To the Designers: How to Keep That MMORPG Market Fresh
I'd first of all like to file myself away among the millions of gamers who have (mis?)invested hundreds of days of playtime into the eternal timesink that the modern webosphere likes to call the massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). There, I said it.
For me, as with most people, it started with an innocent-enough looking game: EverQuest. Originally, a friend suggested it to me in a casual conversation at work. I told him I'd been playing Phantasy Star Online for Dreamcast and was thoroughly enjoying it and he guessed (correctly) that EverQuest would probably be right up my alley. Though my time playing EverQuest was short, I spent ungodly amounts of time on it's sequel, as well as equally monstrous amounts of time on everyone's favorite online game: World of Warcraft. Toss in a dash of Guild Wars, Dungeons and Dragons Online, City of Heroes and Silk Road Online and we've got a recipe for horrendous grades and social atrophy.
The unfortunate part of this story is that all of the games I listed are, in essence, exactly the same! Do away with the differences in graphics, network support and fees, and the silly user interfaces and you're left with exactly what all of the multi-user dungeon (MUD, those gnarly text-only games only those with stomachs of steel can tolerate) players have had for decades. I target you, I cast spell, server calculates resistances and diminishes the usefulness of my spell, spell hits you... ad naseum. These newer, graphics-based games all have their slight spin on this theme, but when it comes down to it, they're all the same at heart. When we look at these games with eyes as objective as we can possibly have, when we really look at these games at the "meta" level, we can see that all of the small differences between them are different manifestations of the same thing!
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