The other day, I was writing a news post about an MMO adding a new feature to the game, and Bree immediately replied, “Love to see a studio implement 20-year-old API functionality.” Which, you know? Fair. It’s not that the functionality shouldn’t be there or even that we want to dunk on this studio particularly, hence scrubbing the studio name; it’s that maybe you shouldn’t brag about adding something that should already have been added to the game ages ago. This seems less like a feature and more like cleaning up an oversight.
Don’t get me wrong; adding this stuff is great. It’s a good thing that World of Warcraft added an explicit social contract for players, for example. I wouldn’t be upset if The Elder Scrolls Online added a proper auction house to the game. But I would be a little bit eye-roll-y at them bragging about doing so, like it’s something breathtaking and new instead of basic functionality for online games that’s existed for an absolute age. So what MMO studio shouldn’t brag about instituting functionality that should already be standard? Where’s the studio that strikes you as most likely to happily crow “we added X!” when X is already present in loads of other games as a baseline?
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!
