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The Invention of the MMO

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Re: The Invention of the MMO

#11

Post by grebc »

swozey wrote: post #4
sillysaurusx wrote: post #2

It's starting to feel like MMOs were just a product of the times we lived in, rather than a separate genre of game. In ~2004 I remember at least four MMOs: Asheron's Call, Planetside, World of Warcraft, and Dark Age of Camelot. It seems like only WoW survived, and nowadays I'm not sure the experience resembles the original anymore. Oh, and then there's EVE-Online, Runescape, Ultima Online... Nowadays it's mostly Robl…

I think they're daily grindfests now. I hear about people logging in just to do their "dailies" and thats about it. Everything new is instances, which don't capture the MMO village feel at all for me. I miss UO but I'm sure they clunky interface would drive me crazy today.

UO is still active on the free shards. Second Age shard staying alive for 20 years. Outlands is way more popular but it’s also not really UO.

Re: The Invention of the MMO

#12

Post by Aerroon »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #2

It's starting to feel like MMOs were just a product of the times we lived in, rather than a separate genre of game. In ~2004 I remember at least four MMOs: Asheron's Call, Planetside, World of Warcraft, and Dark Age of Camelot. It seems like only WoW survived, and nowadays I'm not sure the experience resembles the original anymore. Oh, and then there's EVE-Online, Runescape, Ultima Online... Nowadays it's mostly Robl…

RuneScape is still one of the most popular MMOs out there. Last year it peaked at over 240k people online (concurrent users). It's nowhere near as popular as Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft but it's still doing very well.

I think what happened to the MMO genre is mobile games. They siphoned away the casual playerbase, so the old dynamics don't work as well anymore.

>It's tempting to think there's something like "the MMO" that's yet to be discovered, just like the arena shooter was.

It wouldn't surprise me if this was seasonal games like Diablo and Path of Exile. I've thought that seasons like in those games are the future of games like MMOs since they provide a natural hype cycle and jumping on point for the game.

But something entirely new would likely be AI related. Perhaps AI tools in the (far) future will allow so much decent content to be made that games can constantly offer new experiences. Like imagine a near limitless world to explore. That could be interesting.

Re: The Invention of the MMO

#13

Post by jdcasale »

jameskilton wrote: post #5
sillysaurusx wrote: post #2

It's starting to feel like MMOs were just a product of the times we lived in, rather than a separate genre of game. In ~2004 I remember at least four MMOs: Asheron's Call, Planetside, World of Warcraft, and Dark Age of Camelot. It seems like only WoW survived, and nowadays I'm not sure the experience resembles the original anymore. Oh, and then there's EVE-Online, Runescape, Ultima Online... Nowadays it's mostly Robl…

In a lot of ways, World of Wacraft survived because it perfected the genre, and in doing so, kind of killed it. Final Fantasy 14 is successful because it copied a lot of WoW's patterns. Today, though, it's really hard to sell a game that requires such substantial amounts of time to progress. Lobby games, team shooters, battle royales are popular today because you can sign in, play, and be done in your time with no re…

The barrier to entry was the point, it's what created community. There is really no such thing as a durable community without entry and exit friction.

But games that rely on community are thus generally less scalable and profitable than games that don't. WoW was an aberration (partially because it had almost no competition at the time it was building its player base). It set profoundly unrealistic standards for the genre, and the gravity of community building in a contested space kind of killed off the rest of the genre because no one else was able to do it at 'WoW-scale', which was held up as the benchmark for what good looks like.

Re: The Invention of the MMO

#14

Post by mswphd »

Aerroon wrote: post #12
sillysaurusx wrote: post #2

It's starting to feel like MMOs were just a product of the times we lived in, rather than a separate genre of game. In ~2004 I remember at least four MMOs: Asheron's Call, Planetside, World of Warcraft, and Dark Age of Camelot. It seems like only WoW survived, and nowadays I'm not sure the experience resembles the original anymore. Oh, and then there's EVE-Online, Runescape, Ultima Online... Nowadays it's mostly Robl…

RuneScape is still one of the most popular MMOs out there. Last year it peaked at over 240k people online (concurrent users). It's nowhere near as popular as Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft but it's still doing very well. I think what happened to the MMO genre is mobile games. They siphoned away the casual playerbase, so the old dynamics don't work as well anymore. > It's tempting to think there's something like "the…

worth mentioning there's some indication the 240k peak was massively inflated by bot accounts. but by all means there are many fewer bot accounts this year, and it's still ~150k concurrents frequently. so it's still doing very well, but the numbers are a little different.

