Slashdot Mirror
The Future of MMORPGs
Fargo writes: "How often do you get the creators of EverQuest, Asheron's Call, World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies, Anarchy Online, and others in the same room together? It happened at the recent Game Developers Conference in San Jose. GameSpy pulled together notes from three days' worth of talks and drew some common conclusions that point toward where the genre is going in the future. A good read if you're interested in where Virtual Worlds are headed."
And here it is:
Progress Quest
Its not too addictive and it doesn't use up too much time.
t
Sure, people do "play for the spreadsheet, filling in points", etc, but the real draw of a good game is it's roleplaying value - at least for me.
I've been playing a Text MUD for quite a long time - Dragonrealms (http://www.play.net/dr) - and it's evolved into quite a large player base where anyone can make a mark on the community by roleplaying a character correctly.
Hundreds of addicts, or just hundreds of satisfied people? Not sure, but the Roleplaying Genre needs to focus more on roleplaying, least we end up instead with the "experience-game-in-which-players-gain-levels genre".
The problem with MMORPGs right now is the players can't shape the world. It would be so much fun if players could build cities, destroy cities, take power over a nation, remove a person from power, eliminate an entire species of animal, etc. Sure at times you'll have things unbalanced, but as long as you have methods to rebalance it shouldn't be an issue (like destroying a boulder that stopped a river). Also it would be nice missions involved more than one person. For instance the game could give a high level character a mission that would take too long for him to finish by himself, but he could hire lower level people for a negotiated reward to help him along.
;)
But like all people on slashdot I only have ideas and no plans to actually implement the crap I think up.
Wow. Throw some heavy-duty padlocks on that door and you'll have just increased geek productivity by about 800%.
And if they start asking for food and water, just tell 'em to /petition it...
The central focus of all MMORPGs is the economy, and so far all of them have weak or artificial economies. The rewards of playing stem from the game economy and in order to be truly compelling the economy has to be robust and realistic. Take EQ for example. The economy is really driven by two things - experience (which can't be traded) and equipment, all of which exist in essentially unlimited quantities. Spend enough time and you can get everything the world has to offer.
What is needed is an economy that motivates people to cooperate and simultaneously drives conflict. Think RTS combined with RPG. There should be certain resources that are finite in availablity, but necessary for progress. To get the resources you need you can either find them, buy them, or steal them. To help this along there should be factions or groups to which you can belong and from which you derive certain benefits that help you get the resources you need. This sets up a natural conflict between competing groups vieing for the same limited pool of resources. You are effectively forced to ally with others in order to achieve your aims, since it is easier to defend your resources when you group together. In order to get some resources, it might be necessary to pool resources, for example to get enough cash to purchase a piece of equipment that enhances resource production. You would essentially be investing in an enterprise and expecting a return on that investment. The game could even support a stock trading system in which you could invest in various enterprises based on your interests and desires.
Once you have an economy figured out, everything else comes together. You don't need to provide monsters or quests, since the dynamic of the game creates them all on its own. You get people working with or against each other, which is what it should be about anyway. Other humans are going to be far more interesting and challenging opponents or allies than any AI creature.
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
I'm going to disagree, but not for the reasons you might think.
The true jump in quality won't come from masses of gamers deciding in unison that, yes, I feel like pretending to be a sweaty dwarf named Argus McGinley of the Axehandle Clan today -- or whatever one's idea of traditional role playing might be.
Rather, it'll arrive when these online worlds become immersive/enjoyable enough that you don't even have to think about role playing. Not consciously, at any rate. That is to say, as these games evolve and their in-game mechanics grow to be more fluid and natural (instead of the hundreds of little annoyances -- zone loads, clipping bugs, slash commands -- that constantly remind us of a game's limitations), a majority gamers will begin to act more naturally within them.
Setting influences behavior, in a sense.