Innovation in MMOs, WoW and Ghostcrawler's perspective on it

[Relapses]

tl,dr - Stagnation can be good but innovation is necessary. And if you're going to innovate in the MMO sphere, it shouldn't be in the direction of single player design... it should be unapologetically multiplayer with a focus on increasing the opportunities to interact with other players.

tl,dr,tl,dr - Multiplayer good, single player bad

I've noticed the topic of innovation versus stagnation has been coming up a lot in the WoW discussion sphere as the game nears its 20th birthday. This debate always brings out a lot of polarizing takes as players on either end of that spectrum will argue their cases as if the alternative is the eventual death of the game. Somebody in favor of the stat-quo will say that some core tenants of the game design have worked for decades so it's natural to assume they will continue to work for decades to come. The innovation proponents will say that the game is teetering on the brink of death and dwindling engagement metrics are proof that the game simply doesn't have the special sauce it once had.

Personally, I land pretty firmly in the status-quo camp. I'm pretty regimented in my views of WoW's game design and I've engaged with each new iteration of the game with varying degrees of enthusiasm. But through both the bad and the good times, I think WoW devs have always approached the game with a utilitarian mindset. That is to say that they wish to make the best MMO they can for the most amount of people. And this approach has worked remarkably well, though there have been obvious blunders along the way. But even in their failures, I don't think WoW's devs have ever sought to make the game in spite of its playerbase. I see them as responding to feedback, even if that feedback doesn't fully align with what I might think is best for the game. In terms of broad strokes how I think WoW should be designed moving forward, I've always been a fan of keeping the MMO elements strong (ie, those where you're engaing with other players) while avoiding a too much of a focus on the single player element.

This brings me neatly to a lengthy Twitter thread from earlier today by former WoW dev and infamous pariah, Ghostcrawler. Even though he's framing the discussion around the new MMO he's working on with his own studio, I felt like the points he made on this subject were unbelievably based and wanted to share them here:

Innovation in MMOs, a thread/rant

To start with, we want to make a game that is loved by people who love MMOs. I understand the appeal of a studio making some crazy new genre that is maybe an MMO or maybe something new. I hope there are studios that take that shot. It won't be ours.

We are a new studio, new team, new IP, etc. We can't afford the risk of making a game that has a 10% chance of being awesome. I hope there are studios out there that take risks, because as a player I want to play those games, even if 9 out of 10 studios fail. I just don't want our studio to be one of the ones that fails.

So it's not some new genre we are building. It's an MMO. I have never been a fan of innovation for the sake of innovation. Now, new ways to solve old problems? You're singing my song.

It's easy for us all to be a little jaded on the MMO core loop of killing stuff to get better gear to kill more stuff. It felt exciting maybe 20 years ago when that was all new.

But as a community we are more sophisticated now. We look for the patterns of broken builds, efficiency, minimizing risk, in our focus on progression. We understand that fundamentally builds aren't a player choice if you just want to say maximize your DPS. There is typically a right answer.

And even if there truly isn't a right answer, as a community we want there to be an answer really badly so that our friends and randos don't think we are bad for not knowing what that answer is.

What I am getting at is that even if you ignore the websites and guides and sims and logs, at best you might subject yourself to ridicule for not accepting the status quo, and at worst you might actually be playing suboptimally and hurting your groups' progressiom.

"Suboptimal" is the worst thing ever in an MMO. Most players would rather be optimal than be having fun. Most of us would rather be accused of being bad than accused of not knowing the right stats or gear for our build.

I may sound cynical about this, but that really isn't my intention. I just think it's where the genre is after decades of evolution and why true innovation is so hard.

Deviate too much from the formula and you might not attract the right audience that you want. Don't deviate enough and the optimization problem can be solved too easily.

So what can we do about that? MMOs, like many games, get stale when we feel like we have seen it all. Even for great open world RPGs, it's typical to love the game for the first half and then sort of just want to finish it for the second half.

There are exceptions of course. Sometimes the narrative is so good you want to see the end. Sometimes the developers keep throwing new systems and mechanics at you really late in the game.

In general, competitive PvP games suffer from this "seen it all before" problem less because human opponents are smart and unpredictable. League of Legends is a 1000 hour game, because each match can be really different from the previous one. RPGs can't do that.

They try to cover up for this lack of unpredictability with massive pipes of content, but of course we all understand that developers can't make content faster than players can consume it. (Side note: I think AI might make this better, but not for many years.)

