Why Fantasy MMOs Have An Edge Over Sci-Fi

21 Dec 2009 at 00:00:00 by Bill Vaughan

In a seemingly growing trend, next year will bring with it the release of many new Massively Multiplayer Online Role Play Games. In 2007, Turbine opened up Middle Earth with Lord of the Rings Online, and last year two more epic fantasy favourites were also turned into online worlds with Age of Conan and Warhammer Online. Among the biggest MMO releases this year were Aion, Champions Online, Fallen Earth and Runes of Magic, and the line-up for next year is even bigger. But as the list grows with each passing year, so does the genre's diversity.

2010 will see the release of Global Agenda, a game set on future Earth, which will combine first-person shooter tactics with the persistent world of traditional MMOs. Then there's Star Trek Online, a space-based game where you captain a ship, take on various bridge officers and take part in space battles as well as in phaser fights down on the ground. Finally, another game set in space – Star Wars: The Old Republic, which has more space ships and laser guns, but with plenty of good old-fashioned RPG elements. Yes, 2010 will be the year of the Sci-Fi MMO – but do Sci-Fi MMOs work?

Does the Sci-Fi genre mix well with the MMORPG? The first MMOs were fantasy, based on the old Dungeon and Dragons role-playing games. The rules and terminology in MMOs, even recent ones like AoC and Warhammer, still hark back to the pen and paper era. Sci-Fi MMOs have to take that basic formula and change it to fit their universes. It's relatively easy to do, replace mana with energy cells etc. but is it fun to play once the mixture has been tampered with? I had a look through the brief history of Sci-Fi MMOs to see how they fared.

EVE online, which launched back in 2003, is still going strong. The average age of its 300,000 player base is somewhere in their late twenties, so it appeals to a slightly different audience than other traditional MMOs, such as World of Warcraft. Perhaps that's been the key to its success, as other Sci-Fi MMOs haven't done so well. Despite having Richard Garriott at the helm, producer of Ultima Online and Lineage I & II, NCsoft's Tabula Rasa failed horribly and was taken offline after only 15 months. Hellgate: London is another sad tale, developed by some of the team behind Blizzard's tremendously successful Diablo, the game also sank after around 16 months. The Matrix Online managed to keep going for four years before Sony pulled the plug due to low sales. So, with the exception on EVE Online, Sci-Fi MMOs don't have a great track record.

A game's genre can't always be blamed of course, some games fail to perform well due to bad design, but is it harder to make a good Sci-Fi MMO than a good Fantasy one? After spending this weekend playing in a world full of cybernetic suits, space ships and shattered planets, here's what I think Fantasy generally has over Sci-Fi in an online world: Your character and your surroundings.

MMOs give players a change to be someone else for a while. When making a fantasy character, the role you choose has an effect on your abilities. The gear you pick up increases those effects, but it's your character that swings the sword, pulls the bowstring or casts the spell. In Sci-Fi, many characters rely on machines, either guns or ships, to do their work for them, and I personally feel that takes something away from characters, makes them less heroic. And what you're doing in-game often isn't that far from the truth - I'm sitting at a computer pressing buttons, playing a character that's sitting at a computer pressing buttons.

Then you have the environment. Fantasy MMOs normally tend to be set in olde-world locations. Green forests, marshlands, farmland, mountains and caves, places many people see as idyllic. When you finish your adventures, there's a home city waiting for you with warm taverns and cold ale. What could be nicer? Certainly not the clinical space stations or futuristic minimalist areas that supposedly await us in the furture, according to Sci-Fi. And that's if things turn out well in the years ahead. There's the post-apocalyptic option, as seen in Fallen Earth, which has players scavenging for food and goods worth using, or the high-tech war-time future as seen in Global Agenda.

No, the Sci-Fi world is not a cosy one, and not one I personally would want to spent much time in. I know there are those that do, but are there enough of them to make a game successful?

One upcoming Sci-Fi game does have a good chance though, with both Fantasy and Sci-Fi fans. Star Wars: The Old Republic offers a bit of both worlds – we have magic (the Force) and sword-fighting (lightsabers), allowing characters to feel truly powerful, as well as laser guns and space ships for those who prefer the tech. BioWare isn't scrimping on role-playing content either, as seen by demonstrations of quests with full voice-over and decisions that effect a character's future. Indeed, thanks to Star Wars' massive appeal and BioWare's expertise in RPG games, SW: TOR is looking to be quite the hit. Despite its Sci-Fi label. How well it does remains to be seen, but it might introduce a whole new generation of Sci-Fi fans to MMOs, and spark off another genre within a genre. Then again, it might be another Star Wars Galaxies.

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