Since I started playing MMORPGs, back in the pre-Luclin days of EQ1, the face of the MMORPG gamer has changed. Somehow the culture of an instaclick (or MTV) generation has spilled over into the fantasy world of MMORPGs changing not only the tone and feel of MMORPGs but also the way in which the community interacts and plays, let me explain.
Late 90s early 2000, EQ1 was probably at the apogee of its success and World of Warcraft was not around. I think that it is fair to generalise and say that MMORPGs were principly the domain of geeks, beardies, and the generation who spent their youths playing table-top (like D&D) and that your average teenager was more interested in hs Sony Playstation than the shattered lands of Norath. this said there was one online gaming service that seemed to capture a large number of young and dare I say immature gamers – BattleNet. Something happened early 2000 with Battlenet which resulted in hundreds of our younger bretheren to go in search of a new home – many of them found one – in Everquest.
Suddenly an environment which had generally been quite a respectful and slightly reserved (no KSing, no training, respect for high level players and nurturing of newbies) turned into a screaming kindergarten. Hundreds of beggars suddenly appeared all over Norath, sitting outside city gates and banks begging for plat off anyone who looked like they might be wealthy. These new ‘upstarts’ had no respect for long held, but unwritten rules of the MMORPG world – KSing was OK, camps were there to be raided and taken and the OOC chat around areal like LOIO was decidedly potty mouthed and decidedly juvenile. EQ back then was a slow grind, you couldnt get a lvl 60 toon in 4 weeks, you were lucky if you could do one in 6 months, but these kiddies wanted endgame NOW!! and they would find any method, exploit or person to help them do it Hence was born the ‘B-Net Kiddies’ – continually whining and pleading for someone to PL (power level) them and refusing to play if they couldnt find a ‘chanter to give them a fix of KEI (infact many of them found it almost impossible to play without KEI.
I think that this new generation were to spell the death of MMORPGs as we had previosuly known them, they didnt want corpse runs, loss of gear, complex quests or long grinds – they wanted instaclick gratification. These people wanted fast leveling, lots of phat-lewt, glitterythings and being uber – instantly and somebody was sitting in the wings watching all of this and taking note. They already had an appropriate IP, they had the userbase in Battlenet all they needed was a shiny product to deliver to their MacDonalds fuelled, instant messenger, text driven hoarde and they had it, it was called World of Warcraft and the company behind it was called was Blizzard Entertainment.
From this point onwards the face of MMORPG gaming had changed forever. The IP wasnt particularly new, infact very much sameole sameole, high fantasy massive persistant worlds. What had changed was the way it was delivered, in 2 ways.
Firstly the game was very very highly polished when it was delivered, no more buggy quests, daily patches and all of the other problems that the previous generation of MMORPG gamer had come to expect and live with. This game was pretty much perfect by the time it hit beta – infact the beta was little more than server load tests.
Secondly the grind had been removed. Levelling was fast, loot dropped a plenty and the endgame had the choice of either raiding or faction v faction type pvp.
The other clever move is the game did not require an uber-rig to play on. You could even play it on a fairly mediocre laptop. This is important for 2 reasons, it opened up the whole Asian market (who play mainly in internet cafes) and the average child / youth who very often have hand-me-down pcs, which are normally a generation old, could also play.
The one last trick that Blizzard had up their sleeve, which the like of SoE have persistantly missed (maybe in their arrogance that gaming ends beyond the shores of North America) is European Advertisement. Europe is one of the fastest growing DSL markets, with at least as many potential subscribers as North America and Blizzard had noticed this.
The upshot is ‘old school’ mmorpg gaming is dead – as Brad McQuaid found out to his cost, with Vanguard Saga of Heroes. Many of the old EQ1 gamers have grown up, have families, jobs and mortgage commitments. We cannot afford the 18 hour camps waiting for Stormfeather to pop, or the 5 hour corpse runs when your raid wiped in PoF, those days are gone. The new generation are too impatient to play ‘old farts’ games. These kids have been brought up on twitch games and consoles, they want it fast and furious and must it look cool. This new generation have the attention span of a goldfish, if there isn’t something new happeneing every nanosecond, then it is consigned to the bin of dead games and they move on to the next shiny.
