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The Trouble with MMORPGs
jasoncart writes "The trouble with MMORPGs is a humorous account of one gamer's struggle to find and assume his place in the rapidly evolving societies which form a part of the online RPG explosion. Ultimately, it is also a lament for the loss of direction that is the scourge of the genre."
I got to the same stage as this author about 6 years ago. I spent lots and lots of time playing MUDs - (remember MUDs? Nahh, didn't think so!) before there even were such things as MMORPGs, and while I loved it at the time, after a while you've just done it all, seen it all, and just don't want to do it again. As a result, I've never bothered playing any of the graphical MMORPGs. They can't be that different from MUDs really, can they? I mean, in the enjoyment factor?
I enjoyed the social scene on my favourite MUDs but apart from the jadedness factor, they were a huge time (and money, this was pre-unmetered internet) sink.
-- Soluzar
Sign the FSF's Anti-DMCA petit
Crushed: The Doomed Kitty Adventures!
And it needs orcs that look like this.
I'll stick to quake and counterstrike.
slashdotted.....
Anyone care to post a mirror or the article text?
Way to go. You're such a 1337 d00d. When I grow up I want to be just like you.
.. the real-life webserver PK'er.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
If game developers knew about me, they'd try to bottle what I have - I am the equivalent of MMORPG litmus; an acid test. I've played most of the big ones - UO, EQ, AC, DAOC and now SWG, and I've exhibited the same reaction to almost all of them. You see, I'm always the fish that got away.
It always starts so well. I install, register. Spend an age perusing arcane and obscure sites to find the elusive best combination of STR and DXT and INT for that uber nuking mage or damage soaking tank. I make the decision, create a character. I change my mind, re-roll and start again. I do this several times, until everything is just right. But finally, I'm happy. I enter the game world.
And am immediately lost and confused. No MMORPG ever has managed to ease me into a game. Maybe I'm obtuse, but invariably someone takes pity on me and points me in the right direction - the rat/snake/mouse/snail killing fields, where I begin to cut my level 1 teeth with the other "n00bs". In UO and EQ, this was a delight - it was all new, we were all new back then. This was before the days of power levelling and macro'ing your way to level 40 before the game was even out. No. Back then, we ALL did our time in the rat fields. But despite the obvious menial nature of the task, it is still fun. The levels come quickly, new skills are learned and used, new items acquired and the next goal is only just around the corner. This is the MMORPG honeymoon period - the time where the grind is not just bearable, it's actually enjoyable. But like the real thing, the MMORPG honeymoon can't last.
It begins to creep in, almost unnoticed. The levels are further apart. You begin to notice that newly acquired skills are carbon copies of the old ones, with a different coloured icon and a two percent damage increase. You start to get 'class envy' - that feeling that almost every other race/class/profession is better off than you, and that the developers have it in for you and your kind. Suddenly, you find yourself looking for groups because you're bored of soloing, or soloing because you can't find a group, or crafting because you can't be bothered with either. You try out all the little distractions the developers have put in the game to make things 'deep', only to find they're broken, bugged or plain pointless. But you're a trooper. You stiffen that upper lip and press on, certain that if you can only hang in there the good times will arrive and the game will be FUN again.
It is at precisely this point, that me and others like me will part ways with our more determined MMORPG brethren. I, you see, am a quitter. And that's why developers should listen to me, because it is me and those like me who cannot be retained after the free month. Simply put, if I'm paying for it, then it's a winner. And I tell you all honestly, I'm TIRED of quitting. I want to proudly display my level 75 death mage to all and sundry. I want to tell bored "n00bs" of how I acquired my shiny Boots of Relentless Perseverance + 2 after a three day battle with a fire giant. I want to be that guy - I have it in me, to be that sad.
But frankly, and I mean this in the nicest possible sense, all the MMORPGs out there bore me senseless after two or three weeks. So where are they going wrong? Well, if you're still reading at this point, I'm going to tell you. Here follows Nick's list of MMORPGs do's and dont's... so without further ado, and in no particular order...
1) DON'T use me as pest control:
I've killed them all - rats, spiders, snakes, snails, wasps, worms, beetles etc. And more to the point, I've BEEN killed by them all. I'm tired of this crap - I know MMORPGs must have a sense of progression and therefore start small, but can't I start a bit higher up the food chain? For God sake, in real life I could give most decent sized mammals a good hiding and I don't even possess a shock spell or whirlwind attack. Let me fight something bigger.
2) DO allow me to play how I like, when I like:
I keep unusual hours. It's a by product of being
Trapped in purgatory
A lifeless object, alive
Awaiting reprisal
Death will be their acquisition
The sky is turning red
Return to power draws near
Fall into me, the sky's crimson tears
Abolish the rules made of stone
Pierced from below, souls of my treacherous past
Betrayed by many, now ornaments dripping above
Awaiting the hour of reprisal
Your time slips away
Raining blood
From a lacerated sky
Bleeding its horror
Creating my structure
Now I shall reign in blood!
We simply hang in there, hoping it will get better, blaming ourselves for the lack of content in their game.
"It's our fault", we say, "that I am not enjoying this as much as I did when I first started. If I just hang in there, and believe, it will all be ok"
We're sorta like battered wives, except we pay for the privledge.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
rudi bakhtiar is way cuter
Simply put, MMORPGs are years behind MUDs. MMORPGs these days are glorified versions of Diablo. Even the most trade skill savvy MUDs really have just reduced trade skills into a Diablo equivalent... press this button so many times and win a prize. MMORPGs do not have consistent or coherent worlds. They rely purely upon addictive game mechanics and social communities built within the game to thrive. Personally, I went through the stage where I tried out addiction and found it to be less then enjoyable once I stepped back and realized how utterly boring these games were.
These days, I stick to MUDs. MUDs are light years ahead of MMORPGs. For instance, the MUD I normally play, ArmageddonMUD http://www.armageddon.org/ has a coherent world, enforced RP, and permanent death. No MMORPG comes even close to this. The game is NOT built around slaughtering thousands of NPCs. Just like in real life, it will only get you dead.
The day that MMORPGs will become worth while is when they find a formula other then pure addiction to keep people active. I think A Tale in the Desert is a great leap forward. Combining that sort of game play in with traditional action and adventure is where I believe it is at.
Personally, I will go back to MMORPGs the second one manages to pull off true permanent death. MUDs have been able to pull it off and keep the game enjoyable, yet MMORPGs have not even been able to make the effort. Permanent death forces the game world to be coherent and for combat to less then mindless. I think that we have many years to come before MMORPGs can pull off what MUDs have already done.
If this genre doesn't die soon you can get ready for GENERATION LARD - kids who will spend 18 hours a day having sex chat under the auspices of slaying dragons. While they will quickly get over the psychological issues of male/male sex chat posing as teenage lesbian sex chat, it will be hard for them to physically cope with excessive masturbation being their only form of exercise.
Don't make me pay for the game twice:
If you charge a monthly fee to maintain your virtual world, that's okay. Just don't charge a second time for the game itself. The "game" in the box is just a client to connect to the real game on the server. It's as stupid as if AOL charged $50 for those CDs they give away and then charged their monthly fee.
By charging $50 just to get one's foot in the door, you chase of 90% of the people who would try the game if it just cost the first month's fee. At least some of those people would stick around.
Jason
ProfQuotes
they brought out Age of Shadows, it totally changed the game (for the worse), and everyone left, anyone else used to/play UO here?
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
We did a study on this in my Social Issues In Computing class last year. Online RPG'ing is a scary thing. People get sucked in and lost the ability to coherently act outside of the game. Who do we blame? The gaming organization? I don't think so. They are just good at what they do. It is like when Coca Cola put traces of cocaine in their soda. They were just good at getting people addicted...then the whole cocaine is illegal thing came to notice. Oh well.
One word: JediMud. The economy was barter-based, the world was dynamic and quests were DM'ed by former players. The best part of all was you could only get as high as level 30 (still 40-50 hours of play) before being forced to become immortal or remort. After remorting you got a 1-point bonus to one stat. That kind of system would really cut down on what I consider the worst aspect of MMORPGs, lifeless nerds playing for 80 hours a week and effectively 'ruining the curve'.
Linux: Free if your time is worthless.
god yes! i'd hit it in a second
you just sound jealous to me.
What is next? An article from a net "pundit" declaring MMORPGS dead? Every other article anymore is "is the internet dying?" "is bluetooth dead?" "is _____ dying?" Okay I am going to become a "genius" right now, you heard it here first "Wi-Fi is dying." There you go, slap a beret and some horn rimmed glasses on me now, I am officially a "genius".
I hate sigs.
No MMORPG ever has managed to ease me into a game... ...You begin to notice that newly acquired skills are carbon copies of the old ones, with a different coloured icon and a two percent damage increase. You start to get 'class envy' - that feeling that almost every other race/class/profession is better off than you... Suddenly, you find yourself looking for groups because you're bored of soloing, or soloing because you can't find a group, or crafting because you can't be bothered with either
Well stop doing it, dummy! This guy seems to be a sucker for punishment. Most of us figure out what game genres suit us and which to avoid. I, for one, hate the MMORPG genre for all the reasons described above, but know enough not to keep buying into them.
That in the end the game system is the same:
Do x to get y
OR
Kill n monsters to level up.
So in the end, you're doing highly receptivity tasks for less and less return. This is not to say that these types of tasks don't have a place in the game play (or in real life either, you don't start out as an Karate black belt and must practice to perform better and better, but after a while, you've done it all and your skill doesn't rise - a gross simplification, but a useful one).
Where I think these games fail is in team building and community building.
Most of these games have falling into this trap, and I think the industry is waking up to this fact and are trying to actively advoid it by designing new adventures (content) which focus on the players and their interaction with each other.
I actually think that W:ET has the right idea with XP increases, you can level up quickly in your class, after that, your skills are how fast you can 'twitch' and shoot (and that it is TEAM based! and Yes there is kill to level up, but these are limited (But I hate the run the clock down theme there, but I'm digressing!)).
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
is that pretty all of them seem to use the same engine. the "Keep paying us after you bought the game" engine. I've beta tested Earth & Beyond, which was pretty cool until the beta ran up and they asked me to pay them for the rest of my life. I played Anarchy Online for a while until they asked me to pay for the game until the end of the world(s). I'd probably actually go out and play a MMORPG or two if I could just buy the game once.
the other problem I have with MMORPGs is that they are so dependant on working with other people. There are even quests that you can't go on without having a certain number of people in your party. There is no soloing. none at all. well, unless you want to be that level five guy who always gets PKed.
and the worlds are hardly versatile at all. If it's a game like Anarchy Online where there're two warring factions that supposedly hate eachother etc etc etc, well, you see people from either side partying up and going off adventuring all the time. and while the news posts say that one side destroyed some facility or other of the other side, well, nobody actually does. It's all made up by the guys writing the news posts.
so...yeah, if somebody could just fix the games so they were more like an actual RPG (preferably with a real-time combat system so you don't have click on an enemy, go get breakfast, come back, heal, click on another enemy...) and less like monopoly (where everything's already bought up so you keep paying them as long as you play) then they might be good games.
