You put on your robe and wizard hat and peer into the shimmering pool. The waters seem to coo your name softly. You lower your face, letting the water gently brush against you. For a moment, you catch a glimpse of what the MMO scene might look like in 2012.
2011 was a turbulent year for MMOs. We saw a number of games switching from a subscription-based to free-to-play business model, including the high-profile Everquest 2 from Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). Another less fortunate product from same company got the axe – Star Wars Galaxies. On the other hand, those who predicted the death of the subscription model were proven wrong when Rift and Star Wars: The Old Republic launched with a huge customer base.
First, we look at the games that are currently released and how they are likely to develop over the course of next year.
Rift
Suppose they gave a war and nobody came.
It’s hard to say if Rift is starting to decline, or whether it would in 2012, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be pulling in new customers, and the chances of it doing so next year seems dim. As an active player of Rift, this saddens me. Compared to most other MMOs, Trion has pushed out a significantly greater amount of content during the first year of its launch.
I’m sure Trion is aware of the stagnation that’s going on, and they’ve tried to combat it by making it easier for casual players. While stagnation does not immediately equate to doom, it does not paint a pretty picture in the face of heavy upcoming competition. To combat the problem, Trion first introduced the dungeon finder, then expanded it by making it cross server. Instances designed to teach players raid mechanics, called ‘Chronicles’, were added to hopefully lower the barrier of entry for non-veterans. Then came ‘Instant Adventure’ with patch 1.6. The result was still not promising.
Here was what Instant Adventures promised.
Here is how it turned out. The video has been sped up by a factor of 4.
The end result is a lot less epic, and missing the camaraderie afforded by the presence of a large group.
Trion has been one of the most proactive company in listening to player feedback, providing the tools needed to bring groups of players together. The problem it seems, is that players just don’t want to do that. I expect to see Rift’s population slip further in 2012.
Star Wars: The Old Republic
BioWare completely adverts the problem of getting people to work together by selling it on the merits of its single player aspects – a tightly coupled story complete with cut scenes and voice overs. This is not to say that it is completely a single player game, as Ben Kuchera over at Ars Technica found out. It does however, avoid the pitfall of leaving the player with nothing to do if group dynamics do not work out.
BioWare-EA boasted the it had 1 million registered players two days after launch. While the figures are impressive, the population at launch is not indicative of an MMOs success. We’d have to be well into 2012, at least by the end of Q1 before verdict can be passed. That’d be when most players 1 or 3 month subscriptions run out, and they’re faced with competing choices for their $14.99, because that’s when the giant that is World of Warcraft resurfaces.
To complicate issues, I have certain doubts about BioWare being able to produce content for SWTOR at a pace that’s fast enough to keep players who are at or nearing end game interested. Here’s where the tight story driven approach might be a two-edged sword. Cut scenes and voice acting consumes a tremendous amount of time and cost. Rumors have placed the development cost of SWTOR to be at $300 million. In comparison, WoW cost $100 million to develop.
Although SWTOR might not be in the spotlight next year, it’s not going anywhere. If anything, the launch numbers prove that the Star Wars franchise still has a strong following 35 years after the movie first hit the screens.
World of Warcraft
Naysayers have been heralding every MMO released since WoW to be the next WoW-killer – the game that would seduce over a critical mass of WoW’s population. That isn’t going to happen in 2012 either. However, Blizzard will be facing competition from an unlikely source. It’s a problem that Microsoft constantly finds itself in. Blizzard will have to compete with itself. Diablo 3, scheduled to be released Q1 2012, would be sure to consume some of WoW’s population. A few months after that, Mists of Pandaria, the next major WoW expansion, is speculated to be due. Of course, Blizzard foresaw the problem and came up with a plan to sell Diablo 3 while guaranteeing WoW subscription numbers in the form of its annual pass.
That being said, subscription numbers are one thing, and they don’t always indicate how active a game is. People still keep paying for games they don’t actively play for various reasons ranging from social networking to simply being too lazy to cancel a subscription. To the company, the difference between subscription numbers and active players is a moot point – they get paid just the same regardless of how many hours you put into the game. To the player, a low active population means that groups are harder to come by. Unmanged, the effect could quickly multiply. Player A quits because he can’t find a group, shrinking the population size, leading to another player to quit for the same reason, and so on. It’s recursive.
However, since the release dates of WoW and Diablo 3 are spaced, and chances are that a good amount of Diablo 3 players will also be WoW subscribers (and players), the likely outcome for 2012 would be that active players in WoW will take a significant drop as Diablo 3 is released, and then gradually over the next three months or, so climb back and exceed its 2011 numbers as Mists of Pandaria gets released.
While WoW is never going to reach its vanilla numbers again, if I had to bet on a game weathering out 2012 without too much damage or even come out better off, it’d be WoW.
Further dividing the currently released games, we have a few titles that have undergone major changes in 2011 or will be undergoing major changes in 2012.
Everquest 2
Everquest 2 recently joined a number of MMOs in jumping on to the F2P bandwagon. While some might see the constant toying with EQ2′s business model as a sign of waning confidence in the product, EQ2 does have a unique attraction and keeper – a vibrant and active roleplaying community, especially if you’re on the RP flagged servers. Despite not having played for almost a year, the above screenshot, taken within the first five minutes of me installing the game and logging on, is a great example of why EQ2 still thrives. Even something as menial as begging for gold is asked in such a fashioned and elegant way. Such is the class of people who still play EQ2.