MMOs as a genre are sometimes able to create this novelty, this sense of newness, by leveraging other players but not strictly as opponents, as in the competitive PvP games.

It may sound obvious when I say it, but I also think it's easy to forget, that the one big thing MMOs can offer as a genre is the many other players keeping it fresh.

So finally getting around to my point, I think this is why our game (and we will share the code name soon so we don't have to just call it "our game") has an opportunity.

As players, in our focus on optimization, we understand that other players can be too much of a wild card. They are a variable we can't control. So we ask developers to push the other players to the background so they don't get in the way.

You see this manifest in a lot of ways: Devs, please give me more resources in the world so I don't have to compete with other players. Devs, please give me matchmaking so that I don't have to put up with this crappy healer we pugged that is slowing us down.

And yeah, as I have said before, I had a big hand in WoW's dungeon and raid finder, so I am as much to blame as a dev as anyone.

But I think this mentality can ultimately be really detrimental to MMO design. Other players aren't the problem. Other players are what the genre is all about! Without other players, the progression grind is sort of laid bare for us all to see.

And as I am fond of saying, if what you really want is a wonderfully curated single-player experience, this is a great time to be a gamer! But don't ask your MMO to do that. It's not good at it.

Now, I'm not saying we are going to make a game that forces you to group all of the time. Sometimes you don't feel like it. Sometimes your friends aren't around. Sometimes you have an unpredictable amount of time to play, so you don't want to bail on other humans if you start something.

But we are going to make a social game. We are going to make a game about hanging out and doing cool stuff with your friends. Our game is unapologetically multiplayer.

So that's it. That is our big innovation. Other players. Now we are doing some hopefully clever new stuff too in the name of making hanging out with other players engaging and satisfying.

Anyway, given how white-hot this debate is at the moment I wanted to get the community's thoughts on the subject as well. Where do you stand on the innovation vs. stagnation spectrum? Is single player the way forward? Or do you think MMOs can only survive if they focus on other players?

[Biomega]

His heart's in the right spot, but gaming is so mainstream now that to have any sort of success beyond VERY specific niches you basically need to account for the lowest common denominator in your audiences - which is usually a terrible, entitled, borderline toxic player who would sell their party member down the river for 2 gold if they were given the chance 9 times out of 10.

That's reality. It's not being cynical or misanthropic, it's simply the result of mainstream success that has reached enormous sections of the population with a massive overabundance of product to choose from. People want everything and they want it now because they can have it, and if your game doesn't give it to them (or gives them something else of significant enough value) they'll just go somewhere else to get it, because it's super easy to do that.

It's the same reason meta discrimination is rampant in WoW PUGs - it's easy to do. When there's twenty DPS applying to your key within the first minute, why wouldn't you pick the highest performing meta specs, even if the difference is minimal? All other things being equal, even if it's 99% vs. 100% why would you waste those 1% if you don't have to? Same thing applies here - if a game doesn't give you the instant gratification and affirmatory ego-stroking you crave, then (all things being equal) there's another game you can download within 10 minutes that will.

Now, objectively speaking in terms of sociocultural benefit that's not a good thing. But these are commercial products, they don't care about the well-being of a society, they care about how much money they can squeeze out of its members. And that's fine - it's not their responsibility to educate people, it's ours, as members of a responsible society. Another discussion entirely. This is the reality you have to deal with, and there's preciously few angles of attack if you want to game that reality.

I mentioned it before, but the most fruitful mechanism I see is precisely what Ghostcrawler is calling "innovation": give people something they can't (easily) get in other games, and they'll put up with modified behaviors and expectations. That can be a number of things - it doesn't just involve game-mechanical innovation, it could just be as mundane as hype or social prestige for playing the "in" game. But those factors don't all last the same time, and they're not all sustainable; hype in particular is notoriously fickle and may catapult you to untold heights as well as crater you into the ground. And mechanical innovation is, at the end of the day, really hard to actually do, at least in a meaningful and sustainable way.

