Originally posted by Elikal

Somehow I have the feeling this is more a pipedream. I have said that many times about so called MMOFPS. A lot of FPS fans just play Team Fortress or any similar game. Maybe Homefront, or whatever and then play that with friends multiplayer. They don't need persistend online worlds. I just don't think there is a big enough market for that.

I don't think you knew of Planetside, that was clearly an MMOFPS.

Planetside Next and Firefall will be MMOFPS too, Huxley was supposed to be one but didn't make it. Blizzard's new MMO project Titan is rumored to veer into that direction.

The Winds of Change can be summed up in a few things:

Playstyle: 

Past - with less tech and latency issues, (target) 1,2,3,4,5 was the epidemy of combat.   Most people playing have tons of time, so more grinding/"pitting yourself against the world to get stronger". 

Present - moving towards the "twitch" mentality supporting a more action oriented game.   Platform based controllers to simulate the same actions with physical movement.  Wider audience and gaming vets now with families (less time) lends to different and more types of focused gameplay. 

Future - Virtual reality.  Laugh if you like.  Greater freedom of character control and progress, allowing more and more to be done in games, from relaxing to stimulating to exciting.   People log in to "feel something" as much as play, escaping from the real world into places with less accountability, responsibility and the redo/undo button so very lacking in RL. 

Theme:

Past: fantasy based mostly riding on the popularity of D&D and Tolkien.  Mostly focused on those with the technology to play them (geeks).   Social aspects geared towards common goals (grouping).

Present: A wider range of themes attempting to broaden the scope of players and reach more audiences.  Fantasy has become the institution.  Sci-fi has roots, but not highly developed ones.  Modern day/realistic present/future coming onto the scene.  Social "MMOs" becoming more prevalent as essentially upgraded chatrooms.

Future: Thematic scope will be broadened to include most every demographic as the tech becomes more and more mainstream.   MUCH higher emphasis on the female gamer and social atmospheres.  "Sim games" where you are the Sim.  City building games you actually live in.  War games that are just as dark and devastating as the actual thing.  Social games where you can be who ever you want to be in a global community.   "Fighting games" that pit you against a theme based world filled with both PC and NPC adversaries, built on the backs of todays MMOs,

What I could really go for right now is for someone to come out with a steampunk based true MMORPG with twitch based action, split-game design for balanced PVE/PVP (changes based on target) in an original graphically-pleasing partially-player-atlering world.  but thats me...

Furthermore, talking about MMOFPS and MMORTS as games that fall out of the categorization, is utter BS. Whatever comes after MMO does not matter. What matters is how the game is being built. Is it really massive? Can you potentially log in and play with thousands of players at the same time, or do you in reality enter an instance with 7 other people, making the game undistinguishable from a standard game+lobby (now a 3D lobby, which is used as the sorry excuse to call it an MMO).

Is the game really massive? Is the world really persistant (instances collapse after use)? Does it matter if you play or not? Can you affect the world? Can you make your mark on it?

These are questions you can start answering in your definition, MMORPG.com, and stop bullshitting around with FPS and RTS arguments, that get nowhere near to the root of the problem.

Changes that are observable:

1. Pricing

2. Platform eg Mobile MMO, Web-based MMO (improving quality), multiplatform etc

3. Hybrid genres eg Firefall (FPS) eg More spg RGP elements such as TOR and some in GW/GW2 etc

4. More Online gaming eg Minecraft etc that feels like a spg/multiplayer sandbox that could become more mmo.

Definitely a lot of room for cross-pollination!

The reason why it is expanding is in direct response to piracy. Many of these MMO-style games would have been released as offline or multiplayer stand alone games. However, since piracy is crippling the PC market, it's easier just to tack on a cash shop and give it away for free.

This is altering games for the worse. An FPS hostage to a cash shop or charging a sub fee will include progression based mechanics to get people to spend money. This has the side effect of making very wide powerbands, where premium players either spending money or time will get hard advantages unrelated to player skill. Same with other games.

It's sad, and I think we are going to see games lose their luster under this new economy.

I want mmorpgs to be like AC1 or AC2 if not i play RPGs but they are changing also look at DA2 i wont buy it, its made for new generation of console players, same go for new mmorpgs i wont buy them or play them, only one i maybe gonne play is xsyon but not sure yet im i thinking of stopping, im rather burned out again(second time sinds 99).

There will change alot more then you sum up here mobile gaming social network games or games where players get more control over character and not game who deside what you must do so devs make games and leave up to you how story go or what to do.

Originally posted by Rasputin

Furthermore, talking about MMOFPS and MMORTS as games that fall out of the categorization, is utter BS. Whatever comes after MMO does not matter. What matters is how the game is being built. Is it really massive? Can you potentially log in and play with thousands of players at the same time, or do you in reality enter an instance with 7 other people, making the game undistinguishable from a standard game+lobby (now a 3D lobby, which is used as the sorry excuse to call it an MMO).

Is the game really massive? Is the world really persistant (instances collapse after use)? Does it matter if you play or not? Can you affect the world? Can you make your mark on it?

These are questions you can start answering in your definition, MMORPG.com, and stop bullshitting around with FPS and RTS arguments, that get nowhere near to the root of the problem.

What this guy said

 Winds of change? What change, majority of mmo's I see seem like they are pissing into the wind, and we all know how that turns out :P

Meh, the only reason why MMO keeps expanding is because of the same reasons that the term RPG kept expanding a decade ago. 

