Bungie has publicly called Destiny 2 an “MMO” for the first time after 5 years. There was much resistance to overcome before they acknowledged this, say Bungie’s executives now. But “MMO” is also the direction that Destiny 2 will take. What do the executives mean by this, and what does it mean for the future of the game?
This is the announcement: The topic surrounding E3 2019 at Bungie is the new identity of the game, which they are now shaping as they stand independently without Activision and make all decisions on their own.
During the live stream before E3, when Bungie revealed Shadowkeep and the many changes, Luke Smith suddenly stated clearly: “We are making an awesome action MMO.”
That was even the first point of the new identity.
Why did Bungie resist for so long? Game Manager Mark Noseworthy explained that they had hesitated to call the game that for a long time. Because the term “MMO” carries a number of questions that they had preferred to avoid for a long time:
- Do you need a subscription?
- Do I have to play this with mouse and keyboard?
- Journalist Jason Schreier also asked in an interview at E3 sarcastically: “So does this mean Destiny 2 will now be World of Warcraft?”
But Noseworthy says: “We are now on our own. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck.”
What doesn’t change? Bungie is keen to emphasize that nothing changes at the core of the game. The core of Destiny 2, the action game, remains intact, said Noseworthy.
Destiny 2 is a game with wonderful gunplay, where you shoot aliens and watch their soul escape, said Noseworthy. That doesn’t change.
What does this mean? When Bungie uses the term “MMO”, it does not mean that they will bring more multiplayer activities or really delve into the “Massive” aspect. There will not be 20-man raids coming now.
In the definition of Destiny, “We are making more MMO”:
- more game depth, more stats, more slots
- more ways to influence the player character, their play style, and their equipment
- more social elements, making it easier to find groups
In Destiny, they use “MMO” synonymously with “more RPG” elements, more material for the “core gamers.” This becomes clear from Bungie’s further statements.
What has been called “hobby” so far is now called “MMO” at Bungie.
These are the next plans: Noseworthy and Smith make it clear in an interview with Kotaku that in the future, Destiny 2 will move significantly more in the MMO direction. Plans include bringing “more values, more customization” options into the game.
Destiny is going to become even more MMO than it has been recently:
- With Shadowkeep, the values are set to return – Smith hopes that players will chase something like the “T12” from the time of “The Taken King,” meaning an optimized equipment
- Additionally, armor will be more customizable; the long-term goal is to give players a collection of mods to individually customize their character
- “crafting” character should be a part of Destiny 2
- There should also be more slots in Destiny 2’s inventory, like the artifact slot. This should be significantly deeper than the previous version
Bungie shied away from the connection with WoW
This is what it’s about: It is indeed as we have suspected on MeinMMO for years: Bungie avoided the label “MMO” because it is too closely associated with “World of Warcraft”.
When people think of MMO, they think of a subscription model, mouse and keyboard, and a “tab-target” combat system.
Therefore, Bungie shied away from this term, as they thought they could scare players on PS4 and Xbox One if they associated MMO with the “uncool” WoW and not the cool Halo.
Thus, they had been presenting the game for years under labels like “Shared World Shooter”.
Now, Destiny as a brand is well established enough, and the concept of “MMO” has evolved so that Bungie is now adopting and reinterpreting this label.
It is quite possible that Bungie has been planning this re-labeling for a long time, but Activision’s PR department prevented it for years.
For Bungie, the announcement “We are going to be an action MMO” is essentially equivalent to “We are going to make a game for our core gamers with more RPG elements.”
From a purist and traditional perspective, Destiny 2 is not an “MMO” because it cannot fulfill the “Massively” aspect with a maximum of 6 players in an instance.
“MMOs” in the 90s and early 2000s defined the “Massive” as over 100 players simultaneously on screen – that would today impact performance, graphics, and balance too much.
However, the term “MMO” has been changing for years – and Bungie now seems to be accepting this new definition of “MMO” for themselves.
We have extensively written about the evolution of the term “MMO” in recent years:
