In continuing with my recent article on the evolution and revolution of MMOs and their lack of truly bringing anything 2.0-like to the industry, the advent of an MMO hybrid often comes to mind. The genre today has many MMORPGs and a few MMOFPSs, but we really have no MMORPG-FPS games out there, a hybrid of the two types of MMOs. Seeing as how enormously successful single player FPS games are (Halo, Call of Duty 4, etc.) and how the MMORPG market is pretty much dominated by the World of Warcraft, it only seems to make sense that a developer would want to capitalize on the most popular genre and turn it into a massively multiplayer RPG event. Allow me to explain a bit.

Today, at this very moment, if you had a strong desire to play an MMOFPS you’d have a couple options. While they are a bit old and sometimes a little slow, they are definitely there and waiting for you to get involved. I am, of course, talking about Planetside and World War II Online. The problem with these games, however, is that they offer little objectives other than killing your enemy. For example, in Planetside the game has devolved into nothing more than a giant push and pull match against the other two faction between the different worlds. While that can be a lot of fun, after a while the whole experience starts to feel a bit shallow as without any real goals you really start to question the whole point of it all. In a game like World of Warcraft, on the other hand, you had an active world with quests, monsters, damsels in distress, and other such things that truly make the world come alive. Unfortunately, the whole combat system is also a bit of a drag in a game like World of Warcraft where everything boils down to pushing a series of numbered buttons. Both offer something unique, but an overall lack in complete gameplay.

So where does that leave us? Well, unfortunately, not to far from where we started. There has been a couple of games that havfe attempted something similar to this but they have both ended in failure and closure. Face of Mankind attempted to do exactly what I was talking about, but lacked the initial polish and big budget to really make a headway in this arena. No matter how unique your game is, if you don’t start off wih a good base you simply can’t survive in this industry. Likewise, Auto Assault, attempted to breed fast action and RPG elements but again failed to garner a large enough audience to sustain it’s own costs. After all is said and done, we have very little to look forward to in terms of combining these two genres as it seems that even the MMOFPS genre may die a slow death. Maybe the rumoured Call of Duty MMO will make headway? I guess we’ll have to take a wait and see approach. Until then I’ll see you guys in Planetside.

There is one MMO that no matter how many times I unsub, I always end up returning to it a few months/years later. It’s not World of Warcraft, or Everquest; I have absolutely no desire to ever return to either of those games. The game I am talking about is Planetside. Time and again I have returned to the game to find new vehicles and features awaiting me and even now, as I just resubbed, I have found even more fun to be had. So when is the sequel coming out?

Unfortunately, probably never. As much as I hate to admit it, Planetside was never really a success story for Sony. Despite holding adequate subscription numbers for a decent amount of time the game just failed to generate any real profits, as can be seen in the poor early mismanagement of the game (updates we very few and far between, bad expac), but this doesn’t mean that Planetside doesn’t deserve a sequel. Despite having some gameplay quirks and questionable goal orientation it was actually a lot of fun and a sequel would be able to fix/build on to those gameplay elements.

Today, the FPS genre is more popular than it has ever been before. Last year Halo 3 sold more than 9 million copies world wide, and Call of Duty 4 sold over 7 million. With this re-invigorated market I don’t see it completely unjustifiable that a PS2 would be considered. After all, everybody likes being part of a huge battle, and certainly Planetside achieved that. Now if only there was an updated website that continually added new fix and gameplay suggestions for the game to help focus the commuity in an effort to improve the game so said developers would know where to start with their new Planetside…

Your welcome.

Starwars Galaxies

Probably the biggest disappointment in MMORPG history. The Starwars universe just screams MMORPG, how can you possible mess up a game like this. Well we all got the answer when the game was released on June 20, 2003. No Jedis, no space combat and boring quests. Seriously, are you sure this is based on Starwars? It would be 7 MONTHS before the first player unlocked the Jedi class and another 9 months for the first expansion, Jump to Lightspeed, allowed players to finally jump into the pilots seat of an X-wing or TIE fighter. Future changes to the combat system and a reduction of playable professions would completely lay waste to what was so far a decent game. However there is no arguing that even it you consider Starwars Galaxies a good game, it should no doubt have been one of the best MMORPG of all time.

Matrix Online

What can I say about the Matrix Online, another franchise that should feel right at home being a MMORPG. However when The Matrix Online launched it seems Agent Smith was wreaking havoc because the game was extremely buggy. Reports of crashes, random disconnects, being stuck in walls and falling through the world are just a few. Aside from the bugs the missions were painfully repetitive. Go here, find something or someone, perhaps kill them, come back. Rinse and repeat. To make things worse all the buildings looked similar and were very boring to explore. However the biggest disappoint was that you don’t actually fight the machines or agents. Seriously that’s like Starwars with no Jedis, oh wait.

Planetside

This is one game that definitely did not reach its full potential. Hundreds of players in a FPS fragging each other for territory with a crap load of weapons and vehicles to choose from, whats not to like. Unfortunately this game wouldn’t be on this list if there wasn’t anything wrong with it. Planetside’s problem was that the terrain was boring, all the bases looked the same and no one ever won. It was just a three way tug-o-war battle that would rage on forever. Future expansions added new mech vehicles that altered the games balance and not in a good way. Planetside unfortunately never recovered and is a dying game. Perhaps the upcoming Huxley or Earthrise can fulfil all our MMOFPS desires.

