The Next 10 Years of MMORPGS - PAX Panel

[crunk]

This is a really great panel where people from a lot of upcoming games discuss the future of the genre. I've been playing MMO's since EQ1 and for me the genre has grown incredibly stale. The biggest things they are trying to bring to the table are more meaningful player interactions, persistent change to the game environment, and dynamic AIs. Those are my 3 biggest beefs with the WoW model so this panel gave me a lot of hope for the "3rd Generation" of MMO games that are going to come to market in the next few years.

They touch on a lot of subjects like raids, economy, botting, F2P vs subs, etc. The short version is that everyone is now trying to make persistent, sand-box worlds with varying amounts of theme park vs player generated content. I thought, generally, Dave Georgeson (Everquest Next) and Ryan Dancey (Pathfinder: Online) had the best insight to the genre - they really understand what its going to take to push these games beyond World of Warcraft into the persistent, social experience a lot (most?) of us want. And, while I'm sure Wildstar is going to be a pretty good game, Stephan Frost (Wildstar) got blown out of the water by the other developers' vision for the future. One of them even said "Wildstar will be the last AAA Theme Park MMO".


Anyway, here's the panel, its sort of long but worth watching all the way through. The audience actually asked good questions for once -

[Val the Moofia Boss]

This is a really great panel where people from a lot of upcoming games discuss the future of the genre. I've been playing MMO's since EQ1 and for me the genre has grown incredibly stale. The biggest things they are trying to bring to the table are more meaningful player interactions, persistent change to the game environment, and dynamic AIs. Those are my 3 biggest beefs with the WoW model so this panel gave me a lot of hope for the "3rd Generation" of MMO games that are going to come to market in the next few years.

They touch on a lot of subjects like raids, economy, botting, F2P vs subs, etc. The short version is that everyone is now trying to make persistent, sand-box worlds with varying amounts of theme park vs player generated content. I thought, generally, Dave Georgeson (Everquest Next) and Ryan Dancey (Pathfinder: Online) had the best insight to the genre - they really understand what its going to take to push these games beyond World of Warcraft into the persistent, social experience a lot (most?) of us want. And, while I'm sure Wildstar is going to be a pretty good game, Stephan Frost (Wildstar) got blown out of the water by the other developers' vision for the future. One of them even said "Wildstar will be the last AAA Theme Park MMO".


Anyway, here's the panel, its sort of long but worth watching all the way through. The audience actually asked good questions for once -

Glad to here that the traditional MMORPG is only going to bug us for another couple years before we get some actually decent games.

[Simulacrum]

It sure would be nice to have some sandbox MMOs around here that aren't EVE online, but to go from that to 'all future big-budget non-sandbox mmos are doomed' is quite the leap, and honestly makes it hard to swallow anything else that panel has to say if they don't immediately challenge that assertion - which presumably they do? There are millions paying for that experience right now, millions of whom would probably be happy to move on to the next iteration once the current generation eventually dies off. I know I would be happy to play such a game if it had well-made and engaging content of the type that I care about.

Thanks for the link, I'll give it a listen sometime soon.

[crunk]

It sure would be nice to have some sandbox MMOs around here that aren't EVE online, but to go from that to 'all future big-budget non-sandbox mmos are doomed' is quite the leap, and honestly makes it hard to swallow anything else that panel has to say if they don't immediately challenge that assertion - which presumably they do? There are millions paying for that experience right now, millions of whom would probably be happy to move on to the next iteration once the current generation eventually dies off. I know I would be happy to play such a game if it had well-made and engaging content of the type that I care about.

Thanks for the link, I'll give it a listen sometime soon.

they pretty much agree that themepark elements have a place in MMOs, but to really get people interested in these games anymore they have to offer something different from the instance model. they dont presume to say the "go do this activity" gameplay has no place, rather, that its place should be reduced and paired with something new to offer.

[Deleted]

The future of MMOs is an expansion of the genre pairing. I don't think the theme-park RPG will die out anytime soon; there are still tens of millions of players spread across the four/five major games out there.

What's happening on consoles in the next few years is the most exciting for me personally; persistent world driving MMOs, survival-FPS MMOs, etc.

EQ:Next has the right idea going forward for RPGs with a sandbox element and the potential for player-created content to make it into the game. Wildstar doesn't have anything special enough to be anymore than just "another one on the pile". It's very much a re-skin of the current formulas, borrowing ideas from games already on the market but not having its own stand-out features.

[Sharuko]

They have had some good panels, but I didn't like this one too much. Dancey and the guy next to Frost, were good to listen to though.

[RoninaThorstone]

I loved everything the sandbox/F2P/PvP designers were talking about...

except for how cost ineffective designing a raid is.

I want EVERYTHING that gen 3 is offering... plus ulduar caliber raiding.

(Also, it was a little cruel putting the wildstar guy up there. They made his perspective look really dated and poorly thought out.)

[crunk]

I loved everything the sandbox/F2P/PvP designers were talking about...

except for how cost ineffective designing a raid is.