Re: The Invention of the MMO

#15

Post by serf »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #2

It's starting to feel like MMOs were just a product of the times we lived in, rather than a separate genre of game. In ~2004 I remember at least four MMOs: Asheron's Call, Planetside, World of Warcraft, and Dark Age of Camelot. It seems like only WoW survived, and nowadays I'm not sure the experience resembles the original anymore. Oh, and then there's EVE-Online, Runescape, Ultima Online... Nowadays it's mostly Robl…

>Asheron's Call, Planetside, World of Warcraft, and Dark Age of Camelot. It seems like only WoW survived

wow, daoc, runescape, eve, and now planetside 2 are still operating. everquest, the big one missing from your list, is also still online, so is everquest 2.

new expansions are coming out for everquest like clockwork, still.

UO and AC are the only actual dead ones, and they have a ton of community servers.

I have a hunch these things are cheap enough to keep going until the playerbase croaks and there isn't anyone to pay the bills left. I am sure they have very few new players.

Re: The Invention of the MMO

#16

Post by wyre »

jameskilton wrote: post #5
sillysaurusx wrote: post #2

It's starting to feel like MMOs were just a product of the times we lived in, rather than a separate genre of game. In ~2004 I remember at least four MMOs: Asheron's Call, Planetside, World of Warcraft, and Dark Age of Camelot. It seems like only WoW survived, and nowadays I'm not sure the experience resembles the original anymore. Oh, and then there's EVE-Online, Runescape, Ultima Online... Nowadays it's mostly Robl…

In a lot of ways, World of Wacraft survived because it perfected the genre, and in doing so, kind of killed it. Final Fantasy 14 is successful because it copied a lot of WoW's patterns. Today, though, it's really hard to sell a game that requires such substantial amounts of time to progress. Lobby games, team shooters, battle royales are popular today because you can sign in, play, and be done in your time with no re…

Yet people put hundreds of hours into their favorite video games and story-based games are still doing really well.

WoW puts 95% of the game at max level requiring players to invest dozens of hours just for table stakes. A well designed MMO doesn't have to do that, but the game needs to have enough content to have a thriving midgame, which is something that runescape does really well, except RuneScape's issue is to get out of the midgame requires hundreds of hours of grinding to get out of the midgame.

I think the biggest difference between battle royals and team shooters with MMOs is the online shooters are funded mostly by aesthetic packs, and a new and old account have the same gear available to them, while MMOs allow older accounts to unlock better gear. Nothing is stopping you from playing with your friends, while you can still invest into a character.

Re: The Invention of the MMO

#17

Post by tzs »

serf wrote: post #15
sillysaurusx wrote: post #2

It's starting to feel like MMOs were just a product of the times we lived in, rather than a separate genre of game. In ~2004 I remember at least four MMOs: Asheron's Call, Planetside, World of Warcraft, and Dark Age of Camelot. It seems like only WoW survived, and nowadays I'm not sure the experience resembles the original anymore. Oh, and then there's EVE-Online, Runescape, Ultima Online... Nowadays it's mostly Robl…

>Asheron's Call, Planetside, World of Warcraft, and Dark Age of Camelot. It seems like only WoW survived wow, daoc, runescape, eve, and now planetside 2 are still operating. everquest, the big one missing from your list, is also still online, so is everquest 2. new expansions are coming out for everquest like clockwork, still. UO and AC are the only actual dead ones, and they have a ton of community servers. I have a…

Everquest has made a lot of changes over the years that have turned it into an excellent game (solo or group) even if you stick to free play. You can't reasonably reach the top levels that way, but the top level is so much higher nowadays that by the time free play progress gets too slow you will have been able to do plenty of content that in the old days was high end content.

In the old days solo was a nightmare, but the changes have made it very viable.

Here's a previous comment that goes into details [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31368588

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