If you look down the big list of cancelled or never-released Massive games, Microsoft’s name comes up a suspicious number of times. AC2 anyone? Mythica, True Fantasy Online, Vanguard, and now Marvel Universe were all dented by the Redmond giant’s deft touch. On a fundamental corporate level, I think that MS just doesn’t understand the whole MMO ‘thing’. Trash talking jock douches calling each other ‘fag’ on Xbox Live? That’s understandable. But having the patience to see something like an MMO through – not so much.

Even more than that, I think Microsoft’s stupidity when it comes to this genre has left a huge opening for Sony and the PlayStation 3. Though there are no firm plans in the public eye right now, the tide is rising for MMO experiences on Sony’s console. Has Microsoft ceded the fight without even firing a shot?

Microsoft’s Messups

The fantastic feature piece Delay of Game was originally published in the pages of (sniffle) Games for Windows magazines. The article, which touches on some well-known delayed/cancelled games, has the most recent discussion of Microsoft’s biggest MMO failure: Mythica. I mourned the game’s loss (big time) lo these many years ago, and even then it was very clear why Microsoft had cut it free from development:

[Microsoft says] there are too many games already, we don’t think there is a market for our game. Besides Mythica, Microsoft also has an entire gaming platform to support … Despite the protestations of Microsoft’s PR department, it should be mentioned that Mythic studios had a lawsuit pending against MS … In all likelihood all of these reasons resulted in Mythica’s cancellation. Two years of development time is not something easily thrown away, even by the likes of Microsoft.

I may have been a bit harsh with that ‘douche jock’ crack, but it really is hard for me to understand what goes on in the company’s corporate mind. It’s almost like their are two mental models at work. On one hand you have a company willing to put everything on the line for the untested Xbox 360 concept. On the other, you have a corporation that wasn’t willing to even try to put an MMO on the market. The 360 and Xbox Live have been hugely expensive gambles, and in the US and EU they’ve paid off.

So why cut Mythica? Really? It would have done fine, and might have even done really well. It was ahead of its time with the concept of instancing and storytelling in games, and offering a unique themed experience that still hasn’t been adequately tapped by the MMO genre. Trends that were explored in Gods and Heroes (sigh) and are going to be touched on lightly in Age of Conan were given center stage in Mythica: norse mythology, the gods walking among the adventuring populace, etc.

True Fantasy Live Online’s cancellation makes even less sense to me. It was a gorgeous title that could have not only opened up the Xbox platform for MMOs but also broken down the barrier between MS and the Japanese development culture. That barrier, ultimately, is why TFLO was shut down, at least according to Wikipedia:

Relations between the two companies soon began to spiral out of control as Level-5 struggled to meet the demands required by Microsoft, who in turn grew frustrated at the lack of progress being made on the game … Level-5 President and CEO Akihiro Hino stated in a Japanese interview that the poor relations between his company and Microsoft, partially due to the latter’s inexperience in dealing with Japanese developers, was one of the major reasons behind True Fantasy Live Online’s cancellation.

As recently as early this year Hino said he’ s interested in working on the project some more. The CEO of the company is invested enough to rez a several year old project, a project that MS was too short-sighted to fully explore. Hey … given Level 5’s high-profile current-gen console title, I wonder who they’d end up working with if TFLO ever gets off the ground?

Sony’s Sweet Spot

Two things spell out Sony’s intentions in this space very, very well: the recent reorganization of SOE beneath SCEI (out from under Sony Pictures), and NCsoft’s announced intentions to work with Sony to bring products to the PlayStation 3. For all the terrible, insane, idiotic choices Sony has made over the last few years, their MMO chops are not something you can doubt. FFXI, PSU, EQOA … almost every MMO to come out on a console has hit a Sony platform.

NCsoft’s stake in this is really clear-cut. They want into the console market and need a partner. Lineage and Arena.net’s Guild Wars would be fantastic additions to the PS3, with a minimum of UI tweaks and adjustments to get them working. They have seekrit projects in the works as well, at least one of which I assume to be a purely console game. With their stated intention of working with Sony, I wouldn’t hold my breath to see that game on the 360 anytime soon.