No, human intervention is required to customise the experience, GM style. Smaller worlds are needed with restricted take-up of gamers.
Either that, or stick to the preprogrammed off-line games....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
dude you suck even more than the AC. get a fucking life! only a loser like yourself picks on the details between flamebait and flames.
RUUUDDIII BAH-AH-Ah_AAAAAAHKTIAR!!!!! SPLURRRTT!!!
ahhhh................
dams she's fine
Like her Middle Eastern looks, though.
i am so thirty one thousand, three hundred and thirty seven.
power gamers in these games whine, bitch, and moan. always have, always will. sit back and enjoy the game, if you dont want to kill that bug ten thousand times then don't! quit bitchin about it already!
----------- destroy evil immediately!
But you're a trooper. You stiffen that upper lip and press on, certain that if you can only hang in there the good times will arrive and the game will be FUN again.
You, sir, should avoid cocaine at all costs.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Ultimately, this was allways my biggest pet peeve.
Wrong tool, wrong task syndrome.
It's almost like the only people MMORPGs appeal to are the type of people who use spreadsheets for data warehousing.
It would seem to me that irc was cheaper and easier to use, but...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
yeah well when I jump on a treadmill, I expect to lose weight... not gain it.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
They try and tailor each game to nothing more than time sinks. The longer your play the more money they make. This right there takes the "fun" factor away and adds in the grind. Why do the developers think its fun to go on a 14 hr raid to maybe get a piece of eq that I might need at some point in my characters life. Also, after the initial time sinks have been reached, instead of rewarding you they add more! Look at EQ and DAoC. Both of which have added pay for expansions that do nothing more than give you more pretty pictures and a TON more time sinks.
At some point they have to realize that time sinks do not equal long term cash. Maybe back in the day when EQ and UO were the only game in town could this be done. Now, there are litterly hundreds of new MMORPGs on the horizon lining up to get a piece of the pie.
Devs!! It's time to remember that we play these games for FUN not for another grind akin to our every day lives.
just because the people who do play them look like someone out of an anti-drug ad. "Dude, don't ever start playing everquest bro, I quit my job so I could sit around and play it more."
and a great one is DurisMUD.. durismud.org 6666
--------
Free your mind.
Are these really *games*? Chess is a game, it is infrequently re-invented but continues to have a rather significant fan base. All of these online games and video games are more like a movie, need a new director every few years.
:-) need to be more like sitcoms or no actually more like interactive soap operas. No one cares how many kill points, they care how you use them on a buddy that they want to play a practical joke.
;-)
The MMPORGIES(sp?
Go find LambdaMoo, get a character, there are a couple thousand folks that have been mooing for over a decade. It's more than a chat room, more than a game, less than real life. (no reverse that
...as far as I'm concerned, anyway. I'm in the last stages of burning out on SWG big-time. As usual, that's more depressing than surprising, I knew going in that they'd have to really bust ass to keep me interested beyond a month. Considering how many other 39.99 or 49.99 games have only held my attention for a month or two, though, that's not a terrible thing, just another bad game to stack beside the various bad games and bad movies that come and go between the rarer good stuff.
I also share the author's hope that World of Warcraft will actually BE DIFFERENT than the mass-multi's we've seen so far. I sum up my feeling on that as: "If anyone can do it, Blizzard can".
But that still leaves me wondering *if* anyone can. I mean, how can the content creators ever hope to keep up with the powergamers? It takes 10 or even 100 times as long to create a robust, interesting, and distinctive quest or mission as it does for a typical player to complete it (at least, that's the sort of numbers game developers have tossed out when asked). Solutions like EQ epic quests aren't the answer, because they force the player to join enormous guilds in order to access significant amounts of the game's content, forces an amount of play (in terms of per session and per day or week) that is more than many players can afford to give.
So, have the releases thus far been unable to keep it fresh and interesting because of incompetence or poor design choices (as the author claims), or is actually an unsolvable problem?
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
I used to hate having to do pest control in games (killing rats and rabbits for those who didn't read the article). But I put this akin to being a tutorial before the main game. In most MMORPG's I've played you don't feel "established" until you hit at least level 10 or so. Fighting little woodland creatures is the easiest way to accomplish this in my opinion. It's the MMORPG way of having a tutorial level.
Well, I only MUD regularly. I have tried UO and a few other of the new graphical MMO games though. The article doesn't mention clans/guilds or PVP at all. Killing other people is probably the most fun activity in these games in my experience, seconded only by plotting/leveling/equipping your teammates and having the same done to you so you can kill even better. I guess not many of the new games have PVP?
Second he says not to include him in the story. Big mistake IMHO. Any game that doesn't have GM run events and mobs that force the players to do something meaningful in the story isn't worth playing from my POV. I've always enjoyed town invasions, but I admit they are usually the least involving of the GM run quests I've seen. It does get large numbers involved and you do get to hunt down the leaders or protect the empaths or whatever (like watching newbs die left and right, hehehe), though. ^^
Yes you have to pay for the game and a subscription fee. This is normally tolerable. However, paying a monthly fee for a beta product is unacceptable. When you spend hours stuck or can't even get on to the server, you have to wonder what you're shelling out monthly for? It's like you're paying for the development. Praying that it will eventually reach a tolerable point where the game becomes playable. Content is lacking, activities are boring, but what does that matter if the game barely functions in the first place?
WURD!!
When a game feels more like a job than a game, it's time to quit.
Dude must've had a microphone in my apartment in college. My roomates and I would always ditch games when they "started to feel like work." Work is the antithesis of gaming, if the game drags and there's no reward, you've paid X amount of money to waste time. I can waste time for free, I have Slashdot, Fark, The Onion, & PA!
although you may have not noticed, the fragile is actually, on closer inspection, fantastic.
Is systemic. These being 'persistent' worlds, they permit somebody to spend all their time in them, 16 hours a day if they like (although that is an extreme example). Yet the only way to get anywhere faster in the game is to spend more time at it.
Ordinary, casual gamers are forced to compete with everyone else in the game for the status/level of accomplishment they want, and to do this they have to run on a treadmill that just keeps getting steeper. Most people cannot devote 8 hours a day to the game, for the average person, even an hour every day works out to quit a lot.
Anybody who doesn't have some kind of obsession with in game achievements (which are NOT IMPORTANT, it's supposed to be a game, fun, not a substitute for real life), is eventually going to throw up their hands, questioning "How many rats do I have to kill?!" What happens is that the distance between the levels/goals you want to achieve keeps getting broader, yet the activities to reach them don't get consistently more challenging. It's just the same old repetition, and once it goes on long enough without you getting anywhere, you have to question the legitimacy of your goal. Is getting there really fun, or are you only trying to get there to get ahead of other people? If it's the latter, the game is probably adding more stress to your life than it relieves.
For the people on top, who essentially have free run of the game, it is fun, but to get to their level you have to spend ungodly amounts of time in the game, to the point where it is overwhelming your entire life. But that's the only way to get there. If they didn't do it, someone else would. Remember what I said about status in-game being the result of a competition between all the players, with those who spend the most time winning?
Everybody wants to feel like a winner, in life or even in any game where there is competition. But you have to ask yourself at some point, do I want to be a winner at point and click killing? The best trader of nonexistent commodities? How much are you willing to sacrifice for these things? For most people, MMORPGs make the sacrifice far too great.
The problem with MMORPGs is that they're not really multiplayer. Sure, you play with thousands of people, but what do you do? Kill AI monsters? It's just Diablo II with a bunch of players. This is what I call pseudo-multiplayer, something I would compare to maybe playing tetris and comparing your score with others. Sure, there may be Player versus player or even big realm battles or whatever the concept was in DAoC, but the majority of the time is spent hacking and slashing and slashing without interacting with other players. Compare this to extremely popular games like Starcraft and Counterstrike where the objective of the entire game is to defeat another human being, hence, the added fun. I've sat down and played MMORPGs for hours, and whenever I reached level 20 and got that supersword I asked myself, "What the hell am I doing? I'm playing freaking single-player here". And single-player sucks. Bad. My dream, which however is not possible, is a much more open MMORPG, where everything is player created. I don't know if you should even have NPCS. Constructing towns, taking over towns, forming merchant trade routes, hiring guards and so on. In my dreams, this is all great, although it would probably suck in real life, much because of the unwritten rule that everyone you meet on the Internet are complete jerks.
Cons:
I guess my conclusion is this: the economics will work only if the gaming population is large enough. This requires two things: game quality, which the article addresses, and momentum, which cheaper clients would possibly address. Here's another thought: how about give two months free with purchase of the game?. I know I'd be harder pressed to abandon something I had been playing two months than a mere one month investment.
Planetarion, the one I'm addicted to, is entirely browser based, with no fancy graphics. There is no "levelling-up", the combat is entirely player vs. player, and all you have to do to get new skills is choose which one you want to research next. The gameplay is all in the co-operation of players, forming alliances, trying to get into better alliances, defending your friends, ganging up on your enemies, outthinking dumb people and general larking about with likeminded people in irc. It's even inspired several clones (myphppa, starsphere, dawn of myth, planetia etc.).
Sadly it's dying a slow death because people always go for a $50 + $30 a month glitzy graphics game over a $0 + $15 every 3-4 months one that has no graphics. Before Evercrack, Planetarion had 180,000 accounts, now it's down to about 6,000, despite many improvements being made each round.
If you want to give Planetarion a try, I suggest you sign up for a free 2 week trial. If enough of you do, the game might get profitable again.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I think you mean 'lack of direction.' Loss implies that the genre had direction at one point, which it didn't. ^_^
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
If you feel your MMPORPG isn't keeping up with your actions, the gameplay may need tightening. Click here for more information.
The ______ Agenda
I read this guys thoughts on the current state of affairs of MMOG's. I also read the responses and its clear that most of you are WAY off as is the person who posted the article.
MMOG's are about community. GO PVP. GO GET INVOLVED in an online community. ROLE PLAY....
These games were NOT designed to keep people interested in quests or killing little rats. Those systems within the game are to keep people interested in the game only long enough to get them to the point they need to be at to learn the game and start playing it the way it was meant to be played.
A successful MMORPG will have systems that promote the forming of communities. NOT an awesome quest system or solo monsters to hunt.
Go play Myst.....
I have to agree so much about the staleness of MMORPGs. But I read about Second Life here on /. and I am in love again with online gaming. It is a totally different experience, nothing I could have prepared myself for. I certainly thought I would be bored with it but I'm not!
Seriously, I recommend giving it a try...
Damn skippy it is. Listening to the String Quartet Tribute to NIN right now. Different but fucking fantastic.
