State of the MMO: Industry Luminaries On The Genre, Its Future

In a special treat, we spoke to seven industry leaders about the State of MMOs as they exist today and where they're headed in the future. We take on the biggest topics, such as the cost of development, subscription vs. micropayments, innovation vs. evolution and many more.

In this article, we hear from SOE President John Smedley, ZeniMax Online Studios General Manager Matt Firor, Themis Group CEO Alexander Macris, GamerDNA.com Director of Community Sanya Weathers, EVE Online Game Designer Chantel Zuurmond, IGN PC Executive Editor Steve Butts and the former Executive Producer of Star Trek Online Daron Stinnett.

It was a sentiment shared by most of those we spoke to. It's obvious that World of Warcraft has the market by the throat and have become perhaps the only truly global game in the MMO-space. That means some tough realities for the games in the next tier.

"[MMOs are in a] state of unrest, right now," said Matt Firor, General Manager of ZeniMax Online Studios, a sister company of Bethesda. "World of Warcraft is ruling the subscription game market, and no one wants to complete with them directly, so they go off for niche markets."

As a special note, this will be my final article here with WarCry and it's been a pleasure.

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lepidus:
There are open questions beyond just innovation, though. Currently, there is a fight underway between two very different methods of monetizing MMOs. For years, games have existed with subscription fees dominant in North America and microtransactions (paying for small chunks of content rather than blanket access to the game) in Asia. Now, as more Asian games are adapted for North America, that model has spread. Coupled with the struggles of some high profile subscription games, it makes one wonder if the subscription model is now on its last legs.

"Publishers love a standard subscription model because they can multiply 'x' players by 'y' dollars and know exactly how much revenue is going to be coming in next month," pointed out Butts. "What they're counting on with MTs is that a small percentage of those players will be so hardcore that they're willing to pay money out of their own pocket each month to gain access to the premium content."

Most seemed to believe that the two models could coexist, but it is notable that while some argued purely for microtransactions, not a soul dared to say subscriptions would win the day.

"I firmly believe that this space is going more towards the velvet rope, microtransactions," said Smedley. "Subscriptions will always be there as a component of that, but it won't always be there as the primary revenue generator in this space."

Firor agreed, "Different kinds of games can support different payment models. Blizzard would have been very careless to make WoW free to play or micopayment based - we're talking Western world here - a subscription model was perfect for them."

What I think people overlook is the way that 'The Burning Crusade' or the World of Warcraft expansion has taken on a micropayment nature, people want access to that new content so they bought the expansion. THis is an example of how the two can coincide, but I'm not sure how microtranzactions can stand on their own. I really do not enjoy feeling that it is necessary for me to spend extra money to enjoy facets of the game, constantly being stopped by a red velvet line is annoying, and the same with excessive stopages on a road you look for another route. I don't feel that games can rely on pure microtranzactions unless they end up costing noticeably less.

Edit: Sorry to hear you're leaving, good luck with whatever the future holds =)

Very interesting article, alot of major subjects that we could spend hours and hours elaborating on.

The thing that bugs me the most is that every decision now in making new MMORPGs seems to be influenced by World of Warcraft, they all seem to want their share of the 10 millions subscribers...

But in my opinion, that number doesn't represent the reality of the MMORPGs player base.

A big part of those players don't like MMORPGs ... they like WoW !

You won't get those people to play another MMORPG.

So why keep trying to do the same as Blizzard does or try to steal players from them?

If the goal is to have the most subscribers and make a lot of money, then it all comes down to hype.
Now, how do you reach players that don't know about MMORPGs and get them into playing it?
Of course you'd have to make it really accessible, easy to play, and so on...
But is there still a market for that line of thought? Is there still a pool of players that don't know about MMORPGs, or would jump right into another one just because it looks cool?

My take on it is that WoW picked up the vast majority of those players. They got the genre out there. At the time it came out, most people didn't know what MMORPGs were, so they got in without any idea how involving it can be and the impact it can have on your life, now everyone knows what they are dealing with.

And because of that general knowledge of the genre, in my opinion there won't ever be another MMORPG that will have 10 million subscribers!

What will happen in the near future?
A big part of the WoW players will continue playing WoW, and WoW only, until it goes offline or until they get bored, then they are either gonna go play console games or stop playing video games. But they won't feel inclined to go check out other MMORPGs.

And at that point only the true MMORPG players will be left, and those represent the actual market. And then the MMORPGs that will have success will be the ones with real depth and innovative ideas.

So, what is that actual market for new MMORPGs?
How many players do you expect to play your game? Or do you consider is a number that makes it a successful and profitable game?

Knowing that could ease the task of knowing how much should be spent on making a new MMORPG, and also to have realistic expectations.

I believe there is still a lot to be done in the genre and the market is still there, just don't aim at being the next big thing.

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PS.: Don't get me wrong, I know there are a lot of true MMORPG players that are currently playing WoW and some of those guys are just waiting for another train to pass by to jump on it and leave the warcraft behind, for many reasons...