So what is the future of MMORPG gaming? Probably something between a FPS and an MMORPG. Huxley I think has set the standard, but is yet to catch on in a big way. SoE’s new IP ‘The Agency’ holds some promise – but only time will tell. Brent made an interesting point on his VirginWorlds podcast a few weeks ago – why are more MMORPGs not like Tomb Raider with truly interactive 3D environments? Probably because current technology will not allow it in a MMORPG environment. Whatever it is, it is not going to be the slow and cumbersome games that we have been to date – unfortunately it is more than likely many of the older gamers may not have the reflexes to participate in the same way that we do in todays clutch of MMORPGs - and that maybe a fatal oversight for many companies. As although the kids may make up a large percentage of the market, it is the older gamers who are often parents of the ADDH generation who pay the bills and pass on their hardware for them to play on. Exclude this market and they may restrict the supply of hardware and gaming to their gaming offspring. Currently I dont need twitch reflexes and a Razer Diamondback (although I do use one) for me to have a well equiped character in EQ2. A few friends and a little time farming harvestables gets me plenty of nice gear. But if I had to have 0.1ns reflexes to avoid a mob killing me, then I think that I would just walk away from the game and so too would many of my generation.
It is a fine line that the future MMORPG game producers have to walk, keeping the older gamers hooked, whilst bringing the new generation in and giving them both what they want whilst keeping the playing field level. It is going to be a tough call and one which I , happily, wont have to make.
July 13, 2007 at 12:58 am |
Interesting read, especially for someone like myself who wasn’t around for the first couple of rounds of online RPGs. Where does it end?
I’m getting this mental image of a hotbar with about 5 large buttons with very obvious symbols on them depicting basic actions like “run” and “kill”.
And for the ultimate in automatic gaming, there’s always Progress Quest…
Keep up the good work, you display great insight and offer some interesting thoughts on the subject of mmorpgs.
PS. I hope the html tags work, it’s my first time posting a comment in a wordpress blog.
July 13, 2007 at 9:08 am |
Thanks for the feedback Ryu. I also noticed that I got a whole thread about this post in the warhammer alliance forums. Firstly thanks for reading the post guys, it is nice that someone is that interested in what I have to say. To clarify, I have no desire to return to the heady days of EQ1, nor do I ever wish to see game design that requires such a rediculous time sink for such small returns. Conversely i do feel that MMO devs have gone too far in the other direction and trivialised too much game content, leaving too little of the current clutch of games to be really challenging, time sink does not equal challenge, imho.
Like it or not there is a generation gap. First generation MMO players were mainly the 30 and 40 somethings of today and our culture is very different to the culture of the 20 somethings who discovered mmos with the dawn of WoW, turning the culture from geek to chic. It isnt a criticism, it is an observation, but maturity generally comes with age. When 2 generations are expected to share the same environment, they clash. Teenagers complain that their parents dont understand them, well if their parents dont, generally their parents generation, per se, do not either.
Change is a fact, like it or not, but it doesnt stop you feeling nostalgic all the same.
July 13, 2007 at 2:02 pm |
i like it good read realy opens the eye’s and i understand even though i am 17 i get really pissed off at the constant begging and things like that but then again i am kinda a highbrid teenager casue i can play fps and mmos and know how to act in both but a simple way to fix the age diferance have diferant aged realm such as 17+ are over there and 16 below are over here kinda thing that will get rid of the imaturity mostly and allthough ppl can cheat this system those that do probably are mature enough to be in a 17+ realm i kinda like that idea and one other thing ppl that talk about there personal lfe on an mmo has no life to talk about except mybe if its good new then hell sure u can feel happy for them but the select few that complain about there life tell the to HARDEN THE FUCK UP AND PLAY THE GAME!
