It seems as though the new buzz word is “superhero MMO.” Everywhere you see someone is trying to work up some superhero MMO to break the mold. DC Universe launched this year with dazzling success as the second MMO (first being Red Dead Redemption) to launch for the console. Marvel Superhero Squad Online K-12 rated MMO has been in closed beta for quite some time. And now just recently Marvel Universe Online, a more adult themed superhero MMO, has been announced as a free to play MMO.
Superhero MMOs are nothing new. The first superhero MMO is Champion’s Online which was unfortunately a pretty big massive failure. The MMO started doing so poorly and had such underpopulated servers that it was forced to move to the free to play model. City of Heroes/Villains was touted as being far more successful. Keep in mind, that’s successful for a superhero MMO. The game may have sold 30,000 units if they were lucky. Three or four years ago Walmart took them off the shelf and today the game is only available via esale.
DC Universe was far more successful. This is in part because it didn’t feel very MMOish. I mean honestly, compare the UI of DC Universe to City of Heroes. City of Heroes has stupid numbers of moves that have to be used in between an auto-swing. DC Universe plays off more like a smash em up game where most of the moves are based on quick reflex unlisted button pushes which other MMOs do for your automatically (dodge, parry, punch, kick). In this sense DC Universe feels more like a smash em up game with multiplayer support… like Diablo 2. That’s not saying that it’s a bad game or anything merely saying that it is as far away from a typical MMO as you can get.
Can a superhero MMO work? I’m tempted to say yes.
For an MMO to work one key component to it is that at some level a person has to fantasize about it. Fantasy MMOs work because there is such a massive audience of people who fantasize about being in a land of magic or a land of chivalry. The topic of history survives entirely based on people who are looking back and finding entertainment with their fascination of the past. Global Agenda might not have worked just because no one has ever said to themselves “I wish I was a rebel of a robot dominated world who fights against… other rebels….” People were dressing up in elf costumes long before WoW came along.
Superheroes fit this MMO description. I think Dave Lizewski explains it best:
The second qualification for an MMO is that it has to involve something where a person will gradually get stronger as they get older. In a fantasy world the strongest strongman is usually the older guy. However this doesn’t really translate so well in most genres. Some games have treated leveling like exercise so that you are getting stronger as you move more. But it just didn’t make sense in games like Star Trek Online where you’re in a ship and your ship suddenly gained more health points when you leveled.
In a superhero game you gain powers as you level. This sort of tells you that as you age you are understanding the power you have. You can also see a “stats” transition take place in say, the life of superman. Superman between ages 1-12 has no powers. Superman gains speed at 12, strength at 14, and doesn’t fly until he’s 19-20. It also works for a hero like Batman. Batman in his early years isn’t a very good fighter and isn’t very strong. His weapons are limited. However over the years he becomes physically stronger, a better fighter, and has more toys. If you ever watch any of the cartoons that show an older Batman he ends up being far more able than his younger self.
Leveling represents I think one challenge for a superhero MMO. Leveling up has to make sense. People aren’t stupid. Just because there’s an experience bar there doesn’t mean they will give any attention to it.
MMOs need to have a team approach. Without team you cannot have a game that is massively multiplayer. These days a raid is expected to slot a minimum of 10 people. Instanced PvP is pretty easy to work out, heroes vs villains. But PvP can’t make an MMO. If all you wanted an MMO for was PvP you’d play first person shooters. No you need massive raid style encounters involving massive enemies that will require different powers and abilities to beat.
A typical raid is composed of a main tank, 1-4 off tanks, 3-7 healers, and a bunch of damage dealers. In a typical role the main tank tanks the main boss and soaks the majority of the damage. The off tank perform some utility tanking role including keeping up debuffs/buffs, moving mobs, and soaking damage for short amounts of time. Healers jobs are simply to heal, their roles can be split up in many ways including main healer, tank healer, off healer, raid healer and group healer. Then finally you have your damage dealers who might be split up into support damage and pure damage or melee and ranged damage.
That’s a lot of info to soak in… but not really since you probably already know all that. But now look at that and try and construct a raid of heroes that makes some sort of sense. Tanks and healers just don’t seem to exist in giant mass superhero combats. There was never a point where Magneto EVER yelled EVERYONE ATTACK WOLVERINE OR COLOSSUS THEY TAKE LESS DAMAGE THAN EVERYONE.
There was also never a time where Moira MacTagart or Jean Grey took out the surgical needle in the middle of a battle field to heal someone. The closest thing to it was Shaman who placed his hands on Wolverine and gave him back his powers (after stealing them).
Non-fantasy MMOs need to find a new way to approach the tank/healer/dps dynamic. Space MMOs generally make it so that your ship acts as all three and some take damage better, some deal damage better, some avoid damage better, and some repair faster. In first person shooter MMOs the person they want to soak damage
Superheroes need a fresh idea like that. One thought right off the bat is creating combo moves.
Until an MMO is capable of making something that isn’t WoW there may just not be room for a true superhero MMO.
The biggest setback on the superhero/supervillain game is specifically that dynamic hero-villain. If Marvel is going to do an MMO they are going to need to create a sustainable hero-villain personality that isn’t going to be self-destructive.
In World of Warcraft Warchief Hellscream and King Wrynn are pretty much the same character. If they were allies they’d be glorious allies. In this sense as you level up you can feel (as a horde) that even though you are on the side of ‘evil’ (not human) there is a certain logic and understanding to what you do. The DC Universe villains side is insanely under populated maybe in part because villains don’t make sense. In order to try and make sense of these villains they had to fundamentally change the character profile of almost all of the leading villains. When you go through the Joker side introduction you are expecting this crazy man but you find someone who does a lot of planning instead.
Marvel has a very strong set of villains who are mostly pathologically insane. Unlike our friend Grom Hellscream we could not make a case for The Green Goblin to say that he’s merely misunderstood by the hero side. In fact it’s not even certain that villains could sustainably form a faction. I get some things. Like the Kingpin in New York was responsible for all of the villains that Spider-man and Daredevil had to deal with. Maybe we can even go as far to say that Magneto is the mastermind behind most of the people the X-Men face. I could even stretch to say that Loki is the chief organizer of all of Thor’s problems. But who is to say that these kinds of people can get together and create an organization? They’re all basically competing for mutually exclusive interests.
Take for example the Xbox release game Marvel Ultimate Alliance. If you haven’t played the game in the last ten years I’m sorry I’m finally going to ruin the plot for you. The plot brings all of the villains together for the maddening nefarious plot of Doctor Doom stealing Thor’s powers and rebuilding the earth in his image. Of course Doctor Doom screws over pretty much everyone else to do this.
In order to make a villain side actually work Marvel would have to change a lot of their villains.
The other option of course is to shorten the list of villains on the villain side and make the villains sort of like the nice every day villains who are only looking to better their lives kinda guys. Leave the global domination crowd as raid bosses.
All the same I wish the developers of Marvel Universe Online the best of luck and hopefully they can produce a product that’ll live up to be more of an MMO than DC Universe tried to be.
TheGameGuru.Me 
