October 8th, 2009 : MMO Makeovers  

A couple days ago, MMORPG.com published an article called the “Top 5 MMOs That Need Remakes.” As one would imagine, it’s a listing of MMOs that are too outdated to meet today’s expectations but definitely had something going for them once upon a time. And sure, who wouldn’t want to rekindle the magic if they really enjoyed a game that’s now past it’s prime? There’s no blue pill for that, but take what worked well, then add improved artwork and engines and you’ve really got something, right?

For myself, the old flame is Everquest, my first MMO love. But you can’t remake EQ. If anything, EQ2 is very much an attempt at that and has achieved a reasonable amount of success, but it didn’t light a candle in comparison for me. It was too different… heck, today’s revamped EQ1 is too different even. While each new MMO takes ideas from the old ones, constantly finding ways to improve upon the genre, I feel like you can never go back home. The old graphics, odd quirks (aka bugs), and roundabout way of doing things were part of EQ’s identity. You can’t retool the terrain until it’s unrecognizable and call it by the same name (granted, WoW plans on doing just this with their Cataclysm expansion, but I’ll hold off on my comments regarding that till I see for myself).

Felwithe, the High Elf city of Everquest, in all it’s box-y glory is on the left. On the right is Tunaria, the new Felwithe of EQ2.

So while I may drool over high polygon count games like Aion with character models that would make my original EQ elf want to put a bag over her head, I don’t think old game lore tied to the world I remember with such bittersweet fondness can be injected into a completely new environment. It’s blasphemy! (And yes, I’m aware of Everquest Next, which is in it’s very early stages of development. With very little information available to the public, it’s hard to say whether this is a sequel, remake, or something farther from the original concept).

I’m sure some folks would disagree with me and have no qualms with upgrading to 2.0, satisfied with random traces of the old here and there in exchange for a more polished game. After all, remaking music, movies, and other media happens often enough. A lot of times these remakes are geared toward different generations or types of audiences, however, and thus may be their first exposure. So maybe MMO remakes would be great for new players, but less tempting for some of the nostalgic old-timers.

That is not to say that I’m against ever adding new content to existing games, but developers have to be very careful about cohesion in terms of style and storyline so that it feels like the player is still in the same world as before. This is leading toward a completely different blog post though so I’ll let it be for now!

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