Thoughts on MMORPGs: PART 2

PART 1

Right now, MMOs are headed into a dead end. It's almost impossible to make a good-looking MMO designed to turn a profit from a relatively small population. Because development and upkeep costs are so high, MMOs nowadays need huge player populations or they go belly-up in no time. Is it still possible to do a good MMORPG today, when most of the old userbase has now left and the new userbase is made of people with the attention span of a goldfish? Probably not.

TERA Online looks gorgeous but is incredibly boring

We need a return to equilibrium between graphics, mechanics, competitiveness and storytelling/worlds to explore. Developers and producers are focused way too much on the scale and graphical part of their games instead of creating interesting worlds that players would want to live in. If your game is good from a gameplay point-of-view you won't have to worry about graphics as much, of course they will help sell your game but not always. Interestingly enough, putting everything on the other side of the scale is also a bad move, as evidenced by Star Wars: The Old Republic. Put too much importance on story and it will become an online single-player game that will quickly bore your players into quitting.

Scarlet Blade - Booooooooobs and loli ass

I see a lot of games trying to pigeonhole themselves into niche markets because the market is so over-saturated. Scarlet Blade from Aeria Games is the latest and one of the worst offenders, this game literally sells itself on boobs yet is incapable of backing up anything behind its rack. The game simply has no redeeming features whatsoever. It's probably the worst F2P game you can play these days, the most generic grinding game you'll see.

There is one good reason why we won't have another golden age of MMORPGs like the 1997-2004 years in the near future. Back then, the internet was just starting to spread and most people didn't have computers so it was likely that only the most dedicated players would be playing such games. Nowadays, nearly every kid has access to the internet and online games, which drops the entry barrier extremely low. Obviously, game developers want to cater to that huge market because at the end of the day they only want to turn a profit. 

The worst part in all of this is, the old MMORPGs wouldn't really work today, it's not just the industry that changed, but the consumers of the MMO genre also shifted. You can't give that much freedom to players in an approachable MMO anymore, because griefers used to be somewhat rare, notorious outliers to a generally alright populace. Nowadays griefing videos are celebrated to the point that being a asshole to everyone is the norm.

I remember arriving in Star Wars Galaxies and having no idea whatsoever where to go or what to do, yet everyone was so incredibly friendly and took new players under their wing. Eventually, a group of rebels took me in and showed me the ropes. They gave me a house and good gear, something I will never forget it. Being nice and polite definitely pays in the long run. That is what was so good about SWG. Players could create their very own communities, spread to their own territories and set up their own shops. Socializing was satisfying because we were all strangers to each other. Today, people bring in their close real life friends, stick together for most of the game and simply don't care for the rest of the community.

In the end, what I'm saying is basically this: players want to be empowered. It's probably the number one reason why we play games. We crave freedom, power, social interactions and entertainment. We want to feel accomplished within the limits of the game. We want to express ourselves in our builds and characters, make them our own. When I'm in a guild or a group with people I appreciate and we're tackling hard objectives and then manage to overcome said objectives, it feels great. We worked towards the same goal and managed to derive enjoyment from it. It wasn't so much the fact that we accomplished something but more so that we could share that moment between us, human beings. I guess you could call it emotional affection, or love.

Today, there is no room for dreamers, no room for adventure. We do what the game creators tell us to do. There is no room to build friendships, no room to build animosities.

Thoughts on MMORPGs: PART 1

It seems, to me, the golden age of MMOs is now long gone. That age spanned precisely from September 1997 to November 2004. These two dates mark the release of two highly popular MMORPGs: Ultima Online and World of Warcraft. The first game started the age and the second ended it.

Over those years I've played a ton of MMORPGs, starting on Ultima Online, going through Dark Age of Camelot, Ragnarok Online and ending with vanilla World of Warcraft. These games were absolutely fantastic in their time and captured that sense of wonder and adventure that is so hard to get nowadays. I clocked numerous hours of my life in them, of which I regret absolutely none. Of course, I played a lot of MMOs in between those like Priston Tale, Runescape, LinageAge 2, MapleStory, EverQuest and so on but not for very long as I kept going back to the original games.

