Is Forge the Post-MMO MMO?

In the end, it was time that drove Timothy Alvis away from MMORPGs. Not the legions of dwarves and elves, not the endless variations on the same cast of warriors and wizards, but rather the simple fact that he could no longer juggle them with his duties as COO of indie studio Dark Vale Games and his other role as father to his child. Forge, Dark Vale's new class-based multiplayer "shooter," grew out of that discontent. It takes the ingredients Alvis and his colleagues loved from every MMORPG they'd played (with a clear emphasis on PvP combat) and wraps them all in one surprisingly inviting package that respects your time. It's a simple yet enchanting idea, and after a couple of hours with their beta, I can't help but wonder if this isn't what many of us have wanted all along.


First things first: Forge isn't really an MMORPG. It may feature fantasy MMO archetypes like warriors, mages, and rangers, but it shares much more in common with team-based shooters like Team Fortress 2 than with the likes of Rift and Guild Wars 2. Or, put another way: if you took the arenas and rated battlegrounds of World of Warcraft and stripped away the questing and crafting game surrounding them, you'd have something like Forge on your hands. The key difference lies in the combat. Forge's focus on crosshairs rather than tab targeting recalls the action-based combat of TERA, but its above-the-shoulder perspective and use of active blocking (somewhat in the style of Dark Souls) saturates it with a viscerality that TERA never achieves. And get this -- it's fun. I spent the majority of my time with Forge as a Pathfinder, the arrow-lobbing class that resembles the hunters or rangers of most MMOs (sans annoying pets), and it only took me 20 minutes to realize that Forge had designed the class as I've always wanted to play it.

Tab Targeting No More

But while Alvis clearly wants to attract folks from the MMORPG crowd, he worries about the dangers of associating Forge with MMO combat. "We took the word 'MMO' out of our marketing about two months ago," Alvis said, citing the stain that tab targeting and tired macros have left on the genre. "Essentially we're trying to get across that Forge is Team Fortress 2 with fantasy characters and nine abilities for each class." Standard MMOs, he believes (even when they feature otherwise commendable PvP options), inevitably suffer from the ability bloat that arises from accounting for a 50-100 level game and the wonky but necessary balances between PvP and PvE combat.

There's also much more freedom of perspective in Forge. "Once you switch the targeting systems to work like a first-person shooter, the whole vertical element of the game can open up so much," Alvis said. "We've scrapped three of our early maps and started over from scratch specifically to address that -- the fact that you can get very vertical with things like the Pyromancer's Flame Burst and the different leaps and camouflage swaps."


Yet Alvis emphasizes that Forge's core pleasure is the ability to slip into this fantasy universe that's reminiscent of our favorite MMORPGs without ever worrying about falling behind. Class unlocks for skills and cosmetic gear exist, but players don't have to worry about fans who spend hours at a time amassing a significant advantage. Instead, Forge celebrates skill, and this could boost it. "In a game like World of Warcraft, you're going to fall far behind if you lose a bit of interest and take a break for a month," Alvis said. "Sometimes, you can't help but think it's not worth the bother when you come back." That statement particularly resonated with me, as my character in World of Warcraft has fallen so far behind the players in my guild that I might as well give up on raiding for the duration of Mists of Pandaria.

Et tu, Guild Wars 2?

Still, the concept sounds a little too familiar. I pointed out that the normalized gear and instant level caps of Guild Wars 2's PvP spring from a similar idea, but in Alvis' view, it's not quite the same. "The biggest difference is that Forge's gameplay is built entirely for PvP," Alvis said. "We don't have to spend a lot of development time trying to make two different sets of abilities, one for PvE and one for PvP."

In my own experience, I noticed that Forge's maps benefited from a greater variety (particularly in that there are multiple gameplay modes, even if they're still not perfected) than those in Guild Wars 2, and Forge's brand of action combat adds a layer of dynamism I never saw in Guild Wars 2. I also brought up Fury, an ill-fated project from 2007 that revolved around competitive PvP in a fantasy setting but suffered from poor optimization and odd changes in design by release. Alvis isn't worried. "The technology is a little more mature for this type of project at this point," he said. "[Fury] also still had ability bloat, the combat was very spammish, and you weren't focused on the synergy between two classes or two abilities. I think we've managed to overcome that."


