Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

Tobold is annoyed that mmorpgs " evolved into a bunch of derivative and repetitive chores instead of living and breathing worlds" and his post inspired me to record my own thoughts in a comment which I am recording here for posterity:  I am the same age as you Tobold and like you I once thought mmorpgs would be stepping stones towards fully immersive alternative worlds such as those envisaged by William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and Tad Williams.  I think a few virtual worlds did try to go that way including obviously "Second Life" but also a number of titles aimed at younger audiences such as "Club Penguin" and "Free Realms" but none of them ever really took off and in the end mmorpgs became just another type of game to play. I think that Blizzard realised this early with  World of Warcraft and while WoW did offer a large immersive online world the game aspect always came first. This proved a smart business decision because pretty soon afterw...

For a time in the last decade, there was a sense that an immersive 3D communal place was a substantial thing unto itself, and likely to become an important media offering. That has not happened. Instead, we've seen an unbundling of the parts of virtual worlds. Sociality went to Facebook. Complex heroic stories went to single-player games. Multiplayer combat went to places like DOTA and Clash of Clans. Economy games went to Farmville and the F2P clones. Virtual currency went to Bitcoin.  Edward Castronova final post on Terra Nova, 25th September 2014 This succinct analysis strikes a poignant chord with me. Having grown up with 1980's Sci Fi I have always had a secret hankering for Gibsonesque virtual worlds that would allow humans to escape from the tethers of the physical world. For a brief moment in time it seemed that mmorpgs might be the first tentative steps towards making those virtual worlds a reality. Sure they were games but they were also so much more than games. Th...

I am currently reading Cory Doctor's "FTW" a novel which explores the economic and social consequences of the gold farming industry that has sprung up around massively multiplayer online games. Doctorow knows his subject but even so the novel seems strangely out of date. He describes a near future world where just about every teenager is plugged into an online game and where the economies of major titles exceed that of many countries. I vaguely remember headlines like that from about five years ago but it seems strangely out of date now. Despite rising numbers of players the importance of mmorpgs as a phenomenon seems to have shrunk. No one compares mmorpg economies to countries any more. Stories about Second Life  are no longer a regular feature in the main stream newspapers.  Perhaps most tellingly teenagers are not abdicating en masse from the real world to take up residence in the online world of their choice. No one really seems to believe any more that these virtual...

Apologies to Syp who more usually does this sort of thing but I think Tipa deserves a gong for this one: Simply put, World of Warcraft is not part of the MMORPG genre. It is funny how much healthier the mmorpg scene looks if you do remove WOW from the picture. If you include WOW you see one all powerful market leader with a horde of failed wannabes. If you ignore WOW you can see a large variety of different and interesting games some good some bad some paying the bills some not. But can we ignore WOW? Heaven knows that I and a lot of other former players would like to. I resent its overpowering influence on the market and I have more or less convinced myself that many many World of Warcraft players are not really gamers at all never mind mmorpgers. Me convincing myself doesn't mean its true though. WOW exists. It is big. Whether it really is an mmorpg or not it is kind of hard to ignore

Thank you to Green Armadillo for highlighting the fact that Free Realms is going to put a barrier in at level 5 beyond which you must be a subscriber to advance. As Green Armadillo himself puts it: "Free Realms is now all but officially a subscription game with a free trial, rather than a free to play game with an item shop and optional subscription" I know very little about Free Realms having only played one character up to (coincidentally) level 5 but on the face of it this is a staggering move. For quite some time it has appeared that microtransactions were an unstoppable force which would eventually signal the death of the subscription model. Turbine's recent move of DDO from compulsory to optional subscriptions has reportedly been a big success. Sony are the only company I have heard of moving back towards a compulsory subscription model. Without more information it is hard to read this. I assume Sony are doing it because they think it will make them more money ...

If, in years to come, a more enlightened future generation proves beyond doubt that the massively multiplayer games of the early 21st century were genuinely harmful, that they exploited vulnerabilities in the human psyche and that in addition to being thieves of time they also caused irreparable damage to the intellect and personalities of players, how then should we consider people who embraced these games even more fully than we did ourselves? Should we look down upon this hardcore with scorn for having been so foolish as to abandon themselves completely to the affliction or should we admire them for having grasped the fleeting moment and lived it to the maximum.

If any game is going to knock WOW off its pedestal as the dominant mmo it will need to do something that WOW doesn't do and cannot easily copy. One likely strategy is the console MMO. There is a persistent rumour about Lotro being ported to consoles but I am not convinced they will be able to simplify the interface enough to fit it onto a console. A game that is designed for consoles from the ground up is more likely to succeed I think. Sony seems to think so too and their new MMO "The Agency" is being designed for PS3 and PC (notice which comes first). The game has been described as "pick up and play" and an "online persistent shooter" both of which suggestions seem to be at odds with the game's claim to be an mmorpg but nevertheless we have been promised that the characters will develop rpg like abilities. DM Osbon over at Construed has snagged an interview with Matt Staroscik , Game Designer & Lead Writer for "The Agency" and t...

