If you believe in the ‘world/game’ split of online world design, and are a fan of the ‘world’ camp, now must seem like a pretty grim time. The grand-daddy of ‘world’ design is suddenly having people talk about it in the past tense (prematurely, I should reiterate). Furthermore, new additions to the ‘world’ side of things such as Star Wars Galaxies, Shadowbane and the Sims Online have all gotten disappointing reviews, whereas on the ‘game’ side of things, we’ve had endless praise for City of Heroes, followed by reviewers arguing, out of EverQuest 2 and Worlds of Warcraft, which game can cure the most lepers. The future doesn’t look too bright – Tabula Rasa and Vanguard, obviously on the front lines of the next wave, both appear to be ‘game-y’ games. If you’re a fan of broad game design with do-anything attitudes, some would argue your time is over.

But, for Surly Bob and the other “old school evil players” nostalgic for the glory days of Ultima Online – it won’t happen again. Ever. That moment in time was unique – and it’s gone. Because there will never again be a time where there is only one MMO. The market has matured to the point where there will always be choices. And in a dog-eat-dog PvP game, there will only be the PvPers, not the targets. Because now people actually have the choice of selecting which game to play, which game suits them best. If a person is targeted for the tender mercies of “evil players” – they simply will cancel and move on. The days of UO’s One World where many mutually exclusive play styles are forced to interact, on the terms of the more socially maladroit, are over. The market has fragmented, and cannot be put back together. People, when forced to play the role of “sheep” or “stupid newbie”, will simply leave.

Let’s play devil’s advocate. I’ve seen some go so far as to say that Worlds of Warcraft will end up being the nail in the coffin of MMO design. After all, who would want to make a do-anything game after WoW hit half a million users with a pure gamer game? And I’d counter, those who want to differentiate themselves from the market.

Let’s start by dispelling some of the nay-saying. Star Wars Galaxies, last I checked, easily blew past 200K users (higher numbers, I might add, than CoH). Shadowbane had sell-through that would astonish most observers. And then there’s UO. People give UO a lot of grief for coming into second place to EQ, being Pepsi to Verant’s coke, once EQ came out. But let’s not lie – there is a LOT of money to be made in Pepsi. And UO was an unabashed success for EA. Even at its current rumored numbers, by my math it’s bringing in $25 million gross a month year (edited: fixed). That’s big business, folks, for a ‘world’ genre that’s supposed to be dead.

Whatever else you can say about these games, you can’t say that there isn’t an appetite for them.

I’m hopeful for the world design camp, for a couple of reasons. First off, it makes business sense. First and foremost, I think that, if you’re starting a new game design right now with your small, plucky team, you’d want it to be a ‘world’. Verant, NCSoft and Blizzard are going to be fighting over the ‘game’ side of things like heavyweight champs. They have more money to make content, and they can compete on that battlefield. Anyone smaller coming in will be like the Bad News Bears stumbling into the World Series. There is a market opportunity here that no one is witnessing – but someone is going to, and they’re going to hit it big.

Second off, I think the world games haven’t been as good as they could. UO had too few limitations. SWG took some strange risks and wrestled with the limits of its license. SB — well, we had our own problems. The perfect ‘world’ design hasn’t been done yet, and someone’s going to do it. When it happens, everyone will be talking about it.

Which is my third point: Virtual worlds capture the hearts and imaginations better. As marvelous as WoW was, I never sit around thinking “what if” about it. As cool as City of Heroes was, I found it a terribly easy game to walk away from. Compare this to the vision behind The Sims Online, where Will Wright once compared your house to your web page – a way for you to build and show off to others, with a world where your entertainment is derived from the creativity of others, not the content the designers pump out, that all kind of feels the same after a while.

So how do we get there from here? That, of course, is the question. One of the reasons why we’re in a ‘game’ phase right now is that it was easy for designers to figure out which direction to take that model. I see some basic challenges with the World Model.

First, you need to commit to making a world game. This is tough, because you’re effectively committing to doing a whole lot of systems that interact, as opposed to doing one system well. This drives people nuts – they want to make combat and quests as gripping as WoW or EQ, but you just don’t have the time if you’re doing dozens of other systems. The hard part here is actually defending this philosophy on the boards, from players who want the best combat evar — and every other system (blacksmithing, skinning) to be as fully self-realized as those roles.

Second, you need to clearly identify the right risks to allow. As Scott points out, it was somewhat insane that people who wanted to do nothing but blacksmith were forced to constantly live in fear for their lives. However, as someone else points out in that thread:

Then trammel came out. I had a house for the first time. I could stand complacently at the bank without having to step away from potential thieves. Truly safe for the first time and all the nasty people are off killing each other in felucca. But the passion and excitment of interaction was gone. I remember a guild lying in hidden ambush outside a house that had been stolen from them by a PK. I remeber the guardless island of Jhelom, where reds and blues used to mingle in an uneasy peace. The point of this rambling is that a world is far more compeling when one truly has the ability to choose friends and hate enemies. A wary truce made to tackle a dungeon is far more interesting than the slack indifference of people who know they can’t compete and so decide to cooperate.

Third, you need to solve the expectations problem and the newbie problem. How do you get new players into the game with a wild west feel, and how do you protect them until they have enough of an understanding where they can take part in what you’ve got going on – without going into fully safe, candy-coated ‘game’ designs? I think this is where UO truly stumbled.

These are, of course, random musings. But I do firmly believe that the World model is not lost. Someone just needs to figure out how to do it right.

Original comment thread here.