Colin Johanson doesn't think the MMO is dying. He would say that: he's the studio head of Arenanet, the team behind the Guild Wars series. He's also talking to me directly after showing off combat and movement in the team's next MMO, Guild Wars 3. That said, what is more unexpected is that he says the genre is "as big as it's ever been."
You just need to expand your definition of an MMO.
"You can absolutely argue Fortnite and Path of Exile and Destiny are forms of MMOs," Johanson says. "The line has blended so much between all of them." However, the problem for traditional MMOs is that they've accumulated a lot of baggage over the years. "When we tell people 'Hey you should come play at MMO', their first reaction is 'I don't have time for that'," he says. "Then they'll go play whatever game they love right now for 40 hours that week."
Johanson says that for MMO developers that are willing to "remove some of the archaic things that people associate with MMOs" there is an opportunity to break through.
When I ask for examples of these, the first he points to is what he'd just shown off in his Guild Wars 3 presentation: movement and combat. "Movement systems and combat systems in MMOs are traditionally viewed in one very specific way – [as] two different systems that don't interact at all," Johanson says. "Combat tends to be pretty static and it's tap targeting and it's move, activate ability, stop then, move again. And I think those are things that you just don't see in almost any other genre anymore."
When I saw Guild Wars 3 in action, it looked a lot more like an Assassin's Creed game than an MMO. The player runs along walls, leaps down on enemies from above, and hoofs foes over ledges with a satisfying kick. They still have class abilities, but they are woven into combat and movement that have momentum and force, similar to special abilities in any other third-person action game. It's not so much that it's new – in fact, as I said in my write up last week, it looks what we've seen in games since the early 2000s – it's that it doesn't look like an MMO.
Another way Johanson thinks MMOs need to change – though he's not ready to share Arenanet's plans for doing so – is the perception these games are time sinks. The classic loop is too long, he argues. "You load in, you organise your inventory, you get everything figured out, you set up your skill bar, you go through your quest lists, you teleport to where you need to go, or run there, or flight path there, you organise your group, your group gets together, and all go play together," Johanson says. "By the time you're done, you look at the clock and you spent an hour in the game and you hadn't started playing yet."
Johanson says they need players to know they can have a big three hour play session on a Friday night, but just as easily log in for 20 minutes and "meaningfully make progress in that time". A change like that would put Guild Wars 3 in the same space as Helldivers, Apex Legends, and Arc Raiders. Games where you could log on for a single run, but then keep playing for hours and hours.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/guild-wars-3-dev-wants-you-to-be-able-to-take-a-break-for-months-at-a-time-and-know-youre-not-going-to-be-left-behind
