Increase of MMORPG Popularity and MMO Popularity - a Disaster or for the Best?

Ten years past the idea of the massively multiplayer online game becoming the norm for gaming was more fantasy than reality, it seemed quite a distance off. Now it is anything but, with the tremendous success of the massively multiplayer online (MMO) game World of Warcraft (WoW), a large amount of new MMOs are on the horizon. The question, though, is whether this is for the best or is a disaster for the gaming industry.

Increase Of MMORPG Popularity: The Positives of the Rise of the MMO

There is no doubt that MMOs have the potential to deliver a truly amazing gaming experience, with so many people participating in a world simultaneously it is difficult for the game to ever grow truly boring. That is the true positive of the MMO, the depth of the experience brought on by having such a large community. An example of this is the large-scale wars that take place in WoW, with huge groups going and attacking a city.

The second positive of the MMO is that the worlds themselves often have a lot of interesting things to explore. This is because they are built for a large number of players and because they are constantly updated. As such, just exploring these worlds on horseback can be great fun.

Increase Of MMORPG Popularity: The Negatives of the Rise of the MMO

The main negative of the rise of the MMO is that the general business model for them is fee based, a system where you pay per month to play the game. This model is both expensive and removes one of the major benefits of older gaming, the ability for students to be able to easily afford to play when they are not busy studying. Furthermore, it places pressure on gamers to play in order to get the most out of their money spent. This pressure should be exactly what games are played to escape from, not to create more.

A secondary negative to MMOs is that so far they have not been very good at all. Grinding, or going about and doing menial tasks for the sake of increasing digits on a character sheet, is incredibly dull and more akin to a job than a game. Furthermore, to pay to do this seems absolutely absurd. There is a lot of potential for MMOs that simply never really becomes fulfilled; rather they inevitably seem to end up as games with a focus in grinding.