(Warning, many of the opinions expressed in this article are very extreme and written by one for whom WoW has played a major part in his life.)

Someone I know, upon hearing about the closure of APB after as little as three months, commented on how different his teenage life would have been had WoW lasted as short a time. Others agreed with amusing anecdotes about social lives. After the initial smile and a giggle, I actually started to think about it.

And holy shit.

*wibbly dimensional shift noise as you click the read more button*

The Entire Shape of Gaming is Different

Oh my, look at me go. I’ll break this down into different sections, each with a universe number for the different possibilities. I will refer to our own timeline as 616 for reasons that will be clear to anyone who can spend 5 minutes googling or knows what a comic book is.

MMOs

[295]

MMOs, in a form bigger than casual web-games (more on those later), simply don’t exist. Without the massive influx of players to the mega-genre and gaming in general, everything from EVE to Planetside to Everquest died off from lack of interest. Investment oppertunities dried up and, obviously, there wasn’t a huge cash cow and player base making developers want to try it. It now holds the same position as the second-person shooter in our reality – a clever idea brought up by inspired, brave or very stupid indie developers from time to time and often forgotten during the inevitable hangover.

Even in the east MMOs are smaller, as lack of any sort of proof that westerners may wish to play MMOs has kept companies from attempting expansion. Those that have taken tentative steps find the slog incredibly hard with the lack of triple A titles to point at and say “kinda like that”. The PC Bangs of these nations have kept their grind-focused titles popular but language and cultural barriers have prevented western companies from seeking exposure successfully.

[1610]

EVE became the success story of the MMO scene. Thanks to increased broadband usage across the globe it quickly gained massive popularity. With the additional funds, CCP managed to create systems by which their one-server policy still allowed for acceptable latency. This is achieved via the hiring of Blizzard staff laid off after the failure that was WoW eventually incorporating cross-server and phasing technology on a slightly faster time-frame than WoW due to it being a main concern of CCP. In tandem with this and with similar causes, EVE’s early game becomes much more friendly while maintaining the massive progression possibilities and PvP focus. This snowballs into millions of players spouting the brilliance of an MMO that allows you to specialise so freely and does not cut off your progression simply because you are not always online.

In the east, the lack of blood or even humanoid shapes made negotiations with rating boards (and governments), of South Korea and China particularly, easier than Blizzard’s 616 counterpart. Expansion into this area was therefore quicker and Eve’s growth faster than even WoW here. Eastern patrons loved not having to choose between one game and the other, alt-tab mining with their favourite grinds or simply logging on every now and again to train skills. 616 Blizzard’s pay-per-hour system obviously doesn’t work, so CCP incorporate paying per skill you wish to train based on how long it will take. This and a small charge for actually playing on servers form three payment possibilities – training skills on a character you cannot play, playing on a character who cannot train or the best of both worlds.

Nobody ever, ever spells EVE “EvE”

[2301]

Grind-tacular MMOs become massively popular in the west as companies with an already solid player base invest large amounts of money in attracting and expanding to a western audience. With money to continue to push, none fail as WoW did and eventually attract massive player bases. Eastern gamer culture – PC Bangs, popularised gaming and the like – begin to seep into western society. Progression is incredibly slow compared to either our or an EVE-centric timeline but eventually numbers reach WoW and beyond levels, though spread across many more games.

These player counts lead to numbers that would seem atmospheric to us as gaming becomes as acceptable a social occassion as seeing a play, watching a movie or going to a sporting event, much as it is in South Korea and other Asian nations.

Blizzard
[295]

Massive lay offs and firings after WoWs shambolic launch leave the company a shell of what it once was. Its reputation for “never having released a bad game” is shattered and becomes, along with WoW, this generation’s DNF-level joke. Half hearted attempts to revive other franchises never see release as the company collapses in on itself. Talented staff find jobs elsewhere and companies such as Massive and Bioware are better for it. Those who still believe the MMO can become a success join eastern companies attempting expansion but few see any success. Millions less people have any idea who Bobby Kotick is.

