MMORPGs of Today and Tomorrow

It's been a while since my last post, and while I would like to have a new post fairly regularly such a thing currently isn't possible. There's two reasons for this, the first being that I simply don't have time (I'm meticulous when it comes to writing and that makes the whole process take much longer) and I haven't managed to think of a good topic. Granted I haven't been completely devoid of discussion topics, but I think it would do the blog and the community more good if I kept my topics general enough that they can apply to a wide range of genres. In lieu of my current situation, however, I think it'd be best to write about some specific genre than forgo posting at all.

So for this post I'll be discussing MMORPGs and World of Warcraft. As a fair warning in the event that this post comes off as a rant at any point, World of Warcraft is currently the game I'm spending the most (although still quite little) time playing. Any shortcomings of the game that I mention may unfairly emphasised because they are currently affecting me personally. With that said, let's get to the crux of the matter.

World of Warcraft is, of course, the ridiculously popular MMORPG by Blizzard Entertainment. I could mention how many millions of players current occupy their free time in its fantasy world, but at this point it hardly seems worth the effort to look online to find out what that number is today. The number would be useful if it were only a few times more than the leading competitor, but Blizzard's veritable monopoly on the genre is to such a ridiculous degree that discussing the numbers only serves to illustrate just how little every other game of the genre really matters. We could discuss game design and balance issues disregarding sales numbers, and that's what I try to do in this blog, but the simple fact of the matter is that game companies are still companies. Their ultimate goal is to generate revenue. When we look at game design from the point of trying to make money, we can't afford to ignore how Blizzard makes an MMORPG when designing our own.

As a result, much in the same way Halo standardized how the modern FPS plays, World of Warcraft now defines what an MMORPG is. So what is an MMORPG according to Blizzard? It seems to be a game of progression, where you the player are on a never-ending quest to improve your character. It certainly isn't difficult to see where this train of thought originated: I'm not aware of a game that would describe itself as a single player RPG that didn't have a strong emphasis on character development in the purely mechanical sense. This makes sense as a single player game. The player can progress at his or her own pace and can eventually-- and this is key-- reach the end and finish the game. Being able to finish the game is important in a single player RPG because eventually the game will run out of content.

This might seem obvious, but as usual adding the Internet into the mix changes things. Downloadable content means that once enough players have experienced all the content, a developer can simply add new content. And if you can add additional content once, then you can do it as many times as you like. Suddenly, you have a game that can exist indefinitely. The game design needs to change to accomodate the fact that players will eventually be experiencing content that doesn't yet exist. More importantly, however, is that game design needs to be determined with the understanding that the player of a game that never ends needs to never run out of things to do.

WoW's end-game content is divided up into two activities: PvP content and raid content. PvP content has proven to be comparably straight-forward in ensuring that gameplay never ends. Sporadic patches to balance gameplay and the occasional new set of top tier equipment is generally all the avid WoW PvPer needs to continue playing. Raid content tends to be trickier. Raid content consists of sprawling dungeons and elaborate scripted boss fights. All this is original content that needs to be balanced around top tier raiding parties of currently 25 players. This aspect of the game is generally regarded as the focus of the game, and considering the difference in developer time that goes into raid content this really shouldn't be surprising.

So is this idea of perpetual character progression a good one? From a business point of view, it obviously is. WoW certainly isn't the first game to pursue this type of gameplay, and certainly isn't the first widely popular game to do this. So what sets WoW apart from the rest of the games it has so effortlessly dwarfed? It's been said before that Blizzard's basic design plan for WoW was to take all the components of the popular MMORPGs of the time, dumb them down, and then polish the game until it shone like no other. Again, from a business point of view this seems like the perfect design philosophy.

From a point of view that ignores sales figures, however, this design makes less sense. If character progression is the ultimate goal of a game that perpetually expands, then eventually players are going to become frustrated at the thought of their accomplishments being diminished the next time a content patch is released. The metaphorical carrot being dangled before their eyes will always be just out of reach. This is a problem because for most players the ultimate goal of character perfection is not only unattainable, but actually moving away from them. New content is added at a rate faster than the average player can progress through it.

So what's the future of MMORPGs? My view of the horizon before me is unfortunately pessimistic. There will be few, if any, game companies that will try to compete will WoW directly. WoW simply dominates the market to such a degree that any direct competitor would be swept aside and labeled a crappy WoW clone. So what are developers, seeing a huge potential market in MMORPGs going to do? Create games that pander to the type of gamer that specifically doesn't like WoW, try to wedge in a niche market, and expand their playerbase by attracting frustrated WoW players. Its really the only sane choice for a game company that wants a slice of the MMORPG pie.

You, the reader, are probably wondering how the above paragraph could be described as pessimistic at this point. This goes back to towards the beginning of my post when I talked about how WoW has defined what the modern MMORPG is. The next generation MMORPG is going to quite literally advertise itself as not being WoW. But by defining itself as an MMORPG, the game will necessarily take game design elements directly from WoW. The differences between the next generation of the genre and WoW will simply be superficial, as WoW has made itself the de facto standard. Character progression will remain the ultimate goal, and the eternal grind that has defined the genre will continue to haunt it.

So how do we, as game designers, avoid this fate? That I will leave as an exercise for the reader. I will post my own thoughts on how to change the genre of MMORPGs for the better in a later post, but for now I think it will suffice to simply pose this question: what defines an MMORPG and how does character progression fit into that definition?