Star Citizen is not MMO

In episode 62 of Wingman’s hangar from 26 of March 2014, Eric Peterson calls Star Citizen “a BIG MMO”. And most of the bakers defend that statement. But by their definition of MMO – Farmville will be MMO too. You have massive people playing it online. World of tanks will be MMO. Warframe will be MMO.

The reason I am writing this is that I got little disappointed after the presentation of the Arena Commander at the PAX East event at Boston April 11-13 2014. Just few days ago.

Players will be able to jump into the cockpit and begin the combat simulator, without risking their own ships. Five modes will be included at launch:

· Free Flight

· Battle Royale - Free for all

· Squadron Battle - Team battles

· Capture the Core - Capture the flag

· Vanduul Swarm - Horde mode

Sometimes Chris Roberts mention that Star Citizen will be something like EVE Online, but I think this Arena Mode is pushing it apart from EVE or any other MMO. And there are other reasons why Star Citizen is not MMO.

I am not looking for the dogfights all day. I am more interested in the mining, trading and collecting fish from all over the galaxy. I was thinking of buying the hornet for 140$, but now it looks like the game is 99% focused on dogfights and very little on other experiences. I feel sorry for the people that bought the most expensive ships. They will do some dogfight for a month and then there will be nothing left for them to do. I guess I will keep my pledge level low – just the Aurora and alpha access.

Another thing that starts to piss me off is that Chris said months ago that there won’t be feature creeps, but now every time someone ask about something and Chris answer in “the 10 for the Chairman” is “This won’t be in the initial release, but is down the pipe and may be implemented after few years”.

I know that it will be great game, but it won’t be 100% the game I want to play. It won’t be MMO. And with Chris talking about private servers I’m starting to think that persistent universe may not stay long online.

After all that said I will probably support the game even more than my current level. I will play the game and have fun, but it is not space MMO. And it even may not be space trading and combat simulator on 100%.