The Future of MMORPGs

Anyone that checked out the videos in my 5 upcoming MMOs article might have noticed all five had something in common, real time action based combat. This is no coincidence; there is a paradigm shift now starting within the MMO industry. Developers are beginning to gravitate away from the traditional turn based blow trading found in most old, and current MMO games, and moving in a direction where reaction speed, dexterity, and even sometimes aim can trump the old standbys of higher levels, and better gear.

Dragonica Screenshot

Though the Koreans are squarely on the forefront, with games like GhostX, Draconica Online, and Continent of the 9th they are not alone. Already western games like DarkFall, and The Chronicles of Spellborn employ action skill based combat systems, and countless more games are in development right now around the world fallowing suit. I see this evolution much like how the offline RPG has changed. Games like DragonQuest defined a genre based on a lack of technology, the old NES did not have the processing power to make epic multi-character battles possible, so the idea of turn based combat was borrowed from tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons, this way the player could use their imagination to picture the events going on with the simple visual aids of short animations and text descriptions. Now a days technology has made this style of combat technologically antiquated, yet it continues to exist in modified forms even now because of how iconic it had become. The same can be said about what MMORPGs are now beginning to go through. The traditional style of play in MMOs is what one sees in games such as EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and Lineage. Combat is governed by cast timers, and cooldowns. Anyone who as spent any time with the MMO genre should be familiar with these concepts.

GhostX Screenshot

The original reason for this type of gameplay was because of the extremely low speeds most Internet connections possessed back in the heady days of Ultima Online, and Asheron’s Call. True real time actions were simply not a viable option back then, however even after Internet connections began to speed up most developers continued to use this tried, and true system, because of it’s relative ease to implement, balance, and familiarity, compared to the extreme technical complexities that go with real time online combat systems. The factor that tipped the scale that changed all this is actually the proliferation, and over saturation of the MMORPG itself. It has come to the point currently that there is no less then two MMORPGs launching almost every month somewhere in the world.

Nowhere is this supersaturation more apparent then F2P motherland of South Korea, a country where online gaming is not just a widely accepted hobby, it’s a national pastime. In a country where people can change which MMORPG they are playing almost as often as they change their underwear, developers were forced to come up with ways to try to separate themselves from the herd. At first this was just mostly silly pointless gimmicks like having an NPC child to raise, or ingame dating. However more recently there has been a sudden increase in genre benders, like Valkyrie Sky’s,a MMO flying shoot-em-up. Dungeon Fighter, an MMO sidecrolling arcade brawler, and the extremely odd online dog sled sim Husky Express, an interesting tactic but very “hit-or-miss”. The theme that seems to have resonated with gamers the most has been the addition of action elements in place of pure dice rolls. The shear amount of action based MMO’s currently in production right now is almost impossible to keep track of, while inversely the number of traditional style MMO’s is proportionately much smaller. I do not think what we know as traditional MMORPGs will ever completely die out;. just as traditional RPGs continue to survive, there is a certain comfort, and appeal these type of games enjoy that will ensure their survival as long as the medium itself stays viable.

Dungeon Fighter Online Screenshot

I personally predict within the next 5 to 7 years, the next hugely successful MMORPG is going to focus on action game like mechanics, throwing out most standby statistics like agility, and accuracy, replacing them with actual human reaction. Once this happens, virtually all MMO’s released afterwords will follow this trend as well. I can already see in about 12 years, only the occasional game release will be using World of Warcraft style rules. These games will probably be advertised using words like “Classic”, “Throwback”, and “Retro”. Teens will play them, and say to themselves, “wow my parents games were so slow!”

Feeling old already.

By, Justin Miller