The Perfect MMORPG in 2020

So back in October I did a video titled “The Perfect MMORPG.”
I went and discussed what I thought made a good MMO – how there were several key factors I thought were important to making a successful MMORPG.
Towards the end of the video I tasked you all with an objective: Compile a list of what you believe were the most important aspects of what makes an MMORPG worth playing.
Key, integral parts of the game that would bring something that would otherwise be mediocre without them, into something you could invest large portions of time into.
Thousands of you left comments in that video, and although that’s quite an extensive, arduous process to comb through, I did find several reoccuring themes most of you could relate to.
So in this video, I want to further delve into what makes “The Perfect MMORPG.”

Before we go any further, I urge you to sit through as much of it as you can, and upon completion, let me know, once again, if you can either relate to these or if you believe there is more necessary to making a successful MMO.
Because when these videos get hundreds of thousands of views, have large community interaction and feedback.. they end up with a lot of eyes on them, including developers of all sizes.
Who knows the kind of impact that could have on not only current developers, but future developers trying to obtain a rough gauge of what the playerbase is interested in.

Now let’s start this off with “Freedom.” The highest rated comment on the video, and subsequently the comment with the most replies attached to it was from a user named Mayfair Bee.
In it he (or she) went on to elaborate on how they believed Freedom was the most important aspect of an MMO to them.
I can relate to that. My first games were Tales of Pirates and Perfect World International. In both those MMOs there was no level cap. At least, no easily reachable level cap.
Instead, you were required to grind monsters, quest through content, participate in dungeons, raids, open-world PvP and.. the options were almost endless.
There were two things that kept me playing those games: the freedom to participate in whatever content I wanted without falling too far behind, and the community that supported that playstyle.
While yes, gear was and is always going to remain the most important aspect of progression – without it, you won’t have the motivation to push new content, right? But being forced into one single form of content is very limiting.
That doesn’t mean I’m saying that you should make gear easily accessible to everyone so that it defeats the purpose of high-tier raiding. I’m more alluding to the fact that high-tier raiding doesn’t need to be the only form with which to obtain high-tier gear.
I know that end-game is where the vast majority of players play the game – and participating in end-game content like raids is where the best gear comes from.
And that’s more than fine – I’m definitely of the opinion that players should be rewarded for the amount of effort they put into the game and raiding takes a lot of coordination, practice and effort.
But providing players alternate means of obtaining gear – making it more of a non-linear progression is definitely something we should think about.
I know some MMOs do this currently, like Final Fantasy XIV with raids and Savage raids, and WoW does this with Mythic+ dungeons and Mythic raids, so the concept is there, being utilized in some capacity.

Next we have “The Leveling Experience.” I saw multiple top comments, two of which I’ll list here are from Asar Tony and Kunnie in specific, where they go on to talk about leveling and how drastically it’s changed over time.
Asar Tony mentions leveling in both TERA and Blade & Soul specifically – both games with which I’ve actually played at max level. When beginning TERA originally, back when it was a pay to play MMO, the leveling experience was significantly slower than it is now.
I had to do side quests to get additional XP to continue to unlock new quests, I had to group up with an entire group of players to push into dungeons, we partied up while in the original newbie zone because that area was aids and nobody wanted to run it again.
Everything took time, and you were much more involved in the world. You were required to do more, and as such there were more players running around actually engaging in the world itself. The same applied to Blade & Soul.
When did truncating the leveling experience become the new norm? Developers continue to make large, beautiful worlds filled with personality and a need to explore. With items, bosses, quests found in the most bizarre of places rewarding items you wouldn’t believe.
Then as time goes by, the developers believe that rushing you to max level so you can run the same content over and over is what players want. This is something that will keep them playing indefinitely… which is the complete opposite of what players want.
Yes, some players want to hit max level as fast as possible so they can sit there AFK in queue.. but a lot of us enjoy the journey to max level and pushing new players to skip the majority of what made your game a wonder to be a part of originally is partly responsible for killing it.
I believe that while yes, end-game is definitely important, it doesn’t have to be the only form of content that takes time.
Leveling through a brand new world should be an experience in and of itself. How many of you guys remember tiered content in MMOs? Back when gear mattered, back when you’d want to run leveling dungeons not for XP, but for gear.
These days, people do dungeons because they’re usually one of the fastest methods of leveling through content they don’t want to have to experience.
Yet back a decade ago, dungeons used to take several times longer, had much more difficult mechanics, and offered incentives for running them in the form of gear that normally lasted you several levels.
And those levels took time to achieve, which made them even more of a necessity.
This meant that people were running content with the mindset of actual progression and achievement even at lower levels, which is something that is predominantly done at end-game these days.

