Recently I became exposed to an interesting idea called the Gartner Hype Cycle. It’s implications might be useful to those of us still interested in the future viability of virtual worlds and MMOs.
The Gartner Hype Cycle is a graphic that depicts public expectations of new and emerging (often not so new) technologies in the form of a graph. It is updated annually and produced by a research and advisory company called Gartner, Inc.
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Although I’m not a very big sci-fi or Star Wars fan I figured I’d take a gamble on purchasing and subscribing to EA’s and Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO. After focusing on WoW for all these years, I felt it was time to take a break and try a new AAA+ MMO.
I have played about 20 levels of SWTOR and this review is by no means complete or comprehensive. It is just my thoughts based on my limited experiences. However, I’ve spent enough time playing MMOs to know if I’m going to like a MMO within short order.
Naturally there has been a lot of buzz and hype about this MMO over the past few years due to Bioware’s stellar reputation along with a massive budget of an estimated $300 million. With that hype and budget come grand expectations. So after 7 years of waiting, the good news is that I’m pleased to report there is a AAA+ MMO to rival WoW.
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I try to avoid delving into the realm of politics here at WolfheadOnline but there is a very important issue that affects almost everyone here in America and in the world. The freedom of the Internet has come under attack by big corporations that have managed to influence American politicians under the guise of “stopping piracy”.
If we don’t stop this bill the U.S. Government will start blocking offending sites using the same draconian techniques used by totalitarian regimes and human rights violators such as China, Iran and Syria.
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I know there are some of my readers involved in various forms of indie video game development. I wanted to share with them an amazing bundle of indie dev items that is currently being offered by 3D Ocean which is a part of the Envato family of websites.
For $20 you can get $500 worth of art assets! Knowing how tough it is for indie developers to get assets in their games I figured I’d give 3D Ocean some free publicity.
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It’s been a while since I posted anything on my website. I feel that I owe my loyal readers an explanation of why I haven’t been posting as much.
I have been blogging and championing the cause of virtual worlds and MMORPG’s since 2004. I’m not a big fan of the word “blogging” and its fellow partner in crime “blogger”. You might consider me a snob for saying this, but I would prefer to consider myself a writer and an essayist.
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If you could ask God one question what would it be? Would you ask a deep question such as what is the meaning of life or would you waste your question on something trivial like how to remove bubble gum from a sole of a running shoe?
If you happen to be a disciple of World of Warcraft and can make the pilgrimage to BlizzCon, you actually can ask the virtual gods of Azeroth a question. This was the case at BlizzCon 2011 held this past weekend in Anaheim where thousands of true believers assembled before the thrones of the gods of Azeroth. In fact one player actually praised Greg Street Lead WoW Designer and outright called him “a god”.
What did I think of BlizzCon 2011 and the Mists of Pandaria preview and what does this mean for WoW?
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The past paradoxically becomes clearer as time passes. Trends are very hard to pinpoint and define while they are incubating and growing. When you are personally experiencing a cultural movement you don’t have the time or inclination to understand the implications of what you are doing. You are there and it feels right.
We humans love to jump on bandwagons. We are prone to getting caught up in the moment. We see this with political candidates, the latest technology and we see this with video games and MMOs. During those periods of reckless abandon rarely do we ever stop to consider the implications of our actions. We live for the moment.
I believe enough time has passed since 1998 that it’s time to take stock of what MMOs have become and how their design has affected what we have become as players. There’s a saying “You are what you eat”. I believe this is also true of MMOs, you are what you play. What you do and where you travel has a profound effect on who you become. This explains why most of us who came to fantasy worlds to answer the call of adventure ended up being actors.
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For a long time I have been concerned about how the focus of MMOs has changed from the community as a whole to the individual player. Practically every MMO quest these days focuses on the player as being the savior of the world.
Much of this change is due to what is going in single player video game design. MMO designers have been brought up in a video game culture where players are treated like heroes just for showing up. Load up any popular single player video game and it becomes readily apparent that players are no longer just players; instead they have been elevated to heroes.
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Those of us poor souls who are MMO and virtual world veterans have seen a lot in the past 12 years of the history of this genre. We are no strangers to the philosophical tug of war between world and game. As early MMO travelers and pilgrims, we used to passionately write about it and fiercely debate it. But then we stopped discussing it altogether.
Somewhere in the mid 2000′s, in the public consciousness MMOs crossed the Rubicon and became more game than world. The world became the servant of the game — not the other way around. At about that time an important tipping point was reached that came about unannounced and unheralded: the collective dream of being part of a living, breathing albeit virtual world died.
How did this happen and why?
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In January of 2011, I made the bold and outrageous claim that Blizzard’s Cataclysm was the worst MMO expansion in history. From the vantage point of a player experiencing the pre-level cap game, I was unimpressed at what Blizzard had done to WoW; I felt they had watered down and trivialized their own MMO which was from the outset already too easy and simplistic. I viewed Cataclysm as the inevitable culmination of years of expedient game design that pandered to the lowest common denominator of players. For my efforts, I was demonized by some and applauded by others.
Last week during a shareholders conference call, Mike Morhaime revealed that WoW has lost 600,000 subscribers since Cataclysm’s release. At roughly $15 per subscriber that’s a loss of $9 million dollars per month in revenues. Given this bleak news, I feel somewhat vindicated. I was one of the few if only MMO commentators to have the courage to take on the 800 pound WoW gorilla loved by 12 million fans and tell it like it is.
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