I don’t mean to pick on Keen and Graev here, because they’re awesome, but here is yet another post about why MMOs aren’t evolving. Is anyone else sick to death of this topic? Two of my least favorite themes have been recurring in 2009, and I was hoping the new year would stop them. These two themes are:
1) MMOs aren’t evolving, nothing new and exciting is happening.
2) World of Warcraft brings nothing new to the table, is just a copycat game of all its predecessors.
Let me take a peek at them, and be done with it.
MMOs ARE evolving.
Apparently, people think that no game that’s been out recently have evolved or changed from the original MMOs. Frankly, what do you guys think an MMO is? What defines the MMMORPG category? If you radically change the game, isn’t that no longer an MMORPG?
How much did Modern Warfare 2 evolve from the original Halo game? There are still guns. You still shoot with them. I bet many mechanics are still the same, and most evolution in first person shooters has come through better graphics, better multiplayer features, newer consoles, and more advanced physics and technology. What more do you want?
I sought to find some ‘evolution’ for everyone.
User Created Content – Here you go, a blatant evolution. Long gone are the days where roleplaying is simply something you do fleetingly before it goes away into the abyss of chat logs. Now, in Everquest 2 you can create player-made books to share stories with other people. Lasting impressions on the game. Player-housing is something that has gone mainstream, with everything from Lord of the Rings Online to Free Realms and Wizard 101 embracing it.
Instancing – World of Warcraft took a concept that would have been blasphemy to original Everquest players and made it the new standard. No longer do you have to leave a dungeon because too many people are camping it. No longer do you have to stand around and wait until a group kills a boss and have it respawn. No longer to guilds fight incessantly about spawns and “who got their first”. Yes, the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion had instancing and it was in fact awesome, but no one would have wanted to be EVERY dungeon. Blizzard didn’t care and did it anyway. Good thing too, because it enabled awesome features like the Dungeon Finder.
Maps – Remember when Everquest didn’t have maps? Players had to create maps and you had to use the EQMap addon in order to see them in game. Now, you won’t see an MMO without a built in map. And furthermore, because of the advancements and evolutions in map systems – there will probably be robust objective information on said map. Imagine that in 1999.
Ease of Use – Fondly, everyone looks back to Everquest or UO and thinks they were so damn fun. Sure they were, but we had fun DESPITE the lacking features and complete pain in the ass they were to play. Waiting for boats + hours of travel? No thanks. Look at all of the features that have been added to make MMOs more accessible for more than just the 500,000 geeks who used to play them. Mentoring, guild systems, instant traveling, UI modding ability, flight, recruiting friends, newbie tutorials, customizable chat options, I could go on. Free Realms is basically a walking demonstration of evolution in ease-of-use in MMOs.
Let’s just look at ONE particular game. Everquest 2. A game that people seem to forget when they’re thinking of evolution. This game had/has the following (not saying all of these are new, but they are all evolved features from the first MMOs):
- Diety systems, the ability to use religion to affect your character
- Character evolution that allows you to pick your class later on
- Heroic opportunities
- Guild leveling + rewards
- Appearance slots
- Mentoring
- Instant teleporting to zones, no travel
- Scaling dungeons
- Climbing – since when do MMOs care about the Z-axis?
- Mini-expansions with adventure packs
- Cut scene featuring your character (the original ship scene with the dragon)
- Any race, any class
- And SO ON.
WoW is not Walmart, it is the iPhone
Every time I hear someone say “World of Warcraft is the Walmart of games, didn’t bring anything new to the table and Blizzard are nothing but copycats” makes me want to scream.
This *is* evolution guys. Does anyone doubt that the iPhone is an amazingly powerful device that has had a huge impact on smartphones in 2007-2010? Were they the first touchscreen? Were they the first phone to come out with wireless internet? The first with a camera, or email, or SMS messaging? The first with games, or bluetooth, or internet tethering, or music playing capabilities? The first with ANYTHING? The answer is mostly no to all of these. What Apple did was bring the best features together into one slick package, market it well to a non-geeky, non-smartphone crowd, and sell the shit out of it. Hm, sounds like WoW. The difference is that the iPhone is hailed as an innovative technological success by mobile techies, and World of Warcraft is considered McDonalds, Walmart and a watered down version of an MMO by MMO players. What gives? Why is it even a debate that Gamasutra picked WoW as the Game of the Decade? What other game iterated this much, made such a huge impact on the game industry, and had over 10 million players playing it?
