What makes an MMO a success?

There’s an easy answer to that: people throwing money at developers in order to keep playing. So with that in mind, I’m going to rephrase that question to better suit my needs with this article. What is it that makes the MMO genre so popular and awesome and what makes an MMO a success?

There’s no easy answer to this, MMO is a vast and rich landscape to explore both metaphorically and literally. Now hold on a second there, noble readers, what could I possibly mean by this? How could it be literal?Simple, MMOs are more than just Call of Duty, CS:GO, World of Warcraft and the like. If we sit back and have a think, crank up the Mongolian folk metal, we can begin to explain.

Every MMO be it an RPG like WoW, FFXIV, Arche Age or COD, BF or Halo all have things in common that draws in the player. Back when we were little bouncing bundles of joy, think what you want I was adorable as a child, and had yet to pick up a controller/mouse and keyboard the world was huge and strange, filled with magic and excitement. We knew our horizons stretched far beyond our street. As we grew up, went through the education process, we learned that there was no more magic to be beheld, then we got jobs and knew the Real World had it in for us. No continents left to explore and unless we were mega rich or incredibly smart it was unlikely we’d be globe trotting or plumbing the depths of scientific intrigue. Therefore we can come easily to our conclusion, part of the reason MMO (RPGs at the very least) are a success is the unique world each has to offer.

I remember the first time I logged into World of Warcraft, I had no idea what to expect, sure I had played Runescape and the map there had become as familiar to me as my route to school. But when the opening cinematic started up and I was introduced to Teldrasil, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise and my breath catch in my throat. It was mind boggling, a gigantic tree, floating at sea, vibrant with colours, playful wisps danced in the twilight beneath the canopy of the monster tree the Kal’dorei made their home. When the narrator then told me the fate of this world could rest on my shoulders I was sold. I spent weeks roaming the tree and the surrounding forests of north western Kalimdor before my friend messaged me in game saying “Hey, want to try and find Ironforge air port?”. An airport, really? holy moly that sounds cool, I thought and immediately charged off to get a boat, to cross the oceans of Azeroth. But I’m sidetracking here, I’ve played WoW for roughly eight years now( so from round about when TBC launched) and It’s easy to go off on a tangent talking about my early days of hunting dear and running away from those horrible little murloc gits. MMORPGs offer players an entirely new world for them to carve out a new destiny, with new monsters to slay, new quests to hero. This is part of the excitement in my mind, with interstellar travel not expected in my lifetime MMOs offer me and millions of others an escape from the monotony of real life.

        For other examples of maps making a difference to gameplay, we should have a look at the ever popular first person shooters. Every so often I’m round my friend’s house; who is far more into shooter than I am, when it comes to consoles I prefer a good old fashioned hack and slash but I digress, he busies himself showing me the new map pack he has purchased for whatever incarnation of FPS he is currently indulging in. While I sit and scratch my head he’s showing me his best hiding spots, taking the heads from unwary enemy players or gunning them down like dogs. It makes you wonder, why? Why would you pay for a few more levels of content when you already have a few maps you’re good on? It’s simple,  the game play of FPS is highly competitive you want to be the top dog, with the most points, the best Kill to death ratio. With older maps stagnating it makes sense to release more, it evens out the playing field, people have less success at “camping” and the truly skilled players begin to shine, making for a more nail biting match, where every kill is that much sweeter and every death that tiny bit more soul destroying than the last. New maps keep the players happy, which in turn makes a quick buck for the game studio. Whilst I could probably say more my on experience is limited at best, there have been times where I’ve sat and played for hours, my palms sweating, a maniacal grin spreading across my face as I gun down one unfortunate soul, then proceed in slitting the throat of his unwitting mate. It definitely gets the adrenaline going and satiates the blood lust.

I suppose in a sense, it is the Epic Win Factor, that drives MMOs and makes them so popular. The epic win factor was a term coined by some psychologist somewhere… I’ll find the video and include a link when I can.  But I’ll explain the best I can with my limited brain power. The epic win factor is exactly what it sounds like, the rate at which a player feels good about themselves because of in game stimuli. Whether it’s a cheeky knife kill on a FPS or downing the end game boss in an MMORPG, players get a little rush. A sense of accomplishment that is harder and harder to come by as we get older, with less free time during the day these brief moments where we level up, get a bit of choice loot or pull off a miraculous, yet hilarious grenade cluster f- kill. Cluster kill, that where I was going with it, make us feel good and bring us back.

What’s next? The social aspect. Right. Hah, this will be interesting. Have you ever tried playing an MMO alone? Yes? Not fun is it? Games that are massively multi-player in nature usually require some form of team work, this is definitely true in World of Warcraft and Arche Age. While some, so called, MMOs can be played entirely solo for the most part, cough Destiny cough, I feel this defeats the point of an online game. Right, time for a little bit of retrospect here. When I started playing WoW, I was a socially inept, fat nerd. I am now a slightly less awkward, fat nerd. But whilst I spent nearly a year, grinding through the game doing only solo content I was always apprehensive about doing group content, I did not have a clue, did not know my class and it was not until the end of “Wrath of the Lich King”, WoW’s third expansion, did I even hear of rotations. For those of you who don’t know a rotation is the order in which you use your key abilities in order to play effectively.  I’ve completely lost track, where was I going with this? Em. Right, the social aspect of MMOs.  While MMOs can generally hold true with the rest of any internet forum where myriads of people congregate and be themselves, usually there are more than a few twelve year olds telling you that they slept with your mother, these individuals should be ignored. (Personal opinion: hunted down and castrated). MMOs are great because of the social aspect. If you don’t have a lot of like minded people around you where you live, I’d recommend online gaming. In game friends can quickly become real life friends and sometimes we don’t want to be alone. The fact that MMOs greatly expand the number of people you interact with on a day to day basis allows for even the most socially inept of us to make friends, bonds to be forged through the crucible of war, raids or acting like idiots far from the ever judgemental eyes of the real world, I remember having a pool party with my guild in game to celebrate it’s fifth birthday, was fun and we all acted like fools.

Finally, the content. MMOs typically, if belonging to consoles exclusively, see updates, ie new maps, weapon packs, skins and other glamor items, every few months. The same can be said for MMORPGS, with little fixes, new quests, new people to hand us shiny crap we find totally awesome. Big expansions typically come a few years after release, it offers player new stories and new shores to stride valiantly across, weapons in hand, evil to vanquish.

Essentially, MMOs only stagnate for brief periods of time, there is always something to do in those expansive worlds millions of players world we have fallen in love with and regard as their home away from home (while still in home, possibly in their parents basement, which we know is not true, might I add). With new content comes new chance for players to feel good and to escape. A chance to once more become the hero, the wizard, the cat person, the soldier that pulsates inside of them, the secret face we all wish to wear, MMOs let us be the person we just can’t be in the real world.

So to surmise, what makes MMOs awesome:

1.      People throwing money at companies
2.      Expansive worlds to explore and conquer
3.      The Epic Win Factor
4.      Content, never dull for too long

A big thank you to you all for putting up with my ramblings, noble readers.