that real money is in slopping up watered-down garbage for mass consumption); and last, but not least, as more and more people are able to afford personal computers, computer games and MMORPGs, the overall depth and complexity standard for games is dropping like a stone to appease people who couldn't think their way out of a wet paper sack.

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It's ironic. I left tabletop role-playing games in my childhood in favor of cRPGs and MMORPGs, but developers aren't making many good ones these days (and none at all when it comes to MMORPGs). Looks like it's back to the ultimate freedom of the tabletop one day soon for me.