My definition of a generation is defined by a change in design philosophy that incorporates or significantly changes game elements on a level that causes the entire industry to shift its outlook. The last generation, for example, was defined by the release of World of Warcraft, which brought the following to the table:
* Raids
* Instanced dungeons
* Instanced PvP
* PvP/PvE integrated progression
* An Auction House
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Here are the design philosophies I've noticed taking hold, and I expect to define the next generation of MMO. They largely come from the fact that the MMO is no longer the only persistant online game in town, and that the genre consistently competes for players with other genres. MMO populations take a heavy hit each time a new popular game is released. Getting players back is the struggle the next generation will need to perfect. There are already signs on the wall that developers are flirting with adjustments, but Blizzard's juggernaut is notoriously conservative and cautious, where other designers are currently tailoring their game to mirror Blizzard's.
1) Grouping with Strangers
World of Warcraft is largely successful because of the level of convenience it offers. Not only does it span multiple genres by borrowing content, but the Dungeon Finder, Raid Finder, and Battleground Queues create a very low barrier to entry to what currently defines an MMO. Within 15 minutes of logging into the game, you can have an entire group of strangers playing content that is on-par for what's expected of a random group. You still have the necessity to create organized group for more difficult content, and I do not expect this to change, but a Dungeon and Raid Finder are going to be essential in any game that is newly released -- so much so that three major MMO launches, Secret World, Guild Wars 2, and The Old Republic have recieved quite a large amount of criticism for not launching with a Dungeon Finder feature. Expect this to become standard, and expect this to be a large litmus test for whether or not a game is a part of the next generation. The Old Republic has since fixed their mistake, and threw in their own answer. While Blizzard eliminated trash pulls and gear checks for Looking for Raid, Mythic/Bioware/EA Austin did not.
They've Got It: World of Warcraft
They Kinda Got It: The Old Republic
They Don't Get It: Secret World, Guild Wars 2
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2) Quick Travel
Gone are the days of an hour long wind rider ride. Players want to jump into content, and that means being able to instantaneously be at any quest hub. I shouldn't have to spend an hour hopping from continent to continent in World of Warcraft. As much as travel was neat, and mounts and hearthstones were a wonderful thing, the days of the mount are limited. Let me hop to anywhere in the game world in under 30 seconds or less, so I can jump straight into your content. If I have to wait half an hour to quest with my friend, it's not going to be particularly worth it. Now that every multiplayer title incorporates the "MMO" staples of always connected large-scale multiplayer, we could just go play a different game. Don't let us. Keep us in your game, invested and grinding away. Guild Wars 2 has perhaps the strongest quick travel system in the genre, allowing you to hop straight to any location you've visited by opening the map. It's not any more complicated.
They Get It: Guild Wars 2
They Kinda Got It: No one
They Don't Get It: World of Warcraft, The Old Republic, Secret World
3) Death
Death is just an irritant in most MMOs. You die, you get to run all the way back to your body and you resurrect, just to find yourself near death with broken gear and a friendly neighborhood monster trying to eat your face. Death runs need to go away -- they don't add anything particularly useful to the equation, and they make players disengage from your content. Worse, in raids, players might have to run for ten, fifteen minutes just to keep up with the group. Guild Wars 2 innovates in this category, allowing a state between dead and alive called Downed, where you can still participate, and you can be resurrected and pulled back into the fight. Secret World gets a bronze star for having respawn points just in front of each boss fight, so that dead players can get right back into it on the next attempt.
They Get It: Guild Wars 2
They Kinda Got It: Secret World
They Don't Get It: World of Warcraft, The Old Republic
4) Grouping with People you Know
The second challenge in playing with friends is that it largely provides little benefit in the traditional MMO. Because of the way players are split into zones by level and faction, and finally how players spread out on servers, I can't actually play with my roommate's alts in WoW because he's a dirty Alliance-loving hippie druid on a different server that hasn't played since Burning Crusade. The next generation needs cross-server grouping. Period. Eliminate the concept of discrete and distinct servers as anything more than an area you're in when you're on your own. Secondly, content is destroyed when I come down to play with the roommate, and all I get out of it is nasty repair bills. I need a benefit for "slumming," as I've come to calling it in Guild Wars. ArenaNet implemented a wonderful system that level scales -- it's still leaves you a bit overpowered, but not to the silly extreme that it normally would be. Finally, let players of different factions group together for all PvE content. Blizzard's Quick Join, above, is a silver lining: perhaps they're making the ability to join anyone on your friends list common on WoW like it is in D3.
They Get It: No one currently does all three. Guild Wars 2 is the closest, but is still missing cross-server groups.
