The Stagnation of MMO industry/genre and why

The Stagnation of MMO industry/genre and why

The MMO industry has been stagnant for many years ever since World of Warcraft became the breakout poster game for the genre. After that, year after year, new MMO games released are either clones of it or have many elements that copied it. No doubt there are games that tried to be different. However, either they do not have the backings of a popular IP or fat financial support (or both), or they chose to be a niche market, they could not flourish in a world where the masses demand the lowest common denominator and make an impact.

It is no wonder then that none achieved the financial success the level of WoW and not even a close second (even if one considers WoW a "freak" phenomenon). Think about it. If the MMO industry is flourishing, there should be a new game coming out periodically (around the frequency of once every 2 or 3 years) that is a "hit". What is a hit? It should be first, the numbers of subscribers (or profitability of the game) will be more than the previous hit. Second, the subscribers or profitability of the game should be increasing or at least maintain at a stable rate.

The reasons the industry has been stagnant can more or less be attributed to the following factors and all of them are related to the fundamental design particular to MMO games. I will use SWTOR as an example but you could also see these in other games, especially up and coming new ones, inclusive of expansions of WoW, having the same fundamental problems (with some exceptions).

1. Sharding.
The concept of sharding goes all the way back to the grand-daddy of MMOG, Ultima Online. And that is where the name origin comes from. Sharding is basically the duplicating of the game worlds into different "shards", or servers (in reality, clusters of servers). Essentially, each shard is a complete world by itself

This design has one fundamental flaw that is plaguing most MMOGs, especially "hot" ones like SWTOR, WAR, AoC etc... First, an initial wave of gamers swarmed in, necessitating the setup of many shards (or servers) to cater to the new swarm. Since the initial swarm can be up to a million or even more players, many shards has to be setup to allow players to play without the inconvenience of queuing. Unfortunately, reality is that after the one month inclusive subscription, a significant percentage of these gamers quit.

Thus reducing the population of each shard to less than optimum. At the end, many shards or servers became ghost shards.

The nature of MMOG is that a player's experience is proportional to the number of players concurrently online. Things like PvP, dungeons, group quests are not doable without a ready pool of active players also wanting to do the same. And when you divide that by factions, levels, type-of-gameplays (i.e. PvP vs dungeons) the pool of players are even further fragmented. Now you further divide them by the various shards, you can see why players could not find (easily) other players to play with or against.Even the most anti-social solo player needs a thriving economy so that the auction house or whatever is that game's equivalent is fully stocked with player goods and also as a ready market to sell his haul.

Without a critical mass of population, a MMOG is nothing but a glorified single player game with an online connection and persistency.

If a shard becomes a ghost shard. Then what is the point of playing MMOG? Why not just play a single player game instead with no subscription and no need to connect to the internet?

The concept of sharding has to go. Either a game has to be better designed or,if this is a technological limitation, a technological breakthrough has to be achieved to put the MASSIVELY back to the massively multiplayer game label. New games should boast higher and higher simultaneous active players. The lack of this phenomenon is a sure sign that the MMO genre is stagnant.

Note : So far, only one known game has a single-shard design and it is called EVE online, which has a healthy subscription going. The only thing going against EVE is its niche factor (space-based, sandbox, PvP) and high learning curve. In any case, the technology is there already.

2. Trinity
Trinity refers to the "holy-trinity" of the tank, healer and damage dealer roles. The tank gets the attention of the boss and other mobs, the healer heals the tank and others and the damage dealers fires away at the boss and mobs.

The concept of trinity was grounded in the traditions of fantasy genre. You have the hero and the representatives of every race and class to fight the big bad in a dungeon. With the trinity design, you justify the need for different classes mixed into a gaming group. This was made popular by games like Everquest and solidified in diamond casing by WoW. Thereafter, every other games followed this design and

this has been infecting single player and even pen and paper games which DO NOT need such a design in the first place.

The problem with the trinity design is very simple. Tanking and healing is work. Damage dealing is fun. Hence you have a disproportionate number of players who chose to do damage and only a very small percentage of players who choose to tank or heal. Yes, there are masochists who find such activities fun for them (I myself likes to tank and I have a friend who swears by healing). However, in a dungeon group, you HAVE to have at least one tank and at least one healer. In a raid group, that number increases proportionately. So the requirement and the actual situation is vastly different.

