Brent posted a good question in his latest podcast regarding innovation in MMO’s today, and here’s the question:
Does the desire for truly significant innovation in MMOs actually mean that you’re looking for the invention of a new genre of games, or are you not looking for the innovation of the MMO genre as much as you’re looking for some small feature development that will add to the overall “cool factor” and immersion of the MMO genre without completely breaking down all of those afore mentioned design patterns that we’ve come to know and love…
Here’s my issue with innovation. I don’t think you can make something incredibly innovative and expect it to be widely successful because of people’s reluctance to change. Myself personally, I will probably die playing a Fantasy-themed MMO. I am reluctant to try anything sci-fi, steam punk, or any other variations of settings other than fantasy and its subgenres. I don’t see personally how much more innovation the MMORPG genre can get without taking it completely away from its RPG roots – but perhaps that’s because I’m interested more in the RPG part than the MMO part.
I think in our future we’re going to see little innovative baby steps. I don’t think an MMO is going to come out and be huge and successful if it completely reworks everything we’ve come to know and love about MMORPG’s. I think we have the general fundamentals of player progression, community, interaction, and combat – and I don’t think that we need to change all that. I do think that all the major games that have been released in the past ~2 years have done a decent job of coming up with new elements and building upon older concepts to create something original and fun. Things like diplomacy in VG, instancing on the fly like EQ2, battlegrounds in WoW, titles/deed system in LotRO….these things are all great steps in innovation. Like Darren stated – I’d rather see some more polished games that are doing current elements WELL rather than someone try to innovate and come up with an unturned, buggy, unpolished piece of shit game.
What would I like to see as far as innovation? I’d like to see an NPC AI that’s believable and ‘next-gen’. I’d like to see a game that really caters to the roleplaying crowd that does a lot more with server events daily (a la EQLive Stormhammer server). I’d like to see a dynamic weather system that effects the game – perhaps different quests are available because of a massive snowstorm. Perhaps environments that change due to weather – “Alas, I cannot cross this bridge because it is flooded! I must take the longer, more dangerous route!” Freeform building tools in player cities. Resources that actually deplete for good. The list goes on.
Bottom line, I don’t want to see somebody completely reinvent the wheel – but I like these baby steps towards making a better game. Hopefully this addresses the question accurately.
