The MMO community is purely a different breed of gamer, and an entirely separate market. 

I was getting 20 gift requests a day from friends on Facebook, and I hadn't even touched the game.  One day my mother called and asked me to join and accept her neighbor request so she could expand her farm.  Soon I find out that a lot of people who gave me crap for my past gaming indulgence were now actively playing Farmville.  

I played around with it for a while; planting 2 day crops, spending 20 minutes every other day, and then I needed more neighbors to expand my farm.  I head to the Zynga forums per advice from a friend and recruited 10 people.  Wow what an eye opener.  Some of these people are just as addicted to Farmville as you'd find a person being addicted to any MMO.  They spend 12 hours or more a day spamming collections, and commenting about "stalking the feed"; ie. refreshing the Facebook feed over and over for hours to get clickie rewards from their 300+ random person neighbors they are constantly adding.

My theory..  when people disconnected from Myspace in favor of Facebook, they lost a lot of self expression.  Farmville is all about vanity, and is one of the rare places on Facebook where you can have a visual identity.  Go read the Zynga forums for a while and you'll find people claiming to spend $100 a week on junk that they delete two weeks later.  Others 'play to win', and be better than their friends.  The whole thing fascinated me from a gaming standpoint .

Truth.. these social gamers are not constantly searching for a better gaming experience outside of social networks.  I once thought that Farmville was a gateway MMO, but I retract that idea.  These are real people, and they want to remain real people.  Their motives for gaming are completely different than the standard MMO gamer, but Farmville found the right combination of loot and rewards.. much the same, huh?  

The article was a fine read. Maybe not the best piece ever, but exceptional by mmo journalism standards. So Zynga gets to kick the indie slackers around in the ratings? Good for them and good for us. I consider more competition a very good thing.

And it's true, Farmville is different from you run of the mill mmo. For one thing, in Farmville you get showered with gifts from your fellow players, as opposed being showered with gank squads and insults, which is the norm in all too many contemporary mmos. There are no 6+ hour raids with 20+ mouth breathing troglodytes on Teamspeak. No competition worth mentioning. You're in that game for the fun of it.

The fact that something as rudimentary gameplay wise as Farmville attracts numbers that easily beat most mmos by two magnitudes on the decimal scale just goes to prove that either a) mmos are a niche market or b) mmo developers are doing a bloody rotten job. Take your pick.

Life isn't static.  Sorry you feel like it should be but the facts are things can and do change.  I have been a gamer since the early 70's and believe me many changes have come about in gaming.   Learn to adapt.

I've been against F2P games since they first showed their ugly faces and this only hardens my heart towards them. I love P2P games becuase you get a solid game. Sure I pay more but I have a WAY better time.

In my opinion what we're seeing isn't the death of P2P games but rather a mainstream switch. F2P is pulling in numbers because it attracts cheapminded people. However there will always be those people who will want to spend more for a better game. F2P is becoming your average Honda/Ford of gaming, P2P will become your Lexus/Jaguar of gaming. In the end those that want to pay for Luxury will and those that don't wont.

To be honest..

If there was a new good finished game that has been released in the past 4 years right now that I am not burnt out on (EQ2, WoW, EvE)  I might pay a script.

As it stands, Free games like the brower based ones are the way to go.

I have been burnt by the last few years of releases and will not sub anymore,

Hrica (aka, Tessie, aka Vlatava, aka Voila) has retired from pay to play MMOs for lack of .....well a decent, finsihed product.

Suprize me EA, Square Soft, bring this old man out of retirment.

Originally posted by brostyn

Originally posted by Raph

I haven't seen any numbers for Aion subscribers broken out by territory. Does it have millions in NA/Europe?

LOTRO's what, a million or so?

That really is not "rising tide for everyone" sorts of results. Better, but 2-3x improvement in 7-8 years?

More telling, only two examples?

The marketshare has been increasing every year. What's that saying?

Despite the publishers best attempt to bore us to death with WoW clones, the market is still increasing.

DDO just announced a 500% revenue increase. The money is there. You just have to know how to get it. Creating WoW clones won't do it. You think creating Farmville clones will?

Hey, at least when this doesn't pan out the company won't be out millions of dollars. I'm kinda glad to see the WoW clone publishers moving on to the "next big thing".

