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."

Comments

Player hardship vs gaming challange

[Anonymous Coward]

Walter Yarbrough: I'm also curious about the success of Vanguard's approach of "We're going to make this hard, and you'll like it!" Particularly when compared with the much more casual and penalty-free playstyle of WoW.

I can tell you about the success of that approach: Bollocks to that!

I abandoned EverQuest because the high-end game was a boring chore rather than an exciting challange. Camping for weeks or months on end for your mob to spawn is a "challange" only in respect of trying to hold your eyelids open. In reality, it's simply player hardship for its own sake.

It seems that because of the ambiguity of the word "hard", some designers can't tell the difference between the two things, and which is good and which is bad.

Interview?

[agtwilight]

Those are some pretty short interviews considering the body of work those folks have done.

I have cancelled UO, SWG, EQ, and CoH for WoW...as an old fart of MMO I can tell you that WoW is where it is at - I think every person I know online has switched to it and have no plans of going back to any of the above games. Oh wait there is this one guy at the helpdesk playing EQ 2 and is a miserable whiner about it.

If you like MMO then just go buy the darn thing - play on a low population PVE or PVP server as per your fancy...if you pvp just remember there is a more uber player over that next hill so dont cry when you get ganked after picking on some n00bs.

Bladedawn on Blackhand

City of Heroes

[ParadoxDruid]

I just wanted to bring up City of Heroes here for discussion.

It's an MMORPG that I think has succeeded largely by finding a different niche than most of the other offerings in the market: It's set in modern-day cityscapes with superheroes, rather than a fantasy world.

Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, it's simple and elegant: There's no equipment, what money exists is rarely useful, missions (quests) always tell you where to go with no ambiguity, and the GUI is top-notch.

After an old EQ addiction, City of Heroes is a breathe of fresh air-- I can meaningfully log on and accomplish something in half an hour, even at the high levels (I'm level 44 right now, with 50 being the cap).

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

Without trying to start a flame war, I will say that, while trying to choose the next MMO to play in the past month or so, I did some research on both EQ2 and WoW, and talked extensively to people who play each game. Unfortunately, without trying to start a flame war, I can say that this poster exemplifies the general attitude of the EQ2 community. To them, challenge equals the amount of time you have to spend on a game and not how hard the game actually *is*. To offer an example of what I mean: I consider Contra on the NES to be one of the most challenging games ever made, yet one could essentially beat it within a few days of "hardcore" playtime.

No, what EQ2 and most other MMORPG's offer is not a challenge, but a timesink. You cannot solo past level 20 or so at any pace other than "unbelievably slow", so you are forced to spend perhaps hours seeking a group; you incur a penalty when *another person in your group* dies; simple things like crafting and travel take tons of time and resources; and so on and so forth. However, WoW, with its action-based gameplay, has been perhaps the most challenging MMO I've ever played, not in terms of the time needed to get anything done, but in terms of *real,* Contra-like challenge.

I won't address this poster's other points, since they're largely opinion. But I will say this: a game should not take "effort" beyond the effort required to have fun. I'm glad the WoW developers recognized this fact and made the game a *game,* rather than just another bunch of timesinks.

Deserving a look

[TheTiminator]

Not quite sure I understand why Eve Online http://www.eve-online.com/ keeps getting overlooked. Maybe it's becuase the genre mostly aims toward cut and slash type games, or those that have huge sponsors (Sony, Lucas, etc.)? I think this one deserves a closer look by folks. Just the fact that the Eve universe is a single universe for all players, and not divided into servers or nodes, is very impressive (30,000 + solar systems for over 30,000 players). And another appealing point is the constant improvements and expansions to the game, the most recent being the Exodus expansion. I just feel that if the topic is going to be how creative and original the development process has been for a specific MMOG then Eve-Online deserves a look.