After the release of World of Warcraft, everything started to change. At the time, I didn't understand why WoW was so anticipated, everyone I talked to on the internet always mentioned WoW, every forum I went to mentioned WoW one way or the other and  it still continues to this day. As for me, I always disliked the art style of the Warcraft games and WoW was no different. The game seemed really dumbed down from the games I had played in the past and yet everyone was fawning over it, which was quite annoying to me.

There was no stopping the WoW train, so I still gave it a shot and it wasn't as bad as I thought. Vanilla WoW still offered you that sense of wonder and a vast world to explore. You were that little, level 5 dwarf who had no clear idea where he should go, the world seemed immense and you had to walk for long distances. After a while you were ready to leave the Valley to head to Kharanos. You met people along the way like yourself and bonded together to do quests. Those same people probably stayed in your friends list for all the game, maybe you even formed guilds together. You were playing for that exact experience and kept coming back to recapture it, to meet people and form bonds to overcome great obstacles, to form friendships, to experience happiness but sometimes sorrow too. You were part of something and you felt complete. However, the game would soon lose its charm with the repeated release of expansion packs.

TERA Online and the Pegasus system to travel around

Now? You can fly everywhere and cross the world in mere seconds. Everything is some form of currency you can trade. It's all about number crunching and maximizing potentials, data mining sites not helping. You have to reach level cap as soon as you can because the game will only start at level cap (but by then you will probably burn out). This is how most MMORPGs are today.

If I had to make a quick list:

Old-school MMO:

* No hand holding
* 80% of the content is not doable solo
* Some classes require a party to be fully utilized
* Possibility to create class builds by using different stats and skill points
* Sparse use or no use of fast travel
* Level cap doesn't give anything special

New MMO:

* Constant hand holding for everything
* Achievement for not breaking your spine during first two minutes of the game
* 80% of the content is doable alone
* Homogenization and lockdown of classes
* Huge rewards for hitting level cap and only then does the game start (usually PvP/GvG)

Taking Ragnarok Online as an example, back in the day, I didn't really care for the level cap. Sure, I always had it on my mind but it was a very long-term goal and something I kept on the horizon, just to remind me from time to time. The game didn't even have NPC quests at all, it was just one gigantic, hell of a grind. Yet it worked beautifully and you kept coming back and back to play it. People seemed to group so easily, because everyone knew they would profit from it and the game encouraged that, because most dungeons were not doable as a solo player unless you were far ahead in levels. You grinded maps and dungeons for months just to get that sweet 0.01% drop chance card or rare equipment drop and that's how you eventually reached level cap. The game revolved all around drops and it had a wonderful economy.

Good old days on a busy Prontera market day

The game didn't limit you in almost any way. You could go to every dungeon and city as a level 1 player. You could participate in GvG (called War of Emperium or WoE) from level 1 on if you were on a guild. You being level 75 and other people being level 99 (cap) didn't result in your character being blown into pieces in one shot. If you played well you could sometimes beat people higher level than you. The sense of accomplishment was great.

The fight for the Emperium

In the War of Emperium guilds had to fight against each other across various maps to control castles. Successful capture or defense of a castle meant your guild was the rightful owner of it until the next WoE. The rewards for playing in the weekly GvG were clear, you received additional services and rare drops from the castles chests. This turned guilds who were good at GvG into powerhouses and rivalries and drama grew naturally. People would eagerly await the next WoE. They would make videos of their exploits and released nice compilations of it over the next days. I remember having goosebumps and trembling at the start of each WoE, such was the excitement.

Guilds weren't offered to everyone on a silver platter either. You had to grind certain mobs to get an item called Emperium, which allowed you to create a guild, even if it was just you in it. You could start from the ground up as a guild master and slowly make your way to the top, recruiting people along the way.

TERA Battleground matchmaking

Nowadays, games try to artificially create rivalries between players which doesn't allow for passion to come into play. They make use of systems called raids or battlegrounds that force people against each other. It feels forced and meaningless. There's no role playing, no comradeship, no adventure. Any teaming up is simply for convenience because a raid should be made of exactly five or ten people. You have to force yourself to grind these levels for some goal down the line. Most people will give up before then, especially if they have no friends to play with like me.

Continued in PART 2..