Is there are place for hardcore MMOs any more? (long post)

Everquest was a hardcore MMORPG, and it was very successful - nearly a decade ago now. Vanguard was by the same developer and was intended to be equally hardcore, but it was a bit of a flop. World of Warcraft, on the other hand, was designed with a more casual market in mind (and we all know how that one turned out). So does this mean that the hardcore MMORPG is a thing of the past?

The answer is up for debate, and as this is the 50th post on the blog I'll go into my views here in some (lots of) detail. My perspective has changed a little recently, for the simple reason that I've now started a full time job where I'm out of the house for around ten hours a day, and on top of that I have to revise for exams for the next three years so I can qualify as an accountant and get a big fat raise for my troubles (though technically I'm a consultant rather than an accountant). Before I went into gainful employment, I was either a lazy college or university student, with plenty of spare time. When I played MMOs, I would play at least two hours a day, with four as the minimum at weekends.

Right now, I'm thinking about renewing my EQ2 subscription in the near future - checking out Kunark, which I've yet to see in all of its glory. I'm also currently on mobile broadband rather than a landline, so this'll allow me to see how viable it is to play MMOs over the connection I currently have without having to splash out and buy the box for Warhammer Online. Thing is, though, it's about £10-12 a month to play an MMO for a month. That's a hell of a lot of money, given that I'll now be playing a max of an hour a day during the week and maybe 5-6 hours a day at weekends, if I decide to turn all my spare time over to the game.

And chances are, I won't. I have a gym membership I'm actually using at the moment. I have a social life, and I seem to lose half the weekend to hangovers anyway. So I'm not going to be playing an MMO for huge amounts of time, which means that suddenly the £10-12 that I didn't mind paying when I played EQ2 more often suddenly seems a bit excessive now.

If you look at any major MMO, though, there's PLENTY of hardcore powergamers out there. Maybe it's just because I didn't come into contact with too many people who didn't play for at least a couple of hours a day in my in-game social circles, but most people seemed to sink vast amounts of time into the game. Even WoW, famously casual-friendly, has become the ultimate super-hardcore powergamer haunt - so much so that Blizzard is always struggling to find new things to keep the endgame players entertained.

So in that way, you've got to say that there definitely is a place for the hardcore MMO in the modern genre. After all, if you're charging people a subscription fee to play the game, the logical result is that you're going to have a lot of people who put a lot of their time into the game.There's actually enough of these people around to mean that most MMOs will be sustainable. That's why games like Ultima Online and Everquest are still around nearly ten years after release - people still play them.

It's interesting, though, that the majority of them play the most casual friendly MMO out there. Why? Because it's the game with the most mainstream appeal, so it's the most acceptable for 'normal' people to play - people who aren't really interested in roleplaying, or the gameworld, etc. But invariably some will find that they do like the medium, and become interested in the gameworld, and maybe even find an online identity and start roleplaying.

Powergamers. I would imagine they don't have full-time jobs.

My view is that casual-friendly MMOs like World of Warcraft and now Warhammer are far more sustainable in today's market. I loved Everquest when it came out, truly loved it - but now I have a job, I wouldn't buy the game again if it was released tomorrow. I spent hours exploring the world, doing endless other things than just the grind that modern MMOs have become, but that was because there was a lot more to do. Lots of things I just don't have time for as a working man. So I'll turn my attention to the more casual-friendly games instead.

And its the casual-friendly games that actually breed the hardcore players in the first place. Some will get bored and move onto other pastures, but others will stay. And the problem with creating hardcore MMOs is that you're relying on stealing hardcore players from other MMOs, because you're not going to attract them from the more mainstream market. Your potential playerbase is therefore much smaller than casual-friendly MMOs, and it's also going to be very demanding and labour-intensive to look after. After all, who complains the loudest on the forums when something gets nerfed? Yeah, the hardcore raiders, the people who have invested huge amounts of time into the game. Jack who plays five hours a week pays just the same subscription fee as one of these raiders, but he doesn't have time to kick up a stink when something he doesn't like happens - he's too busy playing the game.

Hardcore MMOs are still viable, then - Vanguard was panned on release and has less than 50,000 subscribers, but you don't hear about them making a loss. They will be profitable, provided that too many games don't try and crowd the niche out. But that's exactly what they are - niche games. Players who have powergamed to the ends of Azeroth may want something a little more challenging than World of Warcraft and seek out a more hardcore alternative, but for every person who does that ten more will find WoW is perfectly adequate for their needs.

There's nothing wrong with hardcore games or casual-friendly MMOs and, in a sense, its barely worth comparing the two any more. They set out to do different things. One sets out to have mass market appeal by offering a shallower but more accessible experience, while the other does the opposite. Both have their own charms, so judge them on their own merits - just don't be afraid to jump the fence if you have to.