Agonist's thread really highlighted something for me - the point about that huge player base being WoW fans rather than MMORPG fans. It reminded me of when a lot of my RL friends were really into AOL or Compuserve but didn't really appreciate what the internet was about.

Those portal sites were highly refined versions of the web - you could chat, surf the limited content, date and shop but there was never any reason to question what was beyond the paying community. I think WoW has acheived something similar - it has everything the average player needs in an amazingly presented package.

Its weakness, like all MMOs, is that once released there isn't much innovation. In BC you're still killing monsters in the same way, still getting uber gear. There are a few additional features but that's it. It even benefits Blizzard to not innovate too much and risk scareing away the faithful masses. There will be a slow attrition of WoW players but this won't be a problem until the paradigm shift comes along that will be known as WoW 2.0. My bet is on something like a convergence of MMO & social networking site.

Games like AA, TR and VG never gained the critical mass of WoW in the first place. EVE was a slow burner and thankfully got over that hurdle but as an early player I had my doubts about its future at the time.

I think that ignoring WoW and concentrating on what's left is beneficial to the 'true' MMO player. PotBS had EVE potential but I feel that it's dead in the water. Pretty soon we'll have AoC and it remains to be seen whether there will be enough end-game content to justify playing for longer than a month. It's important to give both of these a chance because ultimately, as the consumer, if we just play WoW then all we'll get is WoW.

All those publishers expect customers to pay premium prices for their MMO products. But are those games premium too? In order to keep many players paying, the games have to keep many players entertained. So far, not many MMOs really provide fun gameplay for a longer period. MMO is but a feature, it generally means that I get to pay every month and in return I get some over the top multiplayer world in which I am then doing most of the things on my own again. While this feature might sell some games and is the hype of the moment, the games beneath are often crude and not fun.

As a rule of thumb I dare say that if an MMORPG is not a very good RPG then it will fail. I don't need other people see me beat on the same green slime they beat on, I need a fun game. Give players a fun game that is entertaining for extended periods of time and you might make them pay for extended periods of time. But a game that would not have sold without the MMO part will not sale with an MMO part. Why would anybody buy a bad game that is not fun to play? Especially when there are other games that are better AND also have MMO features. Maybe not all of them, but enough of them.

Microtansactions are equally ridiculous, they are called "expansions" in the real world and Accolade was selling them for Test Drive 2 as far back as 1989. I have to say that I prefer them over monthly payments, because I can actually see what I am getting for my money. Naturally they put the pressure on the developer, because if they make bad content, it will not sell.

These are the greatest minds? The fututre is truly bleak if that's the best they can come up with. I don't think price makes that much of a difference. People will pay for a good service. Aside from generally having no real player experience, I've noted one fatal flaw in pvp games that seems to be repeating itself.

Permadeath has always been something that people generally want to shy away from, but it's very much alive in some of the MMOs that have come and gone. This comes from the realm versus realm concept, which is given another 1 or 2 realms. Developers throw in all the standard features for a game, which basically reward the strong and punish the weak, no matter how strong that "weak" player may be. Ultimately, a situation becomes so ridiculously impossible due to a low population that people on one side eventually quit. Dark Age of Camelot clearly got something right here, as they're still in business, but what about the others? Other MMOs will always be a factor, but some games just aren't doing much to motivate you to keep going.

In the case of Auto Assault, you had three factions: Humans, Mutants and Biomeks. There was a severe class and race imbalance problem that didn't help things any. The officer classes were the worst designed classes ever made with no real shot at taking down other players. The real issue though, was players that had amassed massive rewards for defeating others in PvP. They were essentially given the top gear in the game and could easily take on the other factions. Any player that was new to the pvp zone immediately found themselves very much outgunned and left. This game didn't even have a death penalty, but getting killed over and over again can still get very tedious.

In the case of Pirates of the Burning Sea, there is a similar situation, but with 4 factions and a hefty death penalty. Population is the big problem here and it's not just plain numbers, it's numbers to cover the 24 hours in a day. If you can't get enough people together at a certain time for a port battle, you're screwed. With your ship and some of your cargo on the line in every battle, it becomes a very difficult situation. Recovery of losses can be rather difficult. Unless you have a good foothold in the economy and can enter and exit your ports with no trouble, you're forced to grind cash from ships.

As I write this, I currently face a rather difficult situation on the Spanish side of the Blackbeard server. They were barely able to field enough for the port battles they started. Now, one of the bigger societies is moving to another server. All of the French and Spanish ports are now being flipped and there's no one to defend. Brits and Pirates don't have to fight each other, except to try and get a victory on the map. All that's left for me to do is try my best to run the economy and fuel the Brit vs. Pirate war without getting sunk. Even that's getting difficult, because they're not losing many ships, if any, which means less demand for the goods required to make them. I could still change servers, but there's nothing stopping that from happening again.

It's clear that having more than 2 sides to a battle can be very difficult to manage and a developer should have the foresight and ability to manage such a situation or just keep things as a simple good vs. evil arrangement. The next time someone considers a 3 or 4-way battle, they need to consider some kind of compensation or motivation to keep the losing side in the battle. Spending 6 years to run a game for less than 1 seems like a bit of a waste.