Redefining MMOs: Have your say

by Brendan Drain Oct 1st 2009 at 11:00AM

Filed under: Contests, Culture, MMO industry, Opinion, Massively meta, Academic, Virtual worlds, Redefining MMOs

Back in July, we started our Redefining MMOs series of articles to explore how the MMO genre has been redefined during the current generation of games and where it's headed in the next. Each of us here at Massively contributed our own unique perspectives on various topics, from those first articles on the terminology we use to refer to MMOs and the importance of lore to the latest article where developers weighed in with their opinions. Developers from several major MMO development studios discussed the term "MMO", what they think it means now and whether it's time for a new word. It's been an exciting series of articles for us to write and we hope you've enjoyed reading it.

Many of you have already been inspired to comment on the articles and discuss your views on each topic. Your comments have given us a great deal of cause for thought and before we wrap up this popular series, we'd love to hear more of your thoughts. If you've ever wanted to get your opinions on the MMO genre in the spotlight, this is your chance. Simply write your own Redefining MMOs article on your own blog or website and drop the link in the comments. We'll announce our favourite reader submission next week and give them pride of place in next week's final wrap-up article.

Skip past the cut for our full submission guidelines.

How to submit your article:
Step 1: Pick a topic to write on that relates to the Redefining MMOs concept. It should be generally about some aspect of how the genre has changed over the years, where you think it's heading or even where you think it should be heading.
Step 2: Write your article on your own blog or website. If you're thinking of starting a new MMO blog, you can set one up for free at Google's blogger.com.
Step 3: Comment on this post, including the link to your article and a short description of it or the title.

Submission guidelines:

You can write about any topic that relates to the Redefining MMOs concept. It doesn't have to be a topic we've covered here at Massively.
Begin the article's title with "Redefining MMOs: ", followed by your chosen topic.
Link to our Redefining MMOs category somewhere in your article. We recommend doing it in the introduction, to let your readers know where the inspiration for the post came from.
Put your Massively username or the email address you use here in your article to help us verify that you wrote it.
Submissions must be in by about 1PM on Tuesday 6th Oct to give us time to read them and decide on our favourite.

That's it! Any length of article is acceptable, so you can write as much or as little as you like. You can even include some of your own screenshots or images in your article to spice it up a little. Your link will remain on this article's comments for all to see and our favourite submission will earn pride of place in next week's series wrap-up post. The winning submission will be linked to in the post right next to the links to our own articles.

For those of you entering, good luck and we look forward to reading your opinions.

Tags: blog, competition, contest, featured, massively, opinion, redefining-mmos

Related From Massively

The Daily Grind: Your shooter of choice?
6 days ago
The Daily Grind: Are you still playing a September MMO?
15 days ago
MMOs for gamers or businessmen?
28 days ago

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Undini said on 11:20AM 10-01-2009

As it happens, I recently made a blog entry related to this. The entry is about software designs that I hate, and half of the entry discusses the updating process of MMO's. I rant about stuff that makes no sense and propose solutions (all of which exist in some MMO's). The entry can be found here: http://gemigemi.livejournal.com/6886.html

The entry does not follow the submission rules listed above so I am not posting this here as a real submission, but anyone reading this is allowed to take the idea and make a blog entry of their own based on my text. (remember proper references if you do ;) )

Wild Colors said on 5:24PM 10-01-2009

Check out the hastily drafted post on planned senescence in MMOs at http://imadeablogforthis.blogspot.com/2009/10/redefining-mmos-planned-senescence.html. Essentially, I propose a choose-your-own-adventure model.

mikel evins said on 9:33PM 10-01-2009

I've commented on related matters before quite a bit, but this post provided an excuse to do it again. You can find the resulting rant at

http://mikelevins.livejournal.com/4185.html

If you'd rather see it in a more typographically appealing form, you can instead look at

http://mikelevins.livejournal.com/

and find the October 1st entry.

Dblade said on 1:11AM 10-02-2009

This is more about "Where MMOs should be going," but my post at http://mmomisanthrope.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/redefining-mmos-time-to-move-beyond/ is about 4 radical ways to redefine MMOs. It's more about mindset, but I think MMOs are very technically polished, and the danger is more about mindset and soul.

If anyone wants to comment please feel free, and please excuse the overall roughness of the blog.

cb said on 7:22AM 10-02-2009

Here's mine, and this one is about more flexible character classes and the loss of niche protection.

http://spinksville.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/redefining-mmos-flexible-character-classes-and-the-end-of-niche-protection/

abadcoverband said on 5:16PM 10-02-2009

I wrote mine before I knew about this competition, and so far there are some pretty outstanding contributions to the subject, so I'm not hedging any bets of success on my part. But I will throw my hat in and see if it nets my blog some exposure.

My article hopes to encourage people to be more accepting of one another while playing MMOs, on the grounds that games are designed with a certain audience in mind, all of which fall under the umbrella of interactive entertainment. If we switched to a freely distributed MMO model with a micro-transaction platform instead of a box fee and monthly subscription cost, I believe it would eliminate the need to 'love or hate' a game and defend your investment.

If this is something that interests you, read on at: http://analyticview.blogspot.com/2009/10/redefining-mmos-co-operation-and-gns.html

David said on 3:06PM 10-04-2009

I had a hard time *defining* what makes an MMO, let alone re-defining it.
http://canazza.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/defining-an-mmo/

Ferrel said on 8:54AM 10-05-2009

I decided to take a moment and look at the shift from group play to solo play in our MMOs and how in the long run that might not have been the best thing for business.

My article "Putting the multiplayer back in MMORPG" can be found here: http://www.epicslant.com/2009/10/redefining-mmos-removing-multiplayer-from-mmorpg/

Brendan Drain said on 4:02AM 10-06-2009

These are some great articles, I think we're going to have a hard time picking one as our favourite!

Last call for submissions! Today is Tuesday 6th and the submissions close at 1PM by Massively's time.

Dagon said on 4:33AM 10-08-2009

Damn I missed the deadline, as only today I was alerted to this topic. I have been writing a PDF for Eve Online, and it isn't finished but close. It is *LONG*. I will add a link to my submission (even though it'll be too late) in 1-2 weeks, as a PDF. Remeber, it is strictly about Eve Online but many points in it impact in full on MMORPGS in general.

Yah I know, most Eve players are cultistly opposed to anything that changes *their* game.

Add your comments

Your comments:

Remember me

E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.