I was as jaded as the author after running through all the same games as him. Then I took a break and played some Neverwinter Nights (the built in campaign). It was fun, well balanced good ol' D&D. Then I tried the online client. WOW! Log into a NWN persistent world and it's like a free MMORPG without the MM part. It's not huge, but it's not crowded either. There are great tradeskills, class balance is never an issue, selective PvP, dynamic mob gen... everything works so well. Give it a shot if you're burned out on paying monthly fees for garbage.
Yeah. That's be sweet. The Everquest Chainmail Massacre. Yeah. Mmm hmmm. I want me some o' that.
--- Ban humanity.
If spending all that time doing drudge play gets you down, then try Progress Quest.
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
EQ, UO, AO, and SWG...I have played them all, and I think I know the problem. I don't want to bitch about them. I have enjoyed them all in some way, but have also found several major flaws that I think turn the genre into the boring grind so many hate after they get up a few levels.
1. How bout adding community us against them scenarios? Ultima had this for a while, and it was really great. An invasion of the town, everyone running to the city gates or bridge to help repel the AI enemy. Fighting and almost dying, only to realize suddenly that a complete stranger (who happens to be a healer) has just put you back into the battle when you were willing to sacrifice all. The problem is that this requires the programmers and GM's to be actively involved in thinking up these scenarios, and implementing campaigns. That requires paying people for extra work and shrinking that monthly profit margin.
2. Can I please play alone? Having a crippled class that can't go out and solo really stinks. In EQ, I have a very high level charachter. I never play him. Why? I have to actually work for a living. If I want to play, I have to get on, then hustle to find a group (10-20 minutes) then I have to get to where the group is going (another 20-30 minutes), then I have to wait while we all get ready (another 10 minutes). So I have been sitting for an hour just for the priveledge of of hitting some baddie. The solution is to offer solo-areas, and solo monsters that groups can't touch. Offer places where someone can spend a quick hour having fun, not "preparing for fun". The problem again is that this requires a great amount of programmer time and money to create. Why lower the profit margin?
Will I invest in EQ2 or Planet-Side? Nope. I am pretty much done with this genre. When my current subscriptions are up, I'm off the stuff like bad Thunderbird. I'll go back to playing a sniper on Arena or UI for free. MMORPG's are in their adolesence. I have contributed enough cash to their growing up. I'll be back when they finally settle down and get married.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Every time somebody tries to spell out what's wrong with MMORPGs they always get lost in the technical minutia and miss the big picture.
Multiplayer RPGs aren't anything new, they've been played with dice and pencils for decades, and these problems have all been solved there. People aren't tired of killing orcs in D&D. Pest control isn't the problem.
Making an RPG fun is about rewards. On a basic level, the player has fun when they are rewarded for their effors. The trouble is that giving the same reward over and over quickly looses it's apeal. It's hard, however, to create reward variety in an MMORPG because intangible rewards require a lot of creative output. There can't be a controlled plot because there are just so many people that it's infeasable to create that much independant content. This has caused the entire genre to fall into the trap of using levels, experience, and items as the sole rewards. After a while, another level is just a number on the screen, and another item is just another item. Unless the actual game play is it's own reward players will get tired of the game. This means that unexpected things need to happen that cause the players to think critically and encourage them to play the role. It means that every adventure can't be another version of "go kill this thing"; and it doesn't matter if that thing is a rat, or some new creature you've never seen. You'd get tired of all of it if that's all you did.
Sure, there's a small protion of gamers out there that will be sitisfied with seeing the level number go up over and over, but most people will find that it gets old quick.
Now if only the solution was simple....
The only options I see aren't compatible with the "let's make buckets of money for something we used to only be able to charge $50 for" model that most of these games follow. Either the game has to build a community that can support it on social merit alone, which people will not be willing to pay large sums of money for, or large numbers of creative professionals will have to be employed on the server side (think like the precursor to interactive entertainment as described in "The Diamond Age"), which would also cut severly into obscene profits. Either way, it seems to me that the massivly profitable MMORPG will soon be a thing of the past.
Perhaps the problem is you're searching for some sort of meaning in the game when it isn't there in the first place.
Time to get out into the real world.
If you want a kick-back do as you want, when you please online game, try there.com. Sure it has some bugs, but I have been in there almost every nite since January. There is always something fun to do. :)
scarr in there
Like the beaver, it's just Dam one thing after another
Why is this sob story posted to slashdot? Its quite apparent that he hasn't gotten very far in any of the games (2-3 weeks in most mmo's isn't going to get you to any real world-changing excitement) After all, if these games are going to last, how can we have every random little middle-tier player 'changing the world'. Even in todays world that doens't happen.
"So if I'm on your server with only three others at four in the morning, please let me do something meaningful with my time, and don't force me to join up with someone as obnoxious as I am to level up. That's just cruel."
He is missing the largest part of mmo's, the key idea being other people. He readily admits that he doesn't like to associate with other people like himself who play at odd hours. So my question is, why are you bothering to play an MMORPG in essentially single-player mode? These games are designed around social structures, and needing a group of people to get things done. Your lament at not being able to do anything 'world changing' in the first 2 weeks of the game *by yourself* is laughable.
If you want to play an MMO, play it as it is intended, with other people. If you want to play a game by yourself, pick one that was designed for it. Its really that simple. All of his other misdirected rants basically come down to the simple fact that he is trying to play a *massively multiplayer* game by himself.
All a MMORPG is is a chatroom with fancy graphics.
I've never gotten the point. They're so boring. And IRC is free.
And Efnet has better characters than any developer could come up with.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I have a problem with people who say MUDs are better than their graphical counter-parts.... MUDs are all about macros and scripting, it is so BS. I had a freind who had a celeron 700 on its knees playing a mud he had so many scripts running - how is any new person supposed to compete with that?
Does the fact your have pages and pages of "if poisoned with poison A drink antidote A" make you a better player than I am?
Back in the pen and paper role playing days we had a problem with roll players, or "min-maxers" and the way they were best dealt with that I personally saw was in the two of the best game-worlds ever created - Planescape and Shadowrun.
Planescape - you are walking with gods, demons and everything inbetween - the GM/DM is scripting it to a certain extent but there is always someone bigger and tougher than you... so it's all about smarts in terms of interaction rather than combat. But the "NPCS" actually have a human mind behind them rather than some crappy script that can't even pass the Turing test's little toe.
Translate into game worlds.... have more professional "DMs" perhaps people with good roleplaying skills who play at a discounted rate or for free in exchange for responsibilities. You can't rely on clans for this, because there are always "n00bs", no matter what their level.
Shadowrun - no "levels" only skills and karma... in other words there is a limit to your hitpoints. In this sense anyone can be killed, but an experienced person can always kill a beginner. People are much more careful then - and like the above poster, it adds more of a fear of death in.
Some form of peer-review karma system that prevents hackandslash types from ever advancing. Or perhaps a required "even" advancement. 100 points NPC kills, 100 points roleplay 100 points community work will count for more than 10,000 NPC with nothing in roleplay or community.
In short, these companies should be looking for ex-DM/GMs to get involved in their games after the engine, world and basic "story" is build to really flesh out the details. Like OSS you can harness the power of communities to improve things for everyone. I wouldn't shed a tear knowing what's going on behind the scenes or knowing how a magic trick is performed...... I'd love to bring awesome stories to people and challenge them on all levels as a GM admin.
Sure they want to automate everything, but with the current state of AI, and the status of players as self-interested (clans are good but don't fill all gaps) you need professionals.
I've been roleplay since I was 8 (that makes it 13 yrs experience) hire me, with real research skills from the humanities, not some software engineer who thinks he can spin a tale.
Why not scale things down a bit? Why not have a finite plotline that runs for a few months, at which point the game is over? When the game is over, the next plotline begins -- think of the serial adventures of Hurcules and Xena to know what I mean. Limit the game to a reasonable amount of players (fork multiple smaller worlds if need be), so everyone has a chance for involvement.
As long as developers are working on a hollywood style of production, backed by marketeers who want to lock-in subscriptions (guess why leveling up takes 1.5 pay cycles......), we are going to be playing some seriously boring games. Someone needs to break out of the mold.....without the big-studio budget that destroys innovation.
===========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Its called Shadowbane.
1. This guy is about as egotistical as they come. I have rarely seen such arrogance and if this is his regular attitude then I am not suprised he has difficulty finding parties.
.hack//sign comes out in the real world.
2. The fact that he gives up in the first month is less a litmus test for how good the game is and more a litmus test on your ability to stick with something. If you aren't going to pay beyond the first free month than why should the developers care about you? They care about paying cutomers and drawing more, the way he talks it sounds liek he'll never pay unless an impossibly good game comes out. He won't pay till
3. It sounds less like the MMORPG's are bad and more like you just don't like playing MMORPG's. If you think the game sucks, don't play em! There is always in all markets an element of the population that is simply not interested in the given product. If you fall into taht group, deal with it and stop complaining. There is more to life than MMORPG's.
4. Because I am drawn to them as the moth is to the flame. I have a history of single-handedly and without prior research, choosing as my own the class or profession that is clearly 'screwing the pooch'. Reminds me of the fat guy blaming MickeyD's for his weight problems cause they are making the food look too good. Plus, the grass is almost always greener on the other side of the fence. If you think your class sucks, dump it and start a new one.
5. I'll say it again. If you don't like a game, don't play it! Ever game eventually gets old. No game is perfect. Just becuase you can't play a game infinitely doesn't mean that it should be changed just to please you.
About your critism of the current MMORPG's, okay, some do suck major ass. Blizzard's does sound cool, but when you look at their record of how they treat their customers and the time frames of how long it takes to actually get problems fixed on their regualr games, I wouldn't go jumping off into WoW. Wait a month, see some real feedback. And yes, I am Diablo 2 player.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
All games suck except some variant of Quake (and basically just Quake): Left, Right, Up, Down, Shoot. Play for 15 minutes. Start over.
Once you turn 18 that's about it. It just takes you 10 years to realize that.
Okay, so my tax dollars go towards this, but at least I can say they're well spent tax dollars. In fact, I hereby declare that all of my tax dollars go towards development and maintenence of AA:Ops. Fuck interstates, education, the FCC, and any Senator that gave herself a raise. My dough is going exclusively to AA:Ops.
i didnt start using pcs last night. And after a while most people get savvy enough to say the same. By this i mean i know when im being had. mmopgs are subscription based and thus make money by keeping you in game. Characterbuilding is the most used way of doing this. The problem is though that after doing it once in ANY game its old. So now when i do a free trial, if after 1 hour i still havent seen anything but rats or spiders im out. The genre is getting worn out, and users are getting savvy about it. Its not easy to make a mmopg thrive today, and its getting harder, mostly because the same old crap is just that. Offtopic at the end, two exeptions from the rpg dominated mmog genre. Second Life and World War Online. I recommend both.
Lineage is actually a pretty good game.
I recommend it to people who don't want to be crowded in UO or would prefer a "darker" world than EQ.
