Today’s market for MMORPGs is an extremely competitive one, with the MMORPG juggernaut World of Crackcraft..erm Warcraft taking up more than 60% of the MMORPG market it is becoming increasingly hard for new MMORPGs to grab a foot hold onto this seemingly monopolized market. At first I thought this would be a good thing that would inspire more competition and better gameplay, kind of like how it works in real life economics, but so far that has not been the case.

Now that World of Warcraft has given people their cake and allowed them to eat it to, it seems that newer games such as Age of Conan are falling short of people’s expectations in a new MMORPG. This begs the question, “What do people expect from a current-gen MMORPG?”

1. I expect a game that stays fun throughout the entire game. I want to still have fun getting the last levels just like I did with the first levels.
2. I expect to have gameplay that rewards grouping. This is an MMORPG after all, and they are supposed to be Massively Multilayer, not just lots of people playing by themselves.
3. I expect to be rewarded for doing something. If I kill a boss or finish a quest, I want a reward. XP is a given reward and you should always get it for doing a quest, be creative people.
4. Endgame content should be clearly visible and should seem to be something worth investing the time to get to.
5. Grinding is never fun. We don’t want to grind and if I have to grind over 10 levels in the whole game then the game has failed.
6. PVP is a must. The system must be organized and it must have objectives and rewards. Mindless PVP like in Age of Conan where you HAVE to kill everyone just to be able to do PVE is not fun.
7. I expect the game to be balanced. Come on people, what are betas for if not to balance out the game? I know Age of Conan’s beta was a fiasco but Jesus, the imbalance in most classes is crazy.
8. I expect new content on a reasonable release time frame. A little faster than what World of Warcraft currently does, but theirs is not bad.
9. If you have to bring the servers down, do it at night time. Do it from 2:00 AM PST until how long it takes, don’t bring it down during the day.

From what I have seen in the Warhammer Closed Beta, EA/Mythic seem to be concentrating on the whole “socially competitive” aspect of a MMORPG. Making it necessary for you to branch out and group up to get things done in the game, a concept that is great because playing alone is never as fun as meeting new people and playing with them.