Nth Chances

May 17, 2006 on 8:08 pm | In MMO (Live), MMO (Upcoming), General Gaming, Industry

Every year features new entrants into the MMO space. While last year was dominated by Blizzard, we also saw the debut of some newbies ArenaNet (GuildWars), Monolith (Matrix Online) and Planetwide Games (Ryl), among others.

There's also been a long list of expansions for specific titles, from relative newcomers like Everquest 2, maturing titles like City of Heros and genre veterans like Dark Age of Camelot and the venerable Everquest 1 itself. This mix of old and new feeds the very breadth that almost ensures there's an MMORPG for every gamer. But this also shows that almost every game has a fair chance at a second (or Nth) chance. In my mind, there's three main ways to gain a second chance:

  1. A personal or team-collective rethink. The best recent example would be Star Wars Galaxies New Game Experience.
  2. An expansion pack. While some expansions generally introduce new content and perhaps some new powers, occasionally an expansion radically changes the core game play experience. Any SWG expansion would fit here, from the space combat of Jump to Lightspeed to the contrived linear near-RPG experience of Rage of the Wookiees. But the expansion that sticks out the most would be Everquest 1: Planes of Power. This didn't introduce the most changes of any expansion of all time. What it did though was more important: it began the whole process of rethink that resulted in an EQ1 of today that is radically different from those than preceeded PoP. Among these core rethinks was the centralized player Bazaar, a game system to take over for the failings of the player-created ones, a mass transit system that was easy and quick to use, mob rotation in zones and a significant graphics upgrade. Thereafter came things like ingame maps, the removal of hell levels, and of course the more pedestrian and expected stuff like raised level caps and higher level content.
  3. An individual or team launching a brand new game. This is what inspired this blog entry, a sort of "where are they now".

A few well-known names have and will again lit the ways for new MMORPGs with unique promises. There are many more people than who are listed here, but these are the ones that stuck out in my mind during the two days I spent at E3. People in the industry see luminaries and visionaries differently than the gamers do, and the below is focused on the latter.

  • Raph Koster. He'd be the first to say he was part of the team behind UO and SWG, but the average gamer considers him the visionary behind SWG, or the man to blame, depending on their point of view. Having not renewed his contract with SOE, some see the removal of shackles that held back the proper execution of his vision. Others see things a bit differently. Whatever the case is, he'll be back, hopefully driving his vision and integration of community through a publisher with a less, err, "focused" outlook on the world.
  • Richard Garriot. Also of UO fame (having, like, created "Ultima" in the first place), he landed with NC Soft to help them develop their Lineage brand, and now is developing Tabula Rasa. The game has been completely redesigned from the already unique original version, and with him at the Creative helm as of that change (perhaps having inspired it?), this may be the first time since UO that gamers get to see a game he entirely conceived (not by himself of course).
  • Brad McQuaid. The visionary behind EQ (among others, again, of course), he left SOE and ultimately ended up creating Vanguard, a title originally to be published by Microsoft. Now that SOE is also in the mix again, many have wondered whether that means VG will "become" just another EQ. Personally, I feel VG already is another EQ, a game that improves upon that core experience has if the rest of the genre didn't evolve beyond Velious-era EQ. This isn't a good or bad thing. I just think it narrows the potential appeal.

There's also a number of companies that will be given their second/Nth chance to appeal to gamers:

  • NC Soft. I feel NC had an auspicious start in the U.S. with the launch of Lineage 1 with an extremely limited success. They rebounded a bit with word of Lineage 2, a game with pretty 3D graphics and promise of an experience more befitting of Western players. But what I feel really put them on the map was their 2004 live and preview lineup. Unfortunately, since then, City of Heros has declined, Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault were delayed, with the latter garnering relatively limited appeal with this year's launch. Of course, Guild Wars has done extremely well, but here we truly won't know how well it's done until they need to start relying on the sale of expansion packs come next year. But NC is not about individual games. They wisely seem to have a hands-off approach, letting the developers like Cryptic, NetDevil and ArenaNet do their own thing. So even if an individual title does not fare well, the strength of the NC name still resides in the breadth of their library, which continues to grow. All eyes are on Tabula Rasa to see how that does in this age of WoW, of course the GW expansions and then the somewhat offbeat titles like Exteel.
  • Funcom. This is almost a company people love to hate. Particularly for veterans of the genre, the launch of Anarchy Online being such a disaster still stings to this day. Even the improvements to the game since have somewhat been mitigated by their partnering with Massive Entertainment to support ingame advertising. To a veteran, that inspires almost as much profanity-laden discourse as perma-death and RMTing (though as the genre has grown, so has the anger against ingame advertising become more muted). So all eyes are on Age of Conan now, a game I found to be promising.
  • Mythic. As the first saviors for those looking to ditch the arduous grind and arrogance of then-EQ1, Dark Age of Camelot ultimately turned into a very comparable experience. This was not a casual MMOG, but rather, a twist on the same time-sinky nature of EQ1. The game has gone through many great changes, but some have wondered what was next for the newcomer Mythic. For awhile, it was to be Imperator, a world in which the Roman Empire never fell (as if being the world power for over 800 years was not good enough). Unfortunately, that title was "postponed", which to the gamer basically means "dropped." Now the focus is on Warhammer Online, an IP with a great deal more creativity built into it already. Some have wondered if a licensed game needs to be based on a game IP in order to be successful, citing SWG vs WoW. For them, Warhammer may actually prove this out. Or not. The game hasn't had much hands-on public scrutiny. From what I could see, it looks to have the low-barrier graphical styling and engine of WoW, with a UI to match, so that's a promising start.

This leaves a list of newcomers that have not yet arrived, companies like:

Ultimately, any news of WoW capping creativity or interest in this genre is way premature. There are more games under development now than ever. Of course, this also means there are more oldtimers that need to re-prove themselves to gamers again either with new games or by completely gutting old ones to make them relevant to current demand. But it also means there’s still more room for more developers with some new twist to promise.

Has the novelty of MMORPGs worn off? Only for those that relied on the newness and uniqueness of the technology and the relatively niche size of the playerbase. MMOGs have launched that weren’t broken and unplayable at launch, proving that it’s possible just enough to make it a requirement. Nowadays, and for the future, WoW will be the one to beat for companies looking for that “sure thing". But for everyone else, there’s still many more concepts that haven’t been tried (or haven’t been tried since MUDs) to entice new players and old alike

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