I want EVERYTHING that gen 3 is offering... plus ulduar caliber raiding.

(Also, it was a little cruel putting the wildstar guy up there. They made his perspective look really dated and poorly thought out.)

yeeeah i agree, however, what Georgeson said made me feel a little bit better. If they can offer challenging, co-op "puzzles" that offer the same sort of excitement as raiding i think i can take that trade off. in fact, over the years, i've started to prefer smaller group content - so, if they can offer the spirit of raiding in a 4-5 man setting, all the better.


as far as the wildstar guy goes, yeah, i felt a little bad for him. i really do think wildstar will be a good and successful game, but as the apex of 2nd Gen MMOs... which wasn't what the panel was about. when i first saw the panel i was somewhat suprised there was no blizzard rep, until i started watching. im not suprised they stayed way the fuck away from that discussion.

[Darksoldierr]

I still wait for my Sword Art Online.

[Remilia]

I still wait for my Sword Art Online.

I think people don't want to die from a game, literally. >.>

Joking aside. I like how it's just open forum of just giving opinion on how they want to solve the 'dilemma' for a genre as opposed to just a game.

[Darksoldierr]

I think people don't want to die from a game, literally. >.>

Joking aside. I like how it's just open forum of just giving opinion on how they want to solve the 'dilemma' for a genre as opposed to just a game.

Filthy causal

[ro9ue]

Great panel to watch. Thing is, I could've probably went up there and said all of those things. I don't really care much about dev talk as much as seeing their end product.

[Zeta333]

since 2003 and 2004 mmos have come and gone but only 2 have stayed successfull and thats WoW And eve and WoWs install base is declining.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

since 2003 and 2004 mmos have come and gone but only 2 have stayed successfull and thats WoW And eve and WoWs install base is declining.

WoW just gained a quarter million subscribers last quarter.

But yes, the age of traditional MMORPGs are over.

[Zeta333]

WoW just gained a quarter million subscribers last quarter.

But yes, the age of traditional MMORPGs are over.

But its still down how much from wrath days? Wow peaked a long time ago.

[Edge-]

since 2003 and 2004 mmos have come and gone but only 2 have stayed successfull and thats WoW And eve and WoWs install base is declining.

Except that the only major post-WoW MMO to shut down is Warhammer, and just about every other major post-WoW MMO except Champions Online still sees reasonable support. Even a game like LOTRO is still chugging along, having recently extended their license with the LOTR IP with Warner Brothers until 2017, something that indicates that it's still a profitable game for the company.

But its still down how much from wrath days? Wow peaked a long time ago.

WoW saw consistent and steady growth for what, nearly 7 years? Considering all the direct competition that's been released since it came out, that's extremely impressive. It's still absolutely massive, and its Western subscriber base still dwarfs the Western playerbase of any other MMO.

The assumption is EVE is still growing (CCP mentioned something like 40k new accounts were created after the last giant battle), but EVE is in a unique place where it doesn't really have any competition from big Western MMO's. There's no other big budget sandboxes out, especially space sandboxes. Only small titles like Mortal Online or Perpetuum.

[cuafpr]

for me I think that will be biggest factor is persistent changes to the world, and better AI no more let me pull this one mob while the rest of his squad ignores the fact he just ran off... but also not the stupid tied together pack, and add in bosses that have more random abilities and smart enough to not always focus the tank, thus making tanking more of an effort to keep the boss on you vs WoW's threat based system.

[Edge-]

and add in bosses that have more random abilities and smart enough to not always focus the tank, thus making tanking more of an effort to keep the boss on you vs WoW's threat based system.

WoW hardly has a threat based system nowadays with the focus shifted purely away from tanks needing to fight for threat and now needing to sorta manage mitigation cooldowns (which I don't find interesting at all given that it didn't really change the rotations for most tanks very much, if at all). If a game came out where you legitimately need to fight for threat to hold it, that would be much more interesting.

But GW2 has a system like that, where you have tankier characters making an effort to draw the bosses attention, while the AI will frequently go after other group members. It's not the best AI and could definitely be improved, but it's a start.

[Pandragon]

I love seeing replies to threads like this "traditional mmorpgs are over' "wow is dying"..ect..ect..Like any of you really have a clue what you're talking about. You all think you speak for everyone, when all you can do is speak of your own opinion but treat it as fact. A game dies when it dies, not when you think it's dead. Like the 200 rpgs that came that was going to "kill WoW" according to most of you. For all we know Garrisons could be WoWs start to shift towards a sandbox type thing if that becomes the next big thing. Sandbox MMORPGs.

You can't tell when a game will die until it does. One month a game might have 100k players, then they release some new content that gets 200k to join, then something else to get more and so on in that fashion until it's huge again.

I can't stand to see people state their opinion as fact. And the fact is, WoW has been going now for...what 10 years? And it's still got the highest subscription rate.

[HAcoreRD]

I still wait for my Sword Art Online.

<Laughing Coffin> is now recruiting members who want to have fun in this life n death game!