A lot of interested eyes are pointed squarely at Star Citizen to see if the crowd funding method will produce a 'worthy' MMO. In Garrett's latest column, he explores whether how this method could possibly work and set a new precedent for the industry. Read on!

In the era of MMOs we have seen games like EverQuest, Ultima Online, Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot come into play before World of Warcraft. In the post Warcraft era many games have been going after large known names to have a success. Games like Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer Online, Age of Conan, and Star Wars: The Old Republic all followed this formula. While I like all of those game, few MMOs really branch out to build their own fantasy worlds. DarkFall is one that stands out for its appraoch to making a game set in their own world with a sandbox environment. 

Read more of Garrett Fuller's Who Will Make The Epic Fantasy Game?

Originally posted by Theocritus
     Darkfall was probably on the right track, but it used a format (ffa pvp) that the majority of gamers just don't like.....WoW came pretty close but it was too easy for old school MMO vets and it fell short......I think someone will get it right but it may take awhile to get out of the WoW rut that so many MMOs seem to be stuck in atm.

 If Darkfalls on the right track then the genre really is doomed. I mean hell they didn't even have a working playable build ready by their second missed released date, and lets add the whoel custmer service of 'Oh thats right we were supposed to release today. Funny thing that we kinda figured last week there was no way we could get the game working, and probably should beta test so we won't be releasing today, however feel free to pre-order so you can pay to beta test out game."

  The big name companies of course will never attempt such a feat. EA? please they still think subscription cost was the reason SW:Tor tanked.

  Blixxard with their lets make WoW more casual and dumb it down so players have one A,B<C choice every 10 levels.. Bah not gonna happen,

  I'd say our only hope lies with the kickstarter crowd thats not afriad to make a PC game tyhat used the pc's strengths rather then all the companies currently aming to dumb things down for the consules limitations (ie CCP / dust)

THIS is the most epic FANTASY GAME:

http://wollay.blogspot.com/

The only thing about Darkfall that stood out was it was a badly written Indie game.  Fortunately they realized that and had the money and time to rewrite it.

It would be nice if someone could do such a thing in a fantasy world.  It can't be a themepark though.  And no, Pathfinder  is not it, that is just a very poorly written game, just like the original Darkfall.

"I guess the main question is will it work? Well, yes if you include a few major elements to MMOs that have been missing as of late. The biggest would be player housing."

Oh, you got me! I thought this wasn't a joke (or a personal opinion of some random guy mis-using his/her status as an "interwebz blogger/journalist"). Good one!

Without getting my nose too brown, there's been some great features by the mmorpg.com crew lately... 

I think the excitement over Star Citizen looks set to come good. But I also think it's easier to design a "sci-fi galaxy" IP than a "fantasy world". The world should be more granular and more fractal in levels of detail etc. Also it means the assets are lot heavier with all that landscape and people instead of space and ships? Finally IP's such as Games Workshop or LOTRs have had several and more decades to get all these details right. Maybe an IP in a fantasy is therefore saving time on all that and leveraging good quality of a refined vision and artistic style (as well as a ready-built market)? 

The problem is fitting IP's to boring designs or fitting designs to IP's that are not "fit" for those IP's. eg Cable TV of Thrones: Why Game of Thrones Doesn't Work as a Game

...but you could also have markets and castles built and run by players. Tournaments and events hosted by the players. Ultima Online really started to have these player run events and they were amazing.

= Social interaction, creating and changing & influencing the game world - seem to be the key to mmorpgs imo.

Odd how UO started the ball rolling, then it stopped for so long (apart from a few). Possibly players chose more "game" than "simulation" in mmorpgs as that is generally "more gratification more quickly" than the sort of "work" that is required to learn and enjoy EvE?!

But possibly a mix of the IP in a suitably "uncarved block" of a section of that IP's world (risk of sounding like a broken record) this question came up recently:

Massively: With Pathfinder Online being such an open world sandbox, how much liberty do you have to expand upon the Pathfinder IP? Or are you staying 100% faithful?

Ryan Dancey: We are able to work within the Pathfinder IP and still provide extensive freedom to our players. We are locating the game in an area of the Pathfinder world called the River Kingdoms, which was designed to be very "sandboxy" even for tabletop RPG players (it was the home of an Adventure Path published by Paizo Publishing called Kingmaker that was a "sandbox" approach to tabletop RPG play!). Within the River Kingdoms we've created a region we call the Crusader Road. This is a place where people from all over the world of Pathfinder are converging, which gives us easy access to all the incredible backstory, character types, and regional flavor built in to the Pathfinder world without having to try to build that whole world in the game.

Goblinworks and Paizo Publishing are extremely close. In fact we're physically located in the same building. There's a tight connection between the staff and management of both companies to ensure that we get maximum consensus on everything we're doing in Pathfinder Online and that everyone who works on Pathfinder at Paizo has a chance to provide input and context on all the content that is being created.

Well the progression element has yet to be addressed. Raiders like dungeons but instanced dungeons turn it into more of lan party than a mmo. Equal distribution of PVP, PVE , Battleground, RVR and Crafting gear needs to be spread over the entire player base and not restricted to one playstyle. Then make those components dependant on each other.

Fable did a lot of things right that needs to be copied, roaming NPCs that remember you and you can deal with, and colorful specs and skills. There is too much homiginization of skills so mmos can be esports, I could care less about Esports. If I wanted Esport I would play RTS games.

There needs to be non combat specs and classes pure merchants or merchant based professions. Just like the old LP mud rpg games like Batmud, actually just copy batmud.

Also fantasy mmorpgs need to copy the EVE online model into a fanasy setting, players want to own their own property, siege equiptment, npc hirelings, have contract and land disputes you name it, it needs to be translated over into fantasy and not the single player skill spam homoginized garbage they pass off as mmo rpgs these days.

I think the gauntlet in this case falls to indie companies. Big publishers just want to stick with what's already been tried, innovation is just too risky. Citadel of Sorcery for example takes a step in the right direction for being the next epic fantasy as it introduces more variables to quests which we haven't seen before in MMO, like tracking enemies, knocking them out and capturing them to question them, NPCs could lie to you, knock you out and capture you, imprison you, you get to disguise yourself, sneak around, try to trick your enemies, spread rumors, create diversions, make NPC friends and enemies which are unique to you and the list goes on.

Epic has more to it than "stuff does a lot of damage which you need to survive". When a player's strategy extends beyond the realm of simple combat things can get much more exciting. I mean, when you see an NPC asking for help and have to analyze things to decide if they actually do need help or trying to trick you into an ambush, things tend to get every bit more exciting.

I hope that Blizz's Titan is not a shallow themepark.

I also hope that they are making WoW so casual because it is dated and they need to squeeze as much money from it as possible before it dies (which is what you are supposed to do in this product life cycle stage, imo) and not because it is their current philosophy for making games.

While I consider Arche Age to be a step in the right direction in many aspects, I am afraid that it will not be that new big thing.