Why must "MMO" always be followed by "RPG"?

[Zhukov]

I quite like the idea of MMOs.

However, I never actually buy or play them bacause there seems to be a bunch of unspoken rules attached to the genre. (Wait... is "MMO" a genre? Oh shut up, you know what I mean.) These laws go something like the following:
1) The gameplay must suck mightily. It must be combat-based. It must revolve primarily around you and your enemy taking turns to automatically slap each other across the face, mostly just to pass the time while you wait for your ability cooldowns to run out.
2) It must involve tedious amounts of grind for the sake of incremental stat increases. No exceptions. Ever.
3) It must have absolutely no interesting narrative content of any kind.
4) It must have really clunky character animation.
5) The setting must be as unoriginal as possible. Ideally a third-generation Tolkien rip-off. If you really want to push the envelope you can set it in space and rip off Star Trek instead.

Of course I realise that the reasoning behind this serial idiocy basically boils down to, "That's how WoW did it and WoW gets to snort diamond dust while enjoying the attentions of exotic concubines dipped in choclate, so that's how we're going to do it." But by now it should be quite clear that nobody is going to dethrone WoW by imitating WoW. Mostly because anyone who wants to play WoW is already playing WoW and has probably made a pretty significant investment in terms of time, effort and community connections.

(The one game that might defy this trend is that Old Republic thing. The idea of a fully voiced and story-driven MMO is certainly interesting. And, to quote Yahtzee, "Star Wars is the one thing over which nerds are sure to get even weirder". But I'm still not about to put money on it.)

So come on games industry. How about a bit of variety here, eh? How about some games that take the good parts of an MMO (huge world, persistant servers, large player population etc) but scrape off the shitty parts. How about say... a parkour platforming game where one faction is based around evasion while the other is focused on pursuit, and perhaps a third based on enforcing the peace. Or a co-op post-apocalyptic survival game. Or a game based around... I dunno... undersea treasure hunting or something. Anything but grinding for XP in a yet another totally-not-Middle-Earth setting populated by swimsuit models and bodybuilders running about in metallic underwear.

Hey, it might even make good business sense too. Imagine being able to tap into the teeming hordes of CoD fans with a MMO-FPS based around near-future warfare. I personally wouldn't touch the damn thing, but I bet plenty of other people would. Surely that would be a better proposition then lining up with everyone else to get comprehensively curb-stomped by Blizzard.

So... thoughts? Would anyone else like to see some non-RPG MMOs?

 

[NeutralDrow]

Because none of the other MMO genres bother to use the "MMO" abbreviation, naturally.

*goes back to checking Ikariam*

 

[emeraldrafael]

They dont have to be MMORPGs. You can really do anything. Any multiplayer match online in an FPS is an MMOFPS. Its just that MMORPGs are the easiest to make, play, market, and make money on.

You're just making a lot of general assumptions about the "requirements".

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Short barely thought out answer: Because dev's are dumb and unwilling to try something different.

Also Old Republic will fail, not massively, but it definitely won't be the second coming or anything.

 

[TeeBs]

A game based on Parkour, that sounds like a even more boring version of a game based on skateboarding.

But back to the OP

I think Extra Credits did a video on this, there is a Golf MMO in Korea and a Sex Based MMO called Bonetown. *Mods don't strike me down there was an article about the same thing please have mercy*

I like the idea of a RTS MMO though the game itself would probably be buggy and is probably better in theory then practice.

Also this is my 1337 post, awesome.

 

[Kpt._Rob]

You don't think there are some game companies out there that would love to do that? I would guess that the only reason it hasn't happened has a lot less to do with copying WOW, and a lot more to do with the technological limitations. Now granted, I'm not an expert on these things by any stretch of the imagination, but I would imagine that it takes a hell of a lot more processing power to run a world with realistic movement and physics than it does the world one sees in their standard MMO. Part of the reason that MMO's simply don't have the same features as a standard AAA game is that to do that would require an investment many times larger than most companies could ever afford, for servers that could run these worlds, for the basic technology even to design the game, etc...

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

[youtube]35BPhT-KI1E[/youtube]

...Did that embed properly? If not: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E

Also, FFXI goes against 3, 4, and 5 up there. 1 and 2 still apply though.

 

[Dash85]

I don't know if you remember All Points Bulletin. It was supposed to be an MMO Shooter. it didn't exactly do very well. Also, there are MMOs coming out that are trying to break the WoW cloney...ness, although I guess they still do feature models in underwear. TERA is one, definitely models in underwear but the combat is more combaty, you control the blocking, dodging and aiming (mages n archers get crosshairs), dunno bout the narrative. Guild Wars 2 is trying to bring narrative and good quest structure, whether they succeed or not is up in the air. I'm looking forward to that one. People still are interested in fantasy, and there's only so much you can do with it and not look tolkien. That parkour thing sounded pretty interesting though, I mean I do agree with you that they should start experimenting more and trying to bring out more awesome, the problem is keeping people playing and the whole WoW structure is perfect for that.