Smedley claims that SOE’s move is purely functional. That may be so, but even if that’s the case the move has a lot of symbolism behind it. SOE has always been the Sony outsider, doing very much its own thing. My personal view is that MMOs and Massive-like games are kinda the future of all entertainment. Sony’s realignment here makes loads of sense. Bring the experts closer into the fold. Maybe watch them more closely. But most of all bring the MMO-style of thinking ‘in house’ so that ideas can percolate in the right directions. With a firewall between Sony Online and the rest of the company there was little chance of that kind of thinking making it into the correct brains.

It probably helps that SOE has two games committed to the PlayStation 3 platform already. Agency and Free Realms will both be bringing some of that new Sony Online thinking to the benighted console – a little glimmer of hope for their online offerings. Agency is a serious contender, and anyone interested in games has to be taking that game more seriously than Home at this point.

Beyond these corporate moves, Sony has two other things going for it on the MMO front. The PlayStation store and the Sony service itself is free. That’s a huge plus for companies wanting to put their games on the PS3 platform: no additional barriers. If a company like Nexon wanted to bring one of their games into the fold, they could offer a free download from the PlayStation store and never have to worry about their business model being disrupted.

The other thing going for Sony: they haven’t made a giant mess of every MMO they’ve previously touched. Microsoft’s got a reputation in the industry now. Speaking of Nexon, Mabinogi may be making its way to the 360. And, of course, Huxely is still (ever) in-development. Aside from those two, though … there’s just not much movement on that front anymore. Not surprising, given what’s happened in the past.

Without a big shakeup, I don’t see MMOs taking the world by storm on any platform this year or even in 2009. Someday there will be a big console MMO, though. One of these days we’re going to see a persistent online gameworld crawl to the top of the charts and take on the big boys with a controlpad. I’m laying odds that Sony’s going to have the lock on it. In the meantime, Microsoft, can you stop wrecking stuff up? Geez!

There’s something ongoing in Massive games that just makes me dejected, though, and that’s ‘middle levels’. The levels past the ‘newb experience’ and before the ‘endgame’. IE: The stuff everyone mostly wants to skip. The reason: I love those levels! I think the middle levels are freaking awesome. The problem is that both the developers and the players seem to view them more as speedbumps than anything else. As a result, additions to games tend to heavily weight towards either end of the play experience. New character races introduce new newbie experience, while almost every expansion will add (or prolong) endgame content.

Meanwhile, the middlin’ levels are left lolling about wondering why they got out of bed in the morning.  I want to take a moment to pour out a metaphorical beer for my friends, the middle levels.

What makes a middle level so unloved? I think the primary reason is a shift in goals. During the newbie experience, players are working towards understanding. They’re still working out the quirks of their class, getting used to the game UI, and learning how to deal with this brand new world that has such people in it. In EQ2 and World of Warcraft this period ends around level twenty or so. I’d say the second time a player ’shifts venues’ is likely to be the end of his learning experience. After two jumps to a new locale, most players are going to have a good understanding of what the game is like.

At that point the player is no longer playing to learn. With learning no longer the goal, something new has to step in. It varies, obviously. Players with a static group have the goal of meeting expecations. “I have to be there or the group will have no healer.” Players seeking in-game wealth will be looking for prime financial opportunities offered by lower-level experiences.

Most players, though, will be leveling with the goal of engaging in endgame content. Whether they are looking to meet the expectations of a guild, looking forward to endgame PvP, or just want to have really cool looking gear, most level/class games spur the player on to the highest levels.

The problem, as I see it, is that this shift can be done too rapidly. If players stop learning new things early in the leveling process, they’ll quickly see the game as repetitive and lose interest. If the content geared for players just out of the learning process isn’t interesting enough, they players will begin to think the newbie honeymoon was some sort of beautiful lie.

