4mo ago

Former Ultima Online lead says MMOs have 'been in a rut for a long time', and that cozy games like Animal Crossing have been filling a non-theme park hole

www.pcgamer.com

7 comments

Interesting. I still play an oldschool MMO (FFXI) because modern MMOs don't capture the same magic. I'll be curious to try this game when it drops.
- still have not seen anything that looks as good as champions and star trek online for me. Im partial to massive customization of looks and build along with super immersive environments with day night cycles and nps and such that you can hang around and be just awed by how the landscape, floura, fauna, and npcs interact.
I'm one of those people. I played New World recently. It's a great game to turn off your brain, chop wood, and occasionally be a hero a bit so you can chop more wood.
Also, MMOs and always being online just isn't my thing anymore. Group raiding, climbing the power ladder, killing the big bad?
No thanks I just want to chop wood and decorate my house.
I'd be curious to see how they handle the problems which have cropped up with similar systems in the past. Player housing, for example, can be an absolute nightmare. I was actively playing UO back when they implemented player housing, and it was a clusterfuck. You couldn't go three steps without slamming into someone's house and most of them ended up being owned by a few big guilds, because space was at such a premium that no one else could afford one. And with the land so littered with houses, they had to create an alternate world to quest in, which specifically didn't allow player houses. I can also see the systems they are designing becoming a playground rife for griefing. Look at that nice home you built. It would be a shame if someone diverted a river into it while you weren't online.
MMO's greatest strength can also be their greatest weakness: and that strength is other people. The more open and free-form a world is, the easier it is for the griefers to find and exploit edge cases.
- Player housing in pretty much every MMO I've played other than UO and Asheron's Call has been instanced so everyone can have a house that is just in its own special space like with Anarchy Online, Final Fantasy 11, and LOTRO.
  Personally, I always liked UO and AC's system more. Having houses in the world (and actually being able to build them yourself) was always more fun and rewarding. And I was a player who only had a small stone tower in the middle of the big swamp full of poisonous snakes so that just exiting my house was risking death.
  
  Sure, but also having non-instanced housing heavily favors those with more time and/or money. I played Arche Age during its initial launch, but I had to work during the time they released housing plots. By the time I was able to log on, the only available plots were out in the middle of nowhere, which sucked with the limited fast travel options. You also have FFXIV with its instanced housing districts, where on many servers, good luck trying to get a plot. Sure, you could join a FC who has a house and claim a room, but that's pretty lame compared to being able to design the whole house + surrounding yard.
I remember when UO wasn't even a theme-park MMO.

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