[1610]

The main production staff of WoW effectively move to CCP with little exception. Backroom deals, buyouts and exchange of technology and resources keeps the company afloat, allowing it to finish development on StarCraft II several years before 616. Upon release it is a success, though not as polished as the 616 counterpart, leading to a large split in the StarCraft community between the original and its successor. With proof that they are still able to create quality products, Blizzard is bought up by the newly formed EA-CCP as RTS and RPG developers. This leads to releases for Diablo 3 and WarCraft 4 (which, rightly by all accounts, completely ignores the events of WoW) and the continued development of StarCraft II.

[2301]

Eastern gaming culture’s expansion allows Blizzard to barely stay afloat with royalties gained from hastily made StarCraft and WarCraft 3 related deals. Though they are, in general, being ripped off for less than the licenses to run tournaments and broadcast such should be worth, the legal battles to earn more would shut the company down long before any pay out was seen. Efforts are focused on supporting the professional scenes for both of these games as it is a major source of income and balance patches are released for WarCraft 3 in greater number. As grindy MMOs begin to find their grip, Blizzard begins to develop and eventually releases a version of WoW more geared towards the emerging market. It joins the many Lineage clones in sufficing, taking on a Prey-style legend as the game that was released after decade(s) of development.

Casual Gaming
[295]

Seeing WoWs massive failure, indie companies are less inclined to create even browser based online games. Single player Flash also take a hit as always-online gaming in general is seen as a landmine. Knowledge that every day citizens can get into gaming easily is slightly deminished. However, with ever increasing connectivity, something eventually must fill the void and, once initial exploration proves successful, games such as Farmville and the like prove as massively, ridiculously popular as in 616; and eventually more so. Free MMOs such as Runescape gain in users but are incredibly wary of increasing their prices or expanding their commercial portential – to the point that some even decrease costs in an attempt to gain an advantage over competitors and thus get ahead in races for advertising, now worth much more than actual users.

[1610]

With the popularity of EVE, casual online gaming takes on a different shape. Progression continuing without being online is seen as the norm, allowing users to enjoy a much wider variety. However, this leads to drops in advertising revenue for all but the most incredibly popular. As server costs for maintaining an online presence for every user begin to increase leading many games into situations they cannot afford as advertising revenue cannot keep up with how popular their game is. This particular economical balls-up rights itself before it can destroy the scene forever but puts everything from Forumwarz to Bejewelled on massive delays, with only those with the best actual gameplay surviving.

[2301]

In parallel with 295, web games attempt to fill the void left by WoW, but are interrupted by the rise of eastern MMOs and culture. As gaming becomes a social passtime, it becomes much more acceptable to run them outside a browser window. Social networking games still exist but are vastly diminished in favour of whatever MMO a group of friends prefers.

Gaming Developments
[295]

With the stigma attributed to MMOs fresh in developer’s minds, the surge towards co-op and multiplayer that has been seen in recent years is not found. Purely single-player games have a resurgancy, particularly the adventure game genre. Bioshock 2 and Dead Space 2 have as much multiplayer as Mass Effect. Red Alert 3′s campaign is an altogether more personal affair. Telltale’s episodic series take off incredibly as an example of a genre that can be both enjoyable and educational in a world where other people in games is seen as getting in the way unless you’re shooting at them. Wary companies refuse to create some of the massively multiplayer shooters that exist in 616. In addition, the RPG revolution of the last few years where in every game that is released has some form of levelling, purchasing or grinding occurs much slower as it is not made so obvious that this is something that is incredibly popular.

[1610]

The one phrase that inspired me to waste all this time coming up with fanciful scenarios in alternate timelines was this: “in fact, all the big MMO companies would probably be trying to copy eve right now because it survived”

This is true here in all facets of gaming. The WoW-a-likes, both online and offline, that we have in 616 are gone, replaced with continual progression and interaction while away from they keyboard. The “always online” access that modern peoples enjoy is exploited to its fullest, allowing players of every sort to hook their smart phones and netbooks into websites and applications that control how their game characters spend their time while they aren’t with them.