EQ2 has several harsh examples of this, and recently I’ve been thinking this may contribute to the game’s lack of stickiness. For example, old-world players coming out of Freeport (which is in itself a terrible experience) and the Commonlands are sent into Nek forest. Until changes were made to the zone last year tweaking a number of fundemental elements, it was easily one of the most broken zones in the game. The high quality level of the Greater Faydark zone makes for another bad leap. GFay is such a great place to start the game (especially if you’re a Fae). Then you head off to either the Thundering Steppes or Butcherblock Mountains. While I like BB just fine, I’m sure there are a lot of players who find the change jarring.

World of Warcraft also handles this spottily. While Alliance players can look forward to the spooky depths of  Duskwood (a zone I’ll never tire of playing in), they also have RedRidge mountains. The Horde face down Stonetalon and Thousand Needles. With Blizzard’s creation on the tip of our tongues, it’s worth mentioning that they have begun the process of correcting this lack of love for the middle levels. Patch 2.3 added a buttload of new content to Dustwallow Marsh for the highly unloved 35-45 range.  That patch also made essential changes to the speed of leveling from 20-60.

Unfortunately, as much as I love the Dustwallow changes (some of those quests are just awesome), the leveling curve change speaks to Blizzard’s real intent: get players past the middle levels ASAP. In other words, get em’ to the good stuff.

My fervent wish is that someday a dev team will have the time and resources available to look to the present day for inspiration, instead of constantly seeking future glory. My ideas for a WoW expansion may have seemed quite in contrast with what has been announced for Lich King, but they ultimately stem from the same place Blizzard’s does. We both want the game to be fun. I just want the game that’s out *now* to be even more fun.

Change, then, is ultimately what this fight represents. New players in the Massive space have announced themselves. Perhaps for the first time in a long while, jaded gamers can look up from the ruddy glow of Molten Core and see a light on the horizon. There will be flames on message boards, debates about design choices, and analyzing of screenshots. Most important of all, there will once again be passion in the eyes of Massive gamers tired of companies promising ‘Everquest … but different!’. In the end, what every Massive gamer wants is not a hot elf chick. It isn’t phat loots or cybering, guild drama or farmed gold. Massive gamers want to have fun. They want to feel powerful, like they have real choices to make and an impact on the virtual world around them. They want to feel like they’re part of a community. And, of course, they want to wear cool costumes.

Getting linked off of the front page of the EQPlayers site was fun, but is anyone reading these things? Is it worth the time I’m putting into them?

With a day’s worth of thought behind me now, I began to wonder what this would mean for Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. Comments from Positron make the whole thing out to be a great opportunity for gamers, no troubles at home at all.

We at Cryptic want to assure our loyal players that we and the good folks at our publisher, NCsoft, are fully committed to City of Heroes and City of Villains. We have a full team of programmers, artists, designers, and producers devoted to creating and maintaining the best experience in the “City of” world of games. This team is, and will remain completely separate from other teams working on other games at Cryptic. Like fantasy, sci-fi, and simulation, comic book heroes is its own genre, capable of supporting multiple titles.

It’s all well and good to say that … but, I dunno.

I’ll say it up front: I love City of Heroes/Villains. My local gaming group really got behind both games when they came out, and it was a trip to be able to save the day with folks I know IRL. That said, I fear that CoH/V will become the aging aunt in the attic when the shiny new Marvel title comes to town. Let’s keep this in perspective, too, there’s actually two Massive games coming to market wearing costumes. SOE’s collusion with DC Comics will be yet another viewpoint on the capes-and-cowls set. Though I agree the genre is ‘capable of supporting multiple titles’, I’m not sure I think that it can support three.

My two-bit, no information hope is that CoH and MUO come out the winners. Outside of the Justice League cartoon, I’ve never been a big fan of DC’s work, and in a coin-toss between Cryptic and SOE I’ll call dibs on Emmert any day of the week.

It is exciting, though. They’re definitely not going to topple WoW, of course, but we finally have what looks like a real battle brewing up in the Massive space again. Is this what all the future buzz regarding MMOGs will be like? Small operations fighting over the niches not occupied by orcs and elves? Interesting stuff, and I’m looking forward to filling out my score card.