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

[Damion Schubert]

From: Sean Howard

>> 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 doubt the pendulum will swing back. Gone are the days when
> interesting minds from the MUD world are hired for the sake of a
> new field. MMORPGs are an old field with lots of books written on
> them - so all the designers are going to come from traditional
> game industry sources.

I disagree strongly.  I think we might enter a 'dry spell' for
world-oriented MMPs due to this year's releases.  If WoW is
successful, it may even spawn copycats.  But the games industry is
not usually very kind to copycats, only rewarding the best of them,
leaving the rest to failure.

A good synonym is FPS gaming.  For years, all FPS gaming was far on
the 'game' side.  Physics were cartoony, weapons were fantastic, and
the plot always involved the same Space Marine.  After Capture The
Flag was discovered, the designers felt they had found their perfect
game design.  For years, FPS gamers played the same game with
different coats of paint, but only a handful really succeeded.

Out of nowhere, a small company decided they couldn't compete with
id and Epic, and decided that they wanted to make an FPS with a
strong sense of 'world', and dramatically change the rules of that
game from the classic CTF gameplay towards something that would
better capture the idea of holding territory.  While they weren't
the first FPS company to do a realistic shooter, the Battlefield
1942 team was the one that put together all of the pieces in such a
way that they became a true phenomenon.  Now, the pendulum is all
the way the other way: every major publisher has a WW2 or
Vietnam-era shooter in the works, leaving the old 'gamey' space
marine stuff to id and Epic.  And in the classic rush towards the
center between world and game, Epic's UT2004 borrowed heavily from
BF1942's design.

'World' gaming will come back.  When, who knows?  But it will.
Anyway, as long as Raph is making decisions down in Sony, I'm pretty
sure you can trust that the dream of 'world' won't die.

--d
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