Not only that, the tank and healer need to be properly geared, need to know their skill sets, need to do this and do that. You can have a relatively clueless damage dealer player in a group and you can generally breeze through a dungeon but if you have a clueless tank or healer, there is no way you can successfully clear the dungeon or you can do it painfully.

So why is there a need for trinity design? Actually, there isn't. A group of pure damage dealers should theoretically be able to kill the boss and mobs IF THE DESIGNER DESIGN IT THIS WAY. The way a MMOG designer design that dungeon, will affect the roles a class can play and how that dungeon play out.The industry needs to abandon the trinity design and come up with new sets of roles that are FUN instead of chores. By all means, keep the tanking and healing roles, but they should not be NEEDED in order to run a dungeon or raid. If they are unable to do so, at the very least make everyone a damage dealer so everyone can have fun.

Think about it, a dungeon or raid is essentially one big puzzle or a series of puzzles. Boss fights are also puzzle fights. That is why they are interesting and people wants to do them. If every fight is all about how a tank or healer do their job, then it becomes stale and uninteresting and worse, chores for a significant portion of a required group when there are significantly fewer percentage of players willing to do that.

Let's use the quintessential fantasy as an example : The Chamber of Marzarbul fight in Lord of the Rings movie. When the orcs came in, do you see Boromir yelling at them so that the orcs only fight him and no one else? Do you see Gandalf or Frodo standing one side and "healing" the others? No. Everyone chips in and fights. They help one another. Even when the mini-boss the cave troll came in, they took turns to deal damage to it until it dies. Yes, Aragorn tried to be a tank but he got beaten. Then frodo became unintended tank and then got beaten as well. The rest enraged and dps the troll to death. No tank, no

healer, equally if not more fun.Then along the staircase, the orcs shot arrows. What happen next? Legolas and, to a certain extend, Aragorn became the "tanks" and damage dealers to tackle the archer orcs while the rest move on. And finally, you have the Balrog. This is a special case. Only Gandalf is high level enough to take on the Balrog. So the rest has to flee. Essentially, Gandalf "tanks" the Balrog although he was sort of defeated (at that point of view from the fellowship).

So from this example, you can see, even if you need a tank, it does not have to be a single specific player with a specific class and a specific build. Anyone should be able to "tank" as long as he has to hit points. As for healer, well, just have potions do what healing spells can do and everyone is a healer. So anyone can chip in to heal if necessary. Or better still. Don't have healer. What you have in terms of total hit points is all you have in that battle. This makes the battle more exciting as the danger is higher. Players may attempt to run away because they know they will be defeated if they don't OR this forces other players to "taunt" the boss or mobs off their allies if they want their allies to live. Or even better still, mix it up. Have a variety of encounters. Some encounters need all to be dps. Some encounters need rotation of "tanks" and so forther.

One last thing for people who still want to cling on to the idea of trinity is that they may ask : "If there are no roles, then why bother to have so many classes?" Well, having different classes means your PLAYSTYLE is different and you have CHOICES. Sure, we are all damage dealers but he did it by swinging that big axe while I did it by lobbing a fireball. The type and number of classes do not have to be related to the roles a class may take.

Think out of the box. Be creative.

3. Factionalisation
WoW has horde and alliance. WAR has Order and Chaos. SWTOR has Empire and Republic. See the pattern?

In a world that is divided by shards or servers, tanks and healers, players are further divided by factions. Some are even divided into 3 or 4 factions! If you are a game like EVE with hundreds of thousands players, maybe you are justified. But if you are a server or shard of only 1000 players, you just divided your pool of players by half! Why would you want to do that?

The original design decision was PvP. Back in the granddaddy of MMOG, Ultima Online (UO), anyone can kill anyone else. So it created a hostile gaming environment of bullying, intimidation and anti-social behaviours (much like high school). So factions were created and now, you have a ready pool of allies and enemies. In theory, it sounds good. But in practice, you can only play and trade with allies. But if you want to fight your enemies, you either have to travel to a mutually agreed location to fight them (world PvP) or you queue up for some 15 minutes soccer-match-like instanced PvP (called battlegrounds or warzones or skirmishes or some such...)

And because one faction is traditionally the "good" faction and one faction is the "evil" faction (or pretty vs ugly), naturally players gravitated towards one faction, further making the population imbalanced. Hence, world PvP became meaningless because it became a number game and not tactics or strategy. Instanced PvP became instant gratification but the side with more people has to wait longer because the other side is simply too ugly or too evil.

