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Developer Retrospective on the MMORPGs of 2004
An anonymous reader writes "The Corporation recently posted a four-part series asking a few well known MMOG developers their opinions of the past year in the genre. Participants include Richard Garriott, creator of the Ultima series and Tabula Rasa, Walter Yarbrough, Content Producer for Dark Ages of Camelot, Damion Schubert, former Lead Designer for Meridian59, the cancelled UO2, and presently the Lead Designer for Shadowbane, and Raph Koster, former Lead Designer for Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, and present Creative Director for Sony Online Entertainment."
If you want a game that's about having fun and playing the game, play WoW. There's significant challenge and it takes those of us who play 3 hours a day about 2-3 months to level up, which is perfect. If you want endless tedium, mindless reptition and to give up all hopes of living a real life, there's EQ1/2. The win argument is null. These games are meant to be "won" (where that's defined as beating the highest end content in game, in EQ this also means farming it 100 times so that everyone gets phat lewt), no one has yet "beat" WoW or EQ2. Getting level 60 is not "winning" in either game, it's a precondition for starting the real game. Games are intended to be fun, EQ is not fun. I've beaten it through time and I have no desire to go further. It's just not enjoyable past level 8. I'm level 40 in WoW and I've enjoyed every minute of it. Want to wait 1 hour for a group? Want to wait 3 hours for raids? Want to watch your hard work get dissolved when your 70 person guild gets fed up with bad management and leaves to different games? Want to make the startling discovery that your character really is no good on his own? Want to be slaves to a group of horny hormonal teenage boys so that you can have a group on demad? Play the EQ series. Also seek therapy.
Although I haven't played EQ2, I have played DAOC and (while I'm waiting for a new HD, f*ing Fedex!!!) I'm watching my wife play (and helping when she leaves the room!!!) WoW.
Here's what I really like about WoW.
1. Just like the previous poster wrote, Dying doesn't ruin your life. In other MMORPG's the death penalties are such that people don't take risks. They won't explore an area until they are reasonably sure they can drop everything in that given realm with ease because if they die, they know they'll have to pay 100 silver and lose a pile of experience. When I played DAOC, all that did was frustrate the hell out of me. It was a game of shoots and ladders... two steps forward, 1 step back, etc. I like that in WoW, live or die, I'm progressing.
2. As for the original posters bitch about leveling too easily, that's just bunk. I think the other games have it the wrong way around. The experience ramp in WoW is right where it should be. Starts off easy and gets progressively harder. Nobody wants to spend 3 hours getting from first level to second. However, people do expect it to take them three hours to get from 8 to 9th. Likewise, when your 20th level, The expectation is that getting to 21 is going to twice as hard as it was to getting to 20. Putting this in the context of the dying aspect, when you combine excessively step experience curves with terrible death penalites, it makes the game only accessible to those people who are willing to spend 10 hours a day pointlessly grinding...
3. WoW is actually quest based. I HATE GRINDING and wandering around without purpose. Even when I'm off going to get some dudes claw so I can make some malajusted Troll feel better about his lack of wear withall as a warrior, I'm doing something. I'm not off in the woods killing bunnies for the sake of killing bunnies. Also the quests force you to actually go out and explore and tackle creatures that will challenge you. Which is exciting since, if you end up dying, you just go back, try a different tactic, etc.
4. Their GUI is great. I'm suspecting that Blizzard put out an email to all their employees that read "If you play an MMORPG, please come to the starcraft conference room at 1pm..." sat them all down and said "What do you HATE about the games your playing and if you had the chance would design better in an MMORPG. They then took all these ideas wrote them down and worked them into the spec for the game. Just stuff like you goto a vendor and if you hover over a weapon in their inventory it'll pop up a little window next to it containing your currently equipped weapon so you can easily compare them.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Disclaimer: I am a former Blizzard "fanboi". I quit that position with the ill-fated release of Diablo 2, where I had a scratched CD and Battle.net was down for the first month of gameplay.
What is so great about PvP in games other than WoW is that you have an impact and can make a name for yourself. You *are* the school bully, if even for only a few months. Everyone knows you, and some may even fear you. Others might have bested you, and gloat in their accomplishments.
In WoW PvP, you've got about 300 school bullies, none of them are unique, and no one really fears any of them. Since they are all pretty much nameless, you can't tell the one that turns tail and runs back to the guards from the one that stands up to fight. As time goes on, you realize that those that stay and fight become less and less active, simply because the game is *so* balanced and there is absolutely no reward for PvP, that it is ridiculously lame.
Blizzard is notorious for killing "powergamers". Unfortunately, these people are what make MMORPGs fun. You get rid of the powergamer, and you get rid of the idea that someone can make a name for themself in a virtual world. And, IMHO, making a name for yourself in a virtual world is what MMORPGs are all about.