MMOFPS – Vacant Genre?
Anyone who knows me will most likely know I have a keen interest in Massively Multi-player Online Games (‘MMO’ for short). The main titles in this genre which I played included Star Wars Galaxies, Planetside and more recently World of Warcraft. All of these are big titles, don’t get me wrong, however a keen interest for myself was Planetside.
For those whom this rings no bells, Planetside is a MMOFPS developed by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) which features 3 factions fighting for control of multiple bases across multiple planets. In short, Halo in a MMO.
Planetside (along with another SOE game, Star Wars Galaxies) has been dying out for the past several years, which is fine, games have a limited life span and we just have to deal with that. However since the sudden drop in Planetside players there hasn’t really been much action on the MMOFPS front, the genre has been and likely will be for some time, dominated by the MMORPG some love, others hate… WoW.
Before you get hot under the bonnet, I know there are multiple games in development that fit the genre, however some of their goals are set miles ahead. For example: Webzens next child, Huxley, is impressive and all (ive been following it since announcement) but its graphics are far to current for an MMO. It is running on the UT3 engine and supports PhysX! Graphics like this will be nice, I’m all for higher polygon counts, however it wont attract the MMO crowd. Sure, you may say that there is enough players on high performance machines who play FPS, but for the most part these are not the players who stick with one game for years, build up there own mini-community and do the MMO thing. I don’t doubt Huxley will be a success, however its life as an MMO may be short.
There are a few saviours whom may relinquish faith within this genre (not including Darkfall Online, which is semi-fps). Firstly APB (All Points Bulletin), due sometime next year, it is set to be a GTA-style Cops vs. Crooks game set in an ever-changing city. Its being developed by Realtime Worlds (of Crackdown fame), if they get over the repetitiveness that Crackdown had, they may be onto something. SOE are also currently developing ‘The Agency’ with a unannounced release timeline, however SOE have a habit of breaking MMO’s or releasing silly updates that add unnecessary game-play elements. However, they got Everquest right, so I’m going to hold off on my judgement.
The MMO scene is currently missing a place for FPS fans like myself, to go and kill time (and each other for that matter), hopefully one of these games will fill that gap nicely. If not, well, back to Call of Duty I guess…
For those whom have never heard of, or played Planetside; Here is a fan-made trailer:
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