When you think of an “MMO” you likely imagine vast worlds teeming with hundreds, if not thousands, of players all interacting with one another either cooperatively, or often against one another. More and more, we’re seeing games of a different persuasion. Ones that veer off the path of massively, and into more manageable territory like The Division series or Fallout 76.
These games seem to mimic many aspects of MMORPGs but have a player count that falls far short of “massive” leaving fans of the genre confused, afraid, and dare I say vulnerable to the ridicule of MMO purists. It begs the question, are we in the age of the MMO-lite? Or maybe “pseudo MMO” is a more apt term. Whatever you choose to call them, these games are carving out their own space in the vast online multiplayer world, and it’s time we address them.
Fallout 76, is a game that is quite near and dear to my heart, primarily because my closest friends are in love with the series, and it’s our best shot at playing in this universe together. If you’ve never played a Fallout game before (shame on you) 76 sees you roam a post-apocalyptic West Virginia in what feels like a large, shared world—only the problem is, the world is capped at a little over two dozen players at a time. The Division’s Dark Zone delivers a similar experience, where you might run into a handful of other players amid your typical session, which may be a good thing if you’re hoping to extract your SHD cache without resistance.
Even survival titles like Enshrouded feature a lot of MMO-style elements but still limit the world to just 16 players per server. Yet these games still maintain elements of persistent worlds, ongoing player and world progression, and a sense of community, even if the numbers aren’t on par with a true MMO.
And lastly, if not the most egregious case of MMO-lite are the mobile MMOs that attempt to blur the line further. Take Tower of Fantasy, which offers an open world for up to 50 players to explore together and bills itself as a shared open-world MMORPG. It’s still a far cry from the hundreds or thousands of players that define an MMORPG, but it doesn’t stop people from playing and enjoying the open world experience, and the numerous players you can meet in game is often comparative to events from the more traditional MMORPGs we’re used to. And maybe that’s the point—maybe the “massive” in “MMORPG” doesn’t have to mean thousands anymore.
There are some obvious advantages to MMO-lite games for both players and developers. Most of the time they avoid the chaos that comes with hundreds of players in a single area. For some games, the smaller player caps allow for more intimate interactions with the players that are on the server which is something many new MMOs seem to lack. The introduction of familiarity with your fellow players is hard to replicate when you have so many players in a single server all vying for attention as crafters, healers, and so forth. And if you’re a PvP gamer, competitive experiences can also be easier to manage as a supreme lack of zerg is highly preferrable in just about every case.
In a way though, MMO-Lite is one of the reasons MMOs have sort of lost their identity over the past decade. They offer players a lot of the best parts of MMOs, including the social interactions we’ve come to love, just with a lower cost to run, and a lower threshold of players. While it would be nice to see more hybridization of this, such as an expansion to hundreds of players in some of our favorite MMO-lites, I feel like these games can be a good precursor for the largescale worlds we’ve come to love.
Are you a fan of games that might fall into the MMO-lite category? Do you find yourself playing these smaller scale games or are you strictly a fan of largescale MMO worlds? Would you prefer to see these current pseudo-MMOs expand their scope for large scale players? Jump into the comments and let us know what you think.