Lately I’ve been dwelling on the topic of change in MMORPGs. It’s one of the foundational principles of the genre, that these titles aren’t fixed in stone but change and evolve over time. The game you play today might be incredibly different than the MMO you played three years previous, even though they have the same title.
Depending on my perspective, this could be a blessing or a curse. I mean, I love that MMOs keep adding new content, are constantly refined by developers, and hold the promise of more adventures in the future. It definitely keeps the games from getting stale and too predictable. Yet change can also be scary, with patches and expansions that can fundamentally alter what you used to like about a game, break classes, or otherwise rob an MMO of the identity and personality it used to have.
Maybe it’s just like life, in that you can’t ever keep things stuck in time at an exact point but have to roll with the changes and learn to appreciate the new while holding on to the good of the old that still exists. What do you think?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
