Back in May, Project Ghost’s Greg Street got MMO players buzzing over the state of MMOs in the West vs. the East. That isn’t what we’re going to talk about today, though. I want to pull on a different thread. In the midst of that discussion, Street mentioned that in his new MMO, he is going for “power progression,” just after saying how much he appreciated Chinese devs’ horizontal design. And then a fellow Twitter user suggested that “vertical progression is not sustainable in today’s market.”
That’s what I want to talk about for this week’s Massively Overthinking: vertical progression. Is vertical progression still sustainable for MMOs? Was it ever? Which MMOs actually deliver a satisfying vertical progression loop, and how are they achieving it? And what will vertical progression look like for MMOs as we head into the future?
Ben Griggs (@braxwolf): I’m not sure vertical progression systems are any less valid or sustainable than any other progression system. LOTRO is 18 years strong and includes multiple vertical systems for XP, crafting, reputation, virtues, and probably many more. Sure, they’ve gone through multiple class reworks, skill reworks and stat squishes to combat power creep issues, but then again it seems like Elder Scrolls Online, a game that tries hard not to rely on vertical systems, is also constantly tinkering with balance.
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna.bsky.social, blog): I don’t think vertical progression was ever sustainable by itself. The Twitter guy was right. But in saying so, we expose that some MMOs aren’t meant to be sustainable in the first place.
Each successful MMO that has revolved around vertical progression has always had some specific variable that kept it from collapsing under its own weight. EverQuest got away with it because its rivals were few and very different. World of Warcraft got away with it by sucking air out of the genre and creating a relatively cozy solo midgame that kept pulling in more people than it lost at the progression endgame (for a while, anyway). City of Heroes got away with it for being the only superhero MMO for years and supporting heavy alting. And so forth.
Nowadays, nobody is pulling off true vertical progression without a hefty helping of horizontal layered in (see Retail WoW), not if they want to stick around. It is an extremely rare true themepark progression grinder that has a chance of long-term success in 2025. But that also means the vertical themeparks we’re getting are not designed for long-term success. They aren’t designed for sustainability. This is planned obsolescence at work, while we’re still thinking about games like it’s 2002. Most new themepark/vertical-progression-centric MMOs are temports designed to extract as much money from the players as possible upfront while the vertical progression is being chased, and then people leave and the MMOs shrivel up die. We’re sad, but the studios planned it that way and are already building the next one. Working as intended.
Obviously, this is not a model I am interested in. I want sustainable MMOs, so I want sustainable gameplay systems. I think MMOs need a good mix of sandbox and themepark, of horizontal and vertical, of downtime and uptime, of solo and social, of dull and dramatic, and so on, to tap into a wide variety of player types and moods and playstyles. But then I’ve thought that for the last 27 years of MMOs and I’m still preaching into the ether.
Carlo Lacsina (@UltraMudkipEX, YouTube, Twitch): I AM SO TIRED OF VERTICAL PROGRESSION. It’s such an obvious Skinner box, and the older I get the more obvious it becomes. The idea that tougher raids and “the good stuff” is locked behind content and gear is such a stupidly tough sell. I get it, raids need to be tough for hardcore players, but between 30 hours of getting the gear vs. 30 hours of learning a boss fight or playing the funnest content, the latter is the better sell.
And don’t come at me with that “but there’s different kinds of fun in an MMO” either. The raid experience is the pinnacle experience in any MMO. If it weren’t, modern MMO devs wouldn’t devote so much man power towards it.
Another annoying thing about vertical gearing systems is that it gives players a false sense of skill. I mean, if a player is 30 i-levels over another player with better mechanics, the inferior player might be able to just barely match up with the DPS of the better player.
Finally, there’s always the fear of hacks and losing accounts. Losing an account means losing that progress and gear. Never mind the years of experience; if all that stuff disappears, it’s gone. Nobody can take your skill away, but they can take your stuff.
So yeah, get rid of the gear grind already. Just get us to the good stuff ASAP.
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes.bsky.social, blog): I’m slowly beginning to see the error of vertical progression, though I’m also not the kind of person to dismiss MMORPGs with it out of hand. Leveling up in power has always been a perfectly fine metric in RPGs of all stripes, and while its design can inherently mean that older zones or content can frequently be left by the wayside, it doesn’t have to be; Final Fantasy XIV is the best example of how to do this right insofar as making important vertical progression currencies earned by doing reruns of old instances.
That said, Guild Wars 2 has shown me that horizontal progression, or even just hitting a sturdy high water mark for character power to see the world, is more than sufficient. Yes, there’s still some form of grinding up for things like elite specs and masteries, but that always seems to be a bit more latent than treadmill-like. Also, of course, there are sandbox activities and long-tail goals I go for in Elite: Dangerous.
In terms of what it will look like in the future? That’s hard to say. Ideally some form of uncapped climb upwards with commensurate rewards would be fine, but the trick is to ensure that activities spread across multiple areas where people play together would be the right move. Kind of what Project Ghost sounds like it’s trying to do, incidentally.
Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): I recently did a few columns about different progression systems, and the thing is that vertical progress isn’t really in opposition with horizontal progress; they need to exist in parallel. We tend to think of vertical progression as the “grindy bit” wherein you just watch a number go up, but that’s a different failure in design. Making a straight vertical climb wherein your input doesn’t matter isn’t the result of vertical progression but designing a particularly lazy system of same. Ideally, games start you at lower power with few options and allow you to steadily climb toward higher power with many options.
Having said all that, I think the specific claim of vertical progression not being sustainable in today’s market is not totally wrong insofar as I imagine the poster in question was thinking of things like Greg Street’s own former game, World of Warcraft, which is highly aggressive both with its tiers of content and its continued climb for huge gaps of power that escalate far out of control. Chris brought up FFXIV and its progress making use of older content; I would also point out that FFXIV keeps its vertical progress contained within a narrow band and never lets anyone move too far over anyone else. You can absolutely make fun vertical progression work just fine, something you can see in basically every video game in the genre, but you cannot tell people that they need to play for a hundred hours to get to the huge raids in which you grind at progress for a week in hopes of getting a random drop. That isn’t sustainable for MMOs any longer, with the one exception of the game that has lost more players than most MMORPGs ever get in the first place.
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): I still like and appreciate vertical progression because it’s not just a staple of video games; it’s how we measure a lot of goals in life. It makes a lot of sense that way. It’s fiendishly difficult to create an infinitely progressable system in a game — certainly impossible — but there are ways to slow down the progression, layer on more systems, and so on.
As we talked about in a recent podcast all about different types of MMO character progression, probably my favorite way to handle infinite progression is to do character reboots or ascension or rebirth (however you want to term it). Get to the max level, and the voluntarily choose to “reset” your character back to level 1 but with extra perks for the next playthrough. Making sure that you’re able to retain your gear and money is a must that way, too. But with a rebirth system, you could provide a sustainable loop that simply needs extra perks for every successive run.
Sam Kash (@[email protected]): Vertical progression, basically of any sort, just doesn’t work for me in MMOs anymore. I’m slowly coming to realize that I just don’t have the time. I keep trying and then bouncing off games before I ever even get to the end of the vertical track. None of these games has made me care enough.
Now, while I’m not alone in struggling to find game time these days, I know that it’s all on me for not being engaged in the leveling process. I think a large part of it is down to the number of games and even the cost of them these days. A decade or two ago, we didn’t have Gamepass, and barely any legit games were free-to-play. Now it’s just so hard for me to commit to 10+ hours just to get to the good parts when I’ve got a slew of great games at my fingertips.
Of course, I haven’t given up on all vertical progression MMOs. I’ve still got my eye on Throne and Liberty, and I’ve been grinding through Dune Awakening. It’s been a split between fun and a dragging grind.
To me the best future would still have vertical progression, but it wouldn’t block out gameplay types. Somehow I’d like it to be able to have my cake and eat it too
Tyler Edwards (blog): This is, like… the single hardest question in MMO game design, and I don’t think anyone has a good answer for it.
Now, I’m a vertical progression hater. It’s essentially just psychological fakery designed to keep you running on a treadmill. Your numbers get bigger, but so do the enemies’, so really you’re not getting anywhere at all. If you can outlevel stuff, the amount of the game that’s fun and rewarding to play gets ever-smaller as you progress, and if everything scales, it’s even clearer that nothing is changing how big your numbers are.
Carlo also has a great point about how vertical progression can be a bandaid for lack of skill, and I lowkey think that is the appeal for a lot of people. If you grind hard enough, you can tackle the hardest content (and look down your nose at the people who don’t) without the need for much actual mechanical skill.
All that said, I recognize there is a reason why pretty much every game in the genre still uses vertical progression. Even the more horizontally focused games like GW2 and ESO use it to at least some degree.
No one has yet found a perfect, infinitely scalable form of horizontal progression. Cosmetics don’t appeal to everyone. New abilities and classes are expensive in terms of development resources and can lead to complexity creep and balance issues. Content specific grinds like TSW’s AEGIS or many GW2 masteries often just feel like grind for grind’s sake. Vertical progression sucks, but it is the easiest way to keep giving people something to grind for.
That’s not to say that I think we should give up on the idea of abandoning vertical progression. I just want to acknowledge how difficult the goal is. It’s like the cold fusion of MMO design. If anyone can solve the problem, it will change our genre for the better immeasurably. Just no one’s managed it yet.
As for me, I’m most motivated by new build options. The more modular and customizable the better. TSW’s ability wheel and Magic Legends’ card collection mechanics have been my favourite forms of progression in the MMOs I’ve played. GW2 adding new elite specs and weapons is also something I appreciate, though those are a bit more hit and miss depending on how much the new specs appeal to you.
In terms of who does vertical progression best, I liked TSW’s extremely long tail systems like black bullion upgrades and augments that ensured no one but the absolute top of the top ever ran out of things to do, but it came at the cost of very grindy systems. Modern WoW is doing a great job giving a constant stream of rewards and making it easy to achieve your progression goals no matter what content you prefer, but it comes at the cost of regular progression resets that make the emptiness of vertical progression even more obvious than usual.
Every week, join the Massively OP staff for Massively Overthinking column, a multi-writer roundtable in which we discuss the MMO industry topics du jour – and then invite you to join the fray in the comments. Overthinking it is literally the whole point. Your turn!
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