Commonly you see a new feature release in WoW, with a handful of people saying “this is an incredibly great feature” and then a huge handful of people saying “that’s great, but X game had that first…WoW just made it prettier.” Take the new Dungeon Finder for example. An absolutely brilliant, game-changing addition to World of Warcraft and people insist on shouting “Warhammer did that first with Public Quests”. Well no, they actually didn’t. It was a completely different feature that was implemented not at all the same. But hey, Public Quests WERE an innovation. Keen and others must forget that because the game wasn’t all that successful.
How about soloability? World of Warcraft revolutionized soloing in MMOs, permanently. There wasn’t even a concept of soloing in modern MMOs, now it is the new standard? But that isn’t evolution? And talent specs? They took putting points in alternate abilities and made it into full-blown game-effecting class specializations that allowed you to play a druid and pick whether you want to heal or tank. Sure, other MMOs had points and skills, but WoW took this to the extreme. In fact, they even innovated on their own feature by allowing you to dual spec. How about 10-man raids? How about raid and dungeon lockouts? You don’ t have to LIKE features for their to be innovation.
So where are people looking for their evolution? What exactly are they looking for? I really don’t understand. I’m a firm believer that players don’t even really want what they think they want. With the exception of WoW, MMOs are *still* niche. Are there really enough players who want DAoC 2? I frankly don’t think so. It’s awfully hard to be a MMO game designer when the playerbase is full of:
- Old school MMO gamers who refuse to evolve because “that’s not the way things have always been.”
- Old school MMO gamers who think new features aren’t evolution, and want new games to come out to replicate their old favorites.
- People who discard new features as not being innovative, even when designing and tuning large features for a multiplayer environment is no easy task.
- New MMO players (the majority by the way) who don’t give two shits about UO orEverquest
- MMO players who have no idea what they want, because this genre of gameplay is relatively new (MUDs aside)
That was an unorganized rant. You get the point, hopefully.
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
I equate WoW to Walmart because of the reasons I don’t patron Walmart. I admit that Walmart has done a lot to the value of shopping, and I could save a ton of money if I shopped there, but the effect of a Walmart on the local economy, causing shops to close and overall causing an increase in unemployment all while under paying and under providing for their own employees… WoW has had a huge effect on the MMO space, and in my personal opinion, most of it is bad.
So here’s my opinion on this.
There were, what, 600,000 people who played Everquest during its peak? A lot less than that played Ultima Online, SWG, or any other game. WoW came out, and 10+ million people started playing it. Do you think they stole them from the MMO industry, or BROUGHT them to the MMO industry?
Personally, I think that if you removed World of Warcraft from the equation, you’d have the exact same scenario we have now. Which is a lot of AAA games in the 100-300,000 subscriber range as always, and still a trend towards free, accessible, casual games. A lot of companies spending way too much on their games, targeting a market that is too small. There just aren’t that many MMO gamers out there. WoW made smaller companies want to get a piece of the pie, but that’s not Blizzard’s fault.
An excellent analogy. Moving to WOW from EQ2 felt very similar to moving from my Nokia N95 to the iPhone (although I hadn’t realised it until you pointed it out). It’s that sudden realisation that elaborate feature lists aren’t all that important compared to ease of use.
In each case, there’s a hold-out group of people who simply don’t get it. They list all the things their favourite game/phone has that the more popular one doesn’t and conclude that those who prefer the latter must be idiots. Well they’re not. The N95 was powerful, but a PITA to use. Even the simplest task seemed to take dozens of key presses and nested menus.
Blizzard achieved a similar thing to Apple. They went through the whole MMO concept and ruthlessly exterminated anything that was pointlessly annoying, focussing on the core features and dropping ones that were peripheral.
e.g.
Complex crafting? Stuff it – more people hate it than like it.
Forced grouping to progress? Nope. It may be “good for you”, but it’s annoying when you just want to spend a short while online.
In summary:
Fun > features!
I suppose I should explain further… WoW’s success is causing new games to emulate their success in attempt to duplicate it. WoW’s continued success is being built on aspects of MMO gaming that I don’t particularly enjoy (solo over group, now blind grouping over social communities, etc), and most of the recent released games are similar.
