What does the future hold? - A look at MMO games

MMO games have come a long way since their humble beginnings, and they appear so prolific that it makes one wonder: just how much further can they go? Aion was just released, Blade and Soul is coming from NCSoft in the future, as well as Guild Wars 2. Blizzard has an unannounced MMO title that they are working on, and there are new free to play MMO’s hitting the market almost weekly. By the same token, many MMO’s are seeing dwindling numbers; Mythic has recently cut half of their Warhammer Online staff, the Matrix Online shut its servers entirely a few months ago, and Aion is already losing many subscribers if the forums are to be believed, practically all of whom came from WoW with many who aren’t going back.

There is of course the blame for the unusual tidal wave of hot non MMO games: Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2, Assassins Creed 2, Bioware 2, etc.. All top notch games, all being released between Q4 2009 and Q1 2010. If there was a war going on between MMO publishers and non MMO publishers, this is probably what it would look like. The point being, all of these are amazing titles for gamers, and due to the now standard additions of RPG elements within multiplayer environments, as well as the achievement systems all single player games now have, there is a lot of time to be spent away from MMO games.

Quickly, MW2 multiplayer is not bleeding into the MMO seen. Yes, it’s online, yes, it’s multiplayer, no, it is not an MMO. This is because it does not have a persistent world. There is a lobby, you connect to a game, the game loads, you play the game, you disconnect, and you’re back in the lobby. That’s not how MMO’s work. MW2 is a FPS RPG though. Just like the traditional MMO is an RPG, MW2 is one of the culminating transformations of including RPG elements into FPS’s. I say culminating because it’s been done before, even in MW1, but Activision has really hit the RPG aspect dead center this time.

With that out of the way, we can get back to the issue at hand. MMO games are here to stay, and it looks like they are attempting to push the boundaries. As mentioned before, a traditional MMO is a multiplayer RPG game with a persistent world; from Ultima Online to Everquest to WoW and beyond. While the traditional model still works, WoW can vouch for that, most producers have realized that in order to compete with WoW, the investment isn’t worth the payout and risk.

Taking Aion as an example, the game is more polished than WoW was when it launched, and it is seeing improvements constantly, but players are already disillusioned. In order to break into the traditional MMO market right now, you need a game that has seen practically 2 additional years of polish, much like Warhammer Online and Age of Conan are just now approaching. Aion of course launched after having been released for 1 year in Korea, so it still has a year to go before enough polish has been applied. Of course, by the time a game has gotten 2 years of polish, most interested players have bought it, tried it, and then tossed it to the side, looking to the new great thing on the horizon that promises better features and graphics than the now outdated MMO can provide. It is a vicious cycle.

Developers aren’t willing to just let this gold mine slip through their fingers though, despite the risks. Some decided to destroy the reputation of their companies to try and make as much money back as possible for investors, like Age of Conan did. Others keep pushing at it as long as they can, knowing they have an A list title on their hands, but things just aren’t clicking, which is what is happening with Warhammer Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online. Later developers have treaded lightly on the outskirts of the land mine that WoW has turned the traditional MMO market into, and have come up with some fresher concepts.

EvE Online created a persistent world with no rules, a sandbox. Or I guess a “universe” would be a better term. They’ve managed to garner a ton of attention and a solid fan base, despite the “low compared to top list MMO” numbers. Then there’s the rash outbreak of free to play MMO’s as well and here is where innovation is at its peak. Low budget companies throwing concepts together in a mad hope that something sticks and makes an impact on players long enough for them to gain a profit on their investment through micro transactions.

It may be strange to think of it, but games like Evony Online are actually MMO’s. They are multiplayer, they are online, and they have a persistent world that players can interact in. Though many of these browser games are missing the massively part. You could argue that Guild Wars was never a true MMO because it didn’t allow for large amounts of players to accumulate in a single location for adventures, aka lacking on the “Massive”. But that word has basically been forgotten from the acronym, as MMO has come to take on a meaning despite what it originally stood for.

The point of bringing up Evony is to showcase an example of just how much further MMO’s can go. While Evony Online is a browser MMO and is very bare bones, Dawn of Fantasy is a new MMO coming out that fleshes out the basic concepts. Dawn of Fantasy was most likely in production before Evony ever was, so there is no suggestion here that it is literally a take off of it. And before Evony Online ever did it, Glitchless’s Race War Kingdoms did it, but that’s another story. Dawn of Fantasy isn’t a typical MMO, it’s a MMO RTS. Base building, unit and army control, all with a world to conquer. While players are not destroying forests and digging up mountains (as far as I know anyway) in this game, they are building cities and armies in the RTS style and fighting with other players in an RTS style, all in the persistent online world of an MMO. Other MMO’s have allowed you to modify the game world before: Darkfall Online, Age of Conan, some A list MMO that I forgot the name of, Star Wars Galaxies as well. An actual RTS MMO though is one of the new directions some developers are going in order to try and scoop up part of the MMO pie. (note - I don’t condone actually playing Evony Online )

The next step in MMO development, the true “next-gen” is going to go beyond genre mashing though. Some people have been fantasizing about the possibilities for decades, just waiting for the technology and resources to match up so that it can be created. While all MMO’s require a persistent world, and many MMO’s allow players to interact and change things within those worlds, nobody has made a game where players can truly interact with the land itself: cutting down trees that are literally cut down and will take a long time to grow again assuming that they are given the chance, killing rabbits that actually disappear and don’t just respawn 2 minutes later, digging into mountains and having caves left behind. MMO 2.0 is another name for it, and there’s a small possibility that this is what Blizzard-Activision has in mind when they refer to their next-gen MMO that they are making.

MMO’s have a lot of life left in them, and they are going to keep invading the gaming world for years to come. If there is a genre out there, then it can be made into an MMO. Another spin on MMO’s is bringing them to consoles. EvE Online is doing this with their new MMO addition Dusk514, and FPS console MMO set in the same universe as EvE Online. While not next-gen, definitely a step forward for the MMO platform. MMO games have muscled their way into the same platform definition where one would only use the words “single player” or “multi player” in the past. It’s not just a multiplayer game, it’s an MMO.