Penny-Arcade had an interesting stip wednesday about an ultimate game that would combine the best elements of the Old republic, Tera and Guild wars 2. You can agree of disagree with the assessments but you have to acknowledge that reading the various reports on the three games, each seem to have a distinct feature that the others lack. Swtor has story, Tera has gameplay and Guild wars 2 got a living world. PA simply asks, what if a game came along and combined all three?
I’ve been mulling this in my head for a while and I think WoW was that game not so long ago. When it realesed in 2004, it was the pinnacle of gameplay, story and living world. It aged, and by today standards it isn’t the pinnacle of MMOrpg design but for a while, it was.
I know the obvious solution seems to be to do exactly what PA proposes and create a sort of super game combining all the best features of the MMOs we know but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s not that simple. Not only would it cost a fortune to make and take forever to see the light of day but it’s also very likely that by the time it sees the light of day chances are high that gamer tastes will have changed.
I’m trying to finish this post with something smart but I just can’t right now. All the solutions I come up with seems to have some huge gaping hole in them. So.. if you guys feel smart, feel free to add in your solution in the comments.
I think, to some extent, I disagree with you. If you combined those aspects of TOR, Guild Wars 2 and Tera, you get not the perfect MMO, but the perfect video game. You are still missing a key component to any MMO – replayability.
To be honest, that’s what took me back to WoW. I got to the end of TOR and finished my character story and I felt… done. I was finished. I felt like I had reached the end of the book and there was a huge “And they lived happily ever after.” I did my best to keep playing. I tried end game and I tried alts. But the game’s story had been so innate to me that when my character’s story was finished, so was I.
If you compare WoW and TOR a few other things pop out. WoW has more professions. It has more distinct classes. It’s map is larger. It has more dungeons. It has more raids. It has more PvP (battlegrounds + arenas). I am not of the opinion that a lot of horrible content is better than a little great content, but the truth is that more content means that there’s a lot more to do before boredom creeps in.
The second half of that truth is that I’m not saying that WoW is larger because it is better (this is NOT a TOR bashing comment at all!). WoW is larger because it has had 8 years to grow. It didn’t have that many professions, classes, races, or map space when it first opened. It grew. And the sad part is that it would be hard for any MMO to start out as big as WoW is now (remember I’m not talking “big” as in “popular” but big as in “play options”). The money and the time just isn’t there.
So, what can a brand new MMO do to be able to provide as much content to keep players engaged? I, honestly, have no idea. Then again, maybe it’s just that the story of TOR emotionally ended the game for me. Don’t get me wrong – I loved it from beginning to end. But the fact that the story ended at all – that was what made it increasingly hard for me to log in.
I think MMOs are like any growth market. Around when WoW launched there was a growing audience, with disparate needs. WoW did a good job of catering to the full spectrum of players.
Now the market is much bigger, I think a brand new MMO is better off focussing on a niche. Even in the theoretical world of unlimited dev time and money, by this stage in the evolution of MMOs, it’s better for games to focus on one area, and avoid all the conflicts inherent in balancing a game that does casual, hardcore, PvE, PvP. Balance is much easier when a game is really only about one single thing (Starcraft series for PvP, for example).
I think it’s great if ToR offers something completely different to GW2 and to Tera. Sure, it might be nice to imagine a game with ToR’s story and GW2′s open world and RvR focus, but my guess is that by this stage, the PvP specialised community would be unhappy with a compromise game, the story-led community would also be unhappy with a compromise game. And there has to be a compromise, even with unlimited dev time and money, because of game systems and balance.
In conclusion, I think you are right when you say that “All the solutions [...] have some huge gaping hole in them”. A game can’t serve two or three masters equally and faithfully.