Or "Forget Passion, I Want Items!"
Or "The Road Ahead"
Or "Holy fuck I just wrote one long ass post - Even *I'm* not going to read it all"

I think that most of us can agree that the current MMORPG market is in trouble. People are making money, sure, and there are probably more people actively playing massively multiplayer online games right now than ever before.

I wouldn't be so quick to call that success, however. For Sony and other huge, soul devouring companies, sure. Not for us, especially when the future looks so incredibly bleak for our favourite hobby. If you're looking at this situation from the viewpoint of a well-traveled gamer who recognizes that mindless monster bashing and item collecting can only carry the genre so far, which happens to be exactly where it is right now, then word you're looking for is failure, plain and simple.

Right now, as is, the MMORPG genre looks like a failure. Everyone who sees EverQuest for what it actually is can see that, and, eventually, the people who are playing EverQuest will hopefully see it.

"Oh, wow. I can pay you money every month to press a button and watch my little character whack a monster? Cool."

"Alright.. that was cool for a bit, but I wasted some time and some money, and now this is getting a little repetitive, pointless, and stupid. What's next?"

Sorry JoeCarebear23, nothing is next. Not until the gaming community as a whole begins to smarten the fuck up.

Sure, people will continue to pay a monthly fee to spend countless, and extremely pointless, hours watching their character whack a monster so that they can collect the awesome neon loot it drops. Sure people will continue to place that next 'ding' of a raised level at the top of their priority list, gaming or otherwise. Gerbils enjoy running in those little wheels, and a donkey will walk forward when you hang a carrot in front of his face. As is my understanding from various cartoons, anyway.

Humans, on the other hand, either think, or, hopefully, begin to at some point. I truly believe that at some point in time all of these companies making nothing but EQ cash cow clones will have a carrot shoved squarely up their collective asses by an eventual, and most likely very gradual, mass exodus of gamers who have gained a little experience and decided for themselves that paying a monthly fee to watch numbers go up and emote sex acts with 60 year old men 'roleplaying' female elves just isn't cutting it any more.

The genre's whole problem isn't just that companies are pounding out cookie cutter games. They're doing that for a reason, and that reason is that those games sell. They can continually feed the same bullshit to us, because we let them get away with it by giving them money over and over again.

People are very, very used to having a game entirely centred around themselves. The idea of other players actually being in the game world with them is appealing, as long as those players don't get in the way or affect them in any way, shape, or form other than existing as little more than a graphic on the screen and some interactive text in a chat window.

That's how the average online gamer is born nowadays. Coming from a gaming world where there's noone to interact with, the in-game community is nonexistant, and nothing can happen that would detract from them 'winning' the game, they're thrust (gently nudged, after being given a cup of warm cocoa?) into the same thing, with a little chat window. They think this is pretty sweet - they can play the game to win all they want. They want watch numbers go up every once in a while, and get a nice little false feeling of accomplishment. They can even fit their character with awesome loot so their numbers will go up even faster, and, as a bonus, they end up looking pretty bitchin'.

To them, they're doing what they want. Wasting away hours of life accomplishing absolutely nothing, but having a good, solid time doing the same thing over and over again, never worrying about the complete lack of substance. This is just online Diablo, after all. Go whack some monsters, get some gear, watch levels go up. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Pay a monthly fee for it. Buy an expansion every six months so you can do the same thing on a new island.

Fortunately, UO came out before EQ. That gives us a bit of a head start, and some hope for the future of MMORPGs.

See, what UO was was a community. A living, breathing community. People did good things, people did bad things. People crafted, people fought, people bashed monsters. People interacted heavily. It worked out pretty well, because everyone was forced into the same world with, and get this, different types of people.

It was a dangerous world full of challenges - everything wasn't made easy because the company wanted you to give them more money every month (in fact, quite often if you were to page a GM for help, you were told to STFU and a pre-lubed dildo would arrive at your door with instructions to insert and ride in 6-8 weeks). It had it's ups, and it had it's downs beyond finding your favourite spawn already camped. That gave it feeling. That gave it substance. And when that big, black 12 inch dildo arrived at your door in the form of a bad, buggy patch, you'd punch that fucking monitor with all your might only to be pissed later because you couldn't type your UO password in fast enough with a broken hand.

It was, in fact, the living, breathing community that the original designers had been aiming for. It fell short on some of their expectations, but compared to the games that have followed it, a remarkable job was done.

Greed ruined the party for everyone, though. Origin was gobbled up by Larry Probst like a fat cock, and seeing the success of EQ, it was decided that they could be making more money if they catered completely to those who wanted to choke the substance, feeling, passion and community out of the game so they could hunt yellow swords all day without being bothered.

Trammel came along, and money was made by all. EQ was a complete and utter carebear land, with zero community or passion beyond finding an awesome new piece of loot, but it flew off the fucking shelves because the people buying the boxes had no prior grasp on the intagibles that made an online world great. Of course, now, obviously every game to be released from here on out will be a complete ripoff of EQ. EA decided to take it even further than anyone else and put out a game that's actually a single player game + chat.