Ghostcrawler's idea of "let's make our innovation other people!" sounds very naïve and idealistic to me. The idea that your game becomes a place to "hang out with friends" is Utopian at this point in time - that's not how gaming works anymore. It barely worked like that in 2005, before the advent of social media and the explosion of gaming as a mainstream activity. People socialize on PLATFORMS, not games. You "hang out" on Discord or your Steam friend-list. Not in some new MMO. You'll never get people to do that, because people don't game like that anymore: they have decoupled these activity streams, and they're multitasking constantly. It's entirely common to have people be in voice chat for their game, hang out in a separate voice channel with some friends, and have a Twitch stream of their favorite streamer running in the background to boot while they're gaming. That's reality. Not a group of friends chilling on "New GC MMO" during a Thursday night, chitting the chat as they mine some herbs and later maybe kills some dragons together. People like that exist, but they're not the mainstream, and they're not a sustainable audience. And if you think they are or that these days are coming back, you may be suffering from some form of nostalgia-driven delusions. Now, we of course don't know what exactly GC means by what he's saying, and maybe he's got something less traditional in mind. But it sure sounds like someone pining for the "good ol' days" of WoW and EQ that are not coming back.

That being said, I don't think he's wrong that multiplayer is and remains important. But I think he's making a cardinal error in his thinking on a conceptual level: he's still talking about "single player" and "multiplayer" like they're simple, distinct categories. They're not. That's the key here, and in many of the behaviors we see in contemporary games, be they WoW or Diablo or whatever. People are fine playing with other people, but they want to be at the center of things. Other people work as ancillaries to their own experience. They don't want pure single-player games that work offline and never engage with anyone so much as they want games that are technically multiplayer, but let a single player do whatever they want whenever they want to do it. They want all the benefits and none of the responsibility. They want to be around other people, but they don't want to have to play with other people unless they want to. Other players are, by and large, NPCs to them. That's how a huge number of people engage with games like MMOs. Not by finding ten close in-game friends they form a guild with and schedule raids three nights a week - but by always having someone around to do a dungeon when they feel like it, but never having anyone around when they just want to mine nodes and collect herbs. That's what "single-player MMO" notions are about.

The moment you force people into social interaction, that's when you lose. It's fine if you enable it. In fact, the easier you make that, the better. You give people a dungeon finder queue, and 9 out of 10 will pop it on the regular. But you ask those 10 people to go make their own dungeon group, and 8 of them will say fuck it and not bother with it. They're fine socializing if they don't have to do anything. But the more you build on the premise of people socializing, the less appealing it becomes to the mainstream. It's too much work, takes too much attention, and costs too much time in an age where you can just push one button in another game and be put right where you want to be, doing just what you want to be doing and nothing else. You can lament that all you want, but it's reality, and any new game that wants to be mainstream better take this kind of degeneracy on board REAL quick.

[WowIsDead64]

Really sounds like an apology for making game, players won't like.

[AudibleEscalation]

I think the whole "single-player MMO" genre that some people want is strange. There are so many, better pure single-player RPGs out there. Why would you want an MMO where you can ignore everyone else?

But having said that, the "optimal, parse-bro MMO" is not really the social experience I'm after either.

Interested to see what GC and his studio will bring - it sounds like he's making a game firmly planted in the "old school MMO" garden - but given that they haven't written a line of code yet, it'll be 5-7 years before it launches. Will anyone care about the genre at that point? Is it even possible to bring back the "glory of old days"? Even if you innovate?

I have my doubts, but willing to be proven wrong.

[WowIsDead64]

Logical question. If MMOs are so niche, why make another one? Because they allow tons of manipulative cashgrab mechanics? You know. Games, where only 1% players truly plays them properly and 99% of players pay money for breaking free from chains of social pressure, they have a lot IRL already, so they don't need even more - are bad games. What would be innovation - to make game, players would pay for, because they truly like it, not because they need to bypass 100500 artificial obstacles between them and their fun. Things like RMT and botting - are signs of game with unhealthy mechanics. Players shouldn't pay extra money, including paying to 3rd parties, in order to play properly. This just isn't right. Yeah?

[Usagi Senshi]

I dunno, I still have more faith in whatever that eventual LoL MMO will turn out to be compared to whatever he plans on making.

Same thing with Square-Enix if they put more time and effort (and a better engine) into their next MMO.

[WowIsDead64]

I think the whole "single-player MMO" genre that some people want is strange. There are so many, better pure single-player RPGs out there. Why would you want an MMO where you can ignore everyone else?

But having said that, the "optimal, parse-bro MMO" is not really the social experience I'm after either.