I should also say, I’ve used the iPhone a bit and don’t particularly like it either. I think Apple makes horrid products. The iPod is junk compared to even the Zune and both of them are terrible compared many other MP3 players on the market. What Apple excels at, and what WoW excels at, and what Walmart excels at is giving people a bland yet positive overall experience. Dealing with PCs, many older MMOs, or local non-megastore chains can be a mess, difficult, but also extremely rewarding. I have never found an Apple product, WoW or Walmart to be rewarding, just adequate.
How much did Modern Warfare 2 evolve from the original Halo game? There are still guns. You still shoot with them. I bet many mechanics are still the same, and most evolution in first person shooters has come through better graphics, better multiplayer features, newer consoles, and more advanced physics and technology. What more do you want?
I think the differnence is that you can play Modern Warfare 2 and enjoy your self, you pick up an MMo that was released recently and most of them suck. Most of them have evolved contain the features you mentioned, but a month later you end up quiting the game in fustration for someone you’ve been complaining about for years in MMO’s. Things that old MMO’s have solved.
That is interesting.
I’m a Mac person, so I can tell we won’t see eye-to-eye on this no matter how much we debate it out…haha! I’ve never found Apple’s products to be bland. I’ve found them to be the perfect examples of what I’m looking for. Also, I STILL get excited every time I use my Mac. My PC is just…well, there. Nothing exciting about it.
This is an exact example of what I’m talking about. Keen is saying “I want innovation, I want features” and Ogrebears is saying “new features suck, old MMOs solved all of these sucky things.” Did they really, though? Not that many people played MMOs back in the day while these glorious features were supposedly reigning supreme.
I loved this article, and I don’t play MMOs (mainly because I feel they’re relationships as much as games and I really don’t have the time). The main thing in the comments that you hit directly on the head is the fact that 10 million people play WoW. They had to come from somewhere and Blizzard needs to be applauded for getting all these people who haven’t played MMOs before into that part of the market.
Now it’s up to the rest of us to see if we can build off of that and get them playing other things too.
One of the main issues with MMOs is that they are not static (which is really odd to say considering how static their content is). I loved EverQuest. It is the game I want to play. But, due to the success of WoW, SOE has tried to shoehorn WoW feature into EQ and have succeeded mostly in destroying the magic that was EverQuest. If I wanted to play WoW, I would play WoW. I want to play EverQuest circa Planes of Power (plus Ykesha and LDoN, but minus Luclin, though I could live with it) which doesn’t exist anymore unless you want to play on a Mac, and I don’t want to play on a Mac. Even Dark Age of Camelot now isn’t the DAoC that people loved at its peak. Even WoW isn’t immune. Hard core raiders who loved WoW in its early days when ex-EQ raiders were building everything aren’t happy with the high end raiding of today because it has been made too easy.
The problem with MMOs, and why I am less and less inclined to subscribe to them, is that it might be fun and perfect now but that doesn’t mean it will stay that way. And it is such a disappointment to love something and then have someone else “ruin” it to chase another lover.
I have nothing to add other than a “bravo”. I reckon that needed saying.
Thanks!
First I disagree that FPS games have only made technical advancements. Looking at Modern Warfare vs. Halo (To follow your example), Modern Warfare puts you in the role of a character instead of a generic “every man”, it makes some bold storytelling choices, it has expanded progression in multiplayer, and all of this aside from the technical advances. First Person Shooters have had a ton of evolution, especially considering where they started. You’ve got games like Bioshock (RPG style advancement), Farcy 2 (Massive Open World FPS), Borderlands (Dungeon Crawler style questing and item advancement)… I could probably go on.
This isn’t to say that MMOs haven’t made advancements, Eve Online, Anarchy Online, and City of Heroes are some examples of games that have twisted some of the traditional gameplay conventions (That is to say games based on Diku/Circle Mud style progression and advancement).
I can understand how WoW could be named game of the Decade, but I think it pretty easy to call it the game of the decade without thinking much about it. First of all WoW isn’t 1 game, it is 1 game and 3 expansions… That is 4 games in my book if “WoW” gets to be all 4 games, then I’d like to nominate Grand Theft Auto for game of the decade. From Vice City, San Andreas, to Liberty City, in the last 10 years GTA has done as much to define the Open World genre as WoW has to MMOs. I’d also like you to think about Pokemon, there have been 3 pokemon releases in the last 10 years, and each of them has sold more than 10 million units… Much more. What about Half-Life and Half-Life 2? They helped redefine storytelling in FPS games, on top of being some of the most fun games I’ve ever played.
