- by Amanda "Mandifesto" Orneck
- Posted on October 12, 2011 @ 9:15 PST
Yesterday the COO of Gazillion Entertainment gave an interview with Gamesindustry.biz where he basically said that MMOs as we know them today are in trouble. The games we play in 2011 are "in a rut," said David Brevik, and are all basically WoW clones.
While I don't really believe that game designers have given up on creating innovative MMOs, I can say that I agree with him when he says that he believes that TOR will be one of the last subscription based MMOs. For years I've been saying that it will come down to WoW and then Free-2-Play MMOs, and nothing in between. I don't think TOR will be the last subscription MMO, I think Titan will be.
Now I'd like you to weigh in: Do you think that we're seeing the end of the subscription MMO? And are all MMOs out there really just WoW clones? And he's a tougher one: Is that a bad thing?
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The F2P model has definitely proven its place. For those games, you can try as much of the game as you want and don't have to worry about being charged anything at all, unless you either need a health item to help you out, or want to get your character a fancy jacket accessory.
With subscription-based MMOs, you're pretty much forced to make some sort of commitment. At that point, it's a matter of determining how much of the game you need to play in order to make the monthly fee worthwhile, and if you're trying to target a large audience, chances are they're not going to be able to spend as much time on the game as they would like. With F2P titles, they can hop on and off at any time, and not have to worry about losing too much progress.
The other problem is that developers aren't really bringing anything worthwhile to the table in most subscription-based MMOs. They basically try to copy the WoW formula of accessibility and smooth leveling, but don't try to come up with any unique gameplay aspects to set them apart. It's like high school, where WoW is the most popular kid on campus, and everyone just wants to copy whatever their style is at the time.
TL;DR: Subscription MMOs are on the verge of extinction, and expect a lot more WoW clones before people try to come up with something truly unique.
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@Sir Loin of Beef - I agree completely with you. I look forward to the day that someone actually challenges what has come before instead of just building on it. It was the same way when EQ took off, clone after clone released until WoW turned them on their heads. Now we are stuck with so many WoW clones and WoW itself is becoming stale.
I tire of treadmills and kill lists. Even a great story isn't getting rid my feelings of revolution towards the kill lists. It was funny to kill 10 rats in EQ, that was 1999...
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I'm fairly new to the world of mmo's (Only because I just recently acquired a decent computer) but I was surprised and disappointed at how similar they all were. I'm not sure what it would be, but something new would be nice.
