Gamasutra’s Top 5 Most Significant Moments In MMOs

Michael Zenke declares himself the law-giver, and the top five trends are:

• the rise of “little” games, meaning indie, browser-based, and social worlds. And, for some reason, Maple Story even though I don’t see how you can ever call it little.
• Big MMORPG failures, which lists Vanguard, Gods and Heroes, and Auto Assault. Now, all three of these had radically different problems, so I am not sure there’s a commonality there other than the fact that perhaps it was brought home to players in a more comprehensive way that Making MMOs Is Hard(tm).
• World of Warcraft extending its dominance, with celeb endorsements, Toyota commercials, etc.
• Mega-big clashes of the titans, with the Activision Blizzard announcement, plus Warhammer waiting in the wings.
• Microtransactions versus subscriptions, for which he uses the now-infamous panel at AGDC as the proverbial tinder that lit the fire.

That’s a pretty good list, I have to admit. I might have combined the “failures” and the “clash of titans” ones in order to insert the investment and hype surrounding virtual worlds and ancillary services, though — in some ways, it is going to have a longer-term impact.

He goes on to suggest that a game designer throwdown TV show would be entertaining. I’m game. 🙂