The reason for the change, imo, is twofold.  First it is easier.  Easier for marketers who's knowledge of gaming is probably less than last generations moms lol, and not to mention the bloggers.  Back when Diablo first was released there was a small war, for all intents and purposes, because marketing and bloggers kept calling it an RPG, the console kiddies and fps kiddies called it an RPG because it finally opened the door to another, much higher tier of gaming.  Since the console and fps kiddies outnumber RPG gamers the pathetic bloggers and marketers won.  So, now, you go to buy an RPG for a deep entertaining game and you are lucky if you don't get stuck with trivial crap like DA2.  For these blog sites it makes life easier because they aren't required to spend any time thinking beyond what the publisher's marketing departments tell them to think.

Secondly it is because developers, beyond just being blinded by their greed, don't want to actually work anymore.  Once upon a time graphics were one of the last things people talked about because there are far more important components to a game.  AI being one of the largest components of importance.  When one looks to a Creative Assembly Total War game one of the first things you look for is the competency of the AI because it is not something that the company is known for and has been one of their largest downfalls.  In every shooter single player is the worst part of the game because of the complete lack of AI programming.  This was the truth with the release of Doom and is still the truth concerning Crysis 2.  Now, however, instead of working on the AI, they have taken the length of the game and shredded it to nothing, ignored all AI, and tell you their focus is on the Multiplayer.  What does multiplayer consist of?  Half a dozen map packs and (depending on ISP and platform) the privelege of forking out more money to play.  But, you get actual thinking enemies, too bad its other people being forced to pay to play the role that the developers are supposed to design enemies to do.  In short it is a way for developers to get more money from you while doing less work.

Originally posted by severius

Once upon a time graphics were one of the last things people talked about because there are far more important components to a game.   

lol you are kidding right? Graphics have been valued since the start, trust me. Your suffering from romantic notions here ;)

Jesus, I remember clearly graphics wars between the earliest consoles, through the spectrum 48k vs C64 era, and right through th 90's... Gfx have always been important to people and they have always been prized as much as the gameplay by many.

The aging mmo population is increasingly fruntrated, it wants something new but fears change.... newer players struggle with the tired and traditional mmo grind. I think this is evidenced clearly on boards like these and in new games - where people go ott saying how much better the new game is than the one they just came from, but then go on to suggest how it could improve by becoming more like the old one, beofre getting frustrated and deciding to try something else.... There is a massive nomadic mmo crowd listlessly moving from one new release to the next. But change is inevitable and perceptions and studio investment will gradually have to adapt - mmo evolution has been painfully slow but signs at last are appearing that the gates are slowly opening.....

What it comes down to are some key game-play / life-play factors:

"Player Capability Attenuation" (for lack of a better term).  The difference in levels that restricts the scope of teaming between players.  Apart from the first month of a game's release players will find a great deal of time spent just trying to "level up" to enable participation with others.  Desperately trying to catch up with higher level players so they, and their guilds, can run around either nuking lowbies (PvP) or raiding instances wherever their guild is at in the levelling climb.

The PCA phenomenon has insidious side-effects players keep themselves ignorant of whilst grinding away, the most common being: 

players who don't know how to play their classes in the rush to just level, and

groups/raids who don't know how to team together because they count on a now OP higher-level to just bomb through an instance, no strat involved, and

player dismissal of "lower level" zones and instances having actual game-play value, instead being viewed as chaff/waste to be mown through without thought.

Available Game Play Time.  This is a life factor.  Some people have 24hrs a day to play, some a couple of hours a week.  Contributes to PCA above.  The problem here is that everyones 1 hr of game play time is equal in value, while many game's design devalues the hours of those players who only have a few to spend each week.

Game World Architecture / Design.  A chair is designed for sitting in, a towel for mopping up water, a hammer to drive a nail, etc.  Any human construct will service the parameters it was designed to support.  Most games today (and what I consider an evolutionary stallout) are DESIGNED to enslave players to "The Grind" in service to a linear uphill climb up the levelling ladder.  That's the game-play factor most important to the devs, not actual competative game play (which is secondary on the concern scale).

That design enhances the PCA phenomenon (which negatively affects game-play across the playerbase in increasing measure as time and chapters/releases occur), and devalues Available Game Play time (e.g. The player with 4 hours a week to play isn't presented with the same game play value per hour as someone who wastes 18hrs of their life at a keyboard).

What's the fix?  A better design.  Trite and obvious, yet ultimately the truth.

At some point I'm hoping to see a true genius of a designer/developer appear who will:

Design a game where "The Grind" (because that mechanism does need to exist to some degree) operates in service to Game Play (e.g. content, challenges, world events/instances, trials/puzzles/quests/tasks), instead of Game Play subservient to the mechanical, insipid dictator called The Grind.

Design a game where the game world more exhibits the qualities of a Living World with cyclic value to zones, with recurring changes.  The counter to a linear construct where a trodden path is now burned off wasteland is to engage in some form of renewal/change dynamic to those places over time.

Design a game where World PvP is actually available to everyone at every level, instead of being one of the largest freedom restrictors imaginable in MMOs.  Sorry, Arenacraft (little instanced boxing rings) don't count IMO. 

Open Level World PvP, even on PvP servers, immediately destroys freedom in PvP for everyone, and funnels it exclusevely to the few who level to the cap fast as they can.  In short, Open Level PvP (where say 60's can run around a 20's zone) is the slave-master cracking the whip in service of PCA, not game-play value per hour for all subscribers.  PvP means risk, danger, excitment, and surprise for everyone, and shouldn't include a dynamic where simply burning off PvE activity allows a shield of invulnerability in PvP game-play.

My .02 anyway.