It is a timesink, all these games are.. hell, computers are.. it is just the way things work..
anyway the site is at
http://lineagethebloodpledge.com
easy to start, eases you into the game nicely (which is something none of the others do) and people are good..
cheers
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
I think that one fundamental weakness of MMORPGs is the requirement to be "massively" multiplayer. The desire to cater to the percieved "needs" of thousands of diverse players, with wildly different desires from a game, results in watered-down "least-common-denominator" games that meet SOME of the needs of MOST of the customers.
That's why I think that Neverwinter Nights is taking an interesting approach to the problem by producing a "game creation and management" platform that customers can use to build and run mildly multiplayer games.
The NWN community has created over 2900 modules that are hand-crafted to target many different player styles, from persistent worlds (run by teams of volunteer DMs) that allow dozens of concurrent users, to small-team oriented modules designed to be played by 3-5 players for a couple of hours (with or without an interactive DM), to solo adventures that range from one-shot 45 minute modules to multi-module campaigns that take weeks to complete.
There's an excellent community-run website that provides links to descriptions and downloads for modules, schedules for upcoming multiplayer games sessions, community ratings of different downloadable modules and persistent world sites, and lots more good stuff. Here's the URL:
http://nwvault.ign.com
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Drill sergeants.
America's Army makes you go through basic training before you can play.
On the tech front, America's Army now has a Linux version for 64-bit Athlons, shipping as a bootable disk. Now that's cutting-edge technology.
And it's all free. You can even run your own server.
Of course, if you do well, they try to get you to enlist in the real army.
I think the focus needs to shift in RPG's away from leveling at all. Progression should be made mostly outside of computer. Want to kill dragons instead of rats? Then you're going to have to get good at playing the game. You (the person outside the computer) are going to have to gain new skills.
Whether the actual skills required to have your character succeed involve manual dexterity, fast thinking, good memory, or knowledge of the game world doesn't matter - and perhaps it could vary by class.
A lot of the fun of a game is getting better at the game (like I'm good at Super Monkey Ball) - where you are able to do things you just couldn't do before. Levelling is one way to have that happen, but it's artificial and ultimately unsatisfying - especially in a competitive setting where the winner is determined primarily by time/luck/cheating (rather than skill/focus).
If progress was based on progressing the skill of the player, imagine how much more satisfying it would be. Ever wonder why the first month of an MMORPG is satisfying? Because that's when YOU are gaining the skill to play,instead of your character.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
The real problem is player experience curve. Yes there are 400k subs in EQ, all of them over level 25 or 50% max level. The problem with being a newbie or trying to re enter a world is that after the first rush, no one new signs on. the population all ages together, with NO new blood.
Yes there are many people that start new chars but really, I left Everquest for a year and now, the place is a ghost town anywhere that is tailored for players under level 30 or so. The majot cities that once wer actually like cities are now like abandoned malls in the bad part of town.
Do we need virtual urban renewal projects?
And gay anus to pound, in your specific case.
Also, what's an "overarching storyline"? I did a search on google and it's funny that it is used almost exclusively in game reviews.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
... who believes that they hold the secret to the perfect MMORPG. The entire MMORPG community is filled with them, and they love to go on and on about what is wrong with the game, and state things like "If only MMORPGs would do this."
And then of course, his Diablo ties come out when he starts going on about how Worlds of Warcraft will be the game to make the genre. How many times do we have to hear someone talk about how "MMORPG X is going to remake the genre". Same thing was said of Shadowbane, same thing said of DAoC, of Anarchy Online, etc, etc.
No one likes to believe that MMORPGs are done the way they are for a reason. I could nitpick through the guys comments, but I've already wasted enough time. For every guy going on a rant like that, there are 500 guys who like MMORPGs the way they are, or who disagree with the majority of their comments. Why? Because MMORPGs still do pretty well, and get complaints any way that they go.
People just like to complain, and think that, as he put it, they can make a difference.
There's only one MMORPG that I play, Ragnarok Online. It's got the same "pest control" problems in most instances, but the real fun is the "bad Engrish". This is one of the few game that I've actually continually enjoyed for nearly a year and a half. The hardcore folks might not like it, however, it features cute anime-style 2D characters on a pastely 3D world, but the simple bitmap textures are to die for and the monsters are 2D animations, as well. It's the combination and the ambiance that always draws me back to RO, not so much the gameplay anymore.
They also feature a test server, to "translate" features already being played in Korea and bringing them international players. I think half the fun of the game has always been that you can email them English corrections and game suggestions and you actually get a response from them.
They feature seasonal events, as well. Right now they've filled the main towns with monsters and an NPC giving out special quests for Halloween.
"I'd rather stay here with all the madmen, for I'm quite content they're all as sane as me..." ~ David Bowie
Is finding something to do.
They are always based around the concept of 'killing things for experience', which means that groups of players are always waiting around common monster spawning areas ready to jump on whatever pops up.
So you end up sitting around a lot making small chat with whoever it waiting near you (many people). You're in a lineup to kill monsters that randomly appear. I don't see how that's much better than sitting in an arcade in the 80's waiting for the Galaga machine to be free.
At low levels it's too dangerous to go anywhere but a very small area, which is where all other low-level players go. Venture outside of that area and you are dead. Unfortunately it's the only way to get experience.
What would be better is if 90% of the game world was populated by low-level monsters and those high-level monsters required people to seek them out. Just think of mythology...the minotaur was in his maze, the medusa was on her island, etc. High-level monsters should be unusual and hard to get to. People should seek them out in a quest of sorts. Hundreds of high level monsters shouldn't be walking around woods within an hour of a heavily populated town.
Sorry, but the current scheme of MMORPGs is just no fun for people who aren't obsessive.
Was it just me, or did it sound like the author's "excitement" about SWG was the start of yet another honeymoon period that will inevitably lead to the same boredom? Just an observation :)
Babylon 5, all flamewars aside, stands out from other series of its kind mainly because the entire 5-season storyline was written ahead of time. There were story arcs spanning multiple seasons, as well as fun little non-arc episodes. This is in contrast to most series, where the people behind it might come up with a rough overall sketch for the next season, but there's no solid framework that's been well thought out in advance, and when your ability to come up with new ideas falls behind the schedule of shows, it comes apart.
So maybe the way to keep people playing is to not keep them playing, so to speak. Come out with a game and say, "This game will be around until November 2005" (if it came out today). Have a coherent overall storyline and subplots, with contingency plans in case the users change the flow of things too far in one direction. Create an ultimate evil that needs HORDES of high-level warriors of all sorts to even meet face-to-face, let alone kill. And maybe in the end, if they don't have the strength, the players lose! Have events play out so that the big climactic battle is about a month before the game itself ends to provide a little coda and see what happens.
I think planning ahead like this will merge the best elements of offline RPGs and MMORPGs. There probably will be "heroes", or at least local badasses that everyone in town knows because they are fanatical players and have amazing powers.
This would be far cooler than, say, PSO Online: "Well, 534 teams of 4 people each have destroyed the 'ultimate evil' repeatedly, and that's just today." Better to have a definitive end, going out with a bang and all that.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
If you are looking for a different kind of RPG you should check out Borderless RPG It's an indie game, and its going back to the Pen and Paper roots. I'm not affiliated with it, but it looks like its going to be really good.
I logged in, picked up a sword, said hello to someone who wandered by (who ignored me). Went north and was killed by a wizard.
Total playing time: 7 minutes.
Funnily enough, I never bothered going back again.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
There were also upmteen different varieties of the MUD that came out, many of which were devoted more to role-playing (RP) than level advancement.
I was on PernMUSH (based on Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern universe) for 3 years, 2 site changes, and 1 database rebuild. It was a huge timesink for me because it was fun. And the main reason it was fun was because the PLAYERS got to decide what plots to RP. Anyone could come up with a plot, round up enough interested players, and RP it, so long as it fit within the framework of the Pern universe. And more often than not, if it were interesting enough, other players spontaneously joined in after it started.
Sure, it had places where you could "advance" (you could become a dragonrider, or you could advance in a craft, etc), but in most cases, advancement was determined by other players based more or less on your RP activity rather than arbitrary tasks.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
1) DON'T use me as pest control
;)
Oh lord, the author nails this. I spent an entire weekend, about 22 hours, killing spiders and wolves to level my Barbarian Warrior high enough to take on the dreaded Baby Mammoths. Ohhhhhh. And guess what, they weren't worth my time or effort.
Now, some will ask "why didn't you go somewhere else?" Simply put, I couldn't. You can't move a Level 1 - 10 character outside of a "newbie" zone or risking dying. A LOT.
2) DO allow me to play how I like, when I like
Yes Yes Yes. And let me add, please don't make every worthwhile encounter one that demands at least an hour of my time. Make some encounters fast and easy.
I kid you not, it takes a minimum of 1 hour to do almost ANYTHING in EQ. Try out your skills, fight an encampment of dark elves, etc... Time Sink is the second biggest problem with OnLine gaming.
3) DON'T make crap classes/professions
Agreed. In addition, don't punish my class because another class is lame. For example, my level 57 Bard once sped across zones faster than any other character class or MOB. Now, I'm just one of many classes that can run fast. Why take something that is unique to one class and award it every other class? Because, game designers have lost their minds.
4) DO play other types of games, to better remember...
If I put in 6 hours of work in Castle Mistmoore, then I want some good loot. Simple as that. If I clear ToV, then there damn well better be loot worthy of the time, planning, and effort needed.
Don't, I REPEAT, don't fill up the loot table with bullshit items. It's just not right.
I have a friend that spent 2 months in the Plane of Growth before he found the Bard BP. 2 months. Week in and week out. That's just not right.
5) DON'T pretend I can 'make a difference'
No kidding. If I want to make a difference, then I'll work hard in RL or I'll try and join an Ub3r Guild. Otherwise, don't patronize me with your Grand Illusion.
My additions:
6) Don't make me pay for the install disc. You're making me pay a connection fee and monthly charge, why must I pay $50 for the stupid install disc?
7) Don't create the "special" Servers that charge 10 times the normal monthly fee, promise more options, and better customer service. You should already be providing that on the "normal" servers.
8) Do provide in game support and customer service. SOE has dropped the ball on this aspect for going on 3 years. The in game support ranges from arrogant, rude idiots to ignorant newbies to very knowledgeable and helpful long time gamers. And there is NO customer service anymore. They laid those people off long ago.
9) Do create more special in game events (GM Events). They are fun and exciting. Give away unique items for GM quests, etc...