So a mechanism created to facilitate PvP, ended up affecting PvE (grouping) and the economy and does not really help PvP much either.

Here, I would like to say SWTOR did some good work. Most recently in the 1.3 patch, SWTOR has unified the economy by making the GTN tradable by both factions. And instanced PvP now allows players belonging to same faction to fight one another. However, flashpoints and group quests are still affected, ironically.

Faction division should be organic. Players should at first belong to one single faction, friendly to one another. To facilitate world PvP or instanced PvP, they can choose to join a particular faction or many factions. This choice can be automated. Joining of factions can be semi-permanent with choices to switch or temporary. After all, players are either heroes or mercenaries. So there is no reason why they cannot switch factions.

This way, in PvE and economy, you have one unified player base and in PvP, you can have a 50/50 split. You can even have multiple factions (think guilds, sects, orders, armies etc...) fighting one another if so desired. The closest idea to this concept is Arena where anyone can fight anyone else and anyone can ally with anyone else. Now broaden this concept to battles and you have PvP essentially. To justify this in game, remember, players are free agents who can choose to ally with any faction he desire or he is simply a mercenary for hire.

So an Orc Warrior could join the alliance because the alliance pays him to do so. A bounty hunter can fight for the Republic because the republic has deep budget.

4. Grinding and leveling
Leveling comes from Pen and Paper RPG and carried to single player RPG. Leveling makes sense in a single player game with a definite start and end. Once you become high level, you fight high level monsters and get high level loot. And then you retire and live happily ever after. Makes sense.

Now transpose this to MMOG and this design is broken. Why? MMOG by its nature is persistent and also long lasting. (At least long lasting than a typical single player RPG game)

In a SRPG, you pay an upfront cost and the developers do not care a hoot if you took 1 week to finish it, took 1 year or never even finish it. In a MMOG, the developer wants you to keep playing as long as it is needed, for years if possible. The problem is, once you reached the "MAX" level, you feel you are "done" and no longer need to continue. So now the designers added another concept of "end game content" which is also another form of grinding. After all, a player with tier 5 gear should be able to beat the tier 5 dungeon and able to beat a tier 1 geared player right?

So what's the problem? The problem again is that it divided the pool of players. A level 10 can't run a dungeon with a level 50. A tier 1 50 cannot run a raid with a tier 5 50. So while there are many dungeons, each dungeon has a limited pool of players (and when you divide that by shards and roles and factions, you make that pool very small or non-existent, see the pattern?). Some games like SWTOR make some of the dungeon "heroic" so that players can run the same dungeons again but that is only solving the problem at a certain level bracket. Those dungeons at lower levels have no players to run and those raids at higher levels also have no players to run. Think of the bell curve. In the end, designers spent significant efforts to make dungeons but only a small percentage is fully experienced by players.

Why not do away with levels and tiers?

People will ask : then what is the motivation of playing dungeons or even the game?

Well, how about...wait for this....ummm, fun? Don't level a character because you want to get to "end game" so that you can get tier 1 gear, so that you can tier 2 gear, so that..what? What's the purpose again? Play through the game because it is fun to do so. I guess it is more challenging for the designers to come up with fun quests or dungeons as compared to kill 10 rats or spank the boss.

Same for PvP. Why do people play PvP? Well, why do people play sports? Sports is a form of PvP right? Make PvP depends on PLAYER SKILLS, TACTICS and STRATEGY. In this case, SWTOR's Huttball somewhat got it right.

It's just that we need a whole lot of more huttballs. Again, think out of the box for PvP (world or instance) and dungeons such that players want to play BECAUSE of the journey. And when that journey is FUN, no one cares what is the destination.

If you really must have rewards, then give rewards that does not imbalance the gameplay but are nice to have : faster or better looking mounts, trophies, furniture for homes or starships, titles, statues (in capital cities) and bragging rights. Even epic LOOKING armor and gear will still be more desirable than starter gear even if their stats difference are very small. Honestly, if I enjoyed a game of soccer, I don't really care if I win the world cup. But if I really want to win the world cup, I should then play a lot of soccer matches and practice my tactics and hone my skills, instead of getting a sets of shoulder pads or some epic shoes so that I can "pwn" other soccer players.

Another reason to play without levels or gears is story.

SWTOR nearly got it right with the story element as the main pillar of design. However, their execution is FLAWED. Instead of one epic story, they broke it up to many small insignificant stories. If you think of MMOG like a TV series, you will then understand how an MMOG can survive 8 or 9 years like a TV series. Think Babylon 5 (5 years arc), LOST, Friends, Battlestar Galactica (re-imagined) and so on. Even the clone war cartoon series has a sort of main story going along. This is starwars after all.