Alvis claims that a large chunk of his intended audience is composed of the horde of players who end up standing around in capital cities of big-name MMORPGs while waiting for the next battleground or dungeon to pop up. He balked, however, when I suggested that the very existence of these hordes suggested that the concept of a persistent world has run its course. "I don't think persistent worlds are outdated for the PvE concept of MMOs," Alvis said, "but I think they they're currently useless for player-versus-player."

I'm not so sure. I pointed out that in most contemporary MMORPGs, most of the action beyond the level cap still takes place in instances even for PvE. An open, persistent world in an MMORPG supplies an ample playground for players who like to explore or roleplay (and such players will find little to love in Forge), but for many players who prefer to focus on "endgame content," it serves little more purpose than providing a zone for reputation missions or resource gathering.

A New Kind of Raid

That's why, for all my appreciation for Forge in its current design, I found myself most attracted to the upcoming 5v5 labyrinth mode modeled after Left 4 Dead 2, scheduled for release a few months after Forge's launch on December 4th. In the first two scheduled labyrinths, five players with standard Forge classes will face off against one player fighting as a boss (either a frost giant or a lich) and four others playing as his lightweight but annoying minions. This design, Alvis believes, may even appeal to players more interested in MMORPG dungeons than PvP combat. It appeal lies in the constant tension. "It feels really ridiculous in an MMO when you walk into a dungeon and the raid boss is this gigantic guy that just stands and talks to you while you stroll through his dungeon," Alvis said. "In our scenarios, the hunt is reversed. The idea isn't 'Let's figure out how to set up so we can attack these five while the tank distracts the boss' -- it's constant dynamic action."


The details sound attractive, even though I haven't yet seen how it works in practice. Scoring a victory in a labyrinth hinges on defeating the boss within 7.5 minutes, after which you'll switch to the other side for round two. Playing as the boss sounds awesome, thanks to a massive health pool and devastating abilities, but Alvis doesn't think playing as minions will leave us feeling left out -- they'll instant respawn, letting them be "annoying as hell" to the other players. "We're hoping this means no two boss fights will ever be the same," Alvis said. "MMO raiding has grown into a science, where you just stand where you're supposed to stand and secondary goals like topping the damage meters become more important than downing the raid boss. In time, there's very little interest left in the encounter. We don't want that."

Not For Everyone

Granted, this won't appeal to that hardcore crowd that gets their kicks from scoring server firsts on challenging encounters, but for those of us who enjoy the side activities of fantasy MMOs, such as dungeons and battlegrounds, yet tire of the grind, Forge sounds like a potentially messianic game (if the implementation is right, of course). It also retains a welcome sense of achievement while never losing sight of a pure sense of fun. "We still provide progression," Alvis said. "It still takes quite a while to reach max level. But as you're unlocking options and not power, it won't bug you to come in with level 1s and play."

Alvis believes (rightly, I think) that one of the main faults of most of today's MMORPGs is that their design discourages putting them down for a while; Forge, he says, is the kind of game you can put down for a few weeks and jump back into once absence has made your heart grow fonder.


For my part, that's true. Forge's beta still has several rough spots that detract from the experience, but I'm hoping they're cleared up by its release next week. As a longtime fan of fantasy combat, I'm happy to report that its brand of PvP remains more appealing than anything I've ever seen the standard run of MMOs, and it doesn't hurt that its instanced maps allow for far more beautiful and memorable settings than I'm used to in MMORPGs. I've long loved the persistent, explorable worlds that MMORPGs bring to gaming, but if this is what MMOs look like when you cut those worlds out of the picture, it's a sacrifice I'm willing to endure. Are you?

Read more about Forge's combat and its payment model in our interview with Alvis from last June.