Attention all you MMORPGing Wierdo Dregs! You. Are. Offically On notice!

[mutantmagnet]

Originally Posted by Digo

Skilling up/leveling up is content for casual players.

The act of skilling/levelling is definitely not content. Quests are content. New abilities are content. Skilling/levelling is just a time sink that gives players an illusion of making their character better.

[Mist]

Originally Posted by mutantmagnet

New technology or new ways to make old technology attractive to use (Wiimote) could come about that makes MMO games more appealing. Developers could follow through on design philosophies that make MMOs even more appealing. (e.g. mmo games are designed with time sinks in mind. How about removing those timesinks like skilling up or levelling up?)

No one, single game is ever going to be appealing enough to be ONE GAME TO RULE THEM ALL. How mainstream is mainstream enough? 20 million? 50 million? Do you really think it possible to make a game that 50 million people want to pay to play at least a few times a week for at least a few months? And if you DID somehow do this, wouldn't it destroy the rest of the game industry because everyone would be playing one game?

Think of it like movies. When you set out to make a movie, you don't set out to try to make one that 80% of the movie-going population will want to watch over and over again for an entire year to the exclusion of all other movies, destroying every other movie studio and claiming the title of BEST MOVIE EVER. No, you just set out to make a movie. Sometimes you make a movie that YOU want to make, and hope other people dig it. Sometimes you find your target audience and make the movie they want to see. You DON'T throw in elements of every single genre and style of movie and try to get everyone in the world to go see your own movie and never watch any other movies ever again.

That's basically what the major AAA MMO companies are trying to do right now. They see WoW's market share and they want to STEAL a big chunk of WoW's customers. They want to try to OWN the MMO industry, dethroning WoW in the process, rather than make an entirely new genre of MMO and attract an entirely new base of customers. Right now the MMO is viewed as a genre onto itself, rather than being seen as a new type of entertainment entirely with the potential for many of it's own genres.

[Froofy-D]

Originally Posted by Mist

~9 million people have bought Halo 3. 80% of them probably played through the single player game in under 2 weeks, and then rarely played it ever again except a few split screen multiplayer games with their frat buddies a couple times a month. Less than a quarter of current generation consoles are even hooked up to the internet.

Compare this to WoW. 10 million+ active paying customers. Nearly all of them play it at least a couple nights a week for months.

Assuming the 9 million number for Halo 3 is correct, then indeed, WoW is more mainstream than Halo 3. The only thing more mainstream than WoW is Solitaire or Minesweeper. Also consider Flash game sites, online card games, gambling, and fantasy sports leagues, etc.

"PC gaming" is mainstream. However "High System Spec PC Gaming" is not. Too bad a majority of the industry seems to dense to realize it.

[Mist]

Originally Posted by Froofy-D

Assuming the 9 million number for Halo 3 is correct, then indeed, WoW is more mainstream than Halo 3. The only thing more mainstream than WoW is Solitaire or Minesweeper. Also consider Flash game sites, online card games, gambling, and fantasy sports leagues, etc.

"PC gaming" is mainstream. However "High System Spec PC Gaming" is not. Too bad a majority of the industry seems to dense to realize it.

Exactly. 198 million GeForce 5s and above. WoW ran well on my GeForce 4.

PC graphics engines can be extremely good at scaling well. Hell, if you get a large enough subscriber you can afford two sets of client programmers, one for the normal client and one for the 'HIGH DEF' client with the optional 4 gigabytes of high res textures and bigger patch sizes.

Physics is another issue. If you were making an FPS MMO it would most likely need pretty solid physics, and hence some processor power. But if you started making an AAA MMO *today*, by the end of your 4 year development cycle you could assume just about everyone has at least dual cores, considering Dell hasn't sold anything not at least dual core in over a year.

[Digo]

However novel my mom finds bowling or hula-hooping on the wii, she is not going to play WoW, or even something like WoW only "more casual." Going after older, non-gamer markets is stupid.

Keep making diku-style MMOs and aim them at kids. Kids are the real new market.

[column]

Rock band MMO ? =P

[Ravensign]

Maybe when they catch up in quality we can move on to innovation. So many MMO's look like shit, feel like shit, play like shit.

Execution is so poor, you can't even recognize the innovation part.

