[MUD-Dev] MMORPG Cancellations: The sky is falling?

[Damion Schubert]

From: Tony Hoyt
> Quoting Raph Koster 7/9/2004:

>> The single biggest difference I see right now other than graphics
>> is the push on the part of graphical commercial game makers to
>> make the games less like online worlds and more like limited
>> multiplayer games, via instancing and massive streamlining of
>> feature sets. This is something the text games could do, but
>> never did to this degree, and whether it is the right direction
>> is, I think, debatable (though no one doubts that some of the
>> resultant games are fun).

> It almost sound like your suggesting that the next wave of MMOG's
> being produce are more set to a trend of being games before
> worlds.  Does this go against your philosphy of how online games
> should be developed or is it more so the latest fad in MMOG
> development?

You're going to see things go both ways, although its taking a
fairly interesting pendulum swing approach.  The last round of games
were pretty heavy into the virtual world philosophy- Shadowbane,
TSO, Star Wars Galaxies were all a bit more on that side of the
equation, albeit all in wildly different ways.

City of Heroes is the opening salvo of the next wave of games, which
is going to be heavy on the gaming side: I'd expect WoW, EQ2, Tabula
Rasa and Guild Wars to all follow suit.  I also expect them to do
quite well, especially WoW.  'Game'-oriented MMPs have many things
going for them: they're typically easier to run, it's easier to find
fun, and to some degree they're easier to play.  However, expect
that pendulum to swing back to the world side afterwards, especially
as smaller developers try to find unique selling propositions to
stand against the big boys on the block (EQ2 and WoW).

I once wrote a piece discussing the game landscape as a triangle
(unfortunately the piece is lost, apparently), where each corner
represents a game philosophy: Game, World, and Community.  Pretty
much any game can be plotted on the graph: UO, for example, would be
plotted almost all the way into the World corner at launch, whereas
CoH would be mostly on the Game side with a little bit of World. My
general hypothesis was that the best game would be pretty much right
in the sweet spot in the middle, meaning all three are equally
important in the long run.  My secondary hypothesis was that players
would eventually push the game towards the center, either through
their own efforts or by pressuring the devs.  UO, for example, has
added mostly Game and Community features since launch, moving them
towards central.

--d
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