Since World of Warcraft was released in 2004, a vast number of things have changed in the MMOG industry. Our games have become more sophisticated, and our social interactions more integrated into our web personas. The changes have been at once subtle and drastic, and Ten Ton Hammer's Garrett Fuller weighs in on these changes and what may continue to change in the future.
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The social aspect of MMOs is the largest factor that these games offer. Guilds have taken on a life of their own and now collectively travel from one game to the next. Remember your five person RPG group years ago to meet and play D&D, well now you have groups with hundreds if not thousands of members. EVE Online has seen their Corporation system grow into an all out warfare in space. The Corporations themselves have grown into powerful influencers on EVE and really add to the game’s overall design.
It seems that Garrett feels like a lot has changed in four years....but has it? Aren't we all still playing a highly modified version of EverQuest? Or are we finally starting to see more evolution in our games?
An interesting article. Although there have been some very obvious steps forward for MMOs in the past few years, I don't think we've seen anything drastic or any major leaps just yet.
The way I look at things now, we're in a period not all too dissimilar to how things were just before WoW launched. Spread out over a number of different titles, there were a lot of really great ideas and game mechanics that a lot of people tend to agree Blizzard did an outstanding job of pulling together to present in a single package.
I think we're in that same type of phase right now - games on the horizon like AoC and WAR are adding some great new elements to the genre, on top of the contributions from some games already on the market like LotRO, or even Vanguard which had some amazing ideas but unfortunately lacked the resources needed for them to be fully realized. Even then, it's hard for me to read about "you are what you wear" in interviews for the Agency, and not see the direct influence of Vanguard's different outfits for different spheres that automatically change depending on what you're currently involved in.
The next truly major step forward might still be a couple of years off, and it's hard to say at this point what form it might actually take. Will it follow the same formula as WoW and successfully incorporate the best of the newer game mechanics that we've seen over the past few years (and with the new games on the horizon) ? Or will one of the studios mentioned towards the end of the article release a title that has us all completely blown away by how far from the norm it deviates and somehow does so in new, unexpected ways? Hard to say at this point, but I'm looking forward to seeing that next major step, whatever form it takes.
In my humble opinion, the biggest step we have seen in North America is the trend towards players craving PvP action.
Back in 2004, before World of Warcraft PvE was the game development channel of choice.
We now have games built around PvP like Guild Wars and Fury. Age of Conan and WAR are both vociferous about their PvP innovations. North American gamers' tastes have changed.
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In my humble opinion, the biggest step we have seen in North America is the trend towards players craving PvP action.
Back in 2004, before World of Warcraft PvE was the game development channel of choice.
We now have games built around PvP like Guild Wars and Fury. Age of Conan and WAR are both vociferous about their PvP innovations. North American gamers' tastes have changed.
Personally, I'm glad the trend has taken that sort of turn. I began playing MMOGs because I couldn't think of anything cooler than jumping into the persona of the dreaded "Black Knight" and riding around pillaging the nearby kingdom. True open world PvP is something that most players are just starting to enjoy, and I think we'll only see that trend continue.
The biggest change I have seen is the shift from single player to multi-player, and MMOs have been on the forefront of that change.
Games of all genres are now released with multiplayer, co-op modes, online content, etc. We now have the new Xbox live, the Playstation Online network, and so forth.
This trend has affected a lot more then gaming with social networks like Myspace, YouTube, Wikkis... the list goes on and on.
What does this have to do with MMORPGS? Well I think players are expecting a lot more interaction. WoW was designed to give you a lot of solo playability, and to slowly wean you towards group play and eventually massive group play. It was the perfect learning curve.
Now that multiplayer and cooperation/competition have become the norm across all gaming genres, MMO players expect a lot more group content, more interaction with others (be it in PvE cooperatively or competitively in PvP).
This is why I think we see a lot of the new concepts that games like Warhammer are bringing to the table. Living guilds, public quests, a focus on teamwork and "belonging" to something that we see in the RvR campaign. Sure, they are making a lot of content solo-friendly for the late adapters, but more and more they are focusing on the multiplayer elements of the massively-Multiplayer-online name sake.
As we all become more social online across many different mediums, we expect our games to give us more options to be social, be it cooperatively or competitively. The renewed interest and focus on PvP in MMOs is due to this multiplayer movement that really started with online FPS games. We expect buddy lists and belonging in organizations and social groups in everything we do online now, so we see an increased focus on group content and teamwork in our MMOs.
I think this trend will continue until solo-play while online is really only a memory. Developers will continue to invent new ways of bringing us together, to either help each other or kill one another until it becomes so integrated in our minds that the very thought of single-player becomes boring and obsolete.
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The biggest change I noticed since 2004 till today is, the guideing hand within all those MMO`s.
As example the content in games like quests.
Quests give you something to do and help you to reach specific goals/game intersections (level, items, faction and whatnot).
I got the strong impression that most players expect to solve the majority of quests without reading the whole quest description and just enabling the "quest tracker" (depending on the current game) will lead to the target.
Sounds a bit generic simplistic, well I know it isnt that easy and all the games we know have different approaches of "how to know the quest challenges and goals".
From my point of view, it is not a bad thing to have a little help on the way...mostly with the usual %kill_stuff%get%item_quantity& or %go_A%than_C%dont_forget_B% quests, but sometimes the guidiance is a bit to much.
