Brent lobbed the question:

Does the desire for truly significant innovation in MMOs actually mean that you’re looking for the invention of a new genre of games, or are you not looking for the innovation of the MMO genre as much as you’re looking for some small feature development that will add to the overall “cool factor” and immersion of the MMO genre without completely breaking down all of those aforementioned design patterns that we’ve come to know and love?

Cuppy and Darren both responded, and I’m left wondering where the spirit and fire have gone. “Myself personally, I will probably die playing a Fantasy-themed MMO”, says Cuppy. I can dig it, I can understand that … but what’s wrong with Sci-Fi? What’s wrong with Steampunk? Moreover, how is a genre change being confused for innovation? Slapping a new skin on WoW isn’t going to make it innovative; it will just be the same damn thing in a Klingon suit.

Innovation is change, and I do agree with Cuppy that people (MMOG players especially) are resistent to any big change. The downside to this, though, is that if players are content with milquetoast-samey rehashes of elves and orcs over and over again, we’ll be playing World of Warcraft : The Mozzarella Legion in ten years. I have nothing but respect for SOE’s support of EQ and the graphical overhaul of UO, but to be bluntly honest: I really hope I’m not still playing WoW in 2014.

Brent himself said it on the show in question, prompted by a reader submission – Whatever game ‘topples’ World of Warcraft probably won’t be something a lot of us MMOG players are interested in. It may not even really be a ‘game’ the way a lot of us look at games today. If you’ve seen Ze Frank’s (now departed) show, or the trailer for Little Big Planet, you already know the power of online social connections. Building things collaboratively online might be the ‘thing that people do’ online instead of fragging or pwning; there’s a lot more folks like our mums out there than there are like us.

Brent and Cuppy are speaking from the heart, though, and I suppose I should do the same instead of making generalities. Do I want signifigant change? Yes … but not really from a design perspective. Rather, I want the innovation to be from the world in, instead of the game out. I want the kids of people my age and younger to grow up playing Massive games. A MMOG-playing buddy of mine is having a daughter in June; by the time she’s old enought to hold a mouse the MMOG Bioware currently has in production will be celebrating its 7th or 8th year of live. Considering EQ was released in 1999, just eight years ago, that’s practically forever. By then, I hope that the medium of games will have finally earned its rightful place in our culture.

I want thoughtful shows on the web and television discussing the artistic merits of games, be they single-player or Massive spaces. I want regular updates in mass-market publications on momentous in-world happenings; I want Time Magazine’s person of the year 2017 to be an avatar. I’m tired of gamers and videogames being looked on as ‘childish’ or as some sort of fringe element. I want to be able to go down to my local pub and watch World of Warcraft PvP matches with my mates; I want to be able to watch the StarCraft or Counter-Strike world championship during primetime on ESPN.

Compared even to myself when I started this blog, I’ve gotten crotchety. For most of 2006 I had fire in my veins whenever I thought about rehashing old game concepts, and I had frustration in my heart at WoW’s dominance. Today, in May of 2007, I can only marvel at what WoW has wrought. So what if it’s EQ 1.5? The thing has spawned tens of thousands of guilds, thousands of machinima movies, hundreds of comics, dozens of podcasts, first-run episodes of mass-market cartoon shows, subplots in network sitcoms, several musical anthems, and a genuine sense of ‘togetherness’ in an ever-expanding marketplace.

I was in LA last week for SOE’s gamer’s day, and I’ll have stuff to say on that subject later this week. It was amusing in a number of ways, but probably most humbling was the guy who drove me to my hotel from the airport. I tend to be chatty with people I don’t know when I’m in a good mood, so we exchanged pleasantries … no shock, turns out he’s a WoW player. From the sound of things, we were as different as could be. He made snide remarks about NPR, listed the Fox Network as a trusted source of news, enjoyed the uniformity of his days as a driver, and I think even insuitated he was a Creationist. But the man played WoW, proudly running up a couple of new characters with some friends in the post-BC age, and so we had something to talk about. Granted, we were different even there. I literally bought the Drenai t-shirt, and he made a point to gank any that he saw.

This guy wasn’t a gamer in almost any other sense of the word, but thanks to this shared experience he proudly wore the badge on his metaphorical lapel. I hadn’t even told him what I did for a living before he was off and running about pwning noobs in battlegrounds and training up for Arena events.

To put this in perspective: WoW only has 9 million subscribers worldwide. (Look at how small WoW is comparatively.) The day’s going to come when a Massive title has the kind of pull that a show like, say, M*A*S*H did … and that show had 107 million viewers during its finale.

So do I want innovation? Yeah. Just not from within … I want innovation, changes in thinking, from without.