Imagine the money they could rake in with this if they hadn’t fucked up the final seasons. Instead this is going to appeal to a pretty narrow audience who sees the series for what it could have been.
That was going to put HBO and DirecTV on the map, they were top tier streaming back then. If you didn’t have HBO you clearly didn’t like quality TV. Netflix was ahead sure in terms of subscribers, but HBO was the elite tier that everyone wanted.
Now look at it, 7th or 8th tier and bullshit discovery shows. It’s honestly hard for me to think of another company that fucked up the huge of a lead.
Amusingly, this is actually a situation where a lack of studio interference caused the problem. They had offered more episodes, which Dan and Dave declined to make.
Obviously, the show was on the decline since season 5, but the precipitous drop in quality in the final season was because D&D were rushing to finish it all off. An extra season being forced on them by the studio might have allowed the final 2 seasons to continue the gradual decline in quality instead of jumping off a cliff like it did.
I’ll set aside the theme and tackle the format instead. Is there really an audience for MMORPGs anymore? It was a deadly space to enter when WoW was in its prime and it’s only gotten harder. I’m not so sure the MMORPG even “died” as much as slowly diffused into every other genre as live-service capabilities began to spin up. These massive worlds where everyone shares the same story just don’t feel right without a strong ludonarrative dissonance, as opposed to most games that make you the exclusive hero. Sandbox MMOs, on the flip side, rarely have any staying power or purpose. It’s just a really hard design space, in my opinion, when other genres now have all the same benefits of letting you seamlessly play with strangers or friends en masse, without the limitations or side effects of having a single shared world.
Rambling thoughts for discussion. Also I love MMORPGs, to be clear. I just wouldn’t want to be in the business of making one after about 2010.
F2P & “micro” transactions completely killed the genre for me. They also had a tendency to be way too samey in their theme park structure / formula. Sandbox ones imo aren’t feasible today anymore either though because the whole mainstream aspect brought just the worst of people into those games. So they kinda turn from a game with interesting possibilities into a pure pvp gank feast.
The first part is not something I’m going to lay at the feet of this genre. Every category has them and it can be done fairly or poorly by any game, really.
I’m with you on the second part. Can you even design a game that empowers the player while every other player shares an almost identical story and you are seeing that all the time? Again, ludonarrative dissonance in the extreme and that’s not something most players can swallow. That’s that theme park-y feeling.
I think if the right game was made with clever instancing, something to appeal to all the subcategories of MMO players, and a pricing structure that isn’t unfair in today’s landscape, it could work. Who wants to volunteer to make and risk that though when you can make something magnitudes cheaper and more likely to make money?
Yea it would take a lot of money and experience to break into the space, mostly cause you would need to take players from existing games. People who like mmorpgs already play them.
That’s probably why riot put their mmo on ice for a while until they figure it out. But if anyone I’m putting my money on them to nail it.
There are even huge fractures inside that community. You have the intense raiders who want an extremely refined and tuned endgame, the pvp people who just want this refined competitive experience and finely balanced classes, and then you have the more casual story and exploration players like me. Striking a balance between these three is nigh impossible and has killed otherwise fun MMOs with cool new ideas. RIP Wildstar, we hardly knew ye.
I enjoyed wilstar as well. Haven’t thought about it in years.
Yea those points are sorta why I have some hopes for the riot mmo if it ever comes out. They already have teams for pvp and story and they’re working on pve games. Like em or not their pvp games have a huge player base so they must be doing something right and they have decent world building and stories to pull from already. Legends of runeterra added A LOT of really cool concepts to the universe that can be used for anything. Pve is where I suspect they need to improve but who knows.
GRRM is on the design team. Keep holding your breath folks.
That may be cool for lore aspects but I don’t see how that could safe the very flawed genre aspects of it.
What a waste of his time! Get on the winds of winter you big ole procrastinator!
It’ll depend on how much influence he has. He consulted on Elden Ring and I think his touch can be felt in the fucked up family dynamics of the story there, but he was limited in involvement. I don’t think GRRM will be the limiting factor here anyway.
No interest in this or that universe anymore
I dun wont et
I’ll believe it when I see it.
I’m still waiting for the Stargate MMO to reappear.
Also, from the article…
The untitled Game of Thrones MMORPG seemingly shared with Redanian Intelligence is said to be in the works over at Nexon, the Korean publisher behind the likes of multiplayer shooter The Finals, not-indie Dave the Diver and, most notably here, free-to-play MMO MapleStory.
Ah yes nexon. Haven’t played any of their games in years but last thing I remember is all of them being similar with the same cash shop system slapped on.
They’re indeed very much infamous within the genre. At least years back they were. But I doubt they had some sort of process of enlightenment.
I remember how impressed I was by the visuals of the Ha’tak explosion, particularly the smoke particles.
