There’s an emotional scene in the 2007 TV drama about the C.I.A. called The Company where one of the top KGB generals played by Danish actor Ulrich Thomsen, breaks down and cries after he hears about the fall of the Soviet Union. Shocked and bewildered, head in his hands, he realizes that everything he worked for in his life — a communist Utopia — has been for naught because the U.S.S.R. has just collapsed.
The truth is painful.
More people are beginning to realize this about the stillborn state of the MMORPG genre and all the hopes and dreams they had for the future.
Once Upon a Time on Veeshan
The Fires of Heaven forums have existed in various iterations since the days it was formed to be the discussion forums for the original Fires of Heaven EverQuest guild on the Veeshan server. They became famous due to the salty rants from their guild leader Alex Afrasiabi AKA Furor Planedefiler.
The Birth of Player Activism
Furor told it like it was. He spoke truth to power to Sony Online Entertainment and frequently lambasted the ham-fisted John Smedley for his ineptitude in managing the EverQuest franchise. At the time, Furor was the Donald Trump of the nascent MMO industry. He was larger than life, outspoken, brash, and unforgiving of the obvious incompetence of EverQuest developers.
Over the years, the FOH forums have become an online sanctuary where MMO players would congregate and hash out their thoughts, hopes, and dreams for a better MMO free from the censorial community managers on their respective official forums. You could pretty much say whatever you wanted on those forums. Furor had long since departed the forums, but the posters kept the fire burning with the kindling of edgelord bravado.
Shilling for Curt Schilling Never Paid Off
MMO developers would occasionally post in the FOH shark tank to gain street cred. One of the big problems is that the FOH members became starstruck fanboys of these devs. If you were a janitor for Blizzard chances are you enjoy a cult following at the FOH forum.
The FOH community desperate for validation, elevated MMO baseball player turned MMO developer Curt Schilling into a god and then promptly kicked him to the curb when his MMO failed. I’ve had a spat there myself with an ex-EQ developer and I never returned because it was impossible to get a fair shake from the slavish sycophants. Such is the nature of forums and internet culture.
The Fires of Heaven forums are set up in a rather bizarre way. Since each MMO gets only one thread, it’s one big jumbled free for all where it’s impossible to discuss individual topics. Instead, you have to wade through a stream-of-consciousness cesspool of edgy misanthropes and internet comedians.
Proudly Batting .000 for 20 Years
A few months ago, a poster named Jasker started a thread on the FOH forums called Fires of Heaven and our continued disappointment that rightly questioned the relevance of the forums and 20 years of arm-chair bloviating about MMORPGs. Here’s the post:
Most of our narrative on this forum, the forum that originated from Everquest, never really saw a new AAA MMORPG. Everything has just been rehashed WoW or EQ or Diablo or etc. Vanguard, Pantheon, Curts Game, EQ3, Titan, the list goes on. All ghosts. All dead.
We ruminated over thousands of pages on games that never delivered for any of us. We were all so excited and spoke to devs on many occasions over things that ended in tragedy.
That’s all. Just remembering how our life went.
We’ll be dead here soon, most of us, a good 20 or so years, and more than half of our lives we were on a fucking message board talking about games that ultimately never delivered or even came out.
Anyway, off to the WoW classic thread where I get to go back to Vanilla for the 8th time. Sorry to be salty.
It’s just one thing to have not such a great real life, and another thing entirely when the video games all turn out to be one massive troll. Pretty sad for us as I know many of you from gaming and we were collectively on this forum for a really long time deliberating on stuff that never happened.
I agree with the author. This is perhaps the most honest, sobering bit of gut-punching self-reflection that I’ve read there. I would go so far as including my own website and every other MMO site out there as well. I think the impact that the players and we pundits have had over the years is negligible to zero. We think we are making a difference but in the grand scheme of things we are not.
It’s not because we didn’t have good ideas and sound analysis. It’s because MMO game studios are not really structured to take feedback from players. Nor were they set up to collaborate with players. They operate on a primitive old-school ethos: if you don’t like it, don’t buy it mentality.
You have to understand that the MMO industry did not really exist before EverQuest. Everything was made up as they went along. The first MMO developers were like Keystone Cops. They really had no idea what they were doing and what the genre would turn into.
The concept of ongoing customer service did not exist until Jeff Butler realized this and made it happen at SOE with regard to EverQuest. That altruism didn’t last long, a few years later, SOE’s boy wonder Alan Crosby came up with a cost-saving scheme to farm out all their GMs and customer service people to India and hired temp agencies to deal with players.
While MMO studios claim to care about player feedback but they never follow through. It’s all boilerplate performative posturing.
