VG247 got a chance to talk to Blizzard COO Paul Sams ahead of last night’s Lich King launch. All standard product-waxing was there, and Sams even made a few mutterings in the direction of their new MMO, which has been in the first stages of production for quite some time now. “We want to create a great game,” he said. “Something that’s cool, and new, and different, and kind of next generation in terms of look and feel and gameplay. That’s a challenging endeavour.”
No word on schedule yet, as the Blizzard team still aren’t 100% sure of this “new” direction: “We want to have a level of confidence that the direction we’re going in the right one, and that it’s polished enough to be able to show something, also. And we’re not in either of those places yet.”
It’s worth remembering that WoW was seen as a huge risk when it was originally in development. Any number of pundits predicted that it would break the company, that it was even – gasp! – too radical to really be a major success. Now of course we see it as a pillar of establishment commercial gaming, but it’s worth remembering that Blizzard took a big risk before, and now have more than enough money to do it again. So, speculation hat on folks: What will a second Blizzard MMO be like? And if you can bare to drop your Robes of Cynicism +5 for a moment, what should it be like in an ideal world? I think I’ve talked too much about this in the past, so let’s open up the floor, and some brains…
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@R.
Can you link sources, please?
i remember when WoW was announced, it was going to be new and different… he he he.
EVE’s formula is new; even EVE doesn’t use EVE’s formula, but largely due to an overwhelming amount of non-EVE formula content distracting from it. CCP don’t seem to be paying attention to fact that even 0.0 space where there is no law is safer than low-sec space, where there is law but no enforcement; which is good if you’re a criminal but not if you’re any other kind of player.
It’s shameful that the artistically compromised WoW has become a cultural phenomenom but EVE has not, instead relying on being the most loved alternative. Mythic unfortunately failed to keep to what Paul Barnett described as “If you try to be the Beatles, you’ll end up being the Monkees. We’re trying to be Led Zepplin” because EVE already was the Led Zepplin. You would have thought if they were seriously trying to be alternative to WoW, they would have made Warhammer more like EVE. Instead we got more of WoW: instances, grinds, little actual war. WAR is now officially the Monkees.
I’m slowly starting to go off MMOs completely. I don’t understand why developers can repeatedly get it wrong and fail to exploit the most promising types of gameplay that would benefit from a persistent massively-multiplayer world. Instead we get types of gameplay that belong in either single-player or ordinary multi-player games.
Why do instanced PvP when Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 do it better?
Why do quests when The Elder Scrolls and The Legend of Zelda do it better?
Why do team-based dungeon-crawls when Diablo 2, Baldur’s Gate and the Left4Dead demo do it WAY better?
The one gameplay type that actually depends on an MMO infrastructure is competitive, player-VS-player, faction-VS-faction sandboxing. Almost no modern MMOs have attempted this and EVE sought of had it spoiled by excessive protection that gave me as a new player back in 2005 the false impression that losing a ship or being pod-killed was the end of everything. The system security mechanic probably gives many others the same false impression too.
I don’t really like the Blizzard games, but I think will deliver something “original” with some real impresive quality, and thats whats the world really need.
¡Good luck Blizzard!.
Completely agreed with Gorgeras. Even EVE doesn’t always fully follow its own unique formula, at least most content that’s been added in 2008 hasn’t (although, the new stuff has been mostly welcome).
Gah, how I long for a well-done pure sandbox MMO made with a big budget…
By the way Gorgaras.. Have you ever played WoW? I don’t know why, but I fondly remember an orc with that name on my old server (Defias Brotherhood), which must have been several years ago already.
100% agree with Gorgaras
My analogy of EvE is to imagine someone inventing the wheel back when the wheel wasn’t invented, but also inventing the machine gun at the same time and operted so the machine gun (which doesn’t need to reload) would randomly fire bullets when you tried to use the wheel.
Bloody bloody mess, and you problably wouldn’t want it like that but for crying out loud, THE WHEEL WAS A GOOD IDEA.
Everyone secretly 100% agrees with me, but only because the alternative to my absurd version of events is something far more terrible.
I was Gorgeras on Defias Brotherhood, yes. That was one of three versions of him I played as, all were Shaman. The Gorgeras on Hellscream is not me and I’ve always been annoyed that apparently some GM saw fit to make my name no longer unique when this pleb had a naming violation.
I quit WoW after the slowest creeping of disillusionment in history, only staying so long because I’d miss my friends there so much. The PvP-fest it was sold as between 2003-2005 never happened and significant changes were made to the game in the first six months to disguise the heavy PvP-ness of it that almost everyone else seems to have forgotten.
Those same people laugh at me when I tell them Warlock’s were once a Hybrid class and along with Priests they were intended to be able to do decent melee DPS. Before ridiculous Everquest-inspired design was introduced, they were actually quite good at it too thanks to the plentiful cloth items with Strength and Agility stats.
It can’t be different, what else can an MMO be???
It will have either A) Swords and magic or B) Guns and tech or C) A Mix of both.
It will NOT be the standard MMO 3rd person walk around a magical/alternate world.
It is not going to be an MMO puzzle game.
It is not going to be MMO World of Goo.
It is not going to be different or original. There are hundreds of games for every genre and all the good quality ones are MMO allready. There are bad quality ones also and there are indy games also.
I can’t imagine MMO N or MMO Desktop Tower Defence working to be honest…or MMO Solitaire.
