MMOs still have so much room to grow

GamesMMOSky: Children of the LightMMOs still have so much room to growWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Thatgamecompany)

Sky: Children of the Light - a player gestures for you to follow as three others frolick in a grassy meadow

I grew up in the era when every new MMO wanted to be the WoW-killer and frankly, none have ever really pulled it off. Not only is WoW still one of thebest MMOs20 years later, but nearly everything else we consider the best is derived from it in some fashion. I’ve easily spent over an entire real year’s worth of hours combined in Guild Wars and its sequel, The Elder Scrolls Online, Black Desert Online, Final Fantasy 14, and others. And aside from BDO’s nice combat and management activities—and some other outliers like EVE: Online and Destiny 2—the lot is still fundamentally clutching at WoW’s coattails.

(Image credit: Bethesda)

Elder Scrolls Online.

It challenges the assumption that MMOs need these systems to succeed or that they need to be RPGs at all.

And it is genuinely an MMO, make no mistake. Sky has handfuls of players all milling around together in hubs and explorable zones, but no server text chat. It has daily quests and grinding for currency, but no auction house economy. It has fashion—oh so much fashion—and a cash shop too, but no gear stats to fuss over. It even has an endgame ascendancy system and difficult platforming challenges that I’d equate to its version of dungeons (or Guild Wars 2s jumping puzzles) though no raiding or guilds.

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Sky: Children of the Light - two players hold hands while being chased by alarge flying guardian enemy

Sky borrowed what it needed from the MMO space to thrive, the daily login rewards and cash shop, and otherwise avoided becoming WoW wearing Journey’s cloak. It manages to preserve the features that made Journey into a sensation: the flying, exploration, soundtrack, and anonymized multiplayer, without burdening the experience with RPG trappings. Be warned that it does have several different currencies (candles,ascended candles,seasonal candles, and more), so it’s not quite as minimalist an experience as Journey.

Sky is all about barefoot surfing down a grassy meadow on your way to uncover a secret new area, and becoming dear friends with a total stranger along the way. Even without a public chat system, Sky manages to capture the same experience as some of the best MMO encounters: like my time followingESO’s famous bridge-sleeper.

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It shows that deviating from the old MMO rules doesn’t have to be a death sentence.

After several separate false starts, I requested to become their friend and offered them my hand, which in Sky allows me to pull them along with me like a guide. They accepted, and bravely stuck with me for over 30 minutes as I pulled up aTrial of Fire video guideon my phone, and congratulated me with a series of musical chirping noises at each new safe zone I managed to find us in that dangerous trial. We haven’t played together since, but I don’t think I’ll ever take the mysterious player I nicknamed “Tilly” off my friends list.

(Image credit: Singularity 6)

Palia key art - a grassy plain with a mountain in the background where a character stands with a backpack in front of a windmill

Unfortunately both studios suffered layoffs not long after the launch of these experimental MMOs. Both are still active, but with those stumbles I’d begun to worry that departure from the WoW format really was too risky. But Sky has already proven itself. It’s been in “open beta” for nearly five years, first on mobile then on consoles, and has arrived on PC this month as an already well-established game with a thriving community thatas of September last yearreported it had over 7 million daily players worldwide.

It shows that deviating from the old MMO rules doesn’t have to be a death sentence. And that there are so many kinds of games other than RPGs that could still succeed as massive, online games.

Making a free-to-play live service games with daily quests and a cash shop isn’t at all what I expected the developers of that emotional four hour flying game Journey would be doing now. Not only have they done it, but they’ve done it well—proving that MMOs still have so much room left to grow.

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