The Symbiotic but Unequal Relationship Between Developers and Players
Part of the problem is that MMOs are not a one-off product that is consumed and sold; they earn revenue via subscriptions and monetization. Since the MMO player is a perpetual customer, it’s only natural that they want to ensure their future happiness continues and that means that devs must keep creating content they like. There is an underlying symbiotic relationship at work here, whether both parties know it or not.
The problem is that this symbiotic relationship is not equal. There’s a species of whales in the ocean that have tiny fish that constantly swim around them and eat parasites. The whales go where they please and the tiny fish must follow. The developers are the whales and the players are the fish. Leaders and followers. But there are far more followers than leaders. Far more restaurant patrons than cooks.
Eventually, the player who pays to spend daily time in a virtual world starts becoming emotionally invested in that world. That continued investment breeds a sense of justified entitlement. When the player feels he is not getting the proper reciprocity for his emotional and financial investment, he rightfully seeks redress from the developers.
Either developers are unaware of their responsibilities to the players or they are indifferent. Ultimately, an adversarial relationship between devs and players is formed. Developers are supposed to serve the players; the players are not supposed to serve the devs. Today, this relationship is inverted. The failure of studios to realize who is the real boss (players) and enforce it upon the dev team is the reason for most of the dysfunction.
MMO Crack Dealers
Another thing worth mentioning is that MMO developers take advantage of the loyalty of players who would have quit long ago but for the attachment to all their characters i.e. the cost-sunk fallacy. I recall one employee review on Glassdoor remarked that the older Daybreak devs routinely make fun of EQ players because they are so loyal and gullible.
Many EQ players will not quit because they have put too much time into their characters. The developers are like drug dealers because they know their customers are addicts and they realize that no matter what steaming pile of crap they send players, they will still keep paying and playing. Look no further to the sycophancy of the participants at official EverQuest forums for a good example of this madness.
We’re in Their World Now
In medieval times, kings, barons, lords, and nobles would have monthly sessions where anyone in the realm could approach them in court and petition them. These petitions could cover a wide range of issues, including legal disputes, land rights, favors, pardons, grievances, and more. Petitions were a means for individuals to seek redress or assistance from their superiors.
If we stop and think about it, people who inhabit virtual worlds for hours a day, are subject to the lords of those worlds. The lords, gods, or admins, or whatever you want to call them, control every aspect of your virtual life from the color of the sky to the color of your armor.
We can pray to these gods in-game, and we can petition these gods on the forums with unassailable reasoning to address our grievances but these gods remain unmoved and unaccountable. We can only hope that the gods are benevolent, but they are just as likely to be tyrants.
What then?
If some mean-spirited creative director doesn’t like paladins, he’s going to make sure they never get properly balanced and that your gear will suck. You and thousands who play your class are shit out of luck. All you can do is vote with your feet and leave.
It’s not just an anecdotal experience. I’ve seen threads on various forums get into the thousands of replies and still the devs are unmoved and do absolutely nothing. Fundamental game design logic and the will of the players are routinely ignored because the devs know best and they are busy.
Bubble-Wrapped Devs
MMO studios are Kakfaesque concrete tombs teeming with egotistic and arrogant designers who languish in protective bubbles. These creatively challenged hacks stay well under the radar and are squirreled away in remote parts of the studio as they work diligently to create their next masterpiece of mediocrity.
Imagine someone so petty that would rather ignore a great idea because it came from someone else and instead implement a bad idea because it came from them. I see this every day on various forums.
If You Think You Are An Imposter, You Probably Are
Imposter syndrome has been a popular topic of discussion in the past few years. It’s trendy to talk about it and claim that you think you’re an imposter but you just need to believe in yourself because you are not one.
Newsflash: most people who think they are imposters are probably imposters. That’s your God-given conscience telling you something. Your parents probably showered you with copious amounts of self-esteem and here we are.
Many MMO developers are imposters who fell into the industry by hook or crook. Deep down they know this and it eats away at them. Many are hired because they were friends with John Smedley, rode dirt bikes with Brad McQuaid, or knew someone at the executive level.
Video Game Studios Hate You and They Think It’s Funny
A new EverQuest game designer named Qwalla recently revealed in a podcast that she was hired even though she had no experience playing EQ. That tells you everything you need to know about how unserious Darkpaw is and how much contempt they have for players.
If you still believe that video game studios don’t hate players, consider that this inexperienced token female designer now has more influence over EverQuest than 20 years of collective wisdom of thousands of gamers ruminating on the Fires of Heaven forums. She can wink at Absor and he will comply with her every wish.
In a way, it’s poetic justice as the “badass” FOH forum regulars were missing in action during the Gamergate culture war and have been loathe to speak out against the wave of wokeness that has invaded video games. FOH has been traditionally a home for the lunatic fringe. For years, they’ve been promoting transgenderism. People who play video games 40 hours a week are not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed.
