Lets look at MMO's as a genre

[dsawyers9]

I would like to discuss MMO's as a genre and really pick out the top games and what they brought to this genre.
(**NOTE: I will leave out a lot to discuss on purpose. I'm just typing out what I can think of off the top of my head right now, so sorry if I forget something, or even worst, place in misinformation)

First off, I would like to discuss in Order
PvE
PvE (Massive Player Focus aka Raids)
PvP
**More

For the first part, I would like to discuss about PvE and which games brought what to the playing field.

Lets look at Ever Quest/2 (EQ/EQ2)
This was the first REAL MMO (but will say Neverwinter Nights was the first MMORPG for PC and it went into develop in 1989 and was also the first PvP in an MMO, so it did a lot of good for the genre as a whole). The concept of do quests, turn in quests, obtain reward and playing with others, beside your self to level or beat harder quests, came from this game series.

Next I would like to look at Asheron's Call/2 (AC/AC2)
Not so much changed in the genre, but one thing did upgrade and started a good trend in almost all MMO's to follow: Graphics. The models and water graphics in AC/AC2 IMO were better than EQ/EQ2. Without games updating their engines and increasing graphics, who knows what our current MMO's would look like. I'm sure they wouldn't be bad, but who knows.

Next I will skip some other MMO's and do Blizzards work: World of Warcraft.
The huge thing that World of Warcraft (WoW) gave the MMO genre was the story based on Game/Comic Lore. Lore was a huge and a great move for the genre. Next came factions or different sides. Good thumbs up for blizzard for pushing this genre.

Skip some more MMO's to the Recent:
I would like to talk about the new crave Rift.
Rift choose to follow a different path. While at this point, the genre has almost reached its peak, Trion did improve or market a MMO to a rarely or never touched approach to gaming: Real Time Game Changes. In this case, the Rifts are what make Rift a helper in the Genre. Adding in this type of game play is cool and exciting. Now Rift wasn't the first one to do this, but unlike the other MMO's that I know, the entire came is based around this one focus, so I'm going to go out on a limb and give them the majority of credit for adding this to the MMO genre.

:vE (Raids::
Personally, I cant say much here. Dungeons were first created (to my knowledge) in EQ. From there, Raids were just larger form of a dungeon crawl, but with top end game loot and I'm not sure which was the first game to produce Raids for Endgame.

:vP::
As I stated above: Neverwinter Nights was the first MMO to produce PvP in the MMO Genre. So basically everything from then onward was thanks to them

Now I would like to leave the rest open to you the forum posters on escapist to discuss or even disagree with me. Either way, the Genre has slowly advanced into a very important genre. But if I had to give full credit to one source, which defined and allowed our current MMO's to even exist, It would have to go to the Old School Board and Dice:
Dungeons and Dragons. Face it, with out this game, I highly doubt MMO's would have exploded as they did. FPS are easy and everyone can play and games like Mario and Zelda have a fantasy portion, but also very easy to play. So I have to tip my hat to D&D and thank them for allowing the MMO genre to explode and add so many new jobs to the gaming market.

 

[zehydra]

I'd like to note that you're referring to MMORPGs, not MMO's as a genre. For instance, Combat Arms is an MMO, but not an RPG.

 

[dsawyers9]

That is true. So really, I'm focused towards MMO's with a fantasy appearance, not a Combat Arms type. I mean FPS that are online are MMO's because you interact with people, and not AI

 

[lolnoobzor]

Despite all it's shortcomings on the gameplay mechanics side, EVE Online is the only true sandbox MMORPG I know of (haven't been playing any games recently, feel free to correct me if something similar's come out).

Unfortunately, to get to that creamy nougat of pure unadulterated fun, you have to wrestle with the least intuitive control scheme I've ever seen, and then it's marred by all kinds of timesinks... But we're not here to talk about the flaws, but what the game brings to the industry, so:

I think we can all agree that the biggest challenge for an MMO is end-game content. You can put in all the timesinks, moneysinks, and social interaction you want, once you've progressed to the top - be it a level, or for EVE that über ship you want and the money to buy it a hundred times - what can you do?

Personally I've never been a fan of developer content, since at it's best it's a fun dungeon to run through 2-3 times, at worse it's a grind-fest of epic proportions. This content, even with the production value of WoW, also has the intrinsic flaw of being both generic and inconsequential: everyone at your level will be there, and no other MMOs let you really affect the world around you.

EVE, by virtue of being a sandbox, gets around this by letting the players themselves be the end-game content. After all there will never be anything more challenging than another human being and the challenges you face are constantly changing. I sincerely believe that if you take this kind of deep approach to the world you play in, and add rich and simple gameplay, you get the fabled WoW killer everyone's trying to be. Or at least a damn good MMO that's bound to build a dedicated fanbase. Just look at EVE's subscribers despite the interface. What the hell else would motivate people to play Excel in space?

The one problem is a technical one: EVE can pull it off because it's all in one persistent world, and they can pull that off through some tricks that would basically boil down to instancing the whole world if you copypast'd 'em into a WoW-like world.

So, for me, EVE has brought a mechanic that unfortunately (for me) has not yet been acknowledged by other developers, but within the right game could make the perfect dru- err, MMO. Can you tell I have high hopes for CCP's World of Darkness MMORPG?

 

[Marakan]

I had prepared a massive rant to this but I will sum it up nicely.

MMORPGs are stagnant.

What you mention as milestones are merely the death throws of a fat disabled kid dressed as an elf.

Until someone can come up with an MMORPG that doesn't contain anything you have mentioned in your main post I may actually enjoy it. It would also be the biggest innovation in the genre by not just being another spreadsheet game.

I hope it can move on into an altogether different creature one that hopefully doesn't leave all its players bankrupt, drooling and smelling of shame.

 

[angelsmash]

I don't know that EVE is really a sandbox in any meaningful sense. It's sort of the game equivalent of being stuck on a Windows 95 screensaver and trying to exit via the Task Manager.