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Original post by lightblade I see you're from UK...UK has always been the one that colonize other people's land. You never know how it feels to have others colonizing you.

While not in living memory you might want to go and look at the history of the UK a bit more... heres a hint; Romans, Saxons, Viking, French...

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Original post by phantom While not in living memory you might want to go and look at the history of the UK a bit more... heres a hint; Romans, Saxons, Viking, French...

Ancient history vs. modern history

The last time Britain got occupied was like over 15 generations ago, while this is only 3 generations ago. And yes, I will admit that even the hatred in me will evaporate in the wind of time

Racism, 911 jokes, and topic derailings aside...

I think it's silly to call MMOs in general a "fad". Maybe the traditional level-grind MMORPG, but that's far from the only kind of MMO. If anything, MMOs are still in their infancy.

We have quite a number of MMORPGs out there now, probably because it's one of the simpler MMO types - fewer timing issues (MMOFPS requires accuracy so bullets hit there target when shot appropriately, MMORPGs make a dice roll), fewer units (MMORTS requires many units per player, and many players - cowbunga that's a lot of data per-user!), etc.

Current favorite game? Probably the MMOFPS known as Planetside. Having a coordinated team of ~32 (my outfit on outfit nights) work together to achieve an objective, while remaining part of a much larger team, that kind of stuff is awesome. Awe inspiring, even.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Huxley's like. It'll make what, the 2nd MMOFPS I've heard of? Not exactly an over-developed fad. Not yet anyways.

Other things I look forward to are team-based MMORTSes. We have some MMOTBS and MMOSRTS (Slow Real Time Strategy) style games, but I can't say there are many fast paced MMORTS out there. Persistance is an issue in such games... which can be solved in a number of unique ways. I'm looking forward to team-based MMORTS where one controls the same units to some degree or another. Prehaps guild/outfit/empire based - e.g. I can invite you into the FBI Guild, allowing you control of my units - I can task you with scouting while I focus on setting up base defenses. If you send all my units on suicide runs, I can kick you from my guild. If you don't like that, you can choose to start a new one that you own, getting 10 scout units to start with. Rally enough people behind your power, and you can get users on nearly 24/7 from different timezones, prehaps.

Just an example. If you see a good fast-paced MMORTS with building, lemme know :-).

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Original post by MaulingMonkey Other things I look forward to are team-based MMORTSes. We have some MMOTBS and MMOSRTS (Slow Real Time Strategy) style games, but I can't say there are many fast paced MMORTS out there. Persistance is an issue in such games... which can be solved in a number of unique ways. I'm looking forward to team-based MMORTS where one controls the same units to some degree or another. Prehaps guild/outfit/empire based - e.g. I can invite you into the FBI Guild, allowing you control of my units - I can task you with scouting while I focus on setting up base defenses. If you send all my units on suicide runs, I can kick you from my guild. If you don't like that, you can choose to start a new one that you own, getting 10 scout units to start with. Rally enough people behind your power, and you can get users on nearly 24/7 from different timezones, prehaps. Just an example. If you see a good fast-paced MMORTS with building, lemme know :-).

This is infact the kinda of thing I've been toying with (mostly in my head I admit) for a while now. For guild/clan play this concept would be excellent. As I mentioned earlier, my ideas run to galatic scale, so as well as having planet side things todo you'd also have fleetings of ships wandering around in space etc.

Grand idea, yes, but maybe one day... [smile]

A booming MMO market is a good and bad thing depends on what happens.

If you look at the game market in Taiwan, there's like 10 - 20 different active MMORPGs on the market and they're mostly crap with minimal support. They're just being thrown out there for the quick buck and all market as being free to play. Now, that would be bad.

I think MMOs have a future, but more in the narrow sense. The truth is, they'll probably never go away, just like how there are still active MUDs and people still play them. There's something about a shared gaming experience that just appeals to people. What will change and fluctuate will probably be the size of the games. You'll see the market sway between large scale MMOs with thousands of players to the small scale one which have maybe at most a hundred or so players. Its all about player preference though.

Advertising will start playing an important factor too.

I think there is a lack of definition of "MMO" in the thread. If you mean "Will lots of people be playing games online" then of course, that's not just a fad. I (and others apparently) assumed by MMO you meant the model of the current MMO's, not just online games with a server cap of 600 instead of 60.

For isntance, the "metaverse" idea, that the web will be replaced with a 3D interface with customizable avatars, doesn't really mean MMORPG to me. For example, if you "walk" through the metaverse to go join a 32-person capped Capture The Flag server of Quake 17, that's not really MMO. It's not any different than using gamespy to browse through a list of active Capture the Flag servers. MMO to me means the game itself has to be built around the idea of thousands of people playing at once. Current no-fee MMO's, like Guild Wars, sort of follow this example too... everything begins to be replaced by "instances", which means that the players never really game together on a massive scale; they meet in a fancy chat lobby (the guild wars metaverse) but then the actual gaming is still relegated to small groups on single servers.

Neither.

The MMO is just becoming another game type, with several sub genres. ITs like a different way of writing a book. Its not like every game will BE an MMO in the future, and its true, right now we are seeing a lot more that usual, but that has as much to do with addictive gameplay systems and broadband penetration rates.

Its kinda like calling "Pants" a fad. Sure, lots of people wear pants, but some wear kilts.

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Original post by AnonymousPosterChild Neither. The MMO is just becoming another game type, with several sub genres. ITs like a different way of writing a book. Its not like every game will BE an MMO in the future, and its true, right now we are seeing a lot more that usual, but that has as much to do with addictive gameplay systems and broadband penetration rates. Its kinda like calling "Pants" a fad. Sure, lots of people wear pants, but some wear kilts.

That's kind of my thought on it. You could swap "neither" for "both" and get the same answer.

We're seeing alot of MMOs because it's the new fad. But when it stops being a fad, it's not going to go away, just evolve into another game genre to go along with the ones we already had.

On the NES, platformers were a fad, and most of them sucked. Hard. Now the only platformers that come out (or at least most of them) are polished, fun games. At one time, first person shooters were a fad and we got loads of terrible shooters. Now there are less, and the majority of them have matured in gameplay.

We get this with all game types: explosion, cloning, die-off, rebirth. MMOs had their explosion with UO/Everquest, they were then cloned, the majority of them are starting to die off... now it's just time for a rebirth of new types of MMOs and a higher quality of game.

I do not think MMO will take over games entirely or even to a large extent if they hold on to their monthly fee. The problem with this fee is twofold. One, many people, including myself, do not want to pay $50 for a game and then an additional $10 or $15 every month to be able to continue playing it. Just dropping the fee while keeping everything else possible is shown to not be very good, as demonstrated by Guild Wars. Sure, now I can take 3 months off and play on and off as I desire, however the gameplay of GW is lacking and there isn't the same community feeling of a traditional MMO.

The other problem with the fee is that it leads developers to make their MMO in a way to keep people paying rather than making it fun. You would think that to keep people playing it would have to be fun, but this is not true. WoW is an example of this. WoW seems to focus on being addicting rather than fun. Sure, in the short run this is a very successful model. Since it is still so new, people don't care if it is fun or addicting. However, as time goes on, I see this as wearing down on people who get sick of getting addicted to the current MMO rather than enjoying it.

Obvioiusly these problems are mostly linked to the current model of huge projects and massive server farms requiring subscription fees. If this can be overcome (which I have an inkling will happen either in a reorientation of the companies or the general public) then MMOs have a lot going for them. Sure, SP and normal MP will still be around, but MMOs will be more popular.