10) Do promote and respect your player base, because we pay your salaries. And a note to SOE, SWG looks cool, but Blizzard is still going to kick your ass next year.
is companies found out how profitable EverCrack can be: 400'000 players spending $10/month and watch the money come rolling in. All of the other companies realized doing nothing less is leaving money on the table. As a result, creativity and quality are lower on the list than the obvious $$$ to be made. Until|unless companies look at their work like id's Doom+Quake[1] instead of like many women when they are in a dating relationship[2] they will do the customers, the genre, and the company (in that order) irreparable harm. After a while, the customers are choosier about the games they pay for or play, waiting for reviews from one of the "Big 3"[3], playing with a friend's copy, etc. Eventually, the genre starts a downward slide because companies are consistently doing less because they think the industry is spending less and are willing to invest less, and finally, the death spiral happens. I'm not saying PC games are dying, but the number of *good* games percentage-wise is dwindling.
[1] Look at the "expected ship date" in PC-oriented game magazines: Doom & Quake are consistently stated along the lines of "It'll ship when we think it's ready."
[2] In the back of their mind(s), a calendar exists. If things are not confirmed by a specific date, the relationship will disappear. In the case of games and software in general, a ship date is set and it's going out the door, no matter what. "We'll fix it in patches."
[3]Computer Gaming World, PC Games, Computer Games
Morrowind was like this for me. The frustratingly long walks everywhere. The pointless leveling. The combat style that lacked any element of fun.
I think that this sort of style in gaming is getting more popular in all genres. If developers do not have to worry about fun, they can concentrate on the parts of a game that do not require inspiration. They pretty up the art. They can program by template instead of using new ideas.
Stabbed himelf in the heart with a steak knife...at his girlfriend's apartment no less.
His music didn't do much for me, but wow...what a way to go.
Frankly, maybe you should re-visit the type of "game" you play. I plan to start Uru (aka Mudpie, aka Online Myst) as soon as it comes out for just this reason. You completely free to explore on your own, and you're also able to explore with others, if you so desire.
More info:
Open Directory Project on Myst
Uru Live
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
www.nethack.org I've discovered this game like 8 years ago and I still enjoy playing this game from time to time... So much to explore, so much diversity! Nethack is one of my all-time favorite games, one I've been playing since 1200 baud was smokin' fast. -- Actor Wil Wheaton, http://www.wilwheaton.net In short, NetHack 3.1.3 is the most elaborate role-playing environment you are ever likely to explore. This is a place to return again and again, each time for a different experience. You're really going to have to play it for a year or two and see for yourself. -- "Fatal Distractions" by David Gerrold Thank you for the latest release of gradewrecker. My GPA just went in the corner and shot itself. -- USENET posting, author unknown oh, don't read any spoilers...
Poowpoowpo
I can't read any more of that article. What a pompous prick. He seems to epitomize the forum troll, in that he thinks he speaks for everyone who's playing that game -- nay, ALL games. He thinks that his suggestions of how the game should be improved should all be taken into consideration immediately and implemented into the games because his perception of the game is seemingly the only right one. And like all others like him out there like him, the games are better off when he comes and goes like that first level gained.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
This is a pretty good article, describing just why I went back to playing a MUD. Usually the community is so much tighter when 100 people play compared to 100,000. While not impossible with your standard MMORPG, it much easier to get help, form relationships with other characters, and communicate with the management (ie Gods and Imms) on a MUD. MUDs are generally free to play. Those who run and develop them do so because *shock* they ENJOY it. Not to make money.
I recently got back into a MUD I played pretty hardcore 5 or so years ago, and It's blown me away how much it has matured and developed over the years. So many new zones, skills, and class features. I challange any MMORPG to develop its world like that, or even still be around in 5 more years.
The MUD I'm on now is called Intrepid, based on heavily modified CircleMud code. telnet to mud.intrepidmud.com 8400 if you want to check it out.
Anyone else who MUDs, please post where here. I'd like to check out what else is cool in the MUD community.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
Is that there's very little R-O-L-E PLAYING involved in them. There's lots of R-O-L-L PLAYING, because the computer can roll thousands of dice at a time.
I would very much like it if this type of game was rechristened MMOFPS (Massively Multiplayer Online First Person [Shooter|Slasher]), because it's a more accurate term.
"Going outside" ?
where you go outside and meet friends!
with it you get a comprehensive guide on how to fit in with society!
naah, that'd never sell.
It's something new in the world of MMORPGs
It's an ocean archipelago world of pirates, filled with piratey tasks that are all puzzles! There's swordfighting.. but it's a puzzle! There's drinking! But that's a puzzle too! There's bilging and sailing and navigation and gunnery and sea battles galore. Blending elements from classic puzzles like Tetris, Bejeweled, Chu Chu Rocket, Puzzle Fighter, Baku Baku, Dr. Mario, and Alchemy in a whole new way, with the promise of many more puzzles to come, it has endless addictive properties.
It's got a short learning curve.
Because the puzzles are similar, and each one is simple to learn (but difficult to master!), you can be a useful swabbie on a ship in moments. Some of the puzzles never seem to grow old as you practice creating big combos, or as the ship is in dire need of someone to man those sails!
There are no bloody pests.
The only opponents in the game are pirates. Some of them are computer controlled, but there are almost 3000 pirates on every day now, and the game is still in beta with no fatal bugs. Making your opponents skilled humans instead of people who can click really fast makes the game both challenging and rewarding.
It's got broad appeal
Because it's based on puzzles that almost anyone can learn to be decent at, it's got appeal to an enormous age range, not to mention the fact that the gender ratio seems to be almost equitable.
Playing forever won't necessarily make you good
One of the things that always bothered me about MMORPG's was that the 14 year old kid who played 12 hours a day all summer could easily outpace the 20-something year old who was holding down a job, even if the 20-something was a better gamer. In Puzzle Pirates, your pirate doesn't get "better" at the game unless you yourself improve in your puzzling abilities. The puzzles are ranked in two manners - experience and prestige. Experience DOES only go up as you puzzle multiple times over a long period of time, but on the other hand, having a large amount of experience does NOT mean that you can beat an excellent swashbuckler automatically. Prestige, on the other hand, is entirely based on your skill. You don't need to win very many times before you slide up the ranks, and if you're beating people many ranks higher than you, you leapfrog up the ranks. But the game isn't ABOUT numbers. Another note is that all the money you earn in the game, or Pieces of Eight (POE), can't buy you victory. It can buy you a new sword, but if you can't swordfight, that isn't worth a damn. It can buy you a new ship, but if you don't have a good crew to man it with you, that's not worth a damn either.
It's about teamwork
Everyone knows that the most interesting characters in an MMORPG are always other people. Y!PP forces you to be social. You cannot effectively sail a ship into combat by yourself, you need a crew to man the sails, the guns, and the bilge with you. Fortunately, most of the crews are friendly, and you can quickly learn the ship job puzzles with your new mates as you help THEM sail against vile foes! And of course, for helping them sail, you get rewarded with a cut of the booty!
There is no thin veil of a story.
The story is your story. The story is the life of your pirate on the high seas, and you write it as you go. Whether you buy your loyalty with POE, or with kindness, or inspire awe with your swordfighting skills, the story is in the friends you make, and the deeds you do. The story can be the time you beat Pennsuedo (one of the Flag Kings) in a swordfighting tournament, or how you yourself became king of a flag. The story can be how you recruited the best crew in the seas for battling the dreaded Black Ship, or how you trained the best drinking team around.
The possiblities are endless already, and the game hasn't even started yet.
If there were more MMORPG's like this, there would be no shortage of addicts, or part time players, people who play with their families, spouses, sisters, brothers, best friends from college, or new friends forged in sea battle. It's a piratey life for me, certainly.
It was very fun at first but then you just realize one day your not having fun anymore and are simply logging in to chat with your friends and run some errands just so you character doesn't become completely obsolete. No thanks, I too am going to just wait for World of Warcraft.
When trying out Rubies of Eventide someone mentioned to me a thought I hadnt considered before, that not all MMORPG's *want* to be full. For example, Everquest has half a million subscribers. Thats at least 5 mil a month in the bank for them, which is a chunk of change. And for me at least there are enough idiots on any server I've ever played on for me. Perhaps losing the people who lose interest is a GOOD thing.
And am immediately lost and confused. No MMORPG ever has managed to ease me into a game.
It's called a manual, look into it every now and then.
Mmmmmmm.... absolutely the best double-shot ever recorded. When "Postmortem" switches gears into "Raining Blood", I get chills! Brilliant!
Addict is right. That's exactly how drug users feel about the diminishing-return effect on their high.
I totally disagree with charging an initial purchase for the game, and then a monthly fee, but sometimes it has to be done. I think the best option is to have an optional free download of the game from their site. That way you don't have to pay an additional 50 dollars for it.
OK here's my idea, if anyone develops it I'd love to get a call from you.
My problem and other people's problems with MMORPG is that they don't end and are tedius and boring. I know a lot of gamers who don't like the RPG elemennt, but like MM.
So here's what I propose. A FPS like Doom II co-op. The developers make a world, let's say, Mars is invaded, you have to fight back the demons. There are several seperate areas in this world that are just packed with AI demons. It is your job and the job of several thousand others to fight and defeat this area. You might secure it but once defeated it will still come under attack so players will always have to stay and keep it secure.
Perhaps there are a few behind the scenes people who direct demon advances, but for the large part it's just AI. You don't have one character that you play over and over, it's more like you can chose a character like Battlefield 1942 every time you respawn.
After all areas on the planet are defeated. The game ends! THat's the best part you can actually win.
Now here's where the developers earn their salary, when that first world is defeated, there's a new storyline/new world. In the meantime, while the new world is being setup, players can play normal 64/32 player deathmatch.
The advantages are many, you can jump right in and enjoy yourself for an hour a week and feel fulfilled. Or you can play with a group and really battle to take these areas and win.
I'm sure we can add so much more to this type of game and it'd require crazy amounts of server power, but in 5 years who knows.
I'd love playing this game.
-- taking over the world, we are.
Gee, that sounds suspiciously similar to the capitalist society of the real world. No wonder I dislike it.
=======
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I can't believe no one has mentioned Progress Quest. It's MMORPGs, distilled down to it's basis. No nights wasted mindlessly squashing spiders to gain XP, no 10 year old w1z3Rdz bugging you. No nothing.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
Can someone please tell me what the hell is: MUD - ??? UO - Ultima Online EQ - EverQuest AC - ??? DAOC - Dark Age of Camelot SWG - Star Wars Galaxies AFK entertainers - ???
That's why I enjoy the smaller MMORPGs out there. They tend to be cheaper, with devs who are actually interested in making a good game.
I've been into A Tale in the Desert lately, in addition to being without a doubt the most innovative game on the MMORPG market right now (no rat killing in this one!) it also is free to download with a large trial play - no outrageous box fee. Add in devs that respond within the hour if a new tech is bugged or even give out their cell numbers in case the server crashes, and you've got me locked in for quite a while.
American MMORPG have quite simply become MMOFPSG. No more roleplaying, way more FPS.
3-D graphics engines, complex and pointless interface controls, with camera positioning and such of course, blah blah blah. Where are the deep quests the more-then-trivial guild structures and behefits... etc.
Maybe that's why the largest MMORPGs in the world are still 2-D.
