Are Fantasy/Medieval MMO’s Dead?
I’ve been thinking about how the Fantasy genre, in general, is beginning to plateau. Even in literature, it is very hard to write a truly unique fantasy book. Everything nowadays seems to revolve around the Lord of the Rings model, a storyline where the main characters are on a quest for ____. This plot has found its way into nearly every single fantasy MMO ever made. In Runescape, we complete quests for rewards. It’s this simplistic storytelling device that was compelling a long time ago, but what about now? Sci-fi is a generally more flexible genre that can exceed the simple “let’s go on a mission to Mordor!” idea.
Will people gradually get disinterested or not? I think that it could go either way. We all grew up hearing fairy tales, and these fairy tales have changed over time to be more than just an imprisoned princess in a castle or an evil queen who must be defeated. Can this redundancy be solved by incorporating Fantasy into other genres like Sci-fi? I can see it now.. the knights of the Round Table must defeat the Klingon Empire from encroaching onto their vast kingdom.
I’m really not sure any more, but it just seems that Fantasy games are in dire need of a new storyline.
Tags: Miscellaneous |
October 8th, 2007 at 7:05 am
Yea, not only the storyline but the gameplay as well are getting redundant. Same old “click the monster, watch your pixel person fight it, and pick up drops” way of playing. Fantasy is broad though if people don’t get in the LOTR mindset of it, but most people have so I doubt it’ll last for too long.
Fantasy + Scifi…that would be pretty interesting. I could have sworn that there were a few things like that out already.
October 8th, 2007 at 7:06 am
Some researches state that there are about 20 different story lines in the literature at all (in all genres). And it is not very surprising that many fantasy writers use the most successful one in their books. But I disagree that the fantasy genre is stagnant. Just from the top of my head, looking at some new books, take magnificent Bartimaeus trilogy for example or Terry Pratchett’s novels. These are no quests.
October 8th, 2007 at 8:02 am
I disagree. Even though with most fantasy genre storylines, “A character goes on a quest”, that’s a very vague subject and can still be an original story.
The problem with fanatasy style games, is that the developers stick too close to the original idea, and with online games, gamers tend to stick around for a lot longer. It’d be like reading a neverending book, over, and over again. They’re going to get bored eventually and it’s not because the genre is dieing, but because people want a new story.
Mixing genres has always been around, it’d be nothing new nor anythign special. It’s just a lot trickier to implement a sci-fi story into a fasntasy setting, rather than just throwing in another fantasy story about dragons and blonde princesses.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:24 am
I agree with Anubis completely.
Also, I loved the Bartimaeus trilogy.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Theres plenty original fantasy’s around, there just hard to find in between all the crap.
As for Fantasy MMOG in general, well, to be honest i despise most MMOG.
In fact RS is the only one i can tolerate and that would probably be cause it was the first i came across. Well, RS and Planetside.
The rest are just the same old crap. For a game genre that seems to have so much flexibility they all really come out the same - mindless grinding and half arsed story telling.
You’ve played Oblivion right shroomett? If a MMOG could come out with that and have that amount of variety in things to do and not just relie on a bloody mouse click then that would be a good game.
October 8th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
The medieval/fantasy concept for a storyline is dead.
It’s too overused.
October 9th, 2007 at 11:38 am
I hate pretty much every game that you download and play, for 3 simple reasons, first, like you said, they are all the same stroy line. Second, because lets say I kill some things, then I kill some more things, I’m getting bored of killing these things, what else can I do, oh, that’s right kill some more things. And finally, I hate the names of the weapons, armour, etc, Ooh, the Power Sword of Yuriikl +7, I mean, WTF?
October 9th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
@EP
Yuriikl XD You just touched on another thing that annoys the hell out of me when it comes to fantasy MMOs: stupid names. Now.. let’s go kill us some Sciilyndlm with our Xyrllmq swords.