Just a thought - The Rise of Non-Linear MMOs

2013 was a shaky year.

Many MMO titles have fallen on and off the radar.

Many F2P MMOs have been shut down due to publisher negligence and greed.

And World of Warcraft continued its tight stranglehold on the entire industry.

But today, it’s becoming more apparent that gamers are getting burnt out on MMOs altogether. Mainly due to years of conditioning brought by World of Warcraft, many titles have been forced to follow its formula down to a T, as well as follow a strict check list for progression, features and amount of control the player has up until the endgame. For any MMO that doesn’t have a massive amount of content like World of Warcraft, it’s a formula that becomes a time bomb for any MMO attempting long term development.

Previously at GDC 2013, Park Seong Joon of Neowiz CRS hosted a lecture regarding the pitfalls of maintaining a modern MMO, with average scenario that happens after an MMO has launched:

Wonky grammar aside: his lecture explains is that most players will burn through the content of a new MMO faster than any development team can crank out new content for it. While I tend to play my MMOs at a more casual pace these days, it’s a routine that I see time and time again, as many gamers seem to be convinced that the endgame is where all the “fun stuff” happens, and with the linearity that most modern MMOs have, they’ll soon realize that the endgame actually has an –end- to it.

Just a thought - EverQuest Next

Hello again, random browsers and all five of you rabid followers. Today's a new day for some talk about the MMO industry. I've been pretty giddy all of last week since Sony Online Entertainment revealed details on their upcoming sandbox MMORPG: EverQuest Next, which is set to be (pre-)released by the end of this year. First off, I was instantly taken in by the new visual style of the game, which had a much more cartoon look to it. This is excellent because in all honesty, I really can't stand the "realistic" style that almost every single western fantasy MMORPG goes with these days. With a more cartoon style, the game comes off with a more lively tone. It certainly worked for Wildstar by Carbine Studios, because along with that game, Everquest Next is the second western MMORPG I've ever been interested in play. And personally, I can't wait to play as a Kerran, a lion race that looks suspiciously like Chester Cheetah...

...Umm... yeah.

Oh, and the gameplay features sound pretty cool, too. The whole "world destruction based on voxels" thing is a bit iffy to me, however, because if the entire world can be destroyed, then what's going to keep players from leveling out the world as soon as the servers open up? Because if there's two things that a good handful of gamers love to do in an online game, it's grieving and destroying.

On the OTHER hand, however, while I was discussing EverQuest Next with a few random people, an anonymous user brought up a very interesting possibility with the game's world destruction: With the entire world decimated by the players, no longer will EverQuest Next be about exploring a vast open world, but instead the game will be about surviving in the ruins of a vast open world, which sounded pretty freaking awesome to me. But still, would SOE even allow such events to unfold in their game? I mean sure, it IS supposed to be a sandbox MMO, after all, but the developers still have a general vision in their mind for how the game world should play out, especially with all those AI features they're bringing along, which I'm not so sure would work well with messed up, player made terrain. But who knows? I don't.

As mentioned before, EverQuest Next is being pre-released by the end of the year with the upcoming Landmark creation tools, where players will be able to create their own towns, dungeons and more, just as long as they appropriately fit the environments setting, and most of everything that will get to stay in the final version will be by SOE's discretion, so sadly there will be no dick castles to service as monuments for the glorious nation of Dickstonia. One thing I'd like to mention is that there's some buzz here and there about the whole Landmark problem, where some people suggest the whole process is in place so that SOE doesn't have to waste time making the world of EverQuest Next themselves. "We're too lazy to make the world, so make it for us!" Personally, I think this is actually a grand idea. Judging by Landmark creation tool footage, it will be very similar to how creation works in Minecraft, where players can assemble their creations block by block. However, unlike Minecraft, players will be able to shape and curve out their blocks into any shape. So yes, you'll be able to make dick statues that ACTUALLY look like dicks!

Ok... So dick jokes aside, though, with the players being able to create highly detailed environments, along with the possibly of garnering the more creative bunch of the Minecraft community, mixed in with veteran EverQuest players to give players guidance on how the world of EverQuest should look, I'm certain that the world of EverQuest Next will be shaped into something that will resonate with worlds of old EverQuest 1 & 2. Plus, I'm fairly sure that SOE has their plenty of their own environments that will appear in the final game, so not everything will have to be created by the players.

Overall, EverQuest Next is looking might spiffy. I didn't feel like talking about the combat in this blog post, but it looks like it will be similar to combat in Guild Wars 2 or Wildstar. There wasn't a lot of footage of the combat for me to make a decent analysis, but I liked what I say so far.

For more info on EverQuest Next, you can check out some posts over at Cinderboy's blog: http://www.mmoculture.com/tag/everquest-next/

My MMO prediction for 2012

Just to keep some content flowing: here's my previously mentioned prediction for the MMO market in 2012. As I already shouted on my twitter feed, the funny thing about this article was that I made a joke about F2P cash shops selling overpowered items like golden machine guns and whatnot. A day after that article was posted on OnRPG, the site was giving away golden weapon keys for Repluse. Kind of ironic, but the golden weapons were free anyway...

"What are my predictions for 2012? Well it has nothing to do with any big name titles like TERA or Guild Wars 2. My prediction leans toward the future of the free-to-play gaming market. I predict that new online game titles will come and follow down the F2P route in the RIGHT way. Most free-to-play games these days always promote themselves free, but they always include some sort of catch or crippling factor on free players that force them to cough up some real money in order for them to enjoy the game properly. You know… the whole "Free-to-play = Pay-to-win" thing. This has become less of a mockery against particular games and more of a philosophy shared by publishers throughout the free-to-play MMO world."

Lack of immersion in MMOs

When was the last time you felt like you were living in the world of the MMO you played? Or the last time you felt like you were one with your virtual character? Chances are, you probably haven't felt that feeling in a long time. For me, I haven't felt immersed in an MMO since I was a kid. Maybe it was because my sense of childhood wonder helped fill the gap of being connected to the game world, but whatever the case, many MMOs just don't seem to have that spark.

Just a thought - Cut Nexon some slack!

(Please note that this article was created years ago and my thoughts on the company has changed since then. This article is now for archive purposes only)

Well here's a post that should have been posted on my blog awhile ago!

 Over at OnRPG, I did a little feature article on why Nexon deserves a little more credit than they're being given by the general MMO public (and when I mean general public, I mean OnRPG's community... Ha ha.) Now I don't think that Nexon is 100% perfect by all means, but I certainly think they're a step above most gaming portals, because at least Nexon doesn't remove features from their games and try to sell them back to you, or try to place outrageous prices on vanity items, huh? Here's the rest of my thoughts:

I said it!

This is probably not a big deal and all, but new ads on GameCampus's Soul Master are circulating on OnRPG.com right, and it has a quote made by me!

I said that! I totally said that. I mentioned that Soul Master's gameplay has an interesting blend of game genres in my preview article which you can see here and here!

Again I probably shouldn't make a big deal out of this, but it's nice to see that my words used to represent OnRPG.

Oh, and look out for full review of Soul Master pretty soon. It's going into Open Beta this Thursday, so full service shouldn't be too far off.