Why Does it Need to be Massive?

MMOs, they're all the rage with the kids, but how important, really, is the 'massive' in MMO? Not so much these days.

For those who solo - which appears to be a goodly proportion of MMO-ers - the 'massive' doesn't really mean squat. Give them the same world, the same quests, and run it offline, and they'd scarcely know the difference. Heck, call it Oblivion. Oh, there's the odd player economy/auction house and crafting, sure, but these features aren't the core features they once were, if upcoming games are anything to go by.

If you're partial to a bit of group questing, the 'massive' means a bit more - but not really that much more. I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest the average number of players in a party/group/team across most well-known MMOs is somewhere around three or four. The median is probably even less - perhaps two or three. That's not so massive (although I'd love to know the true numbers).

What about pick-up-groups? Where are you to find your ad hoc teammates if not in-world? Well, any 'massive' lobby can replace that feature and then drop you in to your own private world. Heck, the 'massive' part of City of Heroes is pretty much a bloody big lobby for finding teams to run the instanced missions.

Even if you're part of a guild and regularly run through content with them, that's not necessarily 'massive'. You could have a small shard with only a couple of hundred players in it - including all your guild mates - and besides the aforementioned player economy and crafted items, you'd hardly tell it was different from a 10,000 pop server.

Player housing, cities, politics? Nicely 'massive', but again, not proving popular in many of the new wave of MMOs.

Ah, what about PvP? Surely you need a 'massive' population to provide you with fodder? Not necessarily. Steam is 'massive'. Team Fortress 2 isn't. But TF2 can handle a similar number of combatants as many instanced MMO battlefields. Heck, Warhammer Online was often a bloody big lobby for scenarios.

RvR? Ahhh. Now we have something worthy of the title 'massive'. But what proportion of MMO-ers are into open RvR? I'd wager it's not the drawcard for the majority. Besides, you could easily have a strategic RvR map with individual 'non-massive' ('tiny'?) instanced battles, and you'd be pretty close to existing RvR in many ways.

Not So Massive

Massive used to mean something. Back in the days of Ultima Online, something new was afoot. Multiplayer games had been around for a while, but UO was a new kind of thing (well, not that new if you were into MUDs).

UO, and the first generation of MMOs, like Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies, were paragons of 'massive'. Their signature features were remotely hosted persistant sandbox worlds and the idea was that players would populate and shape the outcome of these worlds. This is why crafting was such a big deal, even if it's become a bit of a pale mockery today. Then came the theme park, and many of the sandbox features fell out of favour - and with them, much of what was essential to the 'massive' in MMO.

Today's MMOs are still 'massive', but they could easily be 'tiny' and many people would either never notice, or not complain. When it comes to future MMOs, the 'massive' is even less important.

MMOs in years to come could move even further away from the 'massive' - and such a move might even be a Good Thing. Sure, 'massive' will continue to appeal to some, and I hearily endorse a pluralism of games catering to a broad spectrum of tastes. But I caution current MMO enthusiasts about clinging to the 'massive' for the sake of an acronym.

Consider a game with a 'massive' lobby where you do your shopping, train up your character and find your team - or even survey the strategic map. Then you launch in to a 'tiny' instanced encounter that caters to your current fancy. It could be a PvE mission, a PvP battlefield or an RvR engagement etc. Such a game wouldn't be lumbered with the hosting burdens of a 'massive' game, and it could better tailor content - and difficulty - to the teams as they enter the world. It could even include more randomised content, so you don't get situations where you know precisely where the mission objective is or the spawn points are. Kind of like Left4Dead. Furthermore, it could more easily cater for the large proportion of solo players by scaling to their needs. I call it an MTMO (Massively Tiny Multiplayer Online).

Would such a game be that much different from an MMO? What would it lack that you crave from current MMOs?