The topic I chose for my student's choice research was Zenith: The Last City, also known as Zenith. Zenith is a open world VR-MMORPG that was originally kickstarted by up and coming game company Ramen VR. While not the first VR MMO that has been published, it is by far the most prospective, designed for multiplatform play. This includes PlayStation VR, Quest/Quest 2, Rift, and SteamVR.

As an open world game, it is expected that Zenith’s world would be expansive and full of points of interest for the player. As the game is exclusive to functioning in a VR headset, this begs the question of how users will move around the world with regard to 3 axes of movement. Zenith takes full advantage of all existing systems regarding the motion tracking and usage of the VR controllers, enabling the player to walk, climb, and glide around the open environment, utilizing the joystick triggers and controller rotations to do so.

Zenith takes inspiration from many RPGs, and is heavily influenced by both sci-fi and fantasy themes alike. The main RPG aspect of the games comes from the class and combat systems of the game, which boil down to melee combat as a Blade Master, or ranged spellcasting as an Essence Mage. Both of these classes have 3 subclasses that focus on one of the primary MMORPG roles. A tank, and damage dealer, and a healer. Each class utilizes the controls in a unique way. For blade masters, one must properly time the raising of their sword to parry enemies, followed by swinging at enemies to damage them. For essence mages, the use of gesturing by waving your arm horizontally or vertically enable the casting of a wide variety of both attack and healing magic, depending on your subclass.

The biggest appeal of Zenith comes from VR’s ability to further immerse players into this world. There is something players find appealing of getting the capability to duel creatures in a proper melee, or getting to aim casting and aiming powerful spells. Zenith also implements the common social MMO aspect of guilds, and allows social interaction on a level most MMOs are incapable of. The ability to openly communicate by voice-proximity coupled with VR’s ability to observe other player’s gestures and movements allow for social interaction on a much more intimate level.

Zenith’s designers have accounted for the potential preferences of all kinds of players using the VR headsets. They provide multiple options of locomotion for each method of movement, including the primary ones such as walking, gliding and climbing. They include smooth movement, smooth with vignette, and even a third-person mode designed for users who can get motion sickness very easily. The developers have excelled at accounting for all sorts of users with different motion sickness tolerances, providing the highest quality experience possible regardless of preference.

One of the biggest concerns that comes with the notion of an MMORPG is performance, especially utilizing VR. Having a huge, fully rendered world, full of hundreds of players actively utilizing the world sounds daunting for any . The developers utilized the Unity game engine, alongside the SpatialOS networking engine. What the SpatialOS networking engine allowed the developers to do was isolate parts of the games functionality on a cloud network, which enabled the developers to funnel much more resources into gameplay and design rather than the networking aspect. The game runs smoothly on all platforms, albeit with varying levels of detail based on the performance power of the platform it is being run on.

While Zenith excels in the field of creating a comfortable and well-performing environment, the most important part of any game comes from its enjoyability. As with other MMORPGS, there is an appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers, and anywhere in between. The main gameplay loop involves moving around the world and completing quests provided to the player from NPCs. These quests involve rudimentary tasks such as collecting items or interactions that boil down to waving a hand over an object, which leaves much to be desired for users. The story itself has also never been very prevalent, as most NPCs in the world serve the purpose of acting as quest givers, leaving a very barren feeling world for the player to get involved with. The primary enjoyment for most players falls towards the exploration of environments, finding secrets, and fighting monsters. As the player progresses, they also get access to cooperative instance dungeons, which are intended to be challenging locations with puzzles and combats for groups of players to tackle.

Players can also get invested in an aspect outside of the combat and storyline: crafting. Zenith also has a crafting system with 3 aspects - Gear Creation, Gear Upgrading, and Cooking. The first two processes are rather rudimentary, involving walking up to a station, selecting an item of interest, and pulling a lever in order to complete the process. Cooking involves the player collecting food items found in various parts of the overworld, to then put into a crafting station. Once this station is open, however, the cooking process itself is unintuitive. The ingredients are a little difficult to reach, and the actual cooking process remains unexplained to the user, leading to confusing gameplay. While making and preparing all of these items, it should be noted that there is no method of trading or giving items to other players, which removes a layer of potential social interaction.

While Zenith encourages players to be socially interactive, it may not necessarily be the best VR platform for this. A significant piece of social interaction in games comes from player expression, which leaves much to be desired in Zenith. Avatars in the game all can wear customizable gear, and wield a variety of weapons, yet feel indistinct due to lack of other defining traits. All characters have the same body types and size, and the character customization boils down to selecting from a few preset faces and hair types, where the only aspect the player has full control over is the monotonous hair color.

Alongside this, a common occurrence in other social games such as VRChat is that many of the other users one comes in contact with are located in various parts of the world. This distance tends to create a minor, albeit typically negligible, amount of lag and delay for the users. However, when the primary gameplay involves combat and precise movement, a good connection is necessary to ensure a smooth flow of gameplay. Should users that are across continents wish to play with each other, it is guaranteed that at least one of the players would have a degraded experience due to poor connection to the servers.

Another glaring issue with Zenith’s stems from some frustrating design oversights. One of the most common player complaints is the overlap between certain gestures. The most common of these is grabbing lootable items in the middle of combat, which occurs due to the functionality of using triggers to grab and hold both weapons and items, which can cause mishaps that result in unintentional yet frustrating player deaths in the midst of combat. The gestures you make while reaching for menus can also cause players to unintentionally cast spells while doing activities such as climbing or crafting, once again causing frustration or player deaths. All in all, there leaves much to be desired of the existing systems, either to refine or rework them entirely.

As an MMORPG, Zenith: The Last City still has a long path towards becoming a truly great game. As one of the first VR MMOs created that not only runs but performs well on such a large scale, I believe it has set an excellent example for aspiring VR MMO developers. Regardless of the game’s overall success, there is much to take away from the feats it has accomplished and the shortcomings it has presented since its release. Given that MMOs remain in a state of constant development, the developers always have access to a wealth of feedback from its player base to keep refining features and adding new content. While it may not currently be a game that can keep everyone’s attention, it will certainly act as the baseplate for many VRMMO designs going forward.