The Fantasy MMO genre

Personally, I think it's played out.
When it comes to the mmo industry what has come out that's new?
Little to none since the advent of Everquest. Everything that has
come out for MMO's has just been a clone of that first landmark game.
Sure, there are some differences between them such as a magic system
or a combat system or how xp is awarded.

But those are all just tweaks.

Ah, you say, but what about World of
Warcraft? It's got 10 million subscribers, clearly they must be
doing something different.

Well, they are but what they're doing
different isn't all that different. The graphics have rejected a
realism approach and embraced a “surreal” approach. Making
everything bright and cartoonish, it is fun to look at and the bright
primary based color scheme make it easy to look at.

All the other games are going for as
real as they can get.

The quest system is the same as
Everquest. Find your first contact, and go hunt rats. Except in WoW
it's not rats it's some magical beast about the size of a rat. But
rinse, lather, repeat, get xp.

All just tweaks to an existing format.

If a publisher wants to make a WoW
killer, or just make the next WoW they're going to have to do
something different. Something so innovative that it's not just a
tweak of the Everquest format.

And what is that? Honestly, I have no
idea. I get why the Everquest format works. First it teaches you
the game, and how it all works. Thus the hunting of rats. Then it
time sinks you.

The western concept of the MMO is all
built around keeping you on line for as long as they can. That's why
the crafting systems are so long. To get to be able to build good
equipment, you have to spend 100's of hours at the system grinding
away at all the intermediate steps. It's why the “good” missions
take large teams to complete. They know you're going to spend hours
in the game organizing a team to go through that mission or you'll
wait until you are so high level you can blow through the mission by
yourself.

Either way you're there for hours and
days at a time.

Maybe the next great MMO will have to
completely reject the Everquest format of keeping you on line for as
long as they possibly can. Maybe the key to greatness and fast
riches is to approach it from the weekend gamer angle. The game
should be designed to play in a few hour increments rather than days.

Rather than spending hours seated at
your pc desk grinding away at whatever craft or quest system, the
game should be easy to pick up and put down. I shouldn't have to
worry about falling behind my friends who have more time to spend on
the game than I do.

And I'm not talking about the xp bonus
both WoW and LOTRO currently have.

What I'm talking about is a level-less
system. A game where you don't have to worry about your xph
(experience per hour). I'm talking about a game that is a joy to
play and not a burden on your life. A game that should live up to
that name- game. Something so fun you want to share it with your
friends on a Thursday night.

That's what it will take down the biggest MMO in history, or at least to be the next biggest MMO in history.