MMO Weekly: The Aging MMO

01 Jun 2010 at 00:00:00 by Jeff Hollis

Hello, my fellow avatar jockeys, and welcome to this week's edition of MMO Weekly. This week's MMO Weekly is, as you may have guessed by the title, about the plight of the aging MMO.

Let me digress, for a moment, with a mea culpa. One of the things I try to do with this column, each week, is do a bit of analysis of the MMO industry, games, and players. In months past, I argued that WoW was making itself very vulnerable, because it had emphasized hard core raiding (and other very substantial grinding) as its end game content. This was suicidal. Since this alienated the average player, the addictive love for the game had faded. People howled in protest when I wrote this, but within a few short months, even my biggest critics were agreeing with me.

I then reversed my position, simply because WoW implemented something fantastically brilliant: they implemented the dungeon finder tool into the game. This tool allowed the average player to play the game in short bursts, getting solid item drops, and acquiring currency to purchase epic items. I honestly thought that this would save WoW from the end-game doldrums.

I was, apparently, wrong.

It's not that WoW isn't fun – it is. The dungeon finder is still a brilliant move. But WoW had two problems, and I failed to properly notice the second. The first – their alienating end game emphasis – was largely fixed with the dungeon finder. The second problem is that WoW has aged, and there is no fix for that.

Consider Everquest. Everquest is WoW's immediate predecessor, and the game that WoW was largely modeled after. EQ was a great game but, like WoW, it wasn't perfect. However, contender after contender came along, and each time those new MMO contenders failed to unseat the king, EQ. It began to look like EQ would be the king forever. I even remember distinctly that Brad McQuaid, the game's spiritual leader, was uplifted by these “victories.” He even wrote, early on, about how EQ might not ever be replaced, or ever need a sequel. (He even indicated that there might never be an EQII!) The game, he felt, might simply develop expansion after expansion, upgrade after upgrade, and go on forever, with an ever expanding player base.

That didn't happen. EQ continued to grow for nearly six years, and they fixed many of their endgame problems. The game continued to improve. And then, suddenly, something newer and better and more modern and shinier came along, and then EQ's subscription base suddenly dropped as players abandoned the game. The newer, shinier game that replaced EQ was, of course, WoW.

EQ wasn't replaced because it was a bad game. EQ was replaced because it was an aging game.

WoW was new, and it had every advantage of a new game. The new game learned from the old one, and improved upon it in a lot of ways. They did some things better, sure. They easily addressed some of the little nagging bothersome quirks found in the old game, EQ. The new game had better gameplay, better quests, better dungeons, you name it. Aside from doing things better, WoW also did things that were simply shinier. The game had better graphics, better sound, better features, and more of everything. It was new.

I hang out with a lot of MMO geeks, and the talk over the past few months reminded me of something. It reminded me of the exact same chit-chat, back in the day, when it came to old EQ. In talking to a friend literally just yesterday, he mentioned the following: “Yeah, we're all looking forward to the next expansion, I guess. Does it come out this year? Yeah, we'll probably buy it. I don't know, this whole “gear score” thing is ruining the game for me. I hate that crap. I guess it depends on if I have forty bucks or not when it comes out.”

This was immediately followed by a related conversation: “By the way, when is that Star Wars MMO coming out? Maybe I'll just wait for that.”

Do you see what I mean? The new expansion doesn't seem to be generating all that much excitement, there are some minor things about WoW that bother players, though overall they still like the game. It's funny how, subconsciously, my friend suddenly found himself thinking about, and hoping for, a new MMO. I hear this kind of thing a lot.

Am I saying that Star Wars: The Old Republic (TOR) will be the next big MMO? No. It's waaaaay too early to predict that kind of thing. I mean, the next big thing might be Guild Wars 2 (GW2), The Secret World (TSW) or some other game we never heard of yet. Maybe even 38 Studios' secret MMO is the next big thing (though I have reasons to seriously doubt it). We won't know what the next big MMO is until it's here.

When that happens, WoW will again mimic EQ. WoW will begin to slowly fade. There will be one or two additional expansions, but subscription numbers will drop slowly over many years. Eventually, there will be server merges (Now we're at the point where EQ is 11 years old, and they announced they are going to implement a major server merge.). WoW will linger for a long, long time (consider UO, still kicking 13 years on). An old MMO doesn't cost much to run, and it's still worth doing, even with a small subscriber base.

As you can see, I've come to the conclusion that WoW, despite all the good things it's got going for it, is an aging game. The addictive love of the game has faded. I think that, when people complain about the little things that bother them about WoW, the game's age is the primary reason why. I also think the game's age is why people are looking down the road for a new MMO. Unfortunately, I don't think even Blizzard can fix this. Ah well, it's the way of the industry.

On that note, please share your opinions and insights in the comments, below. I look forward to hearing your slant on this.

That is all we have for this week but, as always, come and visit us over at Cool-O-Rama, where we not only play a lot of MMOs, we engage in all manner of nerdery, geekery, and professional dweebishness. For now, ciao!

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