MMORPG's need WRITERS not more caffine tweaked coders. You know, those creative types geeks are raised to dispise... problem is, THEY make good games.
And that's why games are so damn lame after the first couple weeks... there really is nothing more to do.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Trial by Boredom is a term I used to describe Dungeon Masters who would make you check every door and wander through a dungeon filled with empty rooms, until you were so bored that you missed something and he gleefully killed you off with it. The same can be done with an endless stream of nearly identical monsters, requiring hours of dice rolling with little variation in outcome. This is the template for most MMORPG's.
For some reason, most of the MMORPG designers have got it into their head that the longer you spend connected, the better it is for them. God knows what makes them think this--their overhead must be astronomical (servers, bandwidth, maintenance, expansion, etc..) EQ is the worst for this. I switched to DAOC because it is actually possible to get something done in half an hour or less, and the range of alternate activities is much broader. But even DAOC indulges in trial by boredom. All of which is weird, because you pay THEM by the month, not by the hour!
So, to keep you connected endlessly, they load the game with filler. Pull, kill, rest, pull, kill, rest...yawn...zzzzzz. EQ's crafting system is the worst case of trial by boredom I have ever seen; endless repetitive clicking and dragging in a laggy interface. At least in DAOC you can watch TV or read a book and just hit the button every minute or so. But why do you have to be online for this at all?! Why can't you just log intentions and go do something else, while your character spends up to a certain amount of money to raise a certain skill or produce certain items of a specified quality?
Anything that requires repeating the same action over and over and over again constitutes trial by boredom. And the main impetus behind this is the conviction on the part of the designers that the game MUST keep people online continuously. EQ's reward schedule is the same as gambling; intermittent reward with little regard to player skill, and frankly, it's exploitive. People have died due to obsessive play on EQ. But the only reason this is neccessary is because the game is dull, because they have to drag it out to keep you online. How about just telling the player, "Your character is tired, and needs to rest to gain more experience." If you're going to take three nights to gain that next level, do you really have to spend the entire three nights online?
UO is the best and still. There are thousands of free servers to play on. Each have their own customizations. I personally play on www.neverlands.org and its still as fun if not more fun then UO in its early days of 1996 :)
I had a feeling this "review" was slanted - everything you played before sucked but Blizzard (not associated with any previously mentioned companies) is going to make it better... Very creative trollism and kudos for writing style (not mentioning Blizzard until very end and establing need for change BEFORE getting to the new product)
Ach... Ah SPEAK Ancient Anglish. Ye best nuh' be gettin yer jollies off'n mah speech nah, me boy-o.
Karma: NaN
As for equal opportunity, I think games should be different for everyone. Someone who plays from the beginning should be so much more powerful than latercomers as a result of their longevity. They should have unique items and powers that make them uniquely suited to certain quests/tasks. The opportunity to become one of these greats would serve as a mini-American dream. Obviously, most people don't become that powerful, which is what makes being so powerful so worthwhile.
What is really needed is the ability for senior players to create quests for newbies and others. For example, Lord Thistlewhick decides that a neighboring lord has become too overbearing. He puts out a request for a group of questors to go ravage the fields of his opponent and rewards them generously. Or perhaps he doesn't reward them, and so the rally the townspeople and slay the lord. The creators of the game should continue to affect the environment by adding dragons and such (a la Smaug), but the task of creating quests and such should be set up in a way that allows people to do more than just be a questor. After all, that's why D&D is so damn fun.
Don't ask me how this would be accomplished in terms of programming, I haven't a clue.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I like Earth & Beyond. I d/l'd the demo and get to play full version for 14 days then i can pay $14 and get a new regcode making the demo a full retail copy and a month access. They dont want billing info till im ready to buy. I only wish other MMPs let you sample the goods for free.
One of the major problems with MMPORPGs is they know they can't fit a traditional Japanese RPG Savior of the World goal structure into the game, so they hardly try with any goals. This needs to change, as goal-based gaming is far more rewarding than treadmilling.
For example, a player's NPC family might be sick, and the medicine is only available in a certain higher-level area that is significantly higher than the player's current level, and which is only available as an item to those who have sick families. Or perhaps a certain number of people start in a city that has been raided, and their purpose in the game is to rescue their Husband / Wife. Perhaps, as in SWG, there could be some form of Nirvana that individuals can reach by attaining X powers.
But all of this ignores the secret of good storytelling: it doesn't have to be consistent across all listeners, it just has to all make sense to each one. Phantasy Star Online did this admirably, with small groups venturing down to the planet's surface and miraculously not encountering the other groups on the surface. Many caves or dungeons in MMPORPGs would be significantly more emotionally gripping if they weren't full of hundreds of "William teh Great"s and "Yo m0t4a fuXor"s running around complaining about how easy the dungeon was. Why not have certain, if not most dungeons be party-based?
For that matter, why have goals be consistent? Maybe every now and then a few people in the world get singled out to form an impromptu party because they came across Midgard while it was being set ablaze by a Balrog, and it is their duty to defeat it. Maybe this happens to most people at a rough skill level in the game. Maybe not. Anyone else who happens across Midgard during that time gets the regular version.
You could take it one step further and have this as a function of the gameworld, ALA Silent Hill. The universe is being swallowed up by Hell (or The Nothing, for the Atreyu fans out there). It is your job to claw your way out. Or reach your goal, and stay to become one of the architects of hell. Maybe to some characters you speak a baffling language, to others you speak plain english. Maybe some characters watch as the world crumbles into a drug-induced fantasy realm, where others have no idea where the first group of people went. With people exiting and returning to MMPORPGs on their own schedules, this could mesh acceptably with the people's groupings.
With more and more people looking to use their broadband connections for online gaming we need to create more and more content tailored to the medium. Clan warfare was a good first step towards creating a unique language for MMP games, but there are many left to take. How far can we stretch consistency before players balk? How much of a "Tardis" effect can we rely upon, or do players need rigid spaces?
We won't know the answer until someone demonstratably steps over the line. Sadly, far more games fail these days because they are afraid of breaking conventions, rather than because they broke them too much.
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
Sorry to everyone experiencing problems with the site at the moment, it appears the entire internet is trying to read Nick's rant at the moment (well, the readership of /. at least).
I spent 3 months of my life, 6-8 hours a weekday, and 16 a day on weekends To get to the top of the game. Now, I'm thoroughly bored. Nothing left to do in it.
Having done this, I realise. It's an uder waste of time. Everyone has hit the nail on the head. I come home from work, then spend the entire night working again.
Mainly with SWG, the loot is useless, oh well a shoe. Yay 10 credits! Go me!!! Now I just need to kill 800,000 more durni's and I can afford some decent armor. Yay, ok got my armor, now, 8,905 more durni's till riflemen level 1. Yay!!
They've focused heavly on the social factor of the game. Cantina/Dancing/weddings, But the combat end is completely lacking.
oogly boogly!
Am I missing something? Diablo and Diablo II were fun the first time through, because everything was new. After that first time, you have the oppurtunity to do it all over again, only with monsters that hit harder, are harder to kill, and give more experience for being killed. After the first run, the game becomes nothing more than hack & slash & watching the progress bar.
After that, it becomes a mind-numbing search for runes or ultra-rare items. These things don't have a set way of popping up, so there's no Grand Adventure associated with them. I couldn't tell you how many times that I killed Baal, just looking for good stuff. C'mon... killing Baal is supposed to be the pinnacle of the game, not a chore that you have to do to get good stuff.
I think that a killer thing in MMORPGs would be completely unique items, that would be powerful, but in different ways. They'd be more powerful than any sort of magical weapon, yet they'd all be different. The only way to get them would be to complete a unique quest, something that could only be done once by one (or a group) of players. If it were a group, then there should be some sort of analysis done by the program, and the number of unique items would be given in accordance with the people there, and items would pertain to each individual's skills. If someone else tried to do this unique quest, all they'd see is remains of the completed quest. Those unique items would become something of legend.
Another thing... I would make it insanely difficult to resurrect someone. I would also make it easier to die. It may seem like a stupid idea, since no one likes to die, but it would keep the player base fresh. You wouldn't have 200,000 level gazillion wizards, you'd have maybe a legendary hero that somehow got to level 40 without being killed.
Lastly, I would make age count. Days and nights pass fairly quickly in MMORPGs, so why not age the character? As the character grows older, they'll see a strength gain, and then a strength loss according to the peaking age of that race. RPG's wouldn't be RPG's without having the tired old hero, sitting in the bar, reminiscing on grand adventures... adventures that no one else had had.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
The reason I will NEVER play a MMORPG is that I expect to find BOTH of the following: The sort of people who would LARP if they ever bothered to step outside longer than it takes to pay the pizza guy; and the same sort of assholes who clog half-life servers who can't deride anything without calling it gay, and who usually have a name derived from Dragonball Z
In fact, the single greatest marker of a complete moron/waste of skin online is a name like SSJGOKU2002 or whatnot.
The biggest reason I still think TFC is better than counterstrike is that more of these shitheads play Counterstrike.
Anyhow, screw the game...the game could be 20 times as boring (see 90% of old BBS Door games) and still be fun if the other players were actually worth the semen it took to make them.
I'm willing to let you have my copy of:
Dark Age of Camelot
Everquest:(the version with the new graphic models and textures--the name escapes me).
For $10 each, provided you live in Canada.
Why Do i want to get rid of 'em? For the same reason the parent poster described: I can't be bothered with killing little furry animals for 3 hours 'just to level up' and maybe acquire rare items. The missions suck and have no scope other than do "a) b) and c) then you'll get this shiny new ring" and I can't get past playing MMORPGs for man than a week.
I thought MMORPGS would have been more episodic with grand enemies and problems to solve-- a higher level than single RPGS. But it turns out its full of teens and pre-teens, who do nothing but chat and tell people how 'cool their new item is'.
I am a level 24 orc-slaying warrior...
...and it frustrates me immensely that these inconsiderate asshole game developers always force me to fight my way through levels 1-23 again and again!
That's why I support the concept of characters starting at the level of their real-life avatars-- I want to be working on level 25 from the beginning! I suspect that the reason for this travesty is the game developers' belief that their target market would start with 'negative levels' under this arrangement.
I can see the tech support queries now... "D00D WTF WHY AM I LEVEL MINUS 12 DOOD!?!?!?"
OK, OK. I guess it would be unfair to subject their game moderators to the kind of temptation those sorts of questions would create. Not to mention the 'negative hit point' totals possessed by the truly MMO-obsessed...
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
what needs to be done, I think, is figure out the right combination of fun and numbers of people.
my dream massively multiplayer online game would NOT be a RPG. very few people actually "play" a part as an actor would for a character.
my dream MMOG would be something like this:
Persistent world
FPS like the upcoming UT2004, only with more types and lots of water, air and ground vehicles, cloaking or non-cloaking, fast and slow, etc.
Randomly appearing and disappearing upgrades, which die when you respawn after a death.