Interested to see what GC and his studio will bring - it sounds like he's making a game firmly planted in the "old school MMO" garden - but given that they haven't written a line of code yet, it'll be 5-7 years before it launches. Will anyone care about the genre at that point? Is it even possible to bring back the "glory of old days"? Even if you innovate?

I have my doubts, but willing to be proven wrong.

"Single-player MMO" idea is about making social interaction optional, not forced. Why it's so bad? If player likes social interaction - he will do it. No? If player prefers to PAY for MMO, but play it as single-player game, because it's game with great style, game mechanics and long-term support (aka infinite progress game) - why stop him from doing it? Isn't it extra revenue, that is positive for game's health? No? Isn't he perfect customer?

"Real MMOs" are designed around very strange principle. "If we wouldn't force things on you - you wouldn't do it". Why? Because alternatives are so much better? So, what? MMOs are about making games, that are intentionally bad by design? Isn't it nonsense?

Big mistake, many MMO developers have already made. Wildstar developers for example. To try to make that "true MMO". Because, you know, nobody actually wants it. So it's doomed to fail. His name and reputation wouldn't make us buy his game to at least try it.

[Nymrohd]

I don't think trying to get an MMO to work like Second Life will be successful. Because Second Life itself is not that successful. Heck no implementation of a metaverse so far has been.

[Shadowferal]

They can either make a game primarily for guilds, or they can make a game for everyone.

[AudibleEscalation]

"Single-player MMO" idea is about making social interaction optional, not forced. Why it's so bad? If player likes social interaction - he will do it. No? If player prefers to PAY for MMO, but play it as single-player game, because it's game with great style, game mechanics and long-term support (aka infinite progress game) - why stop him from doing it? Isn't it extra revenue, that is positive for game's health? No? Isn't he perfect customer?.

For sure. People are free to spend their money as they like, I guess.

I'm just not sure why anyone would actually want to pay for a single-player MMO.
MMO's tend to be shitty narrative games - single-player RPGs do far better job at storytelling
MMO's also tend to be shitty sandboxes - single-player sandboxes usually do far better job
MMO's also tend to be kinda shitty single-player experiences, since they tend to have other people around you, ruining your experience.

I don't really see a market for "Massively Single Player Online" game, but perhaps I'm wrong?

[Sykii]

I think the whole "single-player MMO" genre that some people want is strange. There are so many, better pure single-player RPGs out there. Why would you want an MMO where you can ignore everyone else?

But having said that, the "optimal, parse-bro MMO" is not really the social experience I'm after either.

Interested to see what GC and his studio will bring - it sounds like he's making a game firmly planted in the "old school MMO" garden - but given that they haven't written a line of code yet, it'll be 5-7 years before it launches. Will anyone care about the genre at that point? Is it even possible to bring back the "glory of old days"? Even if you innovate?

I have my doubts, but willing to be proven wrong.

You can't be competitive on single players.

A lot of players want competitive over experiences without interaction with others that'a something only MMOs can bring right now

[AudibleEscalation]

You can't be competitive on single players.

A lot of players want competitive over experiences without interaction with others that'a something only MMOs can bring right now

Yeah, I could see something like - Lobby (preferably discord integrated) where you can launch different maps (keystone dungeons, raids, arenas etc).
That would be "social focus" and "doing cool shit together" type of game for me.

Maybe that's the kind of innovation he's talking about. A mix of MOBA and competitive MMO-scene.
Will be interesting to find out more.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

Really sounds like an apology for making game, players won't like.

Based on post history, as long as it is something you don't like, it will probably be good for almost everybody else

- - - Updated - - -

For sure. People are free to spend their money as they like, I guess.

I'm just not sure why anyone would actually want to pay for a single-player MMO.
MMO's tend to be shitty narrative games - single-player RPGs do far better job at storytelling
MMO's also tend to be shitty sandboxes - single-player sandboxes usually do far better job
MMO's also tend to be kinda shitty single-player experiences, since they tend to have other people around you, ruining your experience.

I don't really see a market for "Massively Single Player Online" game, but perhaps I'm wrong?

Yeah I just think to swtor, which had some great stories and stuff back in the day, all of which would have been dramatically better as a single player game

[Sykii]

Yeah, I could see something like - Lobby (preferably discord integrated) where you can launch different maps (keystone dungeons, raids, arenas etc).
That would be "social focus" and "doing cool shit together" type of game for me.