EQ2′s recently introduced dungeon maker system is a feature that’s worth mentioning and keeping an eye on. The system is rather rigid in its current stage, and reasonably so. You can’t have players creating easy dungeons while rewarding themselves with raid level loot. While I doubt player created dungeons will ever replace developer created ones, nor are they intended to, it’ll be interesting to see if they can keep players sufficiently occupied while new content is being developed, and not switch to another game.
In any case, EQ2 has been a long running game and its at a point where the community has matured and stabilized. The people who still insist on playing EQ2 to this day are the sort who see qualities in EQ2 that are special to them, are unlikely to be enticed to impulsively switch to the next shiny new game that comes along. Barring any drastic moves on Sony Online Entertainment’s part, 2012 is unlikely to have much impact on Everquest 2.
Aion and Lineage 2
Both games of the South Korean company NCSoft, Lineage 2 has gone F2P and while Aion would go F2P for the European market sometime in February 2012. The news has been well-received in Europe, much to the chagrin of players in South Korea. North American players (which also includes the Australia and New Zealand market) will probably be sitting nervously on that hands and wonder what will become of them, and an uncertain future is unlikely to be attractive to new players.
Lineage 2 has seen some increased activity since it went F2P in late November. Unlike EQ2′s F2P model, which is rather restrictive unless you choose to pay a monthly fee, there is no restriction on content for Lineage 2. Rather, the focus is on a cash shop selling items which allow the player to gain experience at a faster rate and other cosmetic items. Despite a massive overhaul of the game, Lineage 2 still has several quirks that are likely to frustrate users, such as click-to-move rather than using WASD. This is a niche game, a relic of the past brought forth, with standards that run contrary to current norms, and its players are unlikely to be easily swayed.
Then, there’s the unreleased ones scheduled for 2012.
The Secret World
The Secret World is a little known MMO from Funcom. Older players would remember Funcom’s successful Anarchy Online, while, for new players, the less successful Age of Conan. Judging from the other games in Funcom’s portfolio such as The Longest Journey and Dreamfall, they’re very good at story writing and world building, and less so with game mechanics.
The immediate difference that most players would notice is the visual art. Thematically, The Secret World is kind of a modern dark urban fantasy, an Underworld meets Deus Ex world if you will. The Secret World attempts to innovate upon the existing MMORPG genre by doing away with the leveling system, hoping to achieve a skill based gameplay system rather than one reliant upon gear. From what little gameplay footage that has been seen during E3 and GDC 2011, the combat doesn’t seem unlike any of the other MMOs out there on the market. Even the boss fights shown doesn’t stray too far from the typical “don’t stand in the fire” encounters, except that it is electrified water in this case.
However, when you take a step back and look at it from a higher level, doing away with levels makes absolute sense. Levels in RPGs used to be an empirical indication of progress, but with current games, you can easily reach the game’s level cap within a few days of launch. When you think about it this way, it’s less of reinventing the genre but trimming the fat and doing away with the meta-game. How many times have you heard someone tell you that “the real game begins at level 50?”.
Although I doubt the success of The Secret World, it’s going to be an interesting experiment on whether players will accept the separation of levels from an RPG.
Guild Wars 2
While ArenaNet has no definitive date on Guild Wars 2′s release, there’s been a closed beta in December, which puts it on track for a 2012 launch. The hype surrounding this game is immense, and it’s not hard to understand why.
The predecessor, Guild Wars, sported a payment model not that of an MMORPG, but that of a traditional computer game instead. You pay once to buy the game, and there isn’t anything else you have to pay for. Guild Wars was known for its public quest system, where a dynamic event would take place in a zone and all players are free to participate in it without having to form their own groups. Many MMOs have replicated the same design since.
In what is beginning to seem like an emerging trend, less emphasis is being placed on levels, and Guild Wars 2 is no different. The classes are more free-form, and specialization is based on the selection of a limited number of skills from a larger available pool, more reminiscent of wizards having to memorize spells in classic Dungeons and Dragons.
Supposedly, the physics engine being used would make the environment an important aspect of combat, much like the hanging oil lamps and stacked boulders in Skyrim that can be turned against the enemy. Although the previous wasn’t apparent from the gameplay videos that I watched, the combat is fluid, fast, and involved, playing more like an action game than a dice-rolling RPG.
Guild Wars 2 seems like everything The Secret World is trying to accomplish, but done right. This is a big title that is vying to steal players, especially with its payment model.
World of Darkness Online
A year ago, CCP unveiled a trailer and announced that they were working on an MMORPG based on the World of Darkness setting. And that’s about all we know about it. 2011 has been really rough on CCP, with the CEO going so far as to apologize to the EVE community for monocle-gate, followed by a round of layoffs. It is likely that World of Darkness Online’s release date will slip past 2012, which is a shame during a time when public popularity with vampires is at its peak. A 2012 release date for World of Darkness would certainly go well with Underworld: Awakening, The Vampire Dairies, True Blood, and of course, Twilight.
The games covered are just a select few of the many variations of MMORPGs that are out there, the ones that I feel are worth mentioning and keeping an eye on. The MMORPG as a genre is extremely diverse, especially if you take into account the numerous cutesy ones produced in Asia.