That’s what the next big MMORPG needs to revolutionize the genre

The biggest and most successful MMORPGs are theme park games. They focus on story content, area exploration, dungeons, raids, and instanced PvP. But they all share one problem: the content is used up faster than the developers can deliver it later. In order to trigger a big hype again, the new MMORPGs need the help of the players, says MeinMMO editor Alexander Leitsch.

After its release in 2004/2005, WoW created a hype about MMORPGs. This was also due to the fact that WoW broke with some traditions of the genre and thus revolutionized MMORPGs:

• Getting into the game was easier than in any other MMORPG before.
• Death was not punished harshly, such as by losing equipment or experience, as was common in old games.
• While WoW wasn’t the first MMORPG to use instances, no game focused on it as much as WoW.
• There was competition between Alliance and Horde, but PvP in the open world was not compulsory because there were extra PvE servers.

Of course, the background story of Warcraft, Blizzard’s budget and the graphics, which were good for the time, also played a role. But WoW made such an impressive mark on the genre that many more games followed, later referred to as “WoW clones”.

But since then there have not been any major changes in MMORPGs. Even today, the new games are either based on the WoW formula for success or try to get the “old school” feeling of old titles like Ultima Online or Dark Age of Camelot in a modern MMORPG.

But in order to actually have a huge success, you need another (small) revolution. And I see that in the cooperation between players and developers.

By the way, copying WoW was not enough to be successful, as these examples show here:

Player-generated content for endless PvE fun

The big problem that new Themepark MMORPGs keep having is missing endgame content. No matter how good the start and the level phase are, the game content is always too thin at the end. That was a major criticism of ESO’s launch and is still being blamed on New World today.

I see the solution in editors and programs that are easy to use and in which players can create their own content:

• You can create dungeons and raids, and sometimes make this content so difficult that other players struggle with it for weeks or months.
• You could build your own areas – with quest lines, world bosses and other challenges.
• Even your own PvP arenas or even complete PvP modes would be possible.

Of course you have to weigh something here. Areas and quest lines should be approved by the developers and officially implemented just for the sake of fairness. Otherwise exploits or game-destroying bugs would be possible here.

But I see huge potential, especially with your own dungeons, raids and PvP modes. Since these are instantiated, they have no direct impact on the game world.

Theoretically, it would even be possible to do without loot and rewards completely, as I believe that players are often satisfied with experiencing this content at all, getting world firsts or organizing events that you experience as a guild or broadcast on Twitch.

Many games show that developing your own content is a great asset:

• Skyrim is still a popular game today, partly because the modding community is always coming up with new content worthy of an addon.
• Pure sandbox games like Minecraft thrive on crazy servers or communities.
• In Super Mario Maker, people build the toughest levels ever, and players have fun completing just such challenges.

Some of the modders are so good that they even get a job with the developers afterwards, as was the case with a modder on Fallout 4 and Bethesda.

No revolution on the horizon, also because EverQuest Next failed

When I look at the MMORPGs that will be released in the next few years, I’m actually not very pessimistic. Ashes of Creation is sure to be hyped and relies to some extent on sandbox elements such as conquering, leveling and expanding cities. So players create new content themselves.

But at its core, Ashes of Creation is a PvP MMORPG and while I’m going to have a lot of fun with it, I know the masses will go for theme park and even single player elements. Ashes of Creation will probably not be able to bind these players for long, as it focuses too much on social communities.

NCSoft’s upcoming Throne and Liberty also has a strong PvP focus, while Justice Online looks so much like an Asian MMORPG that it probably won’t get a fair chance in the West.

Even apart from these big titles, I don’t see any MMORPG that relies as heavily on player-generated content as would be necessary for a major revolution in the genre. Only in the past, with EverQuest Next, has there been a game that sounded exactly like what I wanted it to be. Unfortunately, the game failed, as did two other titles that also wanted to revolutionize the genre:

What do you think about the future of the MMORPG? Does it need player generated content? What would be a big innovation that would immediately captivate you?

Twitch streamer Asmongold has his own vision of MMORPGs in the future. Its revolution is based on a different technology:

Major MMORPG streamer says future of genre lies in new technology