Safe-zones to reconfigure some upgrades/weapons or to chat with fellow players.
Play-type-specific areas of the persistent world: war zones, duel zones, race tracks, NPC monster invasion zones, etc.
Each avatar type has specific, general attributes, for ex. speed, toughness, jumping, etc. but with a large number of appearance customization possibilities too.
Some random upgrades are environment-changing or building seeds. The player who uses them causes an area of the world to be modified by robot-NPCs at the spot where that player choses. Like when you send peons to build or harvest stuff in Warcraft. those NPCs can be destroyed to slow the process, but the server always generates new build-bots.
Some weapons or vehicles can permanently or temporarily alter the environment, ie nukes, burrowing/digging vehicles. Some destroyed buildings can spew toxics and make an area dangerous to be in.
the NPCs in the game are either monster attackers or repair-bots that restore, over a long or short period of time, what has been damaged by players in the persistent world.
The main server keeps track of statistics of each player and announces biweekly winners of various play-categories, ex. best kill ratio, best racer, best dogfighter, best tank-driver, best winning streak, etc. Stats are reset after winners are announced.
I understand your frustration with having to do more and more (and eventually way too much) to get a new level. But it sort of has to be that way.
A level number is meaningful in two ways:
1. It distinguishes you from other players (both in terms of fighting each other, and in interacting with the game world).
2. It often releases new game content (skills, accessible areas, or play modes)
For the first, the level inflation would be meaningless. Other players at 60,000,000 XP will be at the same level as you whether they levelled at regular or exponential intervals - because you did too.
For the second, the level inflation would be disastrous. Imagine your play as a graph - with time on the x-axis and level on the y-axis. This line goes up sharply at first, and then levels off. The developers must ensure there is a certain amount of content to be doled out for each level under this line. With the slowing scale, this is manageable.
With a linear scale, it is not. New content would have to be doled out at increasingly large intervals (negating the change altogether), or diminishingly smaller amounts per level (making each level-up less satisfying than the last).
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
So.. now its world of warcraft that going to be the game that changes EVERYTHING in the MMORPG scene. Now.. is it just me or was'nt that what everybody said about SWG?
Face it MMORPGs suck big time, and probertly allways will because of the nature of the game industry.
Im a huge fan og RPG games. I've played them to great extent both on computers, pen&paper and in live roleplay scenarios here in little ol' Denmark. The latter is undoubtedly the funnest.
The most boring form of RPG games? MMORPGs hands down... looking at static on a tv screen is more involving that playing MMORPGs. They're pure evil..
Conclusion? Unless repeating the very same act again and again((and again)^9535493) is your definition of fun. You should defently not go anyway near a mmorpg.
As has been stated several times... it's a just a game.
You don't have to become the master of the universe to have fun. I've played several of these games, especially DAoC. But I don't have anywhere near the time required to get to the "end game."
The most fun I've had in these games are when I get together with my real life friends and go screw around. We'll take our lower level character and go raid a lowbie dungeon. Or we'll go get totally lost and explore the world as we find our way back. It's just fun to hang out in the virtual world with your buddies, who have been transformed into mages, warriors, monks, etc.
Sadly this type of casual play doesn't justify the monthly charges. Which is why all my accounts are currently disabled...
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. -G.K. Chesterton
I've seen a few references to SWG (Star Wars Galaxies) in these posts and I want to make it absolutely clear to anyone who is thinking about purchasing this game:
THIS GAME IS HORRIBLY BROKEN.
It has more bugs, less content and more hostilely apathetic CSR than any game (or product for that matter) that I've ever seen.
It's SO bad that SOE (Sony Entertainment Online) made the forums private so that no perspective buyers could read the 99.9% "you suck" content that exists there.
Let me reiterate: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME!
There are bugs that make entire profession trees simply not work (Bioengineer, Chef), bugs that make your possessions (and money, and houses) go *POOF* in a cloud of bad code (and for the most part the CSR's will NOT reimburse you) and bugs that make items and quests just not work.
Now, I'm a software developer and I understand that nothing of this complexity can be released without bugs; that's not it.
THIS IS THE BUGGIEST PIECE OF SOFTWARE TO DATE.
And to make matters worse, the development team insists in implement new features (which, of course, create new bugs) instead of fixing the existing ones.
THIS GAME IS UNPLAYABLE.
Unless you play a Creature Handlers, then it's all cake because of the incredible imbalance that exists.
Now, before I'm forced to use my caplock key again, does everyone understand not to buy this game?
Good.
-- an SWG player who quit yesterday
It is expected that there will be a Second Telling once we win/lose this one. (basically, a complete reset with unspecified changes in world/tech/mechanics/etc.) Many people seem interested in staying after this reset, but it remains to be seen what effect this will have on the player base.
With my newly written slashdot macros, that write witty slashdot comments for me, I will raise my karma level by leaps and bounds.
I laugh at you puny average slashdotters that must grind through trying to think of things to write. Ha ha ha.
-Written as AC so as not to tip off my secret to the moderators
In this case, you spend $50 on a game, you are going to naturally want $50 of enjoyment as a result. You do not receive that much enjoyment before the monthly charge kicks in, and lo! another $14.95 that must be enjoyed. It's an obligation, so cunningly constructed that most are not even aware of the manipulation.
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Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
The problem - punk high school kids can spend upteen hours a day playing, and you, as an adult with a job cannot. Therefore you must put up with punk kids operating at 1,000,000th level, while you are putzing around killing rats trying to achieve 3rd level (finally!).
The solution - age the characters online. If your online persona aged and _lost_ str, dex, etc as they aged, quality time would be worth more than quantity time. If your character aged at, say 1 month per hour online, and died of old age somewhere around 80 years old, you'd get around maybe 500 hours of useful active character life, after which you could still spend another 200 hours or so boasting and showing off the scars, etc.
This is not entirely new. Remember good old addictive Pirates! forced you into retirement after you'd spent a certain number of years chasing galleons around the Caribean.
Death is such a great way of slowing down the accretion of wealth in the hands of the few. The kids mostly blow the wad...
I too have tried the basic MMPORGs and found the mundanity in killing 'Rabid Rats' and 'Angry Bats' for hours on end, only to realize that I need to get to level 50 to make any real difference in the world.
Why the high standards? Why make the highest levels to unachievable that only the most dedicated and time-wasting can get to them? Why not start you out at level 1, and make the maximum level, oh, 10. Players would turn into 'mature characters' able to do things that effect the plot and the game world without devoting months of gameplay. Or focus on the actual skill of the player more than the percieved skill of his level, attained by the most mouse-clicks against hordes of killer mice.
The reward needs to be in the shaping of the world by the players, not in the attainment of the astronomically high levels that would allow it. If every character that spent a reasonable amount of time in the game turned into 'full citizens' of equal level, quests would be completed by the number and mental dexterity of the players themselves, not by the amount of time they have dedicated to the game up to that point. Want to rid the world of the Big Red Dragon? You could either gather 3 level-95 uber-players who have spent their entire lives the last three months getting to that point, or you could assemble 50 regular joes, led by an experienced player with some leadership qualities, to get the job done. The average players would hear about the dragon quest in the first scenario. They'd participate in the second.
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
If MMORPGs could be modded... these people are trying to make MMORPGs as easy to create as MUDs.
ATD seems like a really cool game, and very different from the other MMRPG's. It's the only one in the whole genre that I've been tempted to play - but found they had no Mac client. What's up with that? They could at least port the Linux version...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They broke this genre by applying the values of the real-world economy and workplace to allegedly escapist games. Their supposed fantasy worlds have become thoroughly mundane... It's not about saving the world anymore... it's about eating your vegetables, paying your bills and showing up to work on time. The games are not really fantasy or science fiction any more. They're just capitalism simulators... not even from the exciting, thought provoking global perspective of a "Railroad Tycoon"... but from the worm's eye view of a cubicle rat. This is Dilbert in real time 3-D with dragons and laser guns. Goody. Ordinary players pay $12.99 a month to be terrorized by psychotic Little League dads (THIS IS A *GAME* SON! IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE *FUN*!!! NOW GET A HIT RIGHT &%##%@# NOW OR IT'S 2 MORE HOURS IN THE BATTING CAGE AND STRAIGHT TO BED WITHOUT DINNER!!!) moonlighting as game developers... and their equally joyless, emotionally stunted powergamer children/cronies... The limitless potential of MMOGs is only matched by the coarseness and banality of their actual implementation... Ask a typical MMOG player about his game of choice... EQ, DAoC, SWG, etc... and he'll probably tell you he plays it not because it's great.. but because it's the one that sucks the least...
As an ex-senior guide from Everquest, I'd like to add a few things to the discussion. The lion's share of online "helpers" are often volunteers; players like everyone else, that often field abuse from frustrated players. We ourselves are just as frustrated, but we just can't show it (hopefully).
I agree with much that has been said on the issue, though I think Everquest is far and away the best and most successful MMORPG. Star Wars Galaxies turned out to be hugely anticlimactic. What makes EQ work are IMO, the core of solid low and mid-level people involved. The problem with most of the user's gripes are related to issues beyond the control of those who really have the ideas and the willingness to make the game more enjoyable.
A good example of this is with real-time GM events. As quest coordinator for my server, I pushed very hard to add more dynamic, interesting content to Everquest. But we were very limited to certain confines as far as what quests we could run, and most importantly, limited to very substandard rewards that could be given away. As a result of the mediocre rewards, many players would groan at the discovery of a GM event because they knew it would not be worth it.
This frustrated the GMs even more than the players, and resulted in morale loss across the board, as well as less enthusiasm to run events, which is why you don't see many, and when you do, they're lame. There's nothing more disappointing than participating in an event and getting a reward that you would sell to a merchant rather than use. But we couldn't do anything about it.
To make matters worse, most volunteer GMs share all the same frustrations, but are afraid to publicly voice much opposition, even among their peers for fear of being excommunicated from the privileged fold. As a result, things don't change much.
From my point of view, the main problem is that not only their tech but their target audience is 12 years old. I should know, my own 12 years old son started a Tibia(a nice german adventure MMORPG somewhat free - paying players have some advantages and logging privileges) frenzy in his school. I started playing to see how it felt like and now I am being understandably pressed to put my credicard where mouth is...
Anyway, you are right, I have yet to find a game as involving and fun as Infinity, an old mud I used to play by the time my son was born. But they have one major drawback for us foreigners: the best ones require an English fluency teenagers simply do not have. The graphical adventures greatly reduce this problem because you almost never have to understand the dragon is next door, you can see it.
Unfortunatelly there are lots of teenagers for whom killing rats for 20 hours is fun - and after the rats, wolfs and after the wolfs, orcs and so on.