The silverspoon feeds you within the game and players got used to it and dont want to have it a other way...do they realy want it ?
PvP on the other hand is more than just roxxoring with skillzors, actually you create your own content and influence over the game world/enviroment.
You are enabled to do something more at your own without much spoon feeding
I wont start with UO and how you where able to have more influence over content (because the silverspoon was nearly not there, questwise).
You wanted something to do ?...well, than go out and do something at your own (thats how it was, the quests whereonly a funny joke).
Somehow, I want more in "todays" games... more place for user influence...more place for imagination.
The lesson learned through all the years, give the players easy to chew content and leave it at that.
Am I wrong ?
Correckt me please, I beg you
If I think about all the games I played over the years, I just want a game with todays tech but close to UO *cough* Darkfall *cough* (Darkfall the Duke Nukem forever of Online gaming? )
Fundamentally though, the MMO formula is begining to change in a number of ways:
1. The way in which we "advance" with our characters. The old games have stumbled onto a lot of excellent ideas during their own development but were never able to implement them due to either game engine or content balancing limitations.
The new games are capitalising and introducing those concepts as some of the cornerstones of their offering, each dressed up accordingly to match their milleu.
For eg, from a purely innovative point of view amongst the games which I've played or dabbled in. I think EvE with its linear and persistent skill advancement system is definitely worth mentioning as an appealing innovation. To have your character progress in a persistent world makes sense esp when you're effectively paying for your subscription. The counter balance is provided by the economic and PvP aspects which require online experience and prowess to fully benefit your character.
2. Graphic content. Whilst many may argue that UO was a good or bad game what ultimately culled its significant player base were EQ1 and AC offerings with their incredible first person interfaces. There was no comparison between the two products and the only thing which kept players in game was the level of immersion and achievement. This is still a significant force of change. I myself moved from EQ1 to Lineage 2 and part of the draw card was the incredible difference in graphics.
4. Linkage of PvP and PvE. The fundamental linkage of PvE to PvP exists in only a couple of games and out of the older breed only in DAOC, L2 and EvE do they achieve an all out integration. The failure of every other MMO including WoW, EQ2 and VG of the new ilk is defining purpose of PvP. Other than a non descript confrontation for the sake of it there is no purpose in it. To reward the outcome via prizes or gear is minimalist and breeds a ganker mentality.
The difference in DAOC, L2 and EvE is that they brought the game economies into the offer as the reason for PvP. Controlling your PvE environment through PvP is the next step beyond the endless raid loop.
It is a significant step forward in empowering the player to determine their ingame destiny, and concurrently enabling a greater degree of "political" flexibility by the players.
As mentioned by Kralle you are neither spoon fed not restrained by the system ala EQ2 as to what you can and cant do.
There are various aspects to each game that warrant their own thread for comparison but this is just a generalised overview.
5. Organisational Structure. This has seen some significant improvements and even the changes to Guild organisation from the days of EQ1 have been excellent and largely as a response to the community. There was no further progress untill the PvE/PvP based games came out because there was no degree of competitiveness which required structural chanes. Hence the EQ2 and WoW guild interfaces are effectively only cosmetically different. Functionality is minimal, although there have been some changes to this end over the last expansion or two. It was infact the PvP games which have driven the need for something more to bind ppl together as an entity and the L2 and EvE models are very interesting in this aspect. The living guilds concept driven by WAR is nothing new to players of EvE and L2 where clan based progression models directly influencing player power, game economy and ingame social order have been in existence for years. (The Standard thing is new though !).
6. Last but not least RMT in MMOs. This is a bit of a pandora's box topic, as it has different connotations to different players and depending on which MMO you play it may have had a different impact on you. Some argue its linked to play style and others to a consumerist breed which we have become. Irrespective of your take on it the accessibility of e-bay based game money/items and PLing services for characters is fundamentally changed MMO's. The RMT is effectively forcing out the old style PvE achievement based MMOs with new free to play but pay for content MMOs. Since RMT undermines the sense of achievement, it reduces the game to a series of time based experiences. This is also why you're seeing so many arcade type games trying to "get online" with their offerings again everything based on a experience based theme with little thought to a progression based model. (other than rudimentary skill/level advancement)
I think those have been the biggest changes to MMOs since their advent in the late 90's
Yes it has changed alot, well not the games all types has always been around.
The demand for certain games has changed.
It used to be 'sandbox' but due to small populations and repetative boring gameplay people got bored after a while.(this is from before 2004 and after)
Then 'themepark' came into play it was fun and you didn't had to worry about too much, this also backfired people started demanding to have more effect on their game world they wanted to change it. Some developers jumped on it and made games like archlord but as said in the previous paragraph, Sandbox alone isn't great either.
Now the market has become bigger and they stopped looking at it so black and white, now they are starting to make 'gray' games, some darker some lighter as developers are still trying to find the 'correct' balance between both gaming styles.
In the mean time, games like EVE are having a healthy playerbase but it requires alot of dedication and games like World of Warcraft have an even more healthier one but we really got to put these things in perspective. World of Warcraft is many people first MMO, so that's it's charm and eventually it's problem aswell.
Personally i'm happy with every chance i get to help and take part in the development of a mmo.
Expect alot of mmo's, some hits and some failures.
From 2004 to 2008: What Have We Learned?
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