Following up on the leveling experience, I’d like to talk about a topic brought up by ENELCLARK and Sibe Cromwell: Building relationships within the community, and the community itself.
A lot of video games are developed with solo-play in mind. There’s no denying that. MMOs, however, were never intended to be played alone, thus why the term “Massively Multiplayer” was coined.
Yes, the definition of an MMO has changed drastically over time, but the term is still defined as featuring a large group of people within the same world concurrently. Open-world MMOs, sandbox MMOs, hub-based MMOs.
They’re still MMOs and they still allow for players to group up, chat, and participate in content together. That is the purpose of a community – to work with other people towards a common goal. Years ago, players used to know who everyone was on a server.
You built relationships with other players, you knew the leaders of different guilds, you knew who the dominant guild was on your server and you often worked hard to be a part of them. You had friends you would run regular content with.
You knew when someone was new, and if you were so inclined, even went as far as offering to help them out if they needed it. Today in MMOs, everything is so contrastingly different.
Very few people care enough to help each other out with the leveling experience as it’s just a rush to end-game. You see people out in the world, say hey, and they completely ignore you because they don’t have the time to waste it on you.
Guilds are no longer a means for people to recruit friends or like-minded individuals. Communities no longer know who the majority of one another are. The community aspect of the genre is in a much different state these days than it was.
I’m not sure what can really be done to remedy this situation we’re in but with today’s generation of gamer more interested in rushing to the end of the game as fast as they can as opposed to enjoying the experience to end-game.. well, it shows developers where they should be focusing their attention, that’s for certain.
Regardless, friends make MMOs more enjoyable to play. Whether you begin the game with friends or you make them in-game, friends are an important part of playing an MMO and today MMOs just feel far too solo for me.
Having a system in place that has players return to lower-level content and even mid-level content not only helps the game feel more alive as they’re not all forced into a small end-game zone, but it also helps the new-player experience.
What better way is there to show a new player that a game is active than having players actively participating in content of all levels?

Then there were basic things like “I want the game to look like Black Desert” or “I want combat as good as “insert game here.””
The most relatable opinions on what make an MMO perfect were the freedom to play how you want, the journey to end-game as opposed to the end-game itself, and the community.
I can understand all 3 of the above. Freedom prevents boredom – since you’re not forced into following a linear form of progression, allowing you to progress in areas you want.
The leveling experience is important because end-game is only one singular part of the game. Content, difficulty, variety are all a very important part of keeping the game feeling alive and exciting on the way to the inevitable end.
The community, being helpful, being welcoming, being friendly is important. Nobody likes toxicity, and that’s a sure-fire way of alienating the playerbase.
We’re all here to play MMOs together. We want to work with other people to experience a game, and ultimately enjoy the journey until it’s time to move on.

I’m well aware that at the end of the day, “The Perfect MMORPG” is something completely subjective to every individual player. Everyone has different likes and dislikes.
Everyone likes different forms of combat, everyone enjoys different narratives and different forms of storytelling. No MMORPG is for every player and as such, there likely will never be a universally accepted “Perfect MMORPG.”
Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean we can’t continue developing our MMOs in the right direction.

That’s pretty much all I wanted to talk about, though. I enjoy the MMO genre immensely. Not only is it my job now, but it’s also the gaming genre I’ve spent the most time in.
2020 is looking to be a pretty solid year for releases, I actually have a video of what we can look forward to next year if you’re interested in checking that out, but otherwise, I’m curious.
Like last time, what do you think, specifically, makes an MMORPG stand out amongst the rest? What is the most important aspect of an MMO that without it – would drive you from playing it?
The more conversations like this we have the better. Let your voice be heard and let developers and the community alike know what we want.