It’s Time to Take These Old MMO Games Out Back and Shoot Them
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You can say most MMOs fail because they fail to match the appeal or longevity of those fictions, sure, but I think in 2012 that's only part of the problem, as even the strongest fiction can eventually wear out its welcome. The more important thing causing this decline, I think, is that people are sick of playing the same damn games over and over again.
Everquest was released in the 20th century. World of Warcraft came out in 2004. Yet when Old Republic, the most expensive MMO of all time, hit shelves in late 2011, it was structured...almost exactly the same as World of Warcraft. Joel's great post on that game last year sums up my own thoughts on that crushing disappointment: in seven years, and with the most popular fictional universe on planet Earth as a hook, the best BioWare could do was copy WoW?
It's a sentiment many other people obviously share, because in only a few short months the game's subscriber base has dropped by around 25%. And while its decline is far from as dramatic, World of Warcraft has also been steadily shedding players over the past year. Other traditional MMO games in recent years have either died off or been forced to adopt a "free to play" model (which admittedly in some cases has been a success for developers!)
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Games like Red Dead Redemption, ArmA and even Mount & Blade can show, in different ways, how large worlds and/or large numbers of players can co-exist on the same server and provide fresh gaming experiences that don't simply revolve around clicking until you collect eight goat's tails.
Upcoming games like Tera and Guild Wars II are even better reference points: both MMOs in that they're designed to be played by large groups of people, but both offering radical departures from Everquest and WoW's tired old formula, most appealing of which is Tera's use of actual combat, which is enough to get me excited despite my track-record with the genre.