Now, obviously, if the entire genre continues on the course it's on currently, which happens to be the "make the most money without any regard to the quality or intangibles of the game" road, it's going to end up in a very, very sad state in a few years. MMORPGs will officially be declared a fad by anyone other than housewives who want to feel like they've been accomplishing something by hitting auto attack, going to change the baby, and coming back with a dead monster at their character's feet.

The overwhelming majority of current MMORPGers have absolutely no respect for the passion that goes beyond the single-player mememe type, or for the type of living word full of challenges that creates the passion that we got a glimpse of in Ultima Online.

Why? Because they're not exposed to it, mostly. They come from single player RPGs and action games and expect the same thing in these games. They get it, all the while hearing about how terrible the old days of UO were from people who got PKed once, decided they weren't in for any kind of challenge and certainly didn't want to attempt to make their way in a challenging world, and went off to either fluff their pillow and go back to sleep or, even worse, pay a monthly fee for a single player game.

Does EQ have it's merits? Absolutely. There's no reason why people can't have a mindless good time and collect items if they want. The problem is that these games have effectively killed what online worlds were shaping up to be. At one point, the future of these games looked completely outstanding. There was nowhere they couldn't go. Now, however, we seem to have hit the ceiling at EQ because noone wants to go for a dip in the icy water. You can tell them "Dude, it's refreshing - just jump in" all you want, but they're not listening. Either because they're one of the people who decided they don't like challenges and don't like a game to have feeling beyond "Awesome! Level 32!", or, because they're one of the people who listens to them on a daily basis and just really doesn't know any better.

While some games, like Darkfall, could start the healing process, I really think it's either too early or too late. Either the entire MMORPG market has made it's decision and aren't interested in living online worlds complete with passion, a brain, a heart, and a challenge - or there are still some newbies that will get tired of the current bullshit that's out there right now and give something like Darkfall a try, only to start a bit of a revolution and make companies decide that the next round of games might be profitable as real online worlds.

It's just too bad Darkfall is seemingly starting to slip with obvious BS lines and a complete slacking off when it comes to community involvement. More importantly, though, they're betraying their vision and the hopes of people who think this genre might still have a fighting chance by giving in and trying to grab some cash by quite possibly doing away with full loot. Full loot is a big deal, as noone wants to PvP a bunch of item whores who never lose their Sword of Faggotry +82, which, obviously, starts the everyone on the "items for teh win!!1" mentality that UO has fallen to. But what's even worse is that they're starting to give in before they've even begun the beta test. Sorry to say folks, but Darkfall is one of the only hopes we have left to begin to break away from the current cycle we're in. If they sell out, which looks more and more possible, we all might as well start using our computers as doorstops and porn downloading devices again.

You can't blame them for getting a little worried, though. Selling out looks like a pretty good option when 90% of the MMORPG audience wouldn't currently consider playing a game with open PvP and full loot. There'll be PKs there, and that should be avoided at all costs. Because those PKs may interfere with my gathering and hoarding, and we can't have that. Besides, PKs are just mindless 14 year olds who get off on ruining someone else's day. Right?

Heh, well.. yeah. Actually, for the most part, yeah. I'd love it to not be the case, but fuck if the average PKer isn't just some fucknut twerp who gets off on knowing you're pissed and taking your stuff.

So, there. I've just validated the carebear argument, right?

Well, no. These people provide a very important aspect of a living, breathing online world. They provide danger, they provide challenge, they can provide surprise. No matter what, they're providing an aspect of feeling. Does it matter what their motives are? They're still doing the same thing. Some people claim to not mind PKs as long as they 'roleplay' a murderer, but I'm sure you'd find yourself equally as pissed if every person to come along and kill you were spouting thee's and thou's.

But, see, that feeling of being pissed was a feeling. It was a negative feeling, sure, but to create a realistic online world you need to take the good with the bad. That's part of what makes it a world and not a simply a game. That negative feeling not only set you back 500 gold, but it etched a memory in your mind. It made you remember the name of that player to see if you could extract revenge at a later date. It made you go to the bank and actually talk to other players about your experience, and hear the experiences they've had. And when your friend got on, you would explain your situation to him and go out to find the offending player to see if you could kick his ass. More than anything, it infused emotion into your online world experience.

This took things beyond "Hey dude.. let's go camp the 50th level spawn for four hours and see if we can get an awesome drop so we can... go camp the 51st level spawn for five hours..".

A sense of accomplishment in character progression is very important, and can provide a very good hook to keep players coming back for more, but what's more important is making sure that these elements aren't the only ones included in every single game that's put out. Unless, of course, you're just out to make money and destroy the potential that online worlds could have had.

I'm not saying PKs and PvP make an online world, I'm just saying you can't make an online world without PKs and PvP.

-Azaroth