WoW has done some amazing things, however there are other amazing games that have done as much, if not more, for the industry and their genres as World of Warcraft. I just don’t think that it is a decision that can be made without debate.
(And EQ 1 had climbing, why does everyone always forget this… How else did you get into the Froglok Assassin’s room?)
Ok so I had a big ol rant all ready to send but I will just post a couple points instead.
UCC, Instancing, Map, and Ease of Use – Not new to current MMOs. Instancing is the newest thing to go into MMOs and really its just bringing Battle.net into the game like Diablo where it limits you to 4 players. Map and ease of use I won’t even get into that cause it sounds like EQ is your only point of comparison even though you keep using UO as a reference.
Sandbox MMOs and Gear dependant MMOs need to stop being lumped together. EQ and UO should never be used as the same point of reference against a game like WoW. EQ and WoW sure.
And comparing user numbers from UO and EQ against modern computer MMOs is another big no no in my books. The price of admission to computer gaming today is only like a quarter of the cost of PC gaming 13 years ago. Internet connectivity alone 10 years ago in North America alone vs what it is today. Cost of internet. Of course the games today have massive numbers.
Basically all I am saying is stop mixing apples with grapefruits and comparing them to a smoothie. And just stating that there was ‘only’ 500k playing EQ vs WoWs ‘14′mill. Different time, different era. Shit being computer savvy is no longer frowned apon by society.
I think the issue is that it’s quite strong felt by a lot of avid gamers that MMOs are evolving in the wrong direction, not that they aren’t evolving at all (excuse the double negatives there!).
For instance, you pointed out WoW’s instancing of dungeons. Yes, it’s an evolution, but I don’t see it as a positive one. If we look at the point and concepts of original MMOs, it was all about creating vast, seamless and immersive online worlds and heavy instancing and soloing is often detrimental to this ideology.
Also, to look at the points you raised for EQ2, a lot of them aren’t positive evolutions either:
Character evolution system? Well that was scrapped by the developers who even realised it was a terrible idea.
Mini-expansions with adventure packs. Scrapped because it wasn’t viable.
Cut scenes for your character. Scrapped because no one liked it.
Climbing. One cliff to climb an evolution doesn’t maketh.
Instant teleporting to zones – no travel. Is that really what you want in your MMORPGs?
The genre is evolving, just not in the right direction. I don’t want a glorified chat room with limited roleplaying options and arcade style instancing. I want to experience a living, breathing online immersive world that fills me with a sense of escapism and longing. Ironically, it’s older games like DAOC and Star Wars: Galaxies that tried to push these boundaries; newer games don’t.
“I don’t want a glorified chat room with limited roleplaying options and arcade style instancing.”
Since people don’t really chat much in games outside their guilds, you don’t have to worry too much about the first part.
No-one really wants “innovation.” If they did, we’d all be playing some of the really experimental MMOs like Arda or Endless Forest. When players whine about the lack of innovation in MMOs, what they are generally really whining about is the lack of new big budget MMOs that cater to their peculiar tastes. Put differently, no-one cares about innovation that doesn’t cater to their whims.
MMO bloggers are very often fans of design features that are niche (at best). Forced grouping, complex flexible crafting systems, “immersive” landscapes with insane travel times, directionless contentless sandboxes with a ton of deep systems, FFA PvP, ect.. Thus, the innovation going on in mainstream games like WoW and Wizard 101 that are broadening the market and reaching out to new audiences are utterly irrelevent to them.The very features that make them accessible enough to reach out to a wide audience turn these guys off right from the gate. Any innovation contained therin “doesn’t count” as far as they are concerned.
While I can percieve the perspective, I consider it pretty assinine to whine that the entire genre is stagnating becuase no-one has read your mind and released exactly what you think you want to play. Even if they did, you’d probably figure out pretty quickly that you were wrong, and there’s a good reason you aren’t a game designer.
In any case, great post. I agree 100%.
Funny that you make the comment about older games. I just came from Tibia, it held my short attention span for an entire year. What is missing there is just an English speaking audience. The open PvP system makes it both very challenging and competetive.
