Monday, June 25, 2007

Elite MMORPG

Can an elite MMORPG be financially successful? An elite MMORPG is one made for people who would consider themselves to be elites - people with more money than time, who don't mind using their brains and don't like having to spend screen time with the leet-speaking youngsters. An MMORPG for the elite would have a greater monthly cost, and most likely implement many of the ideas this weblog has exposed.

With a cost of, say, 20$ per month, you're keeping away many of the people who are looking at World of Warcraft and your MMORPG, but you also make more profit from the game; if the game is good enough that enough people want to pay that extra 5$ per month to kill baddies (or maybe sew tunics), then you might still make a profit; that, of course, wouldn't stop your eager fans from comparing the MMORPG to its lesser brothers.

For an MMORPG to really be considered elite, though, gameplay would have to be elite as well. Gamers should feel threatened when going adventuring, otherwise it's not really elite. They should never feel that the game is easy, even when it is, because they come to the game for a challenge, and challenges and grinding are mortal enemies.

Can it really exist, though? Are the 8 million subscribers of World of Warcraft really role-players, or are they simply in for the feeling of accomplishment of grinding levels in an addictive game? The latter would certainly not want a difficult game, let alone a challenging one. What do you think? Would you play such an elite game?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

very nice article! congrat.