Oh yes, getting rid of the clonemakers and every other bad MMO company would be an extremely positive thing for the industry. Maybe SOE will go make Starville where you can space farm mynocks for milk or something.

Then in my dream they sell off all of their MMO properties to smaller developers that bring real care and concern for the playerbase to the properties, starting with the removal of the RMTs, then rolling back SWG and Planetside to their heyday versions.

Wow, just wow, and I don't mean world of warcraft!  Those people with the fear of facebook games make me laugh so hard I almost had another heart attack, and I've had a lot!  I just recently got into the facebook games, like 2 weeks ago, and you can literally spend about 1 minute on each game, sometimes less sometimes more.  What got me into them is the fact that many of them are nothing more than the old MUD's we used to play with graphics, thats it!  Nothing new or original, its been around since before anyone knew what a MMO was.  And the majority of people playing these games are not shelling out their money, they are playing them cause 1. It's free, 2. it's quick and can do multiple ones and not get bored with just the same ole thing of one game, 3. it's social where the likes of old MMO's forced you to be social as well unlike the solitary lifestyle games now a days are shoving down our throats, 4. it also shows that the majority doesn't give a damn about the best super graphics eva crap.  Seriously when the hell are these developers going to wake up, the people that scream on the forums about better graphics this, better engine that do not make up but the smallest percentage of the millions out there that would gladly pay a monthly subscription if they just concentrated on a game that would draw you in, and make you keep playing over and over and over...etc

When developers get a clue, that is when I will stand up and notice, not when they panic because everything they thought about gaming is WRONG!

MMO: " Browser based social games took our jobs!!!...THEYTOOKAAARJAAABBBS!!"

Originally posted by BarCrow

MMO: " Browser based social games took our jobs!!!...THEYTOOKAAARJAAABBBS!!"

That was funny, and so true!

Good article Mr. Jennings.

Many of the points of your article I have been thinking about myself for the past year or so.

As pessimistic as it sounds, I forsee no new "great" MMOs being released ever again. I believe this because great MMOs were created when Developers, Artists, and Players controlled MMO Gaming. These people no longer do.

Investors, Accountants, and marketing Suits control MMOs now, and they wouldn't know a MMO if it hit them broadside, nor would they care what it was if it didn't make them a tremedous profit. MMOs are an Art form, not a get rich quick scheme.... and the MMO Industry is now run by and paid for by the Suits that only care about short term profit.

MMOs are all about long term. Until the suits figure this out MMO gaming will NOT be MMO gaming, even if they call it that. The problem is this... once the love of money infects an Art form, that Art form dies, or is critically wounded. Only after decades, sometimes centuries does that Art form once again gain the respect and attention it deserves. This pattern in human behavior has been repeated countless times in history. I seriously doubt the human race is going to finally get past this shortcoming now at this precise moment.

Thank you for your article, at least you Sir have attempted to inform the Players about the changes to MMO Gaming. I have known this is the case for months now, at least someone that can publish articles is now admitting it as well.

Thank you to those Developers, Artists, and Players that are fighting this trend in the MMO Industry world itself, at the Conventions, and on the internet. I hope you win the fight.

This is a basically an enviromental niche thing. Farmville, and iphone apps (very in vogue with my family) occupy a certain niche. I very much doubt that MMO players will stop playing LoTR, WAR, WoW etc to play Farmville; although we are all un-doubtable doing something game realated at work - even if it is posting :)

Having got a taste for certain online games, will there be a cross over to traditional MMO? Well hopefully, but the trick would be to create games that exist on multiple platforms. Eve is currently doing this (and if they are cute, they will have the whole game out in a browser before long); clearly subs would go through the roof when they do that.

Consider a new game, you can play the basic parts (in low rez) free via a browers, but the full monty game is via a PC/Console. All those noobs running around just waiting to be pwned by gamer with paid for clients - fresh meat boys :)

I totally agree with Scott's conlusion on his article. FarmVille and other social games won't kill the market of MMOs, cause they hit a completely different crowd.

Sure money will be a very importend factor and prolly draw many developers towards farmville style games.

But im convinced there will always be enough game developers who wanne make a real game and not only for money.

Maybe this even result in getting back to old days and with less money, but some developers make games with real innovation and fun, and not been influenced by publishers who pay there bills.

