Digital Logic

Found this article on Slashdot. As a fairly well seasoned WoW player (although I have since lost interest), this Dana Massey has hit the nail right on the head. The entire MMO genre is based around a singular idea. You log in, you kill stuff, you get more powerful. All games have basically the same UI elements, but fail to deviate from the norm.

Who said that MMOs require hot bars? Who proclaimed that it’s not a proper MMO unless you have quests? Blizzard took a formula that almost all MMOs had been using for years and distilled it down to addictive perfection. Love or hate WoW, it’s a polished, polished title. It’s no coincidence that on hardcore MMO sites, like this one, WoW is not the most hyped or trafficked game around. It’s not that it’s bad, but veteran MMO players don’t have the same love for it, simply because we’ve all seen some variation of it before. The WoW community has always been a bit apart from the larger MMO community. Based purely on the number of subscribers, WoW articles should statistically annihilate every other game on this site, but they don’t. A huge percentage of people who truly love WoW, I’ve always believed, do not know or particularly care about this whole world of MMOs out there. They’re WoW players and that’s it.

It’s true that this is a tried and tested formula, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. It’s attracted millions of people to a hobby that was once basically an underground. Blizzard’s commitment to quality is nothing less than astonishing and let’s face it: they’re in the business to make money. If your users are happy, that means more sales and subscriptions for you, and making players happy is something that Blizzard is very good at.

Part of the problem, as Dana states, is that re-visioning the genre is risky. Developers see a style that works and make their game conform to the standards. From a business perspective, it makes sense. The only problem is people who play MMOs aren’t going to leave their hard-earned characters and move over to a new title that has basically the same gameplay elements and only has slightly better visual elements. Because of the nature of MMO games, there’s no reason to transfer. It’s basically like playing any regular single player game 90% of the way through and then dropping it to pick up the next title, except in the case of MMOs, the game never ends.

For people who don’t mind doing the same thing over and over again, current MMOs are just fine. I’ve always been a person who enjoys not only variety, but a genuine challenge, and current generation MMO games don’t deliver that (I’m looking at you, Blizzard). If a game came out that even began to carve a new path into what massively multiplayer online games are, I would probably give it a fair chance. Until then, I’m going to enjoy the ever-changing Team Fortress 2.

Update: There’s a great GU Comics about the above article.

Reading gaming industry news actually brings up something interesting from time to time, and being a big fan of the MMO genre, I decided that this would be noteworthy. Today’s MMO is Atlantica Online, and it’s unique in the fact that it claims to be a turn-based MMO. For those of you unfamiliar with this particular type of game, turn based generally means… well… your characters and the enemies they are fighting take turns during combat, a la Final Fantasy X, or any of the Final Fantasy Tactics games. Most MMOs of today are real-time, in the sense that you walk up to something and can just start beating on it without fear of how many turns each attack will cost you.

Either way, the game is being produced by Ndoors Interactive and takes the form of your standard Korean MMO (expect some hardcore grinding). In my policy of initially judging a game by how much work they put into their website (yes, it actually helps to filter out some of the horrible games), this game actually impressed me with the design and layout, and thus qualifies for further inspection (plus beta testing is free!).

Check out Atlantica Online to register yourself for the beta.