July 13, 2007 at 4:03 pm |
I thoroughly enjoyed this post, and the subsequent reflections on it, with the exception of my unfortunate peer Aaron, who needs to get a better grasp of the english language. “highbrid” really annoyed the hell outta me.
I myself am 18 years old and just graduated high school. I missed the EQ days, but did have some experience with MMORPGS prior to the arrival of WoW. I don’t particulary have anything to say about that except to acknowledge that WoW did have a significant impact on the world of MMO’s and drew so many people that the devs behind my game of choice, Star Wars Galaxies (I was a bit of a Star Wars geek) decided to change the way the game worked with so-called ‘New Game Enhancements’. While some of them were smart and intuitive, a majority of the changes made served to make the game simpler and more immediately gratifying.
I thoroughly appreciate the time you’ve taken to examine this issue and your insight is remarkable. True that WoW has taken MMORPGs from the days where they were the world of ‘geeks’ and ‘hard-core gamers’ to them becoming the staple of kids with no level of maturity and no understanding of the courtesies you mentioned previously. Here’s to hoping that we can soon strike a balance and progress to better days of gaming.
July 13, 2007 at 10:31 pm |
Very thorough insight, just wanted to post some additional thoughts.
I do believe this is much a case of nostalgia and a paradise lost. In the eyes of any gamer, progress is not only inevitable, but craved. In the transition from games like EverQuest1 and Dark Age of Camelot to more mainstream current games like World of Warcraft and Guild Wars interfaces, tools, and graphics have strived to become more accessible and fulfilling. In the quest to make controls easier to access the game and become more intuitive in their function, they have intrinsically lost their ‘geek value’ and become InstaClick as you put it. It made the life of geeks simpler and left more room and time for advanced settings such as macrocommands and strings. And that’s good for everyone, nerds included. As much as we all used to love MUDs back in the day, you’d never want to go back to them. Just admit it, really. If you’d rather go back to typing syntax in half-constructed phrases, sure it’ll add to your geek-itude, but it doesn’t necessarily make it more fun. Some MUDs still exist today, even (DragonRealms for one) and you can sign up and play. Looking back at the old Mulit-User Dungeons, if you ever played them, or even EverQuest comparably, you can really see the roots of new age MMOs and remember the good times you had “/dance with shandreth and rosequeen”ing all the time, but you know you’d much rather be dropping an elite axe on the neck of the magma dragon or making mushroom clouds appear behind legions of visible orcs/humans. Remember the good times and love them for what they were, for the Golden Years are gone. Now is the time of Chaos and Emo across general chat and roleplay servers used in the name of Chuck Norris.
July 14, 2007 at 1:23 am |
im sry u feel that way leo but it is becasue of people like you that start the ganeral chat wars in wow have to correct alll english and grammer mistaces and then have a cry about little words that people might use becasue they cant think of anything else to say at the time u know i think ppl that do that are just asking to be a father or teacher figure so u bring that down upo ur self
July 14, 2007 at 10:13 am |
Having graduated from Ultima Online and the trials of PK Bridge outside Britain and having played DaoC for a while too, though never really treading the lands of EQ1 i can see why older gamers would miss the old days of the “grind” for hours on end to see your swords hit GM level, knowing that the hours of play weren’t for nothing.
Though I can also see why people, myself included want to see something a little more rewarding for the time I spend playing. At 23, I have a job and house and bills to pay so can’t afford the hours of grinding to get a single piece of loot or rare mob to turn up so i want something more tangible.
As much as WoW is lambasted I think it hit the right note, showing a newer generation see an MMO done well (’cause lets face it SWG was a farce as far as customer service went, at least in my experience), and without the old school grind o’ doom. It was accessable to people who had never played an MMO before and had enough of the old touches to let older, more experienced players get to grips with it faster and without fresh blood in the genre, it will eventually collapse in on itself. While there are the inevitable whining gits asking for gold etc. there are more good players brought in who can help guide the MMO genre onto bigger and better things.
