Continuing on the same tone.

We always wonder about the magical recipe that would lead to “better games” and “humongous success”. Everyone would like a slice of Blizzard’s pie. The new kid on the block that stole all the market with just one game and as a first attempt. The MMO Jesus that multiplied the number of potential customers like the bread and fishes. Leaving all the other veteran companies to bite the dust and run salvage what’s still salvageable.

So what’s this magical recipe? What did Blizzard’s genial devs to make everyone else feel done? Well, it’s simple. They worked on the accessibility of the game to make it more polished and appealing and introduced a quest system that was partially able to hide the feeling of grind and pointless repetition by adding some convenient variance in the patterns. Which is exactly what our “rant communities” HAVE POINTED OUT FOR YEARS. Ignored.

Blizzard gave a decent answer to a problem. A better answer. Making a game “for everyone”.

We don’t need brilliant and experienced game designer like Raph because this genre is already stuck *at the most basic level*. It needs common sense, maybe, but there isn’t anything complex or arcane to understand.

MMORPG design is really that simple.

And what will be the market of the future? The true answer to this quastion is worth billion dollars. It’s like finding the Philosopher’s stone. It would turn everything into gold. And the answer is just IN FRONT OF EVERYONE’S NOSES. Exactly like Blizzard’s “brilliant” design was already so obvious if just some people at the decision-making level had a clue and woke up before.

The future of the genre is to make these world even more accessible and immersive. Working on the qualities that we already discovered and going to tap that potential that is still dormant. The future of the genre will be about offering *solid answers* to the problems that are now dodged or dismissed. It will be about games that bring the players together instead of apart and that will continue to appeal to casual players, without imposing them unacceptable strains and dependencies. Games that will let you contribute to the “world” without the need to schedule your life around it. Games that are accessible and don’t separate the players in social classes of uberness.

Bringing together, and not apart. Removing the barriers, accessibility. It’s always *the same shit*. We don’t need geniuses or Civ4’s “Great People” to advance this genre.

We just need to pay attention. Observe. React. There are already plenty of hints suggesting where the market is going and what are its true demands.

Part of the current success of Eve-Online (and, in particular, the “viral” part of it) is the direct consequence of their “one-shard” model. Which lets you “hear” about the game from your friends and join them right away (and as simple as a direct download for a full, updated client not shattered between a moltitude of expansion packs). Its viral success strongly depends on veteran MMO communities that slowly build up interest and curiosity. Letting the new players join the community without having to crash into barriers and discover that all your friends are spread between twelve+ servers and an arbitrary number of levels. Or that require a videocard so “uber” that would suck alone a whole month of real life work.

Things “come to life” in Eve, despite the shallow initial impression, because the game provides the right conditions for the players to organize and create something.

The pattern was really simple:
1- The devs work hard to make the game appealing on certain aspects (In Eve it’s the sandbox mode, the freedom and scope of the players’ interactions).
2- The players arrive and start to grow in number, bringing their friends in and constantly creating more curiosity and interest. The new players aren’t segregated and dispersed into hundreds of servers, but share the same space. Creating “permeable barriers” that don’t isolate them and encourage them to *connect* with the bigger, emergent community.

CONNECT. Get some “hints” from Xfire. Or its clones. That’s where we are going.

The games of the future will be those where the players won’t be fragmented and isolated between hundreds of servers, but those with permeable barriers. Where from a side you create “cozy worlds” where the community can build up still within a manageable scope, while from the other allowing the players to cross those barriers.

In the same way the players should be able to partially bypass their forced dependence on other players. Permeable barriers, again.

Leaving behind the restrictions and narrow design limitations of level-based treadmills. Removing that silliness that segregates the players till the point where there are huge gaps between the catasses and those who are left behind and are kicked out of the system. Excluded because they couldn’t “keep up” with the power creep and time requirements.

Creating more immersive, consistent worlds where the player will be able to interact more directly and naturally with the game world. Without the interfaces growing and crowding the screen till the point that you can’t see past them. Immediate, visceral, direct gameplay and not “try to find and hit the right button between a million others” while micromanaging everything at the most insane level.

Some of these problems were analyzed and explained by Raph brilliantly and in great detail. But we didn’t need Raph to bring those problems up! Our community already pointed them out from a long time! It was already all so fucking obvious. GLARING.

You just need to open your eyes.

And no, we don’t need fancy new genres or crazy Korean stuff. Because fantasy-themed games can be all that and SO MUCH MORE. Can’t you see?

We need *answers*. Practical, concrete answers and not more, endless dissertations wasting time like I’m doing here. I cannot provide those kind of answers because I have no powers on that front. I can only offer ideas opinions for what they are worth. But there are those, out there, who can. And they have this responsibility to start to move things forward. Concretely.

P.S.
It’s MMORPG design to be stupid and obvious. Execution is still hard. There are no shortcuts for that, I’m sorry.