Past and Future Myth

People have been speculating since Warcraft dethroned EverQuest as the top MMO how long their reign would last, and what would replace it. I've made a post on it before too, and wondered what form it would take when it arrived.

My assumption is based on a business model I am familiar with - casinos. It's standard in the industry to accept that from the moment you begin to promote your property that you have seven years to plan the reinvention of that property. It must be rebuilt or rebranded every seven years in order to remain a competitive destination.

I see MMOs in the same way. First of all you need to make sure that they are entertained when they arrive. The things that you promise must be delivered, and done with a variety that keeps them coming back for more. Now assuming that they are still coming back for more, you also have a time limit of seven years to reinvent the product or you will lose the customers even though they are satisfied. This is a difficult concept for people to understand sometimes - customer satisfaction does not always equate to return business. People like to try new things even though they're happy with what they have, and if they suddenly discover something else they are happy with that is newer, they'll go there instead.

So you've got seven years, because the competition is coming. The next batch of games won't be Conan and Warhammer, because they've learned from the industry's mistakes. They will provide content, a good UI, balanced PvP, class balance, good character development, and a world with rich lore that is fun to explore. Some will provide extra features that Warcraft doesn't, like player-generated content or console support. Some will have brand tie-ins that Warcraft can't match.

The only thing left that I couldn't decide was what genre the next MMOs would choose. I would argue that Warcraft hit a high when it did because it came fresh off the release of the Lord of the Rings movies. The whole genre was mainstream, and WoW was in the right place at the right time with an exceptional product, and took all of MMOs with it to the mainstream. This wasn't EQ-type exposure with ads cut out from the back of comic books, Warcraft time cards are on the shelf at Walmart. There is nothing more mainstream than Walmart.

The buzz right now for titles lining up to try and take away market share include the two largest sci-fi properties out there - Star Wars and Star Trek. Star Trek just reinvented their entire franchise with an excellent movie about the origins of the original Trek crew (Kirk, Spock, etc.) and have a legion of Trek-loyal fans who could crossover, and Star Wars has a phenomenal bullshot under their belt that has everyone drooling for some player-vs.-player lightsaber action.

On the one hand, I'm happy to see that people aren't trying to beat WoW at their own game and instead are offering games in a different genre. On the other hand I'm a little disappointed that they only went as far as picking the easiest competing genre - space. The swords and sorcery model and the space ranger model are very similar, one involving face to face combat and magic against mythical creatures, the other involving ship to ship combat and future technology against mythical aliens.

There are other things people could use as a setting for adventure. Ninjas. Pirates. Sports. Spies. Musketeers. Personally, I think it's a crime that someone hasn't linked into the Harry Potter brand and made an MMO based on that universe. But in the end the top frontrunners chose space as their genre and I think I know why. It isn't a limit on their imagination, but a limit on ours. No one wants to play an MMO alone. There are a lot of people who only want to play the top MMO, regardless of gameplay, because it's starting to ask for so many hours of gameplay that it's substituting for a big chunk of their social life.

People are fine with that, as long as they're jumping into a deep pool. When WoW hit the point that more people play it than live in Finland, it was suddenly ok to spend six hours a day there, talking to people while you play a game. Log out? Why? All my friends are already there.

So now let's say you have two great-looking games on the shelf, and you're tired of playing WoW (not really tired, but you're in the mood to see if there's something new you would also like). In our example, let's say one game is Herman Wouk's World at War, a fascinating, historical tale of war and espionage in 1940's war-torn Europe, and the other game is Galaxy Raiders, a tale of aliens and starships and glactic exploration and adventure.

Gee, I wonder which one I could get my friends to play.

I'd probably enjoy them both, but one of them is something that even my most over-beered friends can understand. They may not want to run a quest to find a safe house on the Polish border to pass intelligence through beneath the notice of the invading German army, but they could probably get excited about unleashing some thermal torpedoes on those tentacled Q'irxxi starships and maybe pick up some green-skinned chicks at the Comet's Tail cafe. It might be a case of bad currency pushing good currency out of circulation, but as long as the AI can't pass a turing test we want to play the game that everyone else is playing, and we'll sacrifice some things to do it.