MMO Weekly 18/08/09

Hello there, fellow gamers, and welcome to this week's action-oriented edition of MMO Weekly.  In this week's installment, we'll take a look at "Action RPGs", and how they are slowly mutating, morphing, and becoming ever more indistinguishable from their cousins, MMOs.  Well, sort of.  Read on, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Way back in 1996, a company called Condor developed a new genre of game, the "action role-playing game" (for you purists out there, it's technically the first "point and click action RPG").  Unlike many other RPGs at the time, it was fast paced.  Many other role-playing games were basically turn based and often very slow moving.  Diablo was unique; it retained the statistical, number-crunching aspects of traditional RPGs with some incredible, non-stop, fast-paced action.  Sure, you could make your Warrior (he morphed into the Barbarian in DII) stronger, or give him more agility, or buff up his hit points according to your preference, but you could no longer rely on simply pushing the "attack" button when it was your turn to attack the enemy.  You had to move and click furiously when faced with hordes of fast-moving monsters, or your min-maxed avatar was quickly dead.   This entire concept was quite innovative, and both Diablo and Diablo II were gigantic successes.

It also spawned a large, and rather odd, legacy.  Many games have tried to imitate the success of the Diablo series.  A few have enjoyed a bit of moderate success; many others have failed miserably.  In fact, one could argue that the only truly big successes in the action RPG genre have been by the team that invented the entire concept.  That core group of people has moved on from Blizzard North.  First, they went to the ill-fated Flagship Studios, and now they've settled into Runic Games.  And yet, despite a few pitfalls, their legacy lives on; three (potentially) huge action RPGs are on the horizon, and these guys have their fingerprints all over each of them.  

It's important to remember that Action RPGs aren't the most natural animals in existence.  It's a hybrid concept, one that combines traditional single player RPGs with a lot of fast paced action.  This requires a bit of a fine touch, or the games don't turn out quite right.  Just play some of the old Diablo clones, and you'll see what I mean.  They tend to be...kind of flat.  

And now, it seems, that the action RPG is about to become even *more* of a mutant, hybrid concept.  Three of these games are on the horizon (one to be released in mere months), and all three are becoming very MMO-like.  Actually, allow me to clarify that a bit.  They aren't MMOs in the traditional sense, but they're becoming so MMOish, the differences are likely to be lost on most people.  Allow me to discuss the MMOishness of each of these three games, from least to most controversial.


Mythos

Mythos is the other game that was being developed by Flagship Studios.  Their first game, Hellgate London made the studio famous (or infamous, according to your perspective).  Hellgate was a decent MMO, and was actually quite popular in Asia.  You'll probably remember that, despite any success that Hellgate had, Flagship had a downright bizarre business model that ultimately caused the company to collapse.    


Background

Shortly before Flagship's implosion, I had an opportunity to play Mythos at the Game Developers Conference.  In talking to the developers, I was told in no uncertain terms that the game was about to go into beta "maybe even next month".  It was that close to being finished.  (It was also pretty darned fun.)  

Mythos started out as a technology test for Hellgate; it was a simple game / platform to develop Flagship's online MMO technology.  After seeing this test platform in action, the Flagship execs decided that the game looked like a lot of fun, and dedicated a team to turning this baby into a full-fledged online action RPG.  


Is it really an MMO?  

According to the developers I spoke to at the time, yes.  Remember, the whole project started out as a platform to test online technology.  Beyond that, players choose races, classes, and customise their characters.  They then form groups and go out into instanced, dynamically generated areas to kill monsters, complete quests, and level up.

However, let me add a few caveats.  One: Flagship took early feedback very seriously, and changed a lot about the game.  Most noticeable was that the standard "godlike" perspective offered in most action RPGs was now significantly altered.  While the game certainly retained its MMOness, this may have affected its overall action RPGness.  Also, as they continued to refine the game, Flagship shut down, and handed the game over to one of their creditors, Hanbitsoft.  

Hanbitsoft's development of the game is a complete mystery.  They brought in a whole new group of people to finish the game.  They also recently put up a few clues on the official Mythos website, but that's all we know.  It's been a year; Hanbitsoft may have made significant changes to the game in that time, and whether the game retains its old Flagship focus remains to be seen.  

Last, but not least, there's this: the game is **heavily** instanced.  Players meet in town, and then go off into instanced adventure content.  In a nutshell, you can never run into anyone in the game world, only in the city.    Some knowledgeable folks argue this kind of game isn't a true MMO, it's an RPG with some online play stapled on top.  Hellgate certainly was set up this same way, and the whole "but is it really an MMO" argument was debated then.  That debate remains even today in regard to the similarly instanced Guild Wars.