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.