Let’s be real, this young woman was really hired because Darkpaw needed to check off a diversity box for their ESG score. Darkpaw’s insatiable need to virtual signal their wokeness far outweighed the right of the players to have competent devs working the MMO they’ve spent their lives playing. Besides, the pervy geriatric low testosterone team of slobs at Darkpaw will not complain when a young woman that they can “mentor” is prancing around the studio looking for advice for a job she knows nothing about.
It’s the ultimate slap in the face that competent male designers were bypassed in favor of a young woman hired off the street with no experience. It’s not just at Darkpaw, this is happening across the industry as studios are trying to “close the gender gap” i.e. firing talented male developers and replacing them with talentless twats who will most likely sue the studios for sexual harassment once she realizes she has to work.
The Pettiness of MMO Developers
MMO developers are jealous of their undeserved power and authority. They are spiteful, selfish, cruel, and insecure scoundrels. Most importantly, they lack humility, empathy, and beneficence. They would rather an MMO go down in flames with their bad ideas than survive and thrive with someone else’s good ideas.
The vast majority of MMO developers are sniveling cowards who are afraid to engage with their players. They are so timid and weak that they rarely even attend cloistered dev-only events at GDC where they are among their own kind. If they did, their imbecility would soon become apparent.
These pusillanimous weasels never leave the safety of their gilded official forums and venture into the realm of public discourse because if they did, they might be held accountable and exposed as frauds. Instead, these invertebrates put on their pride shirts, drive to work, punch in, hide in their cubicles, produce more rubbish like garish pride pets, punch out, and drive home and cry in their boyfriend’s arms about what a bad day they had.
The Final Bosses
Bad developers deserve every bit of scorn they get and more, but the real blame for the failure of the MMO industry should be pointed directly at the people in charge: John Smedley, Kelly Flock, Bobby Kotick, Mike Morhaime, Chris Metzen, and others who bled the genre dry and put precious little back into it.
When is the last time Bobby Kotick or Mike Morhaime stood up and gave a substantive speech about fantasy virtual worlds that weren’t full of stale platitudes and boilerplate diversity mumbo jumbo?
These are the masters of the universe that hired the bad devs and the buck stops with them.
Conclusion
I have arrived at the point in my life where I find writing about MMORPGs pointless and unrewarding. For me, writing about the cultural upheaval that is taking place in Western civilization is far more interesting and worthy of my time. But this post on the Fires of Heaven really resonated with me. Besides, I can’t seem to resist the opportunity to disembowel the creatively constipated goblins destroying our industry. For all the MMO players that had their posts ignored over the years, and received bans for their trouble, this article is for you.
Yes, we should continue to lob tennis balls into the courts of MMO developers, what they choose to do is on them, and not us. The corrupt video game press and the candy-ass streamers will never hold them accountable so it is left to the remaining few bloggers and independent forums to speak truth to power. Imagine what they would try to get away with if there were no independent forums, no blogs, no websites, and no video content creators holding them to account.
–Wolfshead
I’m probably younger than you, but I am also at the end of my MMORPG journey. I’ve been through plenty of bad MMOs, lots of deaths and disappointments. Recently, I’ve become a witness of one MMO I held close to going full woke, which in turn means it has died for me.
I’ve resorted to playing old MMOs, especially on private servers and just older versions of older MMOs.
Nothing new excites me like it used to 10 years ago. Now it’s mostly fear and reprehension of “Is it going to be woke propaganda? Will the game be shallow AF?” Like that new MMO Palia, which I recently got an e-mail from that if I register an account on their website, I might get a chance to play the beta in early August. But that game feels like it will be so fucking gay as hell, I will be surprised if it even has genders. Yes, these are the questions I ask myself these days. Will the g@me even have genders? Will women be able to have beards, will men have female hairstyles and makeup?
I’ve even learned how to tell apart such woke trash propaganda games from the rest. They usually have this art style that looks very cozy, vibrant, but not lush, there is always this very faint purple/pink shader on everything – the grass is not really “juicy” green or the sky azure blue – they have this pink tint that feels in my mind like some woman’s very horrible smelling perfume and it’s smell is almost suffocating me… as if the Nivea cream was made into a perfume, that’s the best I can describe the suffocating smell I’m talking about.
So if a game has such an art style, it is 120% developed by some woke Western studio and they will stuff as much woke crap into it and if anyone dares complain about it will get banned.
The few MMOs that aren’t woke trash nowadays just feel so uninspired, like that Ethyrial one which is built entirely on Unity assets and I’ve seen the same assets in at least 7 other games on Steam. Or that Fractured one which is also an Unity asset flip, but they called it a “sandbox” even though based on the explanation, no such game was ever made. And they called it “sandbox”, because it’s a game about nothing with no content and they expect players to buy the game and then for free to develop the 99% missing content for them.
