THE NEXT BIG MMO GAME!

You’ve heard it all before. Many pretenders have tried to take WoW’s throne but none have the staying power or the fan base. Aion was going to be the new king but it seems to be dying a slow and lingering death. RIFT and TERA are the new young upstarts and seem to have plenty of buzz around their release but I can’t see them making the grade. They are just following a trend instead of setting one. Same goes for Guild wars and countless other Fantasy RPG based games.


Whoever unseats Blizzard is going to have to come up with something different and is going to have to have massive backing. The company behind it is going to be instantly recognisable as a big player with a long term view. It might not even be a games company. The kind of revenue that WoW makes is sure to interest the big American entertainment companies like Disney or MGM. Now they really could plough some cash into the project.


But what form would a new MMO take?


I’ve always been surprised that there isn’t a really good spaced based MMO game. I have played Eve online and if that’s the best attempt then I see a massive niche in the market. Eve is flawed on so many levels but my main criticism is that it’s just boring to play. Those of us who can remember the days of Elite and more recently the X2, X3 and X4 games know there is so much more potential in the genre. Exploration, trading, conquest…


Or maybe it would be more of a seminal challenge. Two games I have loved for years now are Civilisation and Sim City. I envision a mergence of these into a massive world simulator where you design and build your own civilisation right down to the individual people and buildings. Eventually you would stumble across your neighbours who may be allies or foes. You wouldn’t have a character you would have thousands, perhaps millions of perspectives to view your world from. The soldier in the front line. The general commanding battle. The Prime Minister negotiating war and peace.


The Demographics of the online multiplayer gaming community puts the average age of the online gamer at 33. That may be surprising to some. Many people envisage a spotty, socially inept teenage geek as the typical MMO gamer. As a veteran of online gaming I can testify that the teenage gamer is a rarity. They just don’t seem to have the staying power, patience and attention span to be successful in these kinds of games. They want the more immediate gratification of an xbox shoot-em-up. Over in half an hour and no fee to pay.


So the target audience should be the 33 year old gamer. What do 33 year olds get passionate about? It’s a time in your life when you start to develop a long term view. You begin to realise that the things worth having are going to take time and a lot of hard work. You’re done with driving bangers and living in bedsits. You want and are prepared to work for the good things in life. The next big MMO game needs to be aspiration based because that’s what drives your average 33 year old.


If you want something with the lifespan and popularity of WoW then there’s a few rules


Make it different. Dungeons and Dragons are so last decade.


Don’t go in half hearted. We need to know you’re serious and in it for the long term.


Make it technically flawless. It has to work. Put plenty of cash into the hardware


Make it visually stunning. Manga is dead. Give us realism


Make it aaspirational. Killing shit is fun but so is building, designing, nurturing, evolving, developing….make it a seminal experience that we can take pride in the achievements we gain.


Lastly make it a social experience. Learn from social networking. Give us a place to be. Even if we’re not actually playing the game.


WoW can’t go on forever. Although its demise has been predicted ever since the 1st expansion I think the end really is in sight this time. It has become too predictable and seems to be pandering to the ‘I want it now!’ noisy minority rather then the silent majority who long for the days when you could actually be good at the game because you worked at it.