Will MMOs ever be too massive?

Sandbox MMOs are constantly pushing the boundaries of how large, and how complex a digital world can be. The boundaries are starting to burst with the upcoming DUST514, which is linked in real-time to EVE Online’s already massive universe. As it stands, they claim that learning every skill in the game would take 7 real-time years. With this trend towards bigger and more complex MMOs, do you think an MMO can become too big?

Millions of hardcore players lining up to get their pre-order of Hello Kitty Online

Can you imagine a scenario in which the digital world is so large, that you can’t experience it all in one lifetime? Many of us suffer from the ‘steam summer sale pile’, buying more cheap games than we have time to ever play. Could a single game be so vast and complex that you’d have to pick and choose what aspects to specialize in? And would that be a positive, or a negative?

I’d wager that there exists a ‘critical mass’ at which point a game becomes so content-rich that it is no longer enjoyable. There’s something special about being part of a living, breathing, massive digital world. Drop me into a rich, finely crafted cyberpunk city and I’ll enjoy it for a good while. But what happens when you procedurally generate 10,000 worlds, each with hundreds of cities, all in a state of economic, political, military and environmental flux? I’d probably be overwhelmed.

So share your thoughts… where does the line exist for you?

Massively,
-Machination