I admit I’m a little bias, having grown up with the Warcraft universe and love the world that Blizzard created so wandering round the world and seeing things from the storylines of the original RTS is kinda cool
In short, Old school good but innovation and forward progress also good with the right people behind the wheel.
July 14, 2007 at 11:48 am |
I think that I am misunderstood, the only thing that I long for from the ‘old days’ of EQ1 is the social etiquette and politeness to one another, that I experienced when first playing. I truly do not miss raiding until 4am, camping mobs for 24+ hours, monolithic corpse runs with a named mob sitting on top of your corpse or getting another guild to rez your guild after you wiped and failed to even break a zone, no matter get to the final mob. I too have a mortgage, job, family and other social commitments. I cannot afford to spend 4 -5 hours per evening (minimum) grinding my character through ‘hell levels’.
My next series of blog posts will highlight some of my ideas to integrate the desires of both generations, without compromising the overall game.
Thank you everyone for your comments so far.
Mushii
July 14, 2007 at 12:43 pm |
Aaron –
What Leo said is absolutely correct. Regardless of your age, spelling (to some extent) and the use of periods and commas goes a LONG way to getting your point across.
As I said, age is irrelevant – I’ve seen incredibly mature 12 year olds – but I’ve also seen people in their 30s and 40s and with what they ’say’ it sometimes makes you scratch your head.
But – getting back to the point of this blog post – amazing insight and coming from MUDs and ridiculous EQ corpse runs, WoW + (now) EQ2 are a pleasure. I’d NEVER want to go back to the grind. I have a wife, kid, mortgage and a full time job – I don’t need another one.
July 16, 2007 at 3:43 pm |
EQ2 does still have plenty of difficulty in it, if you want to seek it out: ever tried levelling transmuting to 350? Or putting together a full set of EOF epic (or even legendary) class armour? The changes the devs have made make the fun in the game and almost all of its content a lot more accessible, but have left in some “hardcore” elements that pose a real challenge.
There are things that are much easier – in that you can level to 70 in about 300 hours if you really want to, but that’s still a pretty full couple of months if you have any real life distractions.
I really enjoyed the analysis, but my own view is that you may have overstated the distinction a little. I rather see it that there are two games going on – the fast level, which is a real difference from EQ1, and the oldstyle hardcore elements of gameplay.
And Aaron, I absolutely don’t intend to patronise, and I apologise if I do – but I would like to offer you the respect of reading what you have to say. Please show readers the respect of making it easy for them to understand your point. Stream of consciousness may work for James Joyce, but it has to be said that Ulysses is not most folks idea of an accessible novel.
October 6, 2007 at 1:02 am |
I was an EQ player from 1999-2001, and have played a number of games since (AO, COH, DAOC, WOW, LOTRO), and yes, I have experienced the change in manners. (I also think that part of all of this is that the magic of the new cannot be recreated. Until something completely different comes along, and I don’t mean a variation on the MMORPG theme.) I’m not sure how much of it is necessarily age-related so much as it is the mainstreaming of the MMORPG world. (Case in point: Aaron v. Leo above. Not to pile on, Aaron, but I honestly can’t even read your posts. I tried, but figuring out what you were saying would’ve taken me ages — I could read French or Spanish faster.)
I think early on MMORPGs attracted a certain kind of person of any age. My EQ guild was composed largely of people between 22 and 32, but some of us acquired a mascot of sorts who was 15. He was great, and we loved having him group with us. The essential point is really that self-identified “geeks” were those playing back in the day, and we were techco/entertainment pioneers of a sort. One of our guild members in his twenties talked about how his friends mocked him for playing “that gay video game” instead of hanging at the bar. The people playing then were outsiders. That created a basic feeling of community, mutual recognition and overall friendliness. That community has been eroded and finally destroyed as MMORPGs have become mainstream entertainment not very different from TV with a similarly broad audience. In this case, it is skewed young, but the real change is that the mainstream youngsters are now here (as are more mainstream adults, and I’ve had some annoying run ins with some pretty entitled grown up jerks too).