 

[Kae]

Then you might be glad to hear that Petroglyph (the guys that made Star Wars Empire at War) are making an MMORTS named End of Nations, I don't know the details but I heard at PAX that so far they have gotten the game running up to 80 players in a single match, and considering it's an RTS that's a lot, I don't exactly how it will work, but I THINK that it might have a persistent game world in which there is a world map divided into countries (maps) and you can jump in and help in a fight or start one in those maps, but that's just speculation, as you can tell I am very intrigued by this game, but I haven't really looked it up yet...
Here's the wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_Nations, but it does not have much information either.

A game based on Parkour, that sounds like a even more boring version of a game based on skateboarding.

But back to the OP

I think Extra Credits did a video on this, there is a Golf MMO in Korea and a Sex Based MMO called Bonetown. *Mods don't strike me down there was an article about the same thing please have mercy*

I like the idea of a RTS MMO though the game itself would probably be buggy and is probably better in theory then practice.

Also this is my 1337 post, awesome.

Then you might be interested on the game I just mentioned!

 

[Dorkamongus]

Hey, it might even make good business sense too. Imagine being able to tap into the teeming hordes of CoD fans with a MMO-FPS based around near-future warfare.

They actually had one of those called PlanetSide... but I'm pretty sure it died out a few years ago.

 

[Frotality]

...because thats all that works. grind + mathematically formulaic combat= MMO. if they werent RPGs, you would have much less idea of how much progress you were actually making; without the linear and easily noticeable progression of an rpg, all the upgrading in the world would get boring sooner or later; circle strafing in an fps cant withstand the massive timesink of most mmos, the only genre that comes close is hack n slash, which is more or less the same thing just without auto-attack. in the standard formula, the combat isnt made to fun, or challenging, or even addicting, its made mostly just to translate your progression so that you know your actually making some every single step of the way; go too long without noticeable progress in an MMO, and it usually fails. using the standard rpg formula familiar to most players,they can drone out the combat watching the XP bar rise or their fancy new boots provide .023% more defense for months on end.

 

[Thaluikhain]

What about second life? Or that furry version, where everyone is a hermaphrodite and spends their time yiffing each other?

Those are both MMO...dunno if you'd say they were "games" as such, though.

 

[Suicideking]

I don't know if you remember All Points Bulletin. It was supposed to be an MMO Shooter. it didn't exactly do very well.

APB will be making a return as free to play.

Also, there are MMO's out there that aren't RPG. Huxley is a MMOFPS, and there are a couple other MMOFPS's

Also there are some MMORTS's including an upcoming game from Trion Worlds (company behind Rift) and Petroglyph Games titled End of Nations.

 

[WanderingFool]

Hey, it might even make good business sense too. Imagine being able to tap into the teeming hordes of CoD fans with a MMO-FPS based around near-future warfare.

They actually had one of those called PlanetSide... but I'm pretty sure it died out a few years ago.

Planetside I believe wasnt a straight shooter, it had dice rolls behind the combat. But it failed because of multiple problems from what I remember hearing about it, and it ended up having to shutdown.

 

[Telasro]

There are other types of MMO. A few friends of mine and I played a free to play MMO-RTS-TCG called BattleForge. It's pretty entertaining, and kind of breaks the MMO mold a little

 

[lacktheknack]

Because the world's only MMODG (Audition) was KILLED because NO ONE PLAYED IT.

YOU MURDERED IT, YOU BASTARDS!

 

[=HCFS=Discoman]

They dont have to be MMORPGs. You can really do anything. Any multiplayer match online in an FPS is an MMOFPS. Its just that MMORPGs are the easiest to make, play, market, and make money on.

You're just making a lot of general assumptions about the "requirements".

well, most MMOFPS games do have leveling, etc.
there is no real pure massive multipleyer genre. all of them include some RPG elements.
look at combat arms.
massively multiplayer shooter, it's pretty fun. i guess. it's also free to play, assuming you are careful.
but to get the good weapons, you need to grind through the levels. to get the good characters, you need to buy them. on a monthly basis. the really good weapons have to also be rented by the month.
xp bonuses can also be rented, again by the month.

but it doesn't ever really need to be removed-the new, better gun unlocked at that next level is usually incentive enough for people to play more. and in a F2P game, offering paid bonuses may get some players to buy a permanent character, or when they offer a free month of the subscription plan to players. many people will think that the plan actually is quite nice, and buy it.
companies benefit.
besides, it's only when games give unfair advantages to the paid plan players is it become no longer worth playing.
war rock got that way for me-constant deaths at the hands of unskilled paiying players, along with all the downgrades the devs made to the engine made it no longer worht playing.

 

[Worgen]

pshaw, you can put those rules with any genre, all fps games must be set in the desert, have stupid plots involving america being attacked, and have at least one chopper get shot down while your in it
see

besides rpg games tend to have better plots then most nonrpg ones, thats why people get into them

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

Also, Myst Online: Uru Live is an MMO Puzzle-Adventure/exploration game.

 

[dingles]

probably the biggest reason that they're all RPGs is that we simply don't have the technology to properly support any other genre. RPGs are the only feasible genre because they don't require fancy animations, precise textures or physics to be appealing - all of which generate lag when you have 100 people in the same room. Lag isnt such a big deal in RPG's - half second difference shouldn't kill you, but if you were to make say an MMO fighting game or shooter, those half-seconds would be fatal. And lets face it, most other action games kinda need animations, physics and so on to be interesting.