I’ve had this conversation with quite a few people at this point, so this is perhaps reiteration. Oh well, such as it is…

Every single massively multiplayer game I’ve ever participated has gone down a very similar road, eventually. And I’ve played in ALOT of them. This starts all the way back into the very first ones, including the long series of MUDs, MUSHes and MUXes that are out there.

The way I see it, they all start out with some ‘hook’. In the early days of MUDing, it was a new type of mob, or in the cases of the social MU*es, some new area that has been built, or someplace to explore, a new code or program you can utilitize to customize the environment, or whatever. Some of the oldest of them, like TIM or similar, had a large following of players and a just immense area to explore, fun objects to play with and trigger, and so on.

The graphical era moved in, so games like Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron’s Call began to suck up the players. And the current influx of games is immense. There is alot of room in the market for them, and they continue to be successful, but eventually that will peak out as well.

The interesting part is what happens to ALL of them once the initial push wears off. They all become, at the core, a social construct. They are supported by the community that has developed there, and that continue to visit to maintain the contacts and touch points with all the people they’ve come to know and call friends. With the MUDs and MUSHes, it stopped being a game to explore and play, and just became an extended chat room. In the case of the pay-to-play style games, they continue to update content and exist as long as the player base that continues to visit is strong enough to keep paying the bills. Thats a really important point.

So no matter how much you may want those games to return to their ‘glory days’ of major activity and interactivity, you eventually have to embrace their new role.

One thing to keep in mind. I’m not saying that these games become ‘static’ or unchanging shadows of what they once were. While that may be true in some cases, I think that ones that have a dedicated development staff that believes in the game will continue to invest (once again, so long as they are able to continue being paid) in keeping the content fresh, updating on a monthly or at least regular basis, and keep the people who continue to play drawn in to the world. If they didn’t, it would eventually die. I don’t believe even the social constructs survive a pure stasis.

So what is the point of all this? It kind of sounds like I’m nay-saying the whole concept of MMOGs. Quite on the contrary, actually. What I’m saying is to embrace them for what they are. Every single one of them has formal or informal concepts of guilds, allegiances and other manners in which their players group up and have fun together. FIND A GOOD ONE! I think you’ll find that the core group of those players who’ve become fast friends over the time spent on these games will move as a unit from game to game as their interests vary. In fact, in some cases, participating in multiple games at the same time to keep the content fresh for them. I believe with MMOGs, eventually, it stops being about the game you’re playing, and eventually becomes about the PEOPLE you play them with.

And quite frankly, thats just FINE with me.

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