So this leaves FPS. When I am right, you can buy me a beer.
I want more guild interaction. In WoW, a guild is basically just a group for raiding and Guild Banks were a pain in the ass to manage. I want to see more management tools regarding community aspects of the game. I buy MMORPGs to play with people online (my buddies in RL and ones I meet online). I dont buy it to grind by myself. I think the focus should be on community and group play. It is something that until GoW2 and L4D recently came out, console era was strugglin bigtime with my passion of sharing my game experience and play with someone. Anyhow, Blizz makes great games, and I will continue to buy them. I can argue, dare to be great and make another Title that is just outta nowhere and is a huge success. Or I can argue, if it aint broke, dont fix it. What you have is raking in 100+ million a month. Im no mathematician here but god that is insane.
I bitch piss and moan about dumb stuff all the time in a game. It is because i care and enjoy it so much. If you dont get people getting pissy about small things, then start to worry about the shit franchise you just made.
Hah. So it really is the dirty cigar-smoking orc that also gave a very cool speech during the huge War Council meeting in the Gurubashi Arena (among the most impressive events in WoW ever, I’m sure), I think I still have a screenshot of you standing there somewhere. Anyway, I was one of those Second Gurubashi Empire trolls and actually ended up as guildmaster of that guild for over a year or so. Ah well, happy I left WoW though. :)
Small world.
(sorry for offtopic chatter)
Things Blizzard’ll need to do capture the ’serious-gamer-but-thinks-MMO’s-are-shit market’ (in which I include myself)
1) No grind. I REALLY hate levelling up.
2) No grind. How can people enjoy this? I’d settle for less grind, or better yet, grind hidden by all the amazing fun you’re having.
3)Nothing with war or age in the title. In fact, no swords ‘n’ sourcery or far future interstellar space travel, period. Its been done to death and is B o r i n g. New idea maybe?
4) Real time combat, really, this is must. I want to click mouse-left to fire or punch or whatever, not use a menu system.
5) I know, get rid of combat all together, most games with combat in are really just excuses for teenage boys to vent any feeling of latent homosexuality anyway. Gears of War exists for this reason alone. In fact you know what? Fuck it. MMO’s will always be shit. I’m gonna go play World of Goo and PicPic (thanks Mr Walker!).
“this is actually rather chin-strokingly intriguing.”
Holy crap, I was ACTUALLY stroking my chin when I read it too, hahaha.
I’d really, really love an FPS MMO based on Starcraft. In fact, the.. err… fact it hasn’t been done is insane. Come on, who WOULDN’T play that?
Oh, and kudos to the ADOM reference above!
New and different? my arse.
(yes, my arse is new and different, at least as much as any Blizzard MMO will ever be!)
Your arse is well polished?
I hope it’s World of Starhammer. Online. Craft.
of Duty.
A game where the players built it as they went along always sounded like an awesome idea in my head…
Start out as a forest or whatever, players wear roads as lots of players pass over a point, cities would spring up at key areas…. It probably couldn’t be done, but I can fantasize.
Evolving armor and weapons would be nice. That way everyone’s not just a copy of their neighbor and gives character types and abilities more customability. Oooh, and creating your own character type instead of getting a list of what you can be.
There are a lot of ideas from old MMOs that I’d love to see back. Asheron’s Call 2 had some amazing features similar to what people have mentioned: A dynamic world, one that evolved depending on the players. For example, each town started out in shambles, but depending on the population of players hanging out in that town, it regrew and started having quests and NPCs to interact with. Also, the forge, required for crafting, was fueled specifically by the players. They would have to harvest resources from around the world to fuel the forge so people could craft and rebuild.
Unfortunately Asheron’s Call 2 was shipped so unfinished I considered it pre-beta. It was an amazing world though.
Then there’s the Saga of Ryzom, which is a great game I only played briefly. You basically earned spell modifiers instead of full blown spells. So you could create an entirely customizable spell depending on the situation and your play style (do you want “long range, big damage and costs lots of mana” or “short range, weak damage, but essentially free”) … I found that system to be incredibly innovative.
Then there’s Planetside, which I still have a hankering to bust out at times. One of the best MMO games ever, if it weren’t for the lag and how unbalanced things can get. I loved that it was an FPS though and it was all PvP on a global scale.
There are a lot of fantastic ideas out there that failed for many reasons… I only hope that Blizzard gathers them up and polishes the hell out of them to create a truly fun game. I don’t care if it’s “unique” or “innovative”… I want something that’s fun to play and always evolving.
If Blizzard will be creating anything, lets hope to the heavens that they aim to actually attract MMO veterans who have scorned them ever since they’ve released this pinnacle of a treadmill game called WoW. Let’s hope that Blizzard releases a game where REAL skill is needed. Let’s hope that they create a World Simulator, something akin to Ultima Online BEFORE Trammel ruined it. Let’s hope that they create something serious to compete with Darkfall or Mortal Online(both games I can’t wait to play). I want to join a world, not a “game”. I’ve had enough of the same garbage being spat out by this industry EQ, AO, WoW, AoC, WAR ect ect…. Blizzard has the power to turn this entire industry around and go back to MMORPG roots, go back to the times where players shaped the environment in a seamless world without instances instead of the devs shaping the world for the player. I hope Blizzard begins catering to MMO vets instead of going after MMORPG noobs. But this is probably just wishful thinking…