Rift: Because I've Seen It All Before

A new MMO came out today called Rift. Nothing I've seen of this game has not made me yawn. It's not that I think the game is bad, but I've seen it before under many different names and I'm tired of it. As usual however, the MMO-hungry masses seem to have flocked to this game in hopes that it may inject some ingenuity into a genre still shell-shocked by WoW. I like MMO's, but let's face facts: there's nothing incredibly new here.

I've been playing MMO's since Ultima Online and I've been involved in making them for nearly as long. You can't beat WoW by being WoW, just like WoW didn't beat EverQuest by being EverQuest. I know we've all accepted this sort of revisionist history where WoW was always meant to dethrone EQ and EQ wasn't really that big a game anyway, but that was never the case. WoW was a HUGE risk for Blizzard, but they did what they always do, they took all the best ideas out there, threw in some unique twists and improvements, and a TON of polish, and it worked. I haven't seen anyone else do this since, not to the same degree at least.

MMO's currently find themselves much in the same place that FPS games were in the late 90's. Id Software with their Doom and Quake games simply dominated and it wasn't until Valve came along with Half-Life - a game that took all the best ideas out there, threw in some unique twists and improvements, and a TON of polish - that things started to change and Id was dethroned.

When you're making games at this level, you have to realize that you're making pop music. At the core it's always the same damn song, but when someone comes along with just the right tweaks and at just the right time, it makes major waves and a new paradigm is created. Rift is not this game, but I know I'm going to be hearing about how "this is the one" and how it's "so different" at least for about a month until everyone gets tired of it. I know this because I've seen it all before. I sincerely hope that Rift has the staying power to remain profitable for Trion Worlds, but this is not a game that's going to shift any paradigms. Is there a game that can do this? Hell yes and I think we'll be seeing it soon, but understand this: WoW is not going to die some grand movie monster death. The game has peaked and what follows will be a slow decline, hastened perhaps by the arrival of the next paradigm. And what will the future bring after that? God, I hope it doesn't bring anymore larger than life MMO's designed to work for all players at all times. I think there's much more ground to be covered with niche games, but that's a subject for another time.