So I was browsing message boards like I usually do when I’m bored out of my skull and I came across an interesting discussion. Can MMORPG’s survive without the “standards”? Auction Houses, mounts, quest-leveling, fast travel, ability to solo from beginning to end, mail system, mild penalties for death, level based advancement, and so on have now become the basis of which a company designs and molds our virtual worlds.
It wasn’t more than 4 years ago that these things were considered new and nothing more than fluff or extras. When World of Warcraft hit the shelves everything changed. No longer were these things considered extra and cool to see – they became standards. I want to quote something I read because it fuels great discussions. “The bottom-line is that MMORPGs are now at the same point as the auto industry: “innovation” is incrementally evolutionary, not fundamentally revolutionary. Few customers are going to buy something that is radically different from the standards, so few investors are willing to shell out the capital required to fund radical development projects. But they will fund incrementally different projects, provided there’s a potential to earn a decent profit in return for their investment.” And there you have it.
Back when MMORPG’s were first introduced we saw major and dramatic change from game to game. Side scrollers evolved into birds-eye view pseudo 3d games which then evolved into full 3d worlds. Every release held something new and exciting which had to be introduced to the gaming community. Games were designed from the ground up in order to introduce something new and fresh. Rarely would a game mechanic from another one game be similar in another. But now it’s different. Gamers don’t want to be introduced to new things but instead expect to see the standards. This expectation has caused developers to include and perhaps even design their game around said things instead of the other way around. Bottom line? Any Massively Multiplayer Roleplaying Game released today without these standards is doomed to fail.
Gone are the days of innovation. Welcome to the days of MMO’s for the masses. We’re in their world now.
Off-topic: what happened to your ads? 😉
Got rid of them. In the end they just weren’t worth the constant battle removing gold sales.
Aww. Well, as you know I moved my ads to a separate page and since then, I’ve been too busy to write shopping guides so haven’t really been getting too many hits there either. But, I haven’t given up hope, and since they are not on the main blog page anymore, it frees me from having to constantly filter out the RMT stuff (in fact I removed all the filters).
Ok sorry for derailing the topic and to make up for that, I will write my spin on this blog on mine today. 😉
I look forward to reading it! 🙂
[…] Keen’s random thought yesterday triggered my own musings on what seem to be the MMORPG “standards” today, versus what I wish those standards were. Because World of Warcraft, with its 8-million subscriber base, wins the popularity contest hands-down, it has somewhat become the standard in the genre. Every game developer dreams of that kind of success and although innovation is still largely praised and appreciated, the risk of failure is now greater as the bar for success has been raised. Whereas before, 200,000 subscribers would have made producers ecstatic because it equaled Everquest’s record, these days that is only considered to be a moderate success. And yet, for the most part, the gurus in the field still seem to be dazed and bewildered at WoW’s success. I think half the problem is that game developers are hard core gamers themselves so it’s a little hard for them to understand what it is that made the masses, who are casual gamers, love and embrace WoW. The other half of the problem has to do with wanting to achieve the same level of success. Of course everyone wants a bestseller, but not all gamers go for the WoW model. In fact, quite a few “seasoned” gamers scoff at it and think it’s beneath their station to even consider playing it. People should just stop using WoW as a yardstick and instead, measure every game out there on its own merits. […]