Two well known bloggers Tobold and Melmoth announced their departure from Warhammer Online this week. Is this the beginning of the games decline or is it just natural turnover? I don't know. Other bloggers such as Syncaine , Keen and Saylah are still waxing lyrical about WAR, pointing out that this game seems to have really innovated in terms of making group play both fun and rewarding. Not only do I not know but I must admit to being completely unqualified to express an opinion. I have never played WAR and I am currently going through an "anti-mmo" phase as indicated in my series of posts with the tag line " mmos are history ". However, being unqualified to give an opinion doesn't sop me from having one, so, for what it is worth, here it is: I think that the time of explosive market growth for WOW / Everquest style mmo's is pretty much over (in the developed world at any rate). Future subscription growth rate will be low or even negative. I think t...

In his blog today Tobold proposes an mmo where each player has a unique individual epic quest line. You could still group up and recruit friends to share your adventures but you wouldn't all be striving to kill the same ten rats over and over again. As Tobold says this "will allow grander stories, being more interesting to the player because they involve him much more." In other words we can finally have a proper "heroes journey" in an mmo. I think this is a great proposal. Consider Tobold's proposal and read my recent comment about Sacrifice: There are five main paths to the end goal one offered by each of five Gods. Each God offers a sequence of nine missions leading to a common tenth "final mission". Each God has their own style and rewards the player with unique powers and creatures for taking their missions. The really clever bit is that you can mix and match missions for different Gods leading to a wide range of different paths through the ...

This blog serves as a sort of personal gaming history but it has been a few weeks since I wrote about any of the games I am actually playing. To redress the situation I will do a quick round up of my gaming over the last month or so. Eve didn't survive long after my return from holidays. I found myself increasingly reluctant to log into my mission running main and only lingered on for a week or so playing low skill point alts. When my subscription ran out it was an easy decision not to renew. I notice that Warhammer online is getting very good vibes from the press and my fellow bloggers but I am not ready to plunge into another mmo yet. Real life and work (see what I did there?) are making a lot of demands on me at the moment and I can't make the commitment required to do the mmo thing. In fact the commitment that mmos demand is one of the main tenets of my "mmos are history" argument. After EVE I went to the opposite extreme and indulged in some Flash gaming for a f...

I got bored of fantasy MMOs and went through a whole MMOs are History thing. Then I got bored of "MMOs are History" and dropped the subject. The feeling hasn't enirely gone away though. I have been enjoying EVE for the last few months but much of my enjoyment of EVE stems from how different it is to the WOW like mmos I had dabbled in before. With tongue in cheek I extrapolated my ennui onto the entire MMO population predicting that the each new game would hold its audience for less time than the previous one leading quickly to the demise of the genre. The two month wonder that was Age of Conan certainly proved me right and it will be interesting to see if WAR can do better. In a recent post Syncaine makes a very sensible counter argument to MMOS are History(tm). He points out that it is entirely possible for people to be bored with the game they are playing but not be bored of the entire mmo genre. I quote: 'I believe most of the people burned out on WoW are stil...

My recent "MMOs are History" thing ( here and here )was started as a joke but Khan's recent post on the future of MMOs has prompted me to think about this more seriously. The truth is my thoughts and feelings about the future of mmorpgs are quite muddled at the moment. In the first instance I should own up to my own prejudices. I got bored of WOW, I got bored of Guild Wars, I got bored of LOTRO. I didn't just get bored of the predictable fantasy settings or the repetitive gameplay. I got bored of the whole "multiplayer experience". I got bored of grouping and raiding. I got bored of chatting to online friends. I got bored of reading and posting on guild forums. I got bored of trying to fit my life around a game's schedule. I got bored of blogging about my gaming. Even though I am now spending a fair amount of time in EVE I am effectively playing it as a single player game. I know I am missing out on most of what the game has to offer but I just amn...

Terra Nova are the "Harvard" of MMORPG blogging so I feel it necessary to gloat that the good folk at TN seem to be coming around to support my statement that " MMORPGS are History ". Yes, Yes I know that Age of Conan has had a very successful launch. I know that anticipation for Warhammer Online is building up to frenzied proportions. I know that there are new child friendly MMO's being launched every day. I admit that I have just renewed my subscription to EVE online. I admit that I have even signed up for a new free to play MMO ( NosTale ) but some day, somehow my prediction will eventually come to pass and MBP will surely be hailed forever more as the visionary who said it first.

Edit. This post was meant to be tongue in cheek but Khan of the Battered Shield recently linked to it in a serious piece about the future of MMOs . Now I am worried that folk may come and read this, miss the joke and think that I am a complete idiot. If you do read what follows please take it in the spirit of humour in which it was intended. My real feelings about the future of MMOs are a bit more complicated. I am going to write a new post about this and will link to it here when finished. Recently I have made a few posts on this blog along with comments to other blogs along the lines of " MMORPGS are a passing fad". I could point to evidence that WOW has become so dominant that no new MMORPG has a chance. I could point to the many bloggers who are expressing boredom with their current MMO. I could show the very clear trend that the time constant for gamers to get bored with each new game is falling. I could point out that the huge demands that MMOs make on their players a...