That’s why the few MMOs I’m still playing and are interested in are old versions of some Asian MMOs and heavily modified servers of Vanilla WoW or SWG… All private servers. Now that LOTRO is woke shit, Echoes of Angmar the private server is my only hope to play LOTRO again.
You just sent me down memory lane and wondering about the MMO genre, the games industry, myself and friends and people I met when joining early MMOs and first social networks, forums and blogs. Things changed over time, not only things, but people as well.
Some are still playing MMOs and writing by now for me totally hollow articles about MMOs, totally oblivious of anything, being silent or riding the woke train. We all got older over the many years, and many acquaintances and friends already died, got estranged or lost contact. Preciously few are still left in my case, I do not engage with other players in new games/MMOs anymore.
Back in the days it was easier, I was younger, but times allowed for errors and the internet was smaller. The Fires of Heaven forum had some fault lines, like the endless threads, from the very beginning. Fanboyism happened not only there. Moderators of fan sites for this or that game got jobs at Blizzard or ArenaNet, in case of being totally talentless, they could always start out as community managers.
Community manager meant a lot of different things for different studios, nowadays it is a career stepping stone for people who are mostly not filling any role at a creative company, nothing more but a forum and social media watchdog, often tasked with portraying the company in a positive light by being endlessly woke. I am quite jaded; I really had the idea that Community Managers try to communicate what the players want to the devs… oh well.
Bobby Kotick usually gets shafted, he is not a gamer, but a businessman. But at least he isn’t a pretender, which doesn’t make it much better as he is calling the shots. Far worse is a nice smiling, do nothing guy like Morhaime. He worked behind the scenes, but what he did and how successful or not he was… well, Blizzard went downhill, no kudos.
When reading the posting you quoted from the FoH forum, I thought of you and your constant hope for the next Everquest. At this point there is little hope for the MMO genre to recover and get better anytime soon.
Jagged Alliance 3 releases in a few days. It’s a remake of a 1999 game… which I played, liked immensely but haven’t played in over 23 years anymore. But I am so looking forward to it, it seems to be a well-made copy.
You already talked about this remake-era and the lack of creativity in Hollywood and many major studios these days. The x-th re-imagining, the x-th Marvel movie, the x-th Star Trek or Star Wars whatsoever.
We still get gems now and then, but I realize I started playing games in hindsight truly blessed times. What kids and teens get these days is mostly garbage and money grabbing. Influencer culture and watching others play instead of playing themselves. I am thinking of some particularly successful and influential influencers, who are quite terrible and sad beings. How silly must someone be who is watching them religiously.
I was wondering if I am just getting old. Yeah, it’s partly that. But there is more. The world has taken a turn to the worse, culture degenerated, games, literature and movies got affected as well. Dark times.
You were far ahead of most bloggers and gamers realizing this change. Some still didn’t, others vanished. You know your old blogroll, who is still there, who is lamenting the state of the genre? Most are gone, and some go on… as if time stood still for them. No personal development or change over decades is sometimes a dubious quality, to put it politely.
I also wondered if I would see a resurgence of the MMO genre and if I will still be gamer and motivated enough to start playing again. The idea that this chapter of my life ended, I am still gaming though, it’s a bit saddening. I am also fairly sure the next big MMOs might start out on the conceptual level of the first MMOs, but for fresh minds and people who don’t know better. Game studios don’t seem to learn from mistakes of previous big and successful studios. Just like humans seem to be unable to understand the lessons of history and repeat the same mistakes. It’s fairly sobering to think about that.
Awesome post!
Writing one of these articles every few years is cathartic. It’s painful but healthy to take stock of where we are, where we are going, and where we thought we were going. It’s been one strange trip indeed.
The stagnation of the MMO genre is hard to deny. I think the wrong people have been tasked with making virtual worlds all these years. There are far too many barriers to entry that discourage talented people and out-of-the-box thinkers from being a part of this industry.
Community managers don’t care about community in the slightest. They are hired hands that act as enforcers to keep the great unwashed masses at bay.
Discord is the new IRC now. In the past year, I have had the misfortune to interact with a few official moderators of various Discord channels — many outside of game dev — and quite a few are tin pot tyrants. Discord has been a real disappointment to me. When people get on Discord they seem to lose their humanity and become monsters.
If we ever get a new great MMO, I think it will boil down to sheer luck and it will come from where we least expect it. Nothing makes sense anymore. Nothing computes. There are too many comprimised people in positions of power in the video game industry.
Maybe the video game industry and all the other entertainment industries (film, comics, card games, etc.) are simply mirroring the world we live in now. Most people have no morals and no virtues. Art reflects life. Life reflects art.