Dungeons & Dragons Online

For many D&D fans, this was the MMORPG they were waiting for, too bad for them it was just an average game. D&D Online concentrated on group play, the problem with that is many players that were looking to solo couldn’t and unless you were in a large guild or had a lot of online friends you would spend almost as much time looking for groups as you would playing. Lack of content and repeating quests is also a major issue. It doesn’t matter how good the dungeons look, after a dozen times your going to get bored. Speaking about dungeons I think they should have called the game Dungeons & More Dungeons Online.

Typically, when somebody thinks of the coined term MMO it is usually associated with the suffix RPG. It’s really not a huge surprise as the MMO genre is swamped with MMORPGs in a more generalized sense. Just this last year we have had over a dozen MMORPGs get released including Lord of the Rings Online, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and Tabula Rasa. But what about the other games?

Believe it or not, MMO does not always have to end with RPG. Over the years, and coming within the next couple, are games that are striking beyond the traditional and are reaching for something else. Something that ends with strategy, or RTS, or FPS. Today, I bring you the top 5 MMO-alternatives list. Some of these were made years ago, and others have yet to be made. So, without further ado:

• 1. Planetside (SOE/MMOFPS)

Planetside was originally released in May of 2003 as an MMOFPS. Upon releasing the game was a graphical phenomenon, and most people’s computers ground to an abrubt halt. It suffered much of the same symptoms that Vanguard suffered which was unfortunate because, despite needing a beefy computer to play it, it was actually one of the funnest games I have ever played. Imagine being sent into a persistent world, with 3 factions, a dozen vehicles, and even more weapon/armor combinations. Now imagine that with 200 of your friends going up agianst 300 of the opposing faction and another 100 of the third faction. Sound fun? It was. The game was set in the future on an unknown world. Due to some “discrepencies” with the former government (Earth) the planet was quickly broken up into three factions. You chose one of these factions and fought in a never ending war with the other two. The battles were fast, large, and very explosive. Sometimes it would take upwards of 10 hours to take a single base. The game still exists today, but it has nowhere near the population of when it first launched. Still, if you are curious about this type of gameplay feel free to check it out HERE.

• Shattered Galaxy (KRU Interactive/MMORTS)

Shattered Galaxy may not have been the first MMORTS to appear on the market, but it is definitely the one that has gathered enough steam to make it into the big leagues. It doesn’t hurt that it also happens to be one of the best MMORTS games out there (IGN and GameSpot reviewed it with an 80). In anycase, Shattered Galaxy, as you can imagine, is a scifi RTS game that allows you to wage war with different players or a mysterious alien entity. You start the game out as a character of your choice (choose a nation) and are able to up to own 48 units. You then use these units to pound the smack out of anybody who wants to oppose you. The game stresses tactics above all else and, although there is a resource model to the gameplay, it doesn’t appear to be to strenuous. Anybody looking for an MMORTS should definitely check this one out HERE.

• Huxley (Webzen/MMOFPS)

Being developed by Webzen comes Huxley, the supposed next generation of MMOFPS gaming. There isn’t too much to go off for this game, yet, except for the fact that the world is persistent, will run off the Unreal Engine 3, and will support at least 100-man battles. Sounds kind of neat, but it comes nowhere near the expectations that Planetside has already set. According to the website, the game takes place in a post-apocolyptic future where humans have mutated into two opposing races: the Sapiens, and Alternatives. The game sounds very promising though and is something you’ll probably want to keep track of if fast, furious MMOFPS gaming is your thing. Check it out HERE.

• All Points Bulletin (Realtime Worlds/MMO-GTAish)

So what does the guy who created both the GTA franchise and the hilariously fun Crackdown develop next? An MMO version of the two combined. That’s right, Realtime Worlds is in development of an open world MMOGTA-style game called All Points Bulletin. There isn’t much known about the game yet except that it will grace the Xbox 360. In addition to that, the game is promising awesome cops vs robbers styled gameplay where the player can choose to be a part of either one of those organizations. Can anybody else imagine the awesome car chases? The game is promised to be released next year so if this sort of thing interests you head on over to the website. Check it out HERE.

• Heroes of Might and Magic Kingdoms (Ubisoft/Strategy)

Just announced today, Ubisoft has promised that it’s next foray into the Might and Magic universe will be a bit of a departure from their usual action, and singleplayer strategy games. Coming next year, the company will launch a browser based MMO-strategy Heroes of Might and Magic. Now, anybody who has ever played any of these games will tell you what you can expect: multiple kingdoms (classes), wide variety of troops, and city building. All in all the games were a heck of a lot of fun, and it more than peeks my interest that the next iteration is promised to be an MMO. Not much else is known, but check out the article HERE.

So concludes our list of MMO alternatives. A lot of people may wonder: well what about this game, or that game. Well let us know about em! I assure you if we left out a game then it is either because we didn’t like it as much as the above, or we simply did not know about it. It’s a big big MMO world out there. Thanks for reading.