[2301]

Now that grinding games are the most popular there are, the RPG super-genre mentioned earlier really takes hold. A game that doesn’t have central hubs, quests, currency and upgrades is seen as terribly behind the times. Auto-aim has a resurgence in FPS games as the asian culture of playing games as a side-activity while with friends spreads and the less attention that has to be paid to a game is seen as a benefit.

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This article was started in late July and finished roughly 10 minutes ago. It isn’t perfect, and could have used some more work in the intervening time (more than zero, that is) to have it in a state I wanted it. However, it was also a laugh to write, and I hope you enjoyed reading.

A piece on the evolution, increased popularity and significance of multiplayer and MMOs. Er. Look I needed a bit to put before the jump okay.

The proliferation of the internet went pretty well. The populations of the first world are now almost completely connected, whenever they wish to be. You can tweet from your phone, blog from your mp3 player and strafe-jump using nothing but the power of Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer. Hell, even OnLive, the “it’s never gonna happen” Crysis-on-an-Eee project, has entered beta. So, as our connectivity and speeds increased PC gaming began to exploit the new technology and create greater, more complex multiplayer experiences than had been available anywhere else before. The MMO, the co-op RTS and every possible way of chatting known to man – video, audio and text given their own dedicated, multinational services and networks – developed for the masses.

That has led to where we are today: almost every game is released with a multiplayer component; every big company is wanting a slice of the HolyGrailPie that is subscription based MMOs and it is becoming increasingly left to the indie and smaller developers to provide single-player focused genres such as the adventure – most of which are deployed via digital download only. Multiplayer has become an addiction. Let our first investigation be into MMOs and the simple question: why?

Answer: $70 a second, every second, every day. World of WarCraft’s ~12.5 million playerbase paying ~$14.95 per month. On to this you add the sales of the actual boxed game and expansions; the deals made with card game companies, model makers, internet streamers, peripheral makers; the money made from mergers all thanks to the popularity and quality of a singular game. Not only this but the attention it draws to other titles by the same company – how many WoW players are now proud owners of Diablo Battlechests and StarCraft II pre-orders?

This provides resources for what your designers, programmers and artists love doing – making games. Money gives you time, time gives you quality and, theoretically, quality gives you money. It allows you to build bigger studios; hire more experienced directors; create larger, more talented teams. That is why everyone wants an MMO. That is why we have seen so many lame copies and half-assed attempts at a bit of the cake. That is why so many brilliant ideas may have been wasted.

Think of one of the many MMOs released in recent years, successful, sufficing or failed. How many could have made superb single-player titles? Imagine if, instead of buying server clusters they had hired cinematic designers and voice actors; turned those vaguely entertaining set-pieces into works of pre-rendered beauty and those lines of text into enthusiastically acted dialogue. Unchanging, unliving universes becoming worlds where choices matter, characters die, endings happen.

I am not blind to the faults of my ideas – MMOs are good too. They allow for socialisation on an epic scale, teamwork on a level most could never experience. It allows for games to go on “forever”, your character never dying and his fate eternally in your hands. This appeals to me as much as any of you, I played WoW for years, I will play it again no doubt. But I worry for the future as well – for APB, Final Fantasy XIV, Star Trek, The Secret World and the various superhero games. All games with brilliant ideas and (from previews and media) talented development teams behind them; all games that could be ruined by the costs of servers and massive support teams, not to mention the natural limitations of MMOs relating to difficulty and logistics. I hope they do well, I look forward to playing them and I cannot wait to experience them with my friends; but in the current climate original, non-standard games do not need any additional penalties towards their chances of success.

Of course, not every game released or announced “recently” has been an MMO. Now we move onto what I think is the more worrying side of current trends – co-op. A feature so widely requested, one that can be so much fun in the right environment. There are games I have spent literally hours thinking “Man, this would be so brilliant with ventrilo and a couple of friends” (looking at you Mass Effect) and I enjoyed Left 4 Dead as much as the next sensible man. Sadly, we have the same over-application problem – situations where the addiction to multiplayer has hindered rather than helped. Take Red Alert 3: not the worst game you’ll ever play, but a certainly flawed single-player. Perhaps if, instead of developing a passable AI system (that still caused frustration and rage in the more complex missions) and designing every single map around two bases, there had been a focus on quality gameplay I would have actually bothered to finish all three campaigns and purchased the expansion.

