Dopass.com

I don't know about you guys, but if the next big MMO to come out is another fantasy game, count me out.

I've about had my fill of orcs, elves, dragons and demons. There's nothing wrong with them, don't get me wrong, but I think I would literally kill a man if it meant someone could make a legitimate effort to make a high-quality Sci-fi MMO.

I won't kid you, I want to be that guy (so I hope in my hearts it doesn't happen until I have someone's ear), but it just seems weird to me that Sci-Fi MMOs haven't evolved in parallel with fantasy ones.

I mean, back in the day you used to be able to go into your egghead or your Babbage's and walk out with two great games - one of them set in a fantasy world and another set in a Sci-Fi universe. I'm serious, these would be *great* games. For Every Ultima there was a Wing Commander, for every Gold Box game there was a wasteland, for every TolkienMUD there was a BattleTechMUSH, so what happened?

Why has every Space/Sci-Fi MMO to be released turned out to be an incomplete product? I don't mean "unfinished" when I say that, either. I mean that each and every one has been lacking in one way or another.

Is it a curse of Sci-Fi MMOs? Are the developers into Sci-Fi not into quality? Or do they lack some sort of attention to detail that is intrinsicly avaiable to fantasy MMO developers?

Huh, you know what? Maybe that's it. Maybe what they lack is a canon that can be easily co-opted to their needs the way Tolkien's world has been co-opted by basically every fantasy product to ever be released in any medium since Tolkien said, "I'll call it 'there and back again.'"

Maybe not though, I mean the world's I've played in have had great stories, so I doubt that's it. Usually it's facets of gameplay - whole feature sets - that are missing.

Jumpgate offered incredible skill-based combat and really cool player driven events that could change the world (if people participated), but had a totally flat emotionless world because it has no content. The only backstory to be found is outside of the world on a webpage. So it's not a real persistent world. It's a persistent gamespace, but it's not a world - a universe full of interacting beings. Instead it's just a framework for PVP. Think planetside but in space with ships instead of people.

EVE has a bunch of content and a rich backstory and an incredibly deep market, but the combat is pretty boring and the overall feel is pretty astere.

Earth and Beyond had character, an interesting world and good PVP but it didn't last long enough for anyone to care....

Space Cowboy Online is a joke. Calling it an MMO is like calling Quake an MMO. At least that how it seems from here, but I admit I haven't actually played it yet - there's nothing in any of the available documentation that suggests I'd want to.

Face of Mankind was just plain bad. Horrible features, bad content (if you want to call what it had content), ugly art and controls that made playing less enjoyable than bashing your own forhead with a claw hammer.

Neocron had a lot of potential... but nothing else. Great framework for a game, Good backstory, capability to go good quests (but no good quests), player housing, world events and good PVP potential but nothing is fully realized - like they got the game to 60% and said "you know, I think I'm done. Ship it" -- and meant it!

Huxley looks like it has some promise but every time they show it all they show is planetside style PVP, so I think it's promise is just that - a promise and nothing else.

Tabula Rasa... Well... Let's just say that Tabula Rasa is a fantasy game, with lasers, and leave it at that.

Star Wars Galaxies? More fantasy. With guns. Boring fantasy with guns for that matter. The best part about SWG is Jump to Lightspeed [JTL], the spaceflight add-on that adds Tie-Fighter/X-wing style gameplay to the world. The problem is, the SWG devs took JTL back behind the woodshed and cornholed it until it promised it would stop making the rest of the game look bad. There is so little JTL content in the game that it comes off as a gimmick. The kind of gimmick cults use to draw in otherwise sane and rational individuals to expose them to their brainwashing. The problem is, it doesn't work. you come out the other end going, "JTL rocked but what that other crappy game you had to play to get to it?!" To be fair they've made some progress recently, but only by alienating what few old-school customers they had and turning all the critics in the world against them. I dunno, that's not a good sign. Personally I felt like I could play that game for awhile - if they added about 700 times as much JTL content as they currently have.

So what's left? Where's the Sci-Fi MMO that has deep character building, rich lore, player housing, vehicles of all sorts, both player driven and story driven content, and a persistent world that reacts and changes based on the players' actions? I mean, seriously, why has no one stepped up to the plate?

I'd love to, but I don't have the connections to put a project of that scope together myself and I won't kid you - despite a decade of experience and more connections in the industry than anyone ought to have, I don't have those kinds of connections. It's not like I don't have ideas - and from talking to others in the industry it's not like ideas for these games are hard to find.

So what's the deal?

Is it publishers? are they so risk-averse that they won't even consider a sci-fi game with any sort of seriousness?

Or is it us developers? Are we so enamored of the latest 800 pound gorilla in our midst that we can't be bothered to consider a sci-fi MMO?

Am I going to have to wait five years to make one? I mean, do I have to wait for WoW to get old and tired? Do I have to wait for World(s) of Starcraft before you'll realize the flag I'm flying is worth flocking to? (While I admit I'll be a slobbering fanboi for a starcraft MMO, you have to admit it will just be another fantasy MMO... with lasers.)

I have to shake my head at the lack of good sci-fi MMOs; it just doesn't make any sense, to me. To me, sci-fi mmos are easier to design than fantasy MMOs. For one, you don't have the tolkien world - which means you have a lot more freedom to mold your world. Yes, you have a greater responsiblity to mold your world well since you have less well-known cliches to use as crutches, but that's not a bad thing! Systems are easier to make and there is a lot of untapped material out there you can use as inspiration. Every read terminal cafe? Wouldn't you want to play in that world? I know I would.

I want to see a game about mankind after it's spread out into our solar system. I don't need massive space opera. I don't need a million star systems and massive fleets, but give me a hundred colonies (orbital, planetary and deep-space drifts) and a frontier of astroid miners and pirates. Give me our political sphere projected into the future. Give me a high-tech cavalcade of special effects, FPS on-foot combat, player housing of all types and skill based space piloting. Give me a reactive environment that grows and changes as players advance the world and give me impressive, scripted story arcs to traipse through when I don't feel like joining the greater effort. Give me hacking the net, street samurais, taking down the capital ship, player-group owned and operated capital ships and fleet action.

All of it has been done individually in past MMOs, so why not tie it all together and give us a game that is better than the rest? A game that actually tries to succeed. A game focused on quality of experience and freedome of player action? A game that does Sci-Fi MMO right.

Hey publishers and MMO developers: When you're ready to make that game, come look me up - I'm your guy. I've got a decade of experience in the industry and I know a thing or two about game design. I've also been thinking about sci-fi MMOs for a very long time.

- Snipehunter