This also means your year 1 should not be the same as year 2. Imagine SWTOR's main storyline. Year 1 is the cold war. Year 2 is the cold war almost turning into a hot war. Year 3 is the hot war phase 1 year 4 is the hot war phase 2, year 5 is the finale of the hot war (theoretically a hot war can last many years). Year 6 is the winding down of the hot war. Year 7 is the peace building. Year 8 is the mini-relapse. Year 9 is the final peace (And if SWTOR can survive 9 years, by itself is already an achievement!)

Unfortunately, SWTOR took a good design and screwed up the execution. The stories are again all factionalised. So that every players have their own experience and writers are forced to write 8 or more different threads of stories, some good, some not so good.

Getting rid of leveling and grinding means that now EVERY MAP and EVERY QUEST and EVERY DUNGEONS/RAID can be participated by potentially, ANYONE in the game. You don't have to wait for that person to level or get the correct gear. It's like a giant theme park where you can ride anything you want, visit anything you want, without having the need to be of certain height or age or gender. And use story, vanity rewards and the fun experience as main motivation for players to keep playing.

Do all of the above and maybe, maybe, we will see the MMO industry flourish again. And not see clones after clones after clones being churned out and failed to advance the industry/genre as a whole.

TLDR version

1. Get rid of sharding, have one single world
2. Get rid of trinity, everyone is DPS OR invent new fun roles
3. Get rid of static factionalism. Everyone is same faction with the ability to form their own rival groups or have dynamic factions.
4. Get rid of levels and grinds. Introduce fun in the journey and forget about the destination. Introduce vanity, quality-of-life and title rewards for the achievement oriented players.
5. Do all the above and the MMOG industry becomes less stagnant, more vibrant
6. Profit. [<--- investors, please see this, if you see nothing else]

Kind of implicit in your point too, but not explicitly stated, is putting aside innovation for a second: no one has even successfully cloned WoW. Blizzard is the Walt Disney of the MMO industry, with entertainment that appeals to kids and teens and adults and even women(!).

The closest WoW clone on the market today is Rift, and they've decided to focus on hardcore WoW veterans. SWTOR cloned WoW, but the worlds of SWTOR are nowhere near as colorful as Azeroth, and serve merely as backdrop for the story that Bioware wants to tell. (Bioware is the storyteller - and they force you to listen to their story, their way whether you want to or not).

I don't disagree with the rest of your points (except the idea that progression is a bad thing - I think that's a pillar of all MMOs and a necessary part of the genre), but missing from other "WoW-killers" over the years is the broad cross-over appeal that Blizzard is so good at. Blizz has amazing artists and animators that work on their games, and they know how to sell something to everyone.

But yeah, Blizz isn't an innovator - they're kind of like Apple, they take what's out there, polish it a little, put a bright colorful design on it, and mass market it. And WoW is stuck with decades of outdated game mechanics that someone will eventually innovate around.

I stopped reading at grand daddy of MMOs.

If you dont know who the grand daddy is, how can you form a accurate opinion!

But Ill save people the reading (even if it doesnt say this)

The genre is stagnated because it got to dumbed down

People that leave WOW are not looking to play WOW again, and those that didnt leave WOW are not your customers!

So stop copying all the dumbing down and add challenge and duration back into the games. Simple as that!

Anyone tells you other stuff and they simply dont have a foot to stand on.

And again, if you want grand daddy of MMOs, look back to 1991.
UO was # 7 or #8 if you want to be totally honest about the discussion.

I couldn't agree more with just about your entire post. I detest levels, and I never liked the idea that I was forced to choose a faction in this game, i want the choice to be neutral. The fracturing of the playerbase is clearly an issue, and in this day and age I agree that they should find a way to get everyone on the same server.

I love to play SWTOR, its a good game but I feel like it could've been a great game if they would've been creative instead of copycats. I like the voice acting but i think they sunk way too much into that and honestly the storylines are just OK but nothing to write home about honestly.

The experience and storylines of the jedi and sith specifically could've been done a whole lot better. You get quickly whisked through the whole padawan/acolyte phase of your character where I think that should have been a much longer and detailed adventure with training from your master and missions with them as companions. The whole experience just leaves me wanting.

