All of this reminiscing about City of Heroes and how there will actually be world-ending events to coincide with the server shut down has made me wonder, “maybe certain gamers would find some value in a real time-based game-world event happening within the game world.”
Certainly with MMOs on the subscription model, you are basically leveraging real time (and usually real money) against your game time. That introduces a paradox of resources, as the more you invest into that environment, the less you want to see it all for naught. But, every MMO in existence has faced extinction, and World of Warcraft will be no exception.
It’s always a shame when these shut downs happen, and people are inevitably mad. So, setting the expectation of fun as a slow arc from the beginning might be a way to make the customer more of a partner in the cataclysm at the end.
I’m trying to think of examples where a massive persistent game was marketed in this way. All I’m coming up with are alternate reality games (ARGs) and those tend to not be played as a video game, but rather using more intuitive skills. I have a feeling that somebody has probably done this in Second Life.
I don’t see MMOs as they traditionally have been done for the last decade continuing into the far future. An experience that tempers your investment hesitance with a gradual ramp towards a climax and then something big might be a nice transition towards a more palatable multiplayer genre later.
Source: rockpapershotgun.com