In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Petursson questioned why MMO developers seem to be stuck in a rut. For once, a company CEO is making sense.
"I just don't understand why people do yet another fantasy game. Why make a clone of World of Warcraft?" said Petursson, in an exclusive interview with GamesIndustry.biz.
"World of Warcraft is the perfect implementation of this [genre]. It's been done. Do something else. - gamesindustry.biz
It's obvious why developers continue to concentrate on dwarfs and elves - they want to echo World of Warcraft's immense success. Of course, whenever a highly successful product hits the market there are always people who want to cash in on their rival's success by emulating the product but, as Petursson pointed out, plenty have already done that and largely failed. What's needed now is the next big thing, the thing that can have a chance of knocking World of Warcraft off its high pedestal (although it's sure to be a though challenge). To have that thing mirroring the top guy is not something that will appeal to people, or will it?
On the other hand these developers may be concentrating on the fantasy genre because they know it's an established genre that many millions of people seem to enjoy, yet people are eventually going to get bored with the same old thing. World of Warcraft became so popular because it did something different. Ok, the fantasy genre had been around long before World of Warcraft arrived (Everquest for example) but Blizzard successfully identified a gap and plugged it with a game that would appeal to the casual gamer. Having said that I don't believe there's much more developers can do with the fantasy genre so it's time to switch to something else.
Whatever rises to become the next big MMO is obviously also going to have to appeal to casual gamers. I don't believe EVE Online, although the basic premise might, appeals to the casual gamer as EVE largely seems to be based on meta-gaming, an aspect casual gamers don't usually get involved in. SEED was something different from the norm yet it relied heavily on meta-gaming so probably wouldn't appeal to the casual gamer. Still, the game crashed because no one was willing to support it. It's this kind of attitude that leads to the continuation of clones flooding the video game market.
You could say that many people playing World of Warcraft, some of which had never really bothered with video games before, have become pretty hardcore gamers as a result of whiling away the hours in Azeroth. In this sense does the casual gamer label really apply to them? They'll eventually get bored of World of Warcraft (as many already have) and will want something new to spend their free time on. Are they really going to want to be playing in a fantasy world again or will something like sci-fi appeal to these people? Can sci-fi appeal to people that have become so used to the fantasy genre? EVE is the only decent game in the sci-fi genre at the moment, so there's plenty of room for more. You may think I'm contradicting myself saying that but EVE doesn't have even half the user base World of Warcraft does.
World of Warcraft got boring to me because the casual gamer aspect fell away for me. People wanted you to dedicate so much time to the game that it became a chore to play. Moreover, the endless click-wait-click-wait-click-move-click aspect got boring fast. I want something that's based on skill (like a first-person-shooter) rather than the gear you carry and ARGGGGGGH! statistics.
I don't know what the next big thing is, and I'm far from qualified to guess. Whatever it is though, don't let it be another World of Warcraft clone.
EVE Online boss questions glut of fantasy MMOs - Gamesindustry.biz (Via Kotaku)
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