[r3probate]

I would bow down and sign away my soul for a Rock Band MMO

[Mist]

Originally Posted by Digo

However novel my mom finds bowling or hula-hooping on the wii, she is not going to play WoW, or even something like WoW only "more casual." Going after older, non-gamer markets is stupid.

Keep making diku-style MMOs and aim them at kids. Kids are the real new market.

Yeah but frat-boys and other JAEGERBOMB drinkers aren't gonna sit around pretending to be elves a few nights a week either. They would, however, take out their brutish, clannish territorial instincts in a Halo or CoD MMO a few nights a week*, as long as it wasn't so complex that you couldn't play it slightly inebriated. It couldn't just be a reskinned WoW, it would have to have the core gameplay of an AAA FPS game.

Basically, I think nearly every genre of AAA title traditional video games could benefit from some layer of persistence and social organization.

*Hell, even AoC could have gone after this market, if it didn't require a 3000 dollar retail computer or a 1500 dollar homebrew to play it correctly.

[Digo]

They already have a military MMO. It's called Battlefield 2142.

[Mist]

Originally Posted by Digo

They already have a military MMO. It's called Battlefield 2142.

No lobby. No chat features beyond a poorly implemented friends list. No real clan support. Bad interface in general. High system specs.

[r3probate]

And CoD4 has enough MMO-like features ( rank progression, unlockable weapons, abilities, upgrades, time-sinks ) to where I think you could lump it into the sort of almost military MMO with Battlefield XXXX.

Edit: as well as guilds, friend list, etc, etc.

[Mist]

Still nothing anyone would pay 15 dollars a month for. Lets work under the assumption that the basic goal of an AAA MMO is to generate some kind of subscription fee to pay for continued content updates and generate large revenues.

All the best features of BF2142+CoD4+TF2 still wouldn't make something worth 15 (or even 10) dollars a month. Needs more, lots more.

[Fury]

Originally Posted by Jait

It's the tip of the iceburg. Allocation of time is another major factor which I meant to add to the last post.

If you own a PC and at least one MMO, you probably don't have a lot of extra free time for single-player games. And when you do, you'll jump on the console which is much better designed for not only quicker single-player games but fast action co-op.

Most of you folks on these boards are the literal bellwether for gaming. Just think about how you spend your time, and what you *really* want without bullshitting yourself, and you'll probably find quite a few of the answers to the questions asked here. It's a lot easier than typing a 90 page synopsis on what's wrong these days with gaming. Or rather, what's right with gaming. I'm not really unhappy, and I don't think most other folks are either. It's just fun to bitch.

Hmmm... I kind of disagree with this. I mix in AoC and the Orange Box pretty well in my available time. And playing TF2, on the PC, is far superior then it would be on a console. Actually, any FPS should be better on a PC then a console. Halfl Life 2? Again, I'd say better looking and better control on a PC.

Personally I don't even own a console. Now if they start to add the ability to use keyboard/gamepad and a mouse, I might grudgingly move to them. But I actually think we might be coming to the end of the life cycle on consoles. I doubt MS and SOE are willing to keep losing the billion(s) just to keep the other guy from owning the market.

[mutantmagnet]

Originally Posted by Mist

No one, single game is ever going to be appealing enough to be ONE GAME TO RULE THEM ALL.

But noone even said that here.

How mainstream is mainstream enough? 20 million? 50 million?

Do you really think it possible to make a game that 50 million people want to pay to play at least a few times a week for at least a few months?

Considering that 50 million isn't even 1% of the world's population it's obvious there is room for growth, but I'm thinking of the online multiplayer games as a group growing into the mainstream and not just mmos.

And if you DID somehow do this, wouldn't it destroy the rest of the game industry because everyone would be playing one game?

A monopoly wouldn't destroy the rest of the game industry, it would stifle it. I would be more concerned about what a monopoly would do to itss consumers moreso than its miniscule competitors.

Think of it like movies.

Actually I was thinking of movies and other media when I made that post in respones to your question. As technology changed media became more accesible and more prolific. That's why I mentioned new technology will make an MMO more mainstream than WoW in the future.

Right now the MMO is viewed as a genre onto itself, rather than being seen as a new type of entertainment entirely with the potential for many of it's own genres.

Well MMOs are a genre onto themselves when compared to other videogames and online community building projects like facebook. I'm not denying that MMOs can also be broken down into subgenres because I know they can and we've seen a few so far, pvp oriented, pve oriented and economy centric mmos.