MMOs: Are we due for a Renaissance?

There was a post made recently on the League of Legends subreddit suggesting that it was the perfect opportunity for Riot to “take the MMO market by storm” and usher in a new era of MMOs. This was prompted by the departure of some core Blizzard employees, mainly Ben Brode, and Michael Morhaime stepping down as CEO. This wasn’t the first time this idea has come up and I’d thought I’d give my thoughts about the viability of it.

While I was a hardcore MMO player before, I think people have forgotten some crucial information when they look back fondly with their rose-tinted glasses. Concepts and designs that were created back then just do not work in the current gaming landscape.

The Importance of Time

Back in the early 2000s, the amount of games published was considerably smaller to what it is now. Free-to-play was not even a major concept and most people were still console-only players. So while the Internet grew and more people used it, the amount of multiplayer games for the PC was tiny. If you wanted to play a shooter, it was between Counter-Strike and Quake. If you wanted to play an MMO, it was between Runescape and World of Warcraft. There were other smaller games, like Tibia and Maplestory, and older games like Everquest and Ultima Online, but most stuck to one game.

The reason this is important to outline is due to how it affected the players. With so little choices to explore, most people stuck to one game. If you had a problem with a game, you couldn’t find a replacement at the drop of a hat. Players learned to deal with certain aspects of the game and accepted the flaws that came with it.

Additionally, players were more willing to spend a large amount of their time in the game. Most games were not designed around instant gratification, but more to keep players engaged and embraced in a fictional world. The developers designed MMOs as a way for players to enjoy their lives in another world, and rewarded those that devoted their time and effort into it.

This was great and there was little to no qualms behind “grind”. It was just an accepted requirement that to succeed in an MMO, time and effort were necessary. This was until the current generation of players, ranging from early teenage to early adulthood, had to escape their virtual lives and pursue their real ones. Suddenly, these players could no longer devote all the time and effort that was demanded by MMOs and the gaming industry noticed.

As the generation that grew up with MMOs matured and inherited responsibilities, the gaming industry had to adapt. There was now a large influx of players that had little time to devote to any single game but were more eager to spend for a quality product.

“Casuals Only”

A common phrase that players used when hyping up new MMOs was “the MMO that kills WoW”. But no MMO truly killed World of Warcraft. No, what caused the reigning king in gaming to drop to their knees was a genre that catered to a new mindset within the gaming industry: the MOBA.

A Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) was a game previously described as an Action Real Time Strategy (ARTS) but more polished and fleshed out. These could be found in mods for Starcraft and Warcraft 3, but it wasn’t until League of Legends was released that the gaming industry took notice.

League of Legends was a game that checked all the marks that players were unknowingly looking for:

• It was free.
• It was easy to run on most machines.
• It had a progression system that didn’t impact the core gameplay.
• It offered quick gameplay that was similar but new with every match.
• It rewarded skill.

All of this propelled Riot Games, which had never developed a product prior, into instant success. It established a new era of gaming and with it four concepts that carried into other genres: free, fast, familiar, and fair. These concepts, while not groundbreaking on their own, were combined in a matter not seen before. This, in my opinion, is where the MMO (at least how we knew it) died.

MMOs were the opposite of the new trend in gaming. They weren’t designed to be “beaten” quickly. If an MMO was too familiar to another, there wouldn’t be a reason to play it over an existing one. But if it strayed too far from the usual, players wouldn’t put the time or effort to learn it. And those that did quickly left it as an MMO requires player presence to succeed, and without numbers the game would quickly dwindle.

These concepts continued into the more recent genre that took the gaming industry by force: Battle Royale. If you take the Battle Royale juggernaut Fortnite and compare it to League of Legends, you see tons of similarities even though they are in different genres.

Both create a cycle of familiarity while providing different experiences. While both games have a sense of progression, it’s all contained within a player’s account outside the scope of the gameplay. And while the games may all start the same way with the same rules, each match plays out vastly different from the other.

They both have short game times. Fortnite has an average game time of 20 minutes, while League of Legends clocks in at about 30 minutes. Even at their extremes, it would be difficult for either game to last more than an hour.

Both are designed to be fair. League of Legends starts everyone off with the same amount of gold and experience, with previous games having no impact on the current. Fortnite launches everyone with the same tools and location opportunities, giving everyone a chance to scramble and collect resources. Fortnite, while having random looting and luck involved, does not prefer one player to another. League of Legends, while providing a large roster of characters, does tend to make balancing sweeps to try and keep the game as balanced as possible. Additionally, both refrain from selling any microtransactions that would provide an edge in the gameplay.

Lastly, they’re both free. What’s better than free?

Is There Any Hope?

Large amounts of MMOs have been released with new systems and designs but ultimately fall flat either way. The most recent in memory being Wildstar, which was a title developed by ex-Blizzard developers. Some MMOs are sustainable such as Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls: Online, Black Desert Online, and Final Fantasy XIV, but are nowhere near the talk of the block as the genre once was.

With that said, new ideas and concepts may arise that allow the MMO to retake it’s throne but I don’t see it happening for awhile. MMOs may make a resurgence with the help of virtual reality headsets. There is definitely potential for the technology to be beneficial for MMOs if integrated properly, but I don’t see it happening for at least another decade.

For players urgently seeking an MMO to scratch that itch, I believe it’s best to just revisit an old favorite and hope that some new content has been released. But if you’re hoping to play a League of Legends MMO, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. The risks are incredibly high with trends that do not seem to be changing anytime soon.