I have thought that it might be interesting to make a multi-level, multi-side game. One level, you play it like a real-time strategy game - dispatching troops, building things, etc. On another level, you play first person as a hero - nominally under the command of one of the RTS players, who will pass along instructions that he thinks will best use you to help him win the game. With maybe 4-6 RTS players and about 20-30 FP heroes, this could be unending fun. Maybe put it in the context of a 3rd level - world level strategic gaming, where all the RTS players jointly strive to take over the world for their civilization.
god i'm glad i can't stand computer games. that ranks right up there with the fact that i can't stand to smoke... anything. there's two strokes of luck i have going for me.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
I got bored by EQ to death after 2 weeks, but I play WWII Online for several months already and it is still lots and lots of fun.
After the launch disaster 2 years ago now the game is quite playable.
EVE may seem like an MORPG at first glance, but it isn't. Its more a revival of those Massive-Online-Tabletop-Spaceoperas some may remember from early 1990 BBS-Games like Tradewars, Outpost-Trader etcpp - I'll call that MOTSO. Sure, you can learn skills, but you just learn them by buying and letting them run while you are playing. And those skills are not uberpowerfull - they mostly add 10% to 50% to some skills - so three wellworking n00bs can easily beat someone playing for months.
This game doesn't involve stupid "macro-woodwork to get a good working-level". It makes no claims that YOU are the hero, because you most likely aren't.
Have you ever tried as a level one character to join a level 65 party? Well, in EVE you may succeed: You keep a bit back, play the mule but still are a vital part of your party.
Actually the GMs do not show up much and still nobody really misses them. Most gameplay is evolving out of the many corporations, megacorporations and superpower-alliances. So the universe is run by the players, not by some mostly ignorant admins.
Even the economy works pretty well. Ok, there is lots of Basic-Items sold by NPCs, also NPCs are buying here and selling there, but everything beyond food and Coke (Quafe in EVE) is available for better conditions from players.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
I bought Warcraft III, set it to hardest level (I'm a Serious Sam on Serious, solo, kind of guy)... ...and ... ...and found out that my cannons up in towers would not outshoot a damned thing flinging hunks of meat.
No, seriously! A hundred cannon towers would be destroyed by one wagon flinging pieces of meat without firing a shot.
Game "balancing", everything has it's "nemisis", and other braindead decisions, don't ya know. One wonders why the humans didn't put a rocket team up in the cannon tower and shoot even farther.
I LOATHE PLAYING DELIBERATELY CRIPPLED CLASSES. I fought my way half way through the undead portion, then gave up. It's one thing to fight difficult battles with, literally, dozens-to-one kill ratios when all is said and done. It's another to be fighting pointlessly because some ignorant programmer had a woody to pee all over people's heads.
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
Your average MMORPG design squad usually manages to set up an online game so that:
1. There is very little entertaining stuff to do in the game universe by yourself ("this is a multiplayer game, we don't encourage solo play"). Then there are either not enough people to adequately group with, or it's a real hassle getting people to play with you, or you suck it up and join a clan and get pulled into fake game politics -- which can be fun, but should not be necessary to have a good time playing.
2. Your class/race/faction sucks no matter what it is. (Unless you are K'Luth, heh.)
3. Mods, admins, devs, etc. take on a "police" role because of players exploiting buggy code.
4. Any play "outside the box" is likewise considered "exploiting." For me, pushing the limits of a game is really the most fun part of playing.
5. Forums get clogged with people bitching about the game, and then get shut down.
6. There are ALWAYS, no matter what the game, ridiculously repetitive and un-fun tasks that must be done for ungodly amounts of time if one wishes to accrue the proper experience at any given time.
I could go on. But I won't. It'll be a long time before I pay for another MMORPG -- I really have to be convinced.
I found a MUD once where, golly, your starting stats actually made a difference. You could, minimax style, crank up the str of your troll and actually walk out the gate and kill things much tougher than you if you left the strength normal putting it into other stats.
:(
If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't bother replying. Mudconnector sucks in this respect.
I don't wanna have a tough time with rats. I wanna crank up a troll and an ogre, chain them together, and go kill the level 14 blue armored guard standing out in the cross roads area.
I remember when EQ started, my dwarf fighter was sucking at the crossroads, and cloth armor drops were so nonexistant I was mostly naked at level 7, so I built a "gigantic ogre with maxxed strength".
I remember shouting how, at level 1, I was tough enough to kill a yellow thing! Someone replied they, a caster, could kill reds. OMFFFFFFG! Ahahahahahahahahahahah! Casters could kill reds.
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
I don't play a lot of these MMORPGs, but that looks awfully pretty.
Dude, it's spelt `flaimbait.'
Sell the client and server engines without restriction on who and how the client and server can be used and mod communities will provide the data.
The first decent OSS MMORPG will own. Companies will be able to sell access to their worlds and individuals will be able to create their own worlds only at the cost of their time.
Just followed Sparr0's link, and this looks like a very innovative game. I've been looking for somehting like this for a while; used to send emails to Everquest asking for something like this: the ability to plant your own trees and so on.
This is too K5 a subject and too K5 a post (with a too K5 title) but my analysis (not an uninformed one, mind you, being myself an educational software developer with a game development sickness that won't go away) is that these people are alienating their most profitable public, the builders and friends who make a RPG a nice place to live in. I played everything since the the original paper D&D so I speak from experience when I say the group dynamic is everything. If you can't create an enviroment where newbies (newspeak=n00bs) feel at ease you will only have the same old PK crowd around.
I remember when I once played a mud, I joined a guild and people there were really friendly and willing to waste their time helping the newbie who had wandered too far from home. As a result, well before I reached a level where money and HPs were irrelevant, I too was willing to help selflessly (and so were most of the guild members). So, it is almost always a matter of the culture the environment you create enable or fail to enable.
Star Wars Galaxies
The only comment about AO is that it "boasted a futuristic environment". How shallow. It's sad, though, because AO fixes a lot of things that Nick thinks are flaws in current MMOPRGs. It eases you into the game, illustrating what the differences between classes and sides are. Then there is the Shadowlands expansion, which gives you purpose through a linear route to take. You always know where to go next, know where the stronger beasts lurk and it truly feels rewarding to take your party to the next area.
There is always something to do. Whether it's autogenerated dungeons or missions-on-demand, with Shadowlands things got a lot better in that area. So what if you're the only one in the playfield at 4 in the morning? Just go solo for half an hour until you meet people to group with. The missions may be repetitive, but they mostly offer a fair reward for the risk invested.
Also, newbies can do a few mission runs that will get them obscure items that high levels pay a lot of credits for. They aren't even hard to find, there's a thread on the official Anarchy Online forum about them, complete with a handy list and a third-party tool to use so you can find them more easily. That way, newbies aren't pest control. They are assassins, brutes, spies or whatever fits the class/profession. Starting at level one. AND they can get a very nice amount of money that will push them all the way into the mid-levels.
AO with Shadowlands is not perfect, none of the MMORPGs can ever be, but it might be exactly what this author is looking for. And buying Shadowlands gets you the previous booster pack and the full version of the game for free. The game only costs EUR 30 in stores, too.
Maybe he should take a look before he damns all MMORPGs to hell.
I have a theory about the lack of roleplaying in these so called "RPG's" :) (Produces handy fold out portable soapbox).
:)
:-) )
:-) At first I thought his game was the dogs danglies - the graphics were excellent, and the chracter design phase could have sold as a game in it's own right a few years back as a tool to make pictures of your pen and paper RPG chracters :) But eventually, you get bored of watching the suns set on Tatooine and the leaves wave in the breeze on Naboo and I set off to find out what all these other icons did on my screen. For ages I thought "I'm just not getting this - there's something I'm doing wrong" as I struggled to kill the hamster that was eating my trainers, even though it was only a foot long, and I was armed with a blaster. I was wrong. I was getting it. My mission it seemed was not to seek fortune and glory as a smuggler, bounty hunter, or just general roguish adventurer. My mission was to control the Wamp Rat population south of Mos Eisley, and I didn't posess a T16 or any vehicle come to that - I was expected to run everywhere!
......and.... .....and...
I played Traveller AD&D, Runequest and a few others many years ago. (In fact just glancing at a book shelf in here, I can still see "The Traveller Book", "The Traveller Adventure", "Tarsus" and rafts of those cute little black adventure books, and the "Advanced rules"
(Not to mention MegaTraveller which we tried to make sense out of over 3 years, Traveller "The New Era" (!) and finally "Marc Miller's Traveller" - I draw the line at "GURPS: Traveller" though
Anyway - the point. I found from the many sessions we had over those years that a sure way of killing off any roleplaying efforts on the part of the players was to introuduce artificial controls on what they were "allowed" to do. For example, a well known custom in Traveller was that heavy armour could not be worn in Starports. Now as referee you could say "no you can't wear that" or you can just let them do whatever they want and face the consequences. So if they did try to walk through the starport dressed in battle armour, they would quickly be surrounded by heavily armed starport security personnel.
As a UK resident, I couldn't wait to see SWG and signed up for the beta (I had to pay quite a hefty shipping charge to obtain the CD's - but hey - I was desperate
After I'd taken revenge on the Wamp Rats, and slaughtered a few highly dangerous grazing animals on Naboo for no reason other than me being a highly dangerous individual (if only to small furry animals) I decided a career change was in order so I went off to the "mission terminal" and became.... a delivery boy! After my 3rd delivery, and almost 2 hours fo running.. I felt there must be more to life in the Star Wars universe and hooked up with 3 other players who also seemed to be constantly plagued by the local gerbil population trying to eat them from the ankles upwards. We decided we'd try to join the rebellion against the Empire. One of our number had seen a fortress in the wilderness and reckoned it was a rebel hideout so off we went ("wow" I'm thinking "this more like it"). On the way we spy 3 stormtroopers and an Imperial officer in a clearing. Now's our chance to do a bit for the cause. We go into a huddle and come up with a cunning plan (well actually, we just decided to spring out of the trees and shoot them) but hey - it always worked for Harrison Ford and there were only 4 of em. We all leapt out of the bushes, blasters in hand and franctically selecting our targets and.......
and nothing. Nada. Nil point. You *can't attack the stormtroopers - the game doesn't let you* ffs! We all stood around sheepishly; said "hi there Imperial dudes" and then legged it into the woods. I more or less gave up on the game there and then - if the game is going to deny legitimate actions - no matter how foolish they may be, then
I just started a new character in the Discworld MUD over the weekend - so far I'm still a blithering newbie, but it's some years since I last played a text based game for any length of time, and it's taking a little while to get back into the syntax mindset.
:(
At least it teaches you to pay attention to your spelling and grammar. Get it wrong and the command doesn't work. They should make typing text commands compulsary for under 18's in the hope that they will learn some english (or whatever your default language is), they don't seem to be being taught it at school...
cheers
Sara
But perhaps there's also room in the marketplace for an MMORPG that would appeal to me and other non-OCD types. The OCD market you suggest (and I've witnessed some of its consituents) is certainly a hard one to ignore. It's like writing a book to help compulsive-self-help-book-buyers.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...