In Pursuit Of The Modern MMORPG

With the recent release of the popular MMORPG Blade and Soul, and the upcoming release of Black Desert, it seems like an appropriate time to discuss the characteristics of an MMORPG. I’ve been playing Blade and Soul a lot recently, but whenever I play it I can’t help but ask myself, Does this game benefit from being an MMO? And the more I play the more convinced I am that the answer is no.

What Blade and Soul does well is combat. The best way to describe it is that it is a pseudo-action combat system like Guild Wars 2 (with action camera enabled), but with the mechanics of a fighting game (e.g. i-frames, zoning, chaining). This deep combat system allows for the best 1v1 and 3v3 PvP that exists in any MMO to date and it makes the arena PvP the most compelling reason to play Blade and Soul. The combat in Blade and Soul is not the problem, everything else is.

Besides combat everything else feels mediocre. The quests are run of the mill, environments are bland, and it doesn’t feel like a world at all. I felt like the fact that the game was an MMO actually hindered the experience the game offers because, while it plays much like a fighting game in PvP, it’s like a fighting game where there is a week long grind phase before you can play the character you want. (And if I wanted to wait a week to play a fighting game I would have just played Street Fighter V.)

This exemplifies the problem I have with today’s MMOs. Most modern MMOs don’t try to build a world that is immersive and alive. Modern MMOs focus on instanced dungeons, raids, and PvP, while they have a theme park leveling progression to create artificial longevity. These games that have an open world just to put the letters MMO on the box, are better off borrowing the system that Phantasy Star used back in the day, or what Skyforge uses now—a hub world. If the time spent running from quest hub to quest hub is spent running through dead space and loading screens then why not expedite this process?

Cut out the empty space between quest givers and have a quest desk in the hub world. This would help to reduce the mundane feel of running back and forth, leading to potentially more interesting level design and, specifically for Blade and Soul, would help with the optimization issues that are present when there are many character models on the screen at the same time. What constitutes an MMO should be a massive world that benefits from your interaction with other players. (Most of the time in Blade and Soul if you see another player in the same quest area you change channels so you can have your own mob spawns.) MMOs should benefit from the genre they're in, not be hindered by it. I love Blade and Soul and I think it is a great game, but not a great MMORPG.

This leads me into Black Desert and the reason this game excites me. In the end, what makes an MMORPG isn’t having raids, dungeons, PvP, or world versus world. What makes an MMORPG is a game where you feel like you are a part of a world, and where your interactions with other players are consequential. Black Desert promises to be an MMO with a beautiful, continuous world with plentiful knowledge and lore. The combat is enjoyable, but combat is only one of many enjoyable elements of Black Desert. During the first two days of closed beta 2 I explored, quested, and grinded mobs. For the last two days, however, I explored the other aspects of the game. I fished, tamed horses, completed trade routes, and sailed the ocean. I always felt like there was so much to do and more to explore.

Black Desert creates a world that is enjoyable to be a part of. The type of content that Black Desert offers is determined by the desire of the player to experience this world. This type of game does not appeal to everyone, and there will definitely be people who clamour for Black Desert to have a more traditional endgame. In the end, however, that is not the type of game Black Desert is. Accommodating these people would undermine the core design choices that makes it special. Because of this, Black Desert will likely become a niche game in the MMORPG genre, but it also promises to be the MMORPG experience I and many other MMORPG fans like me been waiting for. I’m in love with the game. Now we just need to hope that Daum doesn’t become the next Trion.