This extends to the future too – Borderlands, the ridiculously highly anticipated RPG from Gearbox, is a very exciting looking game. A lovely art style, comedy feel and the first high-profile FPSRPG not to come out of Bethesda. With a squad of four members at its head and a strong focus on the co-op aspect of their play, it is only natural to be excited.  However, perhaps one of the reasons Mass Effect worked so well was because you couldn’t bring in friends to take control. While the AI of your team-mates did have the odd bug, it didn’t seem to matter, as all they were ever meant to do was follow you. Once that AI has to deal with the ability to do everything a player can, it is much more likely to bug out.

Another side to this is that a game experience crafted around cooperative play can be thoroughly mediocre when played alone. Left 4 Dead is – there just isn’t the same character in the pre-generated … characters. Again, I simply worry that those of us who prefer to play alone (or have odd gaming hours or dodgy internet connections) will be swept aside in the pursuit of an elusive, possibly non-existent, crowd.

You may ask: why play alone? Well, other than obvious answers of “because I don’t have too many gaming friends” and “other people suck”, I do not like dependence on others attendance to continue to enjoy a gaming experience I have paid for. This is uniquely a co-op problem, as MMOs are closer to a single-player game with other people in it (at least some of the time) and deathmatch or competitive games do not lend themselves so well to playing with the same crowd over and over. Indeed, currently I take part in a supposedly weekly Pen ‘n’ Paper RPG session that has been postponed for a month so far, simply because not everyone was available at the same time for a multitude of reasons. This problem is present in enough situations as it is, an expansion into gaming is not something I approve of.

It must be said that this addiction has provided some of the gaming related applications ever.  Look at services such as Steam which have become primary distribution platforms for games that otherwise may not have been successful – Audiosurf, arguably the best money I’ve ever spent, being a primary example. The continuing growth of e-sports is also something that should be nurtured as much as possible, Blizzard Entertainment’s Battle.net 2.0 seemingly leading the brunt of the charge in that direction after over a decade of community dedication. Both of these services (along with others such as XBOX Live and Playstation Network) also provide ways in which single-player can be improved through stat tracking and achievements as well as automated patching mechanisms to ensure bugs are fixed quickly.

But the positives I really want to focus on are the truly unique games that have come out of the multiplayer focused. Let the first example be Eve Online, a game that simply would not work without other players. The intricacies (including, as mentioned yesterday, espionage) of massive scale PvP, alliance vs. alliance combat, while remaining something I merely strive to take part in, are not something that can be simulated by the utterly inferior AI we currently have access to. Perhaps it never will. There are elements of this that are true of all MMOs, such as the variable economy or simple unpredictability of humanity. Deep.

Lastly, there are the rare, oft brilliant MMOFPSs. This is a genre I am so very excited about the future of. Rumours that Blizzard’s unannounced MMO is of this type keep me on tenterhooks – you know they’ll do it right. Planetside, despite still being stupidly expensive to play, is a constant temptation that I sadly have not yet had the time and money to take part in but the concept of WoW- or even Eve-scale play with differing mechanics interests me. As an extension of this, the possibilities of the MMORTS, a concept still very much in the Alpha phase of its life, are something I think we will see a massive interest in as we enter the next decade and internet connections become still more powerful in more locations.

If anything is to be gleaned from this article, it is that multiplayer is something that will, and should, continue to expand. But it should also be noted that it is not the be all and end all of gaming, that the individual’s experience is still important to some games and that if that experience is lost or replaced then that could be a grievous blow to one of the things that makes gaming unique: different every time due to your own actions, and your own actions alone.

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Or in short, wordwordswordswordswords. Man I liked writing that, and have been meaning to for a while.  Wish I’d been able to put some images in, but the writing took longer than I was expecting.

I was wanting to do a review today but technical difficulties prevented me doing so, hopefully that will happen tomorrow. I also have an idea for an interview that may materialise, as well as associated work with gaming websites. My weekly newsletter for StarCraft Legacy should also be available tomorrow.