I also played DAoC back in 2004 or so right before they revamped their entire PvP system. I never got to try to new features as I wore the game out already. Having 6 max level characters was a little excessive, all that was left was PvP. I really liked the realm system where you picked your character from the beginning of 3 possible lands to grow up in. When PvP is introduced at around level 30, the 3 realms come together and fight in a designated area for honor, glory, and of course rewards.
LOL yup very true
I don’t agree expecially with the first couple of points that you made.
UO had housing and player made books, already 10 years ago.
EQ1 introduced instances with the expansion Lost Dungeon of Norrath (LDON) in 2003
So no evolution had happened here.
Maps and easy of use both belongs to the UI category, which in fact has improved a lot.
But the improvements (or better, the changes since part of the transformation is going in the wrong direction) in fact are really minor considering than in 10 years games of other genres have evolved much much more
Echoing Yeebo’s point, when a lot of players say ‘evolution’, they actually mean ‘revolution that is fun for me in vague, undefined directions’. There is plenty of innovation and evolution in MMOs, but it tends to be sidelined because (irony) it isn’t in WoW or the latest big budget MMO release. Or if a title is not determined to be ‘fun’ or is considered ‘a failure’, all of its innovations are ignored (e.g. Vanguard’s diplomacy system is fun and a great idea, ChampO and Aion’s zone sharding takes instancing to a whole new level, MxO had a fantastically flexible skill tree system).
Having read Keen and Graev’s blog: nostalgia plays a huge part. In their day, if you’d contrasted DAOC (remember, that was positioned as EQ without the suck at launch) and UO, you’ve have fanboi wars lasting for days. They occupied completely different spaces and – most importantly – the more game-y the world, the better it sold. UO got the benefit of moving first, but EQ was much more successful despite not offering the same depth of world. Plus: bugs and the lesson learned by devs is that the more flexible you make a system, the more you will have to patch it as players break it. Fast forward to 2010 and suddenly all those warts are forgotten because that last MMO you played didn’t evoke the same sense of wonder as the first one you played.
The really funny thing is that if people wanted to, they could go back and play UO, DAoC or AC today. They are still around, still hold all of those wonderful features so requested in newer MMOs. But they don’t, or if they do they tend not to stick around. Why? Because the features aren’t as good or as pretty as they are remembered.
It’s a funny thing, but as much as I dislike WoW, I really am still shocked by the fiery hatred for it. The game is honestly well crafted compared to other MMOs that were out at the time, and it very much hit a sweet spot. It’s just about the right amount of everything for attracting non-gamers/non-MMO gamers. It doesn’t necessarily shine, but it’s set the entry level at playing to a point where everyone and their brother can finally enjoy the concept of a Massively Multiplayer world.
And while the innovators belong in the history books so to do the so-called enablers, streamliners, and distributors.
All that said I honestly think MMOs might start changing more when the market has grown enough to allow for more risks. (Let alone the fact that there are games like Puzzle Pirates that do have relatively new, interesting ideas that might make you shake your head about the way we make games, but nobody bothers to look at them.)
>User Created Content
The original MUD had this, but dropped it. It was reinvented by TinyMUD.
>Maps
The original MUD had maps, but players preferred to make their own. Island of Kesmai was its own mini-map.
>Ease of Use
The fewer the features, the easier to use, yes.
>Diety systems, the ability to use religion to affect your character
The early 1980s MUD Gods was built around this concept.
>Character evolution that allows you to pick your class later on
The early MUDs allowed you to pick your class moment-by-moment. You want to be a mage? Use magic. You want to be a fighter? Use a sword.
>Heroic opportunities
Where’s the heroism in a world that merely slaps you on the wrist when you “die”? If you want heroism, try the permadeath of early MUDs…
>Guild leveling + rewards
Some DikuMUD derivatives had this, I believe.
>Appearance slots
In most later text worlds, you could have as infinite and varied an appearance as you wanted.
>Mentoring
The early MUD Shades had this.
>Instant teleporting to zones, no travel
We had instant teleporting in MUDs, too. Not too much, obviously – otherwise there would be no point in making anything between the teleportation sites…
>Scaling dungeons
I recall hearing this discussed by the I/O World of Adventure people at at MUD conference in 1989. I don’t know if they implemented it or whether they dropped the idea because it was so obviously annoying.
>Climbing – since when do MMOs care about the Z-axis?
Oh, since about 1978. You could add some extra dimensions, too: textual worlds weren’t limited by 3D co-oridinate spaces.
