MMO Pacesetting Editorial

Outpacing the Fun?

Everyone loves to do more in less time. The pace of life is steadily increasing, and the evolution of MMOs shows a transition by degrees from the halcyon pen-and-paper days to today's drive-thru MMO. Can the old-school social gamer thrive in today's "casual" games. And as we rush through the levels, are there more tacit tradeoffs looming just over the horizon?

"In one of those ironic twists that keep game designers awake at night, the scads of console-trained 'achievers' are the only reason pace is a major problem. Achievers always seek the path of least resistance, but if you play an MMO as a linear "single player RPG"-style game, you're bound to be disappointed. In an MMO, designers have to deal with an infinitude of perspectives all of the time; you have far fewer creative limitations if you have one player in a big world. So, if you want to make a truly open-ended "worldy" game and make it massively multiplayer as well, you have to defeat achievers' every attempt to find a shortcut to the top."

Is the pace of today's MMO so fast that you don't enjoy yourself? Too slow, that an evening of gaming gets you nowhere? Check out the first of this week's TenTonHammer Network editorials as Ethec paints the genre in broad strokes.