Sad as i am to admit it, i play SWTOR but I am already looking ahead to the next MMORPG Star Wars game with the hopes they do something different and unique.

Lucas Arts tried most of it. SWG had no set roles, classes, or any "gear: tier.

but we all know how that ended.

I've only been playing MMO's since 2005/6 and i started with WoW, went to LOTRO, SWG NGE, STO, SWTOR, and EVE. To me it seems like there are several types of MMOs, some niche some cater to a wider audience.

Themepark ground - ie WoW, LOTRO, SWTOR you basically follow your avatar a person around

Themepark flight - STO this could also be ships, airplanes or spaceships. STO is the only recent one that comes to mine. STO also has some equal ground elements, but the space portion is unique because you have more freedom then SWTORs version of space combat.

Sandbox ground - SWG, i only played it for a while so i dont how if it was more ground heavy, or if the space portion was about equal. I cant think of any other MMO out there that has a sandbox that is set mostly on the ground (following a human avatar).

Sandbox flight - EVE takes place entirely in space. Anything that happens on the ground is just eye candy (until they introduce Dust 514). It is also almost entirely player driven and the main focus is PVP, although there are some PVE elements there.

Of those WoW is hard to beat in its class, STO is doing poorly imo, SWG is finished and nobody makes a game that fills this type of gameplay, and EVE is on its 9th year being the space sandbox. I dont know if the people who make these MMOs fear making a game for a small minority, even with a big name like Star Trek or Star Wars backing them up. But i think that SWTOR could have easily put itself in competition with STO instead by having space combat with a lot more freedom and instances that occur in space in addition to the ground stuff. Or it could have been the SWG 2 that so many fanbois are asking for. or it could have competed with WoW, but allowing us a little more freedom while leveling and having more content and so on.

As thoughtful and in-depth as that post was (and I read every word), I just have to disagree with every point in here. I don't think it's possiible to have all 1.whatever million players in a single game shard. I happen to think tanking and healing are every bit as fun as "dpsing"; having all characters fill all roles at different times in an encounter doesn't sound like fun to me. Leveling is one of the draws of the (MMO)RPG genre for me......I like seeing my character grow and become more powerful; even if someone made a game with no charater levels, obtaining better gear or unlocking new/more powerful abilities is still a form of leveling. In fact, "leveling up" is part of what makes the journey fun for me. Lastly, it's hard to imagine Star Wars without an Empire faction and an Alliance/Republic faction...even if you could choose to be neutral, that basically just defines a third faction....I just think that the factions work well in the SWTOR/WoW universes.

Sorry for the run-on paragraph...posting from my phone.

Even though I don't agree with most of it, it's still one of the most well-thought-out posts I've seen here.

I would have said

get rid of AI and NPC
get rid of CC
get rid of mechanic bypassing

it's probably already mostly in some other major MMO already.

Well....
I have one thing to say ....
Go try "The secret world" ...
If people can keep an open mind after Wow brainwashing, this game Will blow everything...

A point about your piece over the trinity:

You're right when you say they're not a requirement to game design- full DPS can beat a boss designed for it to be beatable that way. But you also have to factor in how playerbases work, and how roles mesh together. The simple fact is, if a game has the capability for someone to hold enemy attention better than anyone else, and someone to do significant healing, then you're going to end up with either two things: An endgame that's way too hard for a lot of people, or an endgame that's way too easy for a lot of people.

The simple fact is that the trinity developed because with all those roles available, it's the most effective way to fight most creatures. With that in mind, encounters have to be designed around a certain level of player performance in mind, or specific compositions. A monster that's specifically designed to be taken on by groups of full DPS is going to give a lot of trouble to a trinity type group, but a monster that's simply "capable" of being downed by a full DPS is going to be trivially easy to a similarly geared/statted group using tank/heal/damage. Any type of enemy design you go with, you have to tune it- and even doing it perfectly, it's only going to be at the right 'difficulty' for one type of group. Monsters that need tanking and healing will be extremely difficult without them, monsters specifically need lots and lots of damage will be difficult if you take tanks and healers along, enemies with lots of powerful status effects or self buffs will be extremely difficult for groups without control and debuffs, and anything you build that's "any group" designed will be trivially easy to a group that builds itself to take it down.

Every approach has its problems, and they're inherent to having multiple roles in the game. Unless you make your game have only the one, single role, the developer's job isn't to *eliminate* those problems, it's to minimize them, and choose which ones are acceptable for the game they want to build.