Also posible that many famrville players in few years want more and gonne look for real games and millions more starting to play hopefully game like Darkfall:P

I had written about it before in my topic "There's a war out there."

It got locked and I got issued a warning.

In my thread I had descripted a future analog to the french revolution, in wich developers/publishers would exploit the consumers "lack of awareness" to the limit. Everyone wants a piece of the pie and each one discretelly grabs a bigger piece noticing no repercussions the next time they go for a bigger piece, eventually they are rushing for it, indiscriminatelly, no rules, no moral, or ethics.

Its like ZT Online on east and Farmville here on west. It takes someone greedy enough to go for such a big piece of the pie that everyone else think "ok, thats enough, it was all fine when we all got our share, but, this way is not manageable anymore, this way we will self destruct".

Do we want something that is interesting enough to attract us?

or

Do we want to be given an out of game incentive to play?

Real world issues will always have some impact on what we play. The money a game costs can be an important factor in which we choose out of the bunch especially for adults who are practiced in constantly monitoring their expenditure and managing the budgets.

But, what this article is saying to me is much deeper than this. Games are a non-essential purchase. They are not food or clothing or something that we must have in order to live.

Thus, money is important but our personal interest level is much more important simply because we choose to play games rather than have to. So out-of-game incentives to play, whether real or artificial, are nowhere near as important as a game being good in its own right.

In the dark ages of computer gaming, games like JetSet Willy, Jet Pack, Lemmings all broke the mould cast by Pong, the ubiquitous tennis game at the start.

MUD thru EverQuest thru WoW to today's MMO have extended that sort of ground breaking expansion from simple to intriguing & complex by introducing the most dynamic factor of all .. People!

Every time games have evolved, they have not become simpler, they have become more complex. Sure, yes: better graphics, nicer sound, more helpful & easier to use clients. But the actual evolution has always been along the lines of deeper, more profound, more puzzling, more intriguing, more immersive gameplay.

We play games .. all games, in one way or another, for whatever particular aspect we personally prefer, to stimulate out minds.

The real problem with intrinsic as opposed to extrinsic (which stupid jargon I rephrased with my post title) is whether or not the game developers will recognise that ..

We have a need for games that is motivated by our desire to learn!

"Intrinsic versus Extrinsic?" is, at the base of it, the question of the short sighted accountant focussing only on the profit line. You have to pay attention to that profit line or your game will fail financially.

The problem is, that if you focus on money forgetting the real issue, that a game must satisfy our real desire for interesting games to play, then eventually you will lose your customer because you will lose their attention.

This is what has been happening in the MMO market for the last 5 to 10 years. Developers, admittedly forced to pay heed to the real concern of making a financially viable game, have been losing sight of our, the players', need to have variety, depth, puzzle and innovation in the games we play.

With the success of WoW, the plaguiaristic copy cat of the MMO world, game developers have seem to have lost their motivation to design and write interesting, exciting and evolving games.

The game industry has stuck to the standard formulae and is boring us to death.

What? You are not bored of your game yet? Well .. you will be.

Sooner or later you will want a different game to play, or a better game to play.

Sooner or later, the same game with different graphics will not be enough for you!

i dont play farmville, i shouldn't be posting here. most of my friends play..hmm...maybe i should try it out now to see what so great about it..

I've never enjoyed Farmville, or any game in that same vein. I find them boring and repetative at best. Sure, there are things in "world-y" MMOs, that some people could say the same thing about. However, I think the differentiating element here is that a "true" MMO provides you with a more encapsilating experience. That is that you are part of a larger world, and going even further into the hardcore/sandbox genre, you can infludence it. This is escapism, what I believe most MMO fans are seeking, and that is something that Farmville and it's ilk will never be able to do.

TJKazmar in the first page of this thread stated, "...these player-watchers may come to want more than games like Farmville have to offer. They may seek out the world that we know and love, and it will be the task of developers to model games that bring the 'new' generation of gamers up to par with what we are used to."

However, I would add that if developers, in seeking new revenues from these "player-watchers" dumb down the MMOs we've all come to play and love it could damage this entire genre of gaming for quite some time, if not all gaming.

Personally, I think a person should be able to play whatever game they want, but I also believe that Farmville and "World-y" MMOs can never be combined into something that both sides will enjoy. I think they cater to two completely different groups of people, and trying to combine them into one wholistic model is folly.