Shooter-like MMOs

I'm reading news from the Leipzig Games Convention, with a description of new games announced or presented there. Most of them are shooters, most are multiplayer, and more and more of them got rid of linear levels and replaced them with a more open-ended free gameplay, often including exploration of zones. In short, shooters become more and more similar to MMORPGs. The most extreme convergence is probably Hellgate: London. From the other side games like Tabula Rasa are nominally MMOs, but gameplay resembles a shooter. I sense a collision ahead.

First victim of that collision will probably be Tabula Rasa. Not that this is a bad game. But with so many shooters offering MMO-like elements, who wants to pay a monthly fee for a MMO with shooter-like elements? I don't know whether Hellgate London is actually better than Tabula Rasa, but I'm willing to bet that it will sell much better. Action games with monthly fees won't fare very well.

It's time for MMORPGs to take a history lesson: The original Dungeons & Dragons from TSR derived from squad-based tabletop strategy games. In fact TSR stood for Tactical Studies Rules at the time. Tactics are the very heart of RPGs, all that pretending to be an elf only came later. MMORPGs should move towards offering more tactical gameplay, and try less to look like action games.