They Kinda Got it: Guild Wars 2
They Don't Get It: Secret World, World of Warcraft, The Old Republic
5) Questing
Along with the focus on convenience, the existing model of "pick up quest, run to quest area, wait for spawns, complete quest, run back to quest giver, turn in quest" is a bit outdated. Warhammer Online created the idea of the Public Quest, an area quest that completes for everyone in the area, and is turned in in the quest area. Guild Wars 2 took it further, creating quests that one person could theoretically complete, but adding events that are triggered by the number of players in an area, offering more difficult quests. Guild Wars 2 has set a new bar that makes quests convenient and quick, and require little to no running out of the way.
They Get It: Guild Wars 2
They Kinda Got It: No One
They Don't Get It: World of Warcraft, Secret World, The Old Republic
6) Party Roles
Grouping for an instance is a pain on a good day. Even with Blizzard's streamlined Dungeon Finder, players that have chosen a DPS role outnumber tanks and healers by a huge margin. This leads to queues for Dungeon Finder slots that can last up to half an hour, leaving you with nothing to do except talk about Chuck Norris the level 65 Orc Paladin and his weapon Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker in trade chat. Party roles also frequently pidgeonhole players. There are also classes in World of Warcraft that have no ability to either tank or heal, leaving the dual spec option primarily wasted. The future is in allowing any character class to tank, heal, and DPS -- or breaking the party role trinity entirely. Secret World keeps the trinity, but does away with classes, allowing players to save and load builds on the fly. Guild Wars breaks the trinity roles themselves, giving everyone support abilities, healing abilities, and survival abilities, and having no threat or spammable heals. TOR made sure every class could either tank or heal, and would have participated in this if they'd allowed dual speccing of advanced classes.
They Get It: Secret World, Guild Wars 2
They Kinda Get It: The Old Republic
They Don't Get It: World of Warcraft
7) Loot
The old school model rolling against friends in dungeon, ninja looters, or looting each and every one of the fifty trash mobs you just killed is old. Area Loot is a necessity, as rolled out in The Old Republic. Players should not be able to roll Need on anything except items intended for their class. They also shouldn't be looting against one another (except in guild raids, where DKP apparently still rules the day). World of Warcraft will go a step further in their Looking for Raid tool. Players don't actually raid against each other at all -- if loot drops that they can roll on, they get a roll to see if they get the item.
They Get it: No one.
They Kinda Get It: World of Wacraft, The Old Republic
They Don't Get It: Guild Wars 2, Secret World
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8) UI
At this point, MMOs have found a way to convey all of the information and give all the options WoW does, along with most of the addon content, without the highly cluttered interface WoW has. Secret World and Guild Wars 2 have minimalist UIs, leaving WoW in the dust. Guild Wars 2 even goes further, including elements such as Gatherer's minimap functionality. The reduced number of abilities available at a time give Secret World and Guild Wars a huge advantage. Mods should not be essential to gameplay.
They Get It: Guild Wars 2
They Kinda Get It: No One
They Don't Get It: Secret World, The Old Republic, World of Warcraft
9) Personal Story and Phasing
Phasing, an accidental discovery made at Blizzard, creates different game worlds for different players, seamlessly overlaid over other content. It was used extensively in Wrath of the Lich King, and I expected heavy use of the technology during Cataclysm -- and it didn't disappoint. This was perhaps the most dynamic content of the entire expansion. The competition can't seem to get Phasing to work properly. However, one aspect Blizzard lacks wholly defined story arcs that connect players to their character in more ways than face rolling. The Old Republic nailed this one out of the park, and Guild Wars appears to be doing the same for (what I assume is) a much smaller dollar figure. Secret World did a bit of this, but it really feels like a handful of side missions rather than something that draws you through the game.
They Get It: Guild Wars, The Old Republic
They Kinda Get It: World of Warcraft, Secret World
They Don't Get It: No One
10) Meaningful World PvP
This pony was led about by Warhammer Online, but the rest of the industry has taken a while to catch up. Secret World's Fusang Projects convey benefits on a faction as a whole, but the actual PvP is a terrible game of swapping control points, as was the Battle of Ilum in The Old Republic. Guild Wars was the first game that seems to have gotten this right, and boy did they ever.
They Get It: Guild Wars 2
They Kinda Get It: Secret World, The Old Republic
They Don't Get It: World of Warcraft
Note that I have not touched the beta for Mists of Furcadia, so some of my information may be outdated. Mobile app implementation would have been a late addition to this list at #11, but 11's not a good round number. I think that we're close to a new generation, but we aren't quite there yet. What do you think is essential in a new generation of MMO?
As a note, GW2 intends to have "guesting," allowing you to hop to another server to do non-WvWvW PvP.
ReplyDeleteHowever, GW2 -also- intended to not be hacked. So. There's that.