Former Dev: WoW Has Killed the MMO Genre

[leviathanmisha]

I smell a rat all over this interview.

What's so wrong with making a (sub-)genre accessible to more than guys living in their parent's basement?

I recently climbed aboard the WoW ship after beating Oblivion again, not wanting to pick up Skyrim again (I'm not allowed to call it by my name on here I don't think), and finally coming to terms with the fact that Perfect World is never going to make a PWI client for the Mac and I have to say, it's exactly what I expected. I'm leveling about as quick as I would in PWI and I know at some point, it's going to turn into grinding, but that's what happens in all MMO's at some point.

Really, all I see in this interview is someone complaining that a 14 year old can pick up WoW and be just as good as the 40 year old in their parent's basement who has dedicated his life to it. And to be honest, that's nothing to complain about. If anything, that's how video games grow and become better.

 

[Do4600]

Kern says that this leads to fatigue from both players and developers, which is causing the genre to stagnate. Players don't want to play another "WoW clone" but developers are afraid of deviating from the formula that WoW has ironically made players interested in the MMO genre in the first place.

Also see every genre since 2007 and why the games I'm the most excited by are all crowd sourced independently developed games like 7 Days to Die and Star Citizen.

 

[AgedGrunt]

Yeah! How DARE people try to get into and enjoy a game! How DARE THEY!

Sarcasm or not, it is a marketing issue. Games are a lot like movies in that fans tend to enjoy familiarity. That's why Hollywood clings to iconic IP and why "leveling" is in everything now, even racing games.

Farmville never got popular for being an awesome game, it created addicts who got hooked on a simple reward system. Click water can, click soil, watch your reward sprout up. MMOs are, under the hood, designed to produce the same feelings and keep players rewarded and happy. There is literally established theory in creating addiction and developers understand it.

Personally I agree with the write-up, only I can't lay the blame at WoW's feet. Developers may need to emulate in order to keep players interested, but there's no excuse not to evolve. Guild Wars 2 had one of the most inspiring and perfect opportunities to do this, yet ArenaNet took so much of what made the last game unique and brilliant yet deviated, borrowed too much from the standard MMO. It's still great, but could have redefined the genre.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

For me personally, the OP is spot on.

I think part of the problem with MMOs is the community that has grown around the genre. When I played EQ1, everything felt so novel largely because people hadn't yet grasped the optimum play styles, groupings, and social structures for defeating all of the content. Now, everything is just spreadsheet. You read your gear and raid strats online, implement them through repetition, download mods to handle bosses, macro everything you possibly can...

And the devs have played right into it, too. Want to conquer a dungeon? Press a button to instantly queue. Want to travel somewhere? Walk through a portal. Want to find a quest objective? Check your map. Everything is handed to the player on a silver platter. There's no sense of world anymore because you teleport everywhere and instant queue everything. The quests are meaningless, trite, and legion. The challenge is nonexistent.

But more than anything, it's the competitive aspects of the genre that have turned me away. I'd love to explore a huge fantasy world with a handful of my friends, but you can't do that without running into people who play 24/7, shred all the content, and pretty much control the server. I'm not at all jealous of these people. I just wish I didn't have to play with them. I'd like a game that moves at my pace. That's why I play SP mostly these days.