GamerSushi Asks: Would You Play an MMO Shooter?

Brink

Ever since the wild success of WoW, MMOs have been the apple of every major publisher’s eye. They all want one, they’re all desperate to have one, but it turns out that making lightning strike twice is a bit trickier than anyone could have imagined. Note the sarcasm, there.

However, Paul Wedgewood, CEO of Splash Damage (currently working on the awesome-looking FPS Brink), feels that there is a large portion of the market untapped when it comes to MMOs. Specifically, he’s wondering why there aren’t any major MMO FPS games.

“You know, for a long time it hasn’t been technically feasible because you need super low latency connections for good shooter combat and that’s generally incompatible with 1000 people being on a server at the same time… But there are enough solutions around now so that it’s reasonably feasible. I know that there are some teams on the periphery working on ideas for this.”

So what do you guys think? I know we’ve got some WoW players here and more than our fair share of FPS gamers. Would you guys play an FPS MMO? Are we at the point where you think a good one is plausible? What do you think would make you take a peek? And is anyone excited about Brink? Go!

Source – CVG

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I write about samurai girls and space marines. Writer for Smooth Few Films. Rooster Teeth Freelancer. Author of Red vs. Blue, The Ultimate Fan Guide, out NOW!

5 thoughts on “GamerSushi Asks: Would You Play an MMO Shooter?”

  1. First of all, I super-psyched for Brink, and I’ll probably just run around some of the levels for the first 30 minutes. lol

    I would love to play an MMO FPS. Whether or not it’s persistent, it would just be so cool to storm Normandy. If the game had persistent equipment and customization, it would be really cool to work at making your character a specialized and pimped-out cog in the war machine.

    Then again, battles that are, like 20 vs 20 feel epic enough (from what I’ve seen in Project Reality), and moreover too many players feels unnecessary. I saw players in MAG, who almost never saw enemies, and if they did, it was one or a few enemies and the engagements were usually just small skirmishes. The MMO FMPS would need to be structured intelligently so that the player engages in smaller scale shootouts and large scale strikes within the same combat space and battle in order to maintain the drama of combat. Too little action is boring, too much is overwhelming and you’d lose the sense of strategy. The MMO FPS would require strong coordination tools (maps and callouts), enough variation in guns and equipment to make a difference when you’re taking positions and shooting enemies (so it’s not just “this gun kills one bullet faster”; there needs to be a noticeable niche for each gun, and the equipment needs to impact a player’s movement flow and tactics), and large enough maps so you can have memorable and interesting rivalries between certain locations. I don’t think an FPS needs 100 players to make an interesting battle; 20 vs 20 sounds like an awesome and epic battle, and it all comes down to the design of the maps and gameplay. You can throw 1000 players into a poorly designed map, but it won’t be as epic as a 20 vs 20 battle in a well designed map.

  2. Id love to play an MMO Shooter, my dream game is a Call of Duty type game set in medieval times lol. Imagine a game where 2 armies just charge at each other on some big open plain, first to wipe out the other is the winner. I better stop, Im just depressing myself because Ill probably never play that game.

    I think if a game structured itself in the way WoW does with instances it would be a blast. Your server can just be you and your friends doing missions, free roam, exploring. Then when you want to do a dungeon or big mission you enter a queue and get matched up with some huge amount.

    Borderlands could make the transition to MMORPG

  3. I’ve made my dislike for magic/fairies/elves known around here I think, and that’s really what keeps me out of MMO’s, and in fact, a lot of video games in general. I think I would give a Shooter MMO a try, but I definitely wouldn’t pay a monthly fee for it unless it was around $5. I like everything Cossack said too; it would have to be just the right blend of big-not-too-big fights and small-not-too-small shoot-outs. Also, not too realistic or not too “Arcadey”. I wouldn’t play an Operation Flashpoint MMO for example.

    I’m hard to please, I know.

    I guess my short answer is: Probably not.

  4. Actually there was a reasonably successful MMO FPS a few years back called Planetside developed by SOE. It was a cracking game I played it for about 4 years and loved it the whole time. They are even making a sequel which I will be picking up for sure.

    Another good MMO shooter is Global Agenda which is third person and has recently gone free to play, while not as gripping as Planetside it still warrants a shout out for being a good MMO shooter.

  5. If there’s a good FPS MMO game then I will play it. If there’s a bad FPS MMO game then I will probably play it and insult it while doing so. If there’s a monthly charge then I will not play it.

    That’s pretty much my thoughts on the whole thing in a nutshell.

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