After many (eventually accurate) rumors, Microsoft finally revealed Playground Games’ Fable game that’s coming to the Xbox Series X and PC sometime in the future. The trailer was quite vague, only showing a sprawling world and the unfortunate fate of one fairy. And even though Microsoft didn’t give much solid information about the game, some industry insiders have claimed that it will have “MMO-lite” aspects to it.
This rumor began in a ResetEra thread with Twitter user and journalist CronoTK declaring that the game would indeed be an MMO. While some of the commenters bemoaned the idea, a few others jumped in with similar statements corroborating the idea. One member named Navatra stated they heard it would be MMO-lite while ResetEra moderator Transistor chimed in later saying that they heard the same thing. Industry analyst Daniel Ahmad (also known as ZhugeX) gave a more cryptic response, insisting that people should not read into it being a full “2004” MMO.
Ahmad’s response to the topic is not inherently at odds with the prior comments because of how the definition of MMO might differ from one person to another. Being called an “MMO-lite” game and being implicitly and explicitly contrasted with World of Warcraft implies that, if accurate, this Fable game will be similar to games like Sea of Thieves, Destiny, or Playground’s own Forza Horizon 4. These games take in MMO-like elements that support many players and trappings of the genre, but aren’t full-blown MMO games in the traditional sense.
Fable has flirted with multiplayer in the past. Fable 2 and Fable 3 both had co-op and Fable Legends was supposed to be a more cooperative-focused title before being canceled in March 2016. Given that history, Playground’s own titles, the general direction of the industry, Microsoft’s continued support of Sea of Thieves, and incentive to make constantly evolving games to keep players subscribed to Game Pass, Fable possibly having more than a few MMO-like qualities isn’t too unheard of.
