The Daily Grind: MMOs jumping the shark?

by Krystalle Voecks Feb 11th 2008 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Opinion, The Daily Grind, Humor

There are many who may argue that some MMOs have already jumped the shark. Two of the examples that came up in our recent debates were EverQuest and of course, Star Wars Galaxies. SWG is perhaps the most obvious one for any potential shark-jumping with their decision to switch to the NGE, and thus completely dropping a new game into players' laps. The idea was to bring more people into SWG, but so far as we've been able to tell, it's still fairly low-population whenever we've logged in. Of course, the unintended consequence also involved many of the original players leaving the game, torching the game box, who have since then taken every possible chance to curse the names of all involved with the NGE. The line in EverQuest is blurry; some say it was Kunark, some say it was Planes of Power, and still others say that it hasn't really ever jumped since there's still a devoted fanbase.

Today we'd like to ask you -- do you think that it's possible for an MMO to ever actually "jump the shark?" Would you consider SWG to be alone in that distinction (assuming it applies) like some of the people we spoke to? Do you think that there are far more games that have passed the point of no return than what we've listed? What point do you think is too far? And do you see any games giving off warning bells that they are nearing the danger point?

Tags: eq, everquest, jump-the-shark, mmo-history, soe, star-wars-gallery

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Mark Crump said on 11:09AM 2-11-2008

For me, EQ jumped the shark with PoP. Things were going along decent until we needed to get flagged for each tier, and guilds refused to back-flag.

That's when EQ stopped pretending they weren't a raid game.

Ravious said on 11:29AM 2-11-2008

I think it is hard for an MMO to jump the shark UNLESS it changes the fundamental way the game is played.
So IMHO WoW could not have jumped the shark with BC because the way the core was played was still more or less the same, whereas with SWG the whole game changed.

Angel said on 1:02PM 2-11-2008

A MMORPG would jump the shark when level caps are raised to absurdity at the sacrifice of story content. In other words, when the world content is transformed from “literature” to a bunch of bigger “mobile bags of experience” with only a loosely strung together excuse for their existence in the world.

chestone said on 3:26PM 2-11-2008

There is a clear difference between when SWG jumped the shark and other MMOs such as EQ due to a dramatic exodus of players, and complete shift in the game itself. I agree that EQ really jumped the shark with PoP, which is when even I as a hardcore raider threw in the towel. It like the game had lost its way, and was progressing too quickly for my taste. That and I had been playing the game since a little after release, and maybe I just had had enough. Really we can't tell much about WoW right now, as I think we are really in the midst of it, and we can only really make clear distinctions awhile after the fact. DAoC jumped the shark at some point as well, but I didn't stick around long enough or pay enough attention to watch it happen.