MMO Week in Review: Doom and gloom

Doom and Gloom in deed.

It's like the whole MMORPG world is waiting for/anticipating/fleeing from Guild Wars 2. Haven't seen a game pull off that level of anticipation in years - not even TOR got close.

2012 will be a real blood bath by the time it's done. When GW2 enters the scene you're going to have to be a AAA+A f2p to stay viable...in the west that means Aion, LotRO, AoC. Sony seems to stand behind EQ so good for them...will EA/Bio keep W:AoR around though? WoW and ToR will be the only guaranteed subs but I'll put money on Rift making it through this year.

If you're not a game I mentioned I'm thinking trouble is in store.

I think Eve will be the big news this year...CCP will go bye-bye in 2012.

IMO this is a logical and even predictable consequence of MMO's trying to capture "mass market" lowest common denominator player bases. Speaking from experience MMO's have lost hard core gamers to cater to casual gamers. But like anything with mass consumer appeal, you lose the core audience, and the fickle masses always move on to something else.

Most MMO's these days have completely thrown out the idea of role play, immersion, and suspension of disbelief ( such as rich true to the subject matter Fantasy worlds, RPG's with believable and sensible game mechanics, with abstractions that don't jar you out of suspension of disbelief) to capture an audience that doesn't want to "travel" to a quests, be challenged, face adversity or ever fail a quest. The players they have cultivated want to line up like it's a roller coaster ride at Six Flags, they want to buy their tokens and have their pick of the prize on the wall behind the carnival barker...

So the games are dumbed down, the rules are constantly twisted and morphed (nerfed and buffed) to try and manipulate HOW THE PLAYERS PLAY THE GAME, to make the game play more simple and easy and appealing to people who aren't particularly good at games. like some strange pavlovian social experiment... Wacky sounding (and working) play mechanics abound in every MMO, they proliferate and even eventually have become new "standards" of how to design a game for a lot of people to play... even when those new mechanics jolt hard core gamers out of the sense of immersion and ultimately the fun and the overriding reason to ever play an MMO in the first place (think living their long term heroic fantasy(& Sci Fi/Comic) alter egos).

Yes MMO's bear a striking resemblance to amusement parks and carnivals. Play DDO (it's free) some time... that's not D&D... it's a D&D themed virtual amusement park. There's a quest barker on every corner. Same goes for every other MMORPG out there From the first to the latest, UO to Rift (whatever). They aren't great games any more, they are game-like rides designed to get you to buy the most tickets/tokens and overpriced hot dogs and funnel cakes before you leave feeling queasy and wondering what you spent all your money on.

Raid timers, gear scores, 8x8'ing, Power hour, gimp and uber, Dungeon Alert, PVP, PVE, Stat loss, level cap, combo's, Buffing, Raiding, Nerfs, microtransactions... and a thousand other terms that never would have entered our lexicon if creative and talented game designers and their core gamer audience hadn't given way to mass market lowest common denominator...

what game is that screenshot from? Anarchy Online is the only one i can remember with those spherical tree canopies, but it doesn't look like AO.

Theres a lot more games out there these days and certainly a lot more free to play . This is one of the reasons your seeing games like Warcraft hemoraging subscribers on such a large scale . The question today is why pay ? especially if you play a game on a causal basis . I think Guild Wars 2 could be a genre changer because if it is as huge as some people are expecting it may make buy to play mmos the industry standard . Quite frankly I've thought for a long time mmos over charge for what they offer and most arnt worth the standard subscription fee .

I was waiting for this for a long time. That is the only way companies will stop producing shitty games, when people get bored of same ole repackaged with a new coat of paint and stop paying for them and playing them.

Then some talented people can step in and make a MMO that is fun to play and brings something new to the table.

Doom and Gloom for who exactly, there are only so many idiots in this world that would actually pay to play. The rest of us will always and continue to refuse the pay to play system. To flood the market with MMO is stupid when there are no more new customers willing to sign up.