Maybe that's the kind of innovation he's talking about. A mix of MOBA and competitive MMO-scene.
Will be interesting to find out more.

There is a game in development trying to do it called Evercore heroes but they did not execute it really well and after a closed beta launch they have left it on maintenance mode while they re-develop the core of the game and make something better on the future.

I played it and it was 4 teams playing the same map and in the end two teams were left on a head to head ending the concept was fine but it was poorly implemented and pve aspect was really lackluster.

But something like that will flourish in the future for sure and become it's on thing as well as PvP games were developed on the shadow of MMO PvPs.

A lot of players play wow only for mythic + push and raiding, they would not care if rest of MMO features were removed from the game

[Kumorii]

I don't think much was being said at all tbh.

He acknowledges that a problem with MMO and multiplayer in general is that other players impact our own enjoyment and how we approach our own characters. We don't want to be detrimental to others and we don't want them to hold us back either.
Their game will embrace other players, but no word on how to solve this issue. They want to embrace group play, but as he pointed out, any form of group play will turn into "What's optimal to play". There's no way around that.

Essentially it just boiled down to "Group play causes these issues", "We gonna focus on group play".
How do they solve the issue they presented? If they don't this will become another game with "optimal" and "sub-optimal" choices.

It's like giving a brief of "Our game gonna be about FUN". Which is great, but also says absolutely nothing without steps on how to achieve it.
It sounds more like they try to not think about that issue and their focus on group play will make up for the negatives it brings. Which also isn't saying much at all. Being aware of a problem is all good and well, but solves absolutely nothing in of itself.

[Cathfaern]

Because of this

Ghostcrawler's idea of "let's make our innovation other people!" sounds very naïve and idealistic to me. The idea that your game becomes a place to "hang out with friends" is Utopian at this point in time - that's not how gaming works anymore.

and this

Really sounds like an apology for making game, players won't like.

this whole thing just sounds like a Wildstar v2. What they say sounds logical, but this is simply not how things work anymore.

[Roanda]

Look at that!

A game dev that believes in the "social" thing i posted a while ago...nice

[Cathfaern]

I think the whole "single-player MMO" genre that some people want is strange.

I want a single player game which is constantly developed not just by adding new content, but also by adding new features (including graphical engines, etc.). So it's an everliving game. As far as I know only MMOs do this currently, so I stuck with them.

[WowIsDead64]

For sure. People are free to spend their money as they like, I guess.

I'm just not sure why anyone would actually want to pay for a single-player MMO.
MMO's tend to be shitty narrative games - single-player RPGs do far better job at storytelling
MMO's also tend to be shitty sandboxes - single-player sandboxes usually do far better job
MMO's also tend to be kinda shitty single-player experiences, since they tend to have other people around you, ruining your experience.

I don't really see a market for "Massively Single Player Online" game, but perhaps I'm wrong?

I'm not sure why, but single player games aren't supported that well. Diablo for example. Remember Diablo 3? For some reason DLC model isn't enough for modern game developers. Make new content - sell it, use money to make new content, etc. As easy, as that. But they want more.

Overall I think, that major reason, why MMOs have such design: for some players only motivation to do harder content - is prestige. Yeah, so called e-peen and elitism. Players agree to do harder content, only if it's exclusive to them. And it's very profitable for devs. As for them "harder" content usually means "kill 1000 boars instead of 10", i.e. zero-effort extra content. That's why I call MMOs job/sport simulators. It's very similar to how real sport works.

And I also want to say, that MMOs are turned into virtual business. Such things as RMT are inevitable. Why? Because if you need plumber service, you aren't plumber and none of your friends is plumber - you have to hire plumber. Is it great, when games are turned into virtual business? I don't know. May be it's innovative. But they're no longer games, you know.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

I want a single player game which is constantly developed not just by adding new content, but also by adding new features (including graphical engines, etc.). So it's an everliving game. As far as I know only MMOs do this currently, so I stuck with them.

This is understandable but the reality of what you get is that it's all watered down by virtue of mm limitations and production schedule. Again I'd look at swtor. Content that gets added over time it's just going to be weaker and thinner because there's far fewer resources board into it.

One of the good things about SP games is that they end before the story inevitably becomes a farce.

People complain about the wow story how they want but it's exactly the same with comics and anything else that refuses to end, stories that don't endpoint inevitably turn the sour and stupid because they are only carrying on for the sake of capitalism not anything organic