>Mini-expansions with adventure packs
Expansions in text MUDs came in all shapes and sizes, from patches to mini-expansions to major expansions to complete rewrites and an increment of the roman numeral after the name. Yes, this includes the commercial ones, too.
>Cut scene featuring your character (the original ship scene with the dragon)
We had this kind of thing in some later text worlds, mainly as a way to show off the world without letting the players do anything to it (like gryphon rides in WoW). I don’t know of any that used them for narrative purposes, but I can’t imagine that none tried it.
>Any race, any class
Well yes. Some MUDs had dozens of both to choose from, too.
>And SO ON.
Wake me up when “evolution” stops being “reinventing the wheel”.
Richard
MMOs need a sense of achievement, the idea that you’re doing something. It’s something that the original EQ suffered; here’s a quest to kill 10 rats. Ding, move to a new zone, here’s a quest to kill 20 giant rats. Ding, move to a new zone, here’s a quest to kill 30 Giant Desert rats and so on…
Innovation in an MMO for me was the EVE Online economy. However their skill based advancement instead of level based advancement meant that you could never ever reach friends/family that started the game ahead of you.
Free Realms tradeskill mini game idea for me was a good one. Bringing the Nintendo DS to an MMO made doing things interesting, however I can see how dull it would get if you continually had to roll out potions for the raid/guild, getting RSI while you stirred pots.
The next big innovation for MMOs should be an overhaul of the questing system, it is the only thing that has been unchanged since the dawn of MMOs.
It’s a shame that Cuppy isn’t as old as you, or she may well have been playing her first roleplaying game with chalk and slate.
To save me typing, all the above; but with pen and paper around my parents kitchen table before computers became affordable household additions
To let you know.. Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game ( MMORPG ) has notthing todo with its game design in general to define the “genre”
It simply means that it is a game that can support vast amount of concurrent users on a sharded server ( wow ) or single server ( EVE ) and that it is
a ROLE PLAYING GAME.
So really a MMORPG could very well be a Formula 1 game where you take the role of a formula one player to advance the character through series of races and
against allot of players on a sharded server or single server.
Furthermore…
The MMO industry has introduced little innovation past 10 years. it is a FACT.
The “innovation” you are refering to as “something new” or “new feature” is not innovation.
Ill give you an example of innovation to give you a CLEAR vision.
World of warcraft WS Eve Online.
Compare the two and you will understand what people are talking about when they say notthing new and that world of warcraft is a copy cat of Everquest.
What other game is like EVE?
What other game is like WOW?
I dont argue the fact that EVE to me is not fun. its seriously hard to learn but that does not cloud the fact that it was an innovation to the MMO industry and
today peiple are looking for another innovation, no doubht they want innovation that is easy to get into, pretty to the eye and fun to play.
Personally I agree more with Spitfire’s comments than yours and thus I could argue with most of your post, but the last line really bothered me in particular. Maybe we don’t go back because these games lack the population to hit the “fun critical mass” level; or maybe there is a level of spit and shine that these old games don’t have; or maybe, like most gamers, the new kid on the block gets most of our time and attention; or maybe these games actually don’t exist anymore except for in name. Maybe if any of these things weren’t the case we would go back to those old games that, in fact, *do* have “good or pretty” features
What about the things old mmos DID do right that current games don’t add in till later for no apparent reason other than milking features? I’m talking player houses, mounts, customization and vehicluar transportation. You don’t see mmos releasing with housing systems anymore. Simple mechanics like cloth/armor dyes are added in later as premium or cash shop content even though the mechanics of dying a texture have not changed at all. It can take years before a mmo adds mounts, or flying, or swiming even though the 5 year old game engine they are running supported those features right out of the box. Having access to ships/airships/vehicles has become some grand update hyped thing that many mmo players dream about and developers dangle over their heads for years when you could go out in uo and get a boat, day 1. If you are using an engine like unreal or cry, how can you justify not having native features of the engine like flight, swiming, or vehicles? I can understand how a housing system might take a bit of work to flesh out but those other things… give me a break.
Certain aspects of mmo design are changing for the better, others are going ass backwards full throttle in reverse. I want to play a mmo made within the last year or so with at the very least a basic personal housing system. I haven’t found one yet.
By the way, wow didn’t create the solo game play mechanic. The orignal Lineage was very solo heavy, and maybe I was playing it wrong but so was UO.