The MMOGs of Tomorrow

SirBruce, of MMOGChart, took a good hard look at what the massive games of tomorrow will look like at E3. He has impressions of every game due to be released in the next year or so, with commentary on most. From the article, about Vanguard: "This title is highly anticipated by some of the MMOG hardcore, as it comes from ex-EverQuest developers Brad McQuaid and Jeff Butler, but aside from the graphics and the promise of in-game voice chat it does not seem to be very innovative over the original EQ1 design. The game is designed to be group-focused and highly challenging, which may mean it's too much of a time investment for the more casual MMOG player. If the game were coming out this year, I would have higher hopes for it, but I feel it may get lost behind the mass of other fantasy-themed MMORPG titles."

Comments

blah

[Anonymous Coward]

"The game is designed to be group-focused and highly challenging"

In other words..n00b infested, unfun, timesinking, endless grinding, unfun piece of shit.

FFXI tried this, and it was a total pain in the ass, and unfun. No soloable XP, painful death penalties, 80% of your time spent looking for a group.

As usual noone will want to play the monotonous roles of healers, and everyone else will be left standing around wasting their time and monthly subscription fees.

Wheeeee

Re:blah

[Golias]

As usual noone will want to play the monotonous roles of healers

I loved playing a straight-up healer in EQ. I hardly played any other class.

In fact, for a while, I was playing on a computer which didn't quite meet the specs to handle some of the new zones, but got by just fine because of my quirky enjoyment of playing clerics. When we got into big combat and the graphics started to majorly lag, I just stared at the ground, and everything ran smoothly.

All I had to do was keep people from getting killed, communicate with hybrid healers so we wouldn't overlap, call for tanks to scrape MOBs off me whenever I was attacked, and direct the action based on the flow of how things were going. I was shockingly effective for somebody who wasn't even watching the fight directly.

Later, when I got a beefier PC with a fast graphics card, the only thing that really changed was that I got to see what was going on while monitoring health bars and relaxing on the perimeter of the combat.

Best of all, being one of the three rare-yet-in-demand commodities (along with the warrior and enchanter), I never had to put up with any bullshit. "Don't like the way I'm running the party? Okay see ya later. I'll just recruit one of the six other rangers and shamen who have been begging me for the chance to join the group. Good luck finding another cleric forming a party in the zone. The only other one on the map is four levels lower, and is already working as my back-up healer."

No voicechat.

[Seumas]

Text. Typing. It's a very RPG-ish thing. Voicechat is not. I don't want to know that the beefy warrior I'm partying with through the mountains is actually some dinky thirteen year old kid with a retainer. I don't want to know that the really hot night elf with the long legs and the quiver full of hard, stiff arrows is really a 45 year old guy with a speech impedement.

What's next? In-game video-chat? That's about the only thing I can imagine that would ruin the experience much more. MMORPGs devolve into too much of a "chat room" thing as it is, without adding in video/audio chatting.

I'd much rather have NPCs that speak, instead. Especially in games like War Craft. Save my poor eyes the extra reading and include some damned voice dialogue!

Re:No voicechat.

[Dr. GeneMachine]

You got a point there. Perhaps it is the time to wish for sufficiently fast computers that can render the voice chat into a timbre or even a style of speech that is more in character. I mean, I lost the confidence in any of my co-players being able to actually role-play. If it takes an AI to at least make them seem to be role-playing - bring it on!

Re:No voicechat.

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never played a modern MMO, have you? For example, in Planetside:

Me (typing): look out incoming enemies
You (typing): i don't see them
Me (typing): to your left
You (typing): kay, thawwwwwwwwwddwaaa(dies)
Me (typing): oh shis222666666(dies)

Because the next level of immersiveness is being interactive. You can't have interactive "twitch" games with typing as the sole method of communicating when tight combat coordination between players is important. Sure, text chat is useful, but when you need mouse and keyboard for aiming, moving and staying alive, communication is best done hands-free.

And your gamer stereotypes don't always ring true - sometimes you end up playing with really cool people who simply enjoy playing videogames. And after you've played with them for a couple of nights, the game becomes much more rewarding as you get to know the people playing and how they play.

In a way I'm actually looking forward to the first MMO that requires you use voice to communicate with other players (besides the puddle-deep throw-away titles on Xbox live, that is).

Re:No voicechat.

[SirBruce]

It is interesting to note that of the four games I know of with integrated voice chat - PlanetSide, There, Tabula Rasa, and Auto Assault - three are FPS/shooter/sci-fi type of play. But I don't think voice chat is somehow how at odds with fantasy play. You do have fantasy races, sure, but they are no different from alien races (or the lack thereof).

Personally I don't think there will be a big problem with voice chat breaking immersitivity. Those who want it will use it and those who don't, won't. Will this cut down on the amount of cross-gender roleplaying? Probably somewhat, but not too much, since I've known plenty of guys who RPed female characters in PnP games. Other developers believe we need to implement a "voice masking" type of technology, so players can retain anonymity.

My biggest concern is that such technology may segregate players too much. People who embrace voice chat might not want to socialize much with those who don't have it. Grouping is more difficult, for one. Secondly, they'll wonder why the person doesn't have it. Are they not really female? Are they secretly black (or white)? Perhaps they stutter. We might see a lot of people offering excuses, e.g. "I'm deaf" or "My microphone broke" and so on. But will this cause people to naturally segregate into voice and non-voice social groups? Only time will tell.

Bruce
http://www.mmogchart.com/

Re:McQuaid Part of the Problem, Not Part of the Cu

[Nasarius]

There were aspects of EQ's original design that, however nifty they seemed in theory, just didn't work out in practice (melees not binding themselves, for example).

That's sort of a nitpicky example. The real trouble with EQ was that it wasn't any fun to play; it was tedious work. I haven't played a fun MMOG since the good old days of UO.

Dear Sigil

[Gamelore]

Despite the widespread, casual, watering-down of the industry, there are *many* people who I know personally who want a long, lasting, hardcore MMORPG again. Everquest got a lot of things right, many of which have been lost in translation to later games. Please consider this list of design items for Vanguard:

Hidden stats and formulas -- Not knowing precisely what everything does keeps players hypothesizing and experimenting to try to figure things out. It kept people from truly "mastering" the game because they could not be 100% sure they were correct. It also helped maintain a decent level of suspense and curiosity.

Original EQ-style models -- I don't know why they felt the need to change them, but it was definitely for the worse. The original EQ models were the best I've seen in a fantasy-based MMORPG because they had personality. City of Heroes and AO character models also had personality, for example.

Kill stealing -- I want to be able to kill steal and I want others to kill steal from me. I want the rush of "who's going to be the winner" when some total jackass comes along. The contention of spawns was a huge part of EQ drama.

Death penalty in original EQ/beta EQ (prior to the 2 halvings of the exp loss -- it went down to 25% loss) was SPOT ON! It *should* take me 3 months to reach level 25. You SHOULD lose levels! The set of people who are MAX_LEVEL should *not* only increase. Absolutely superb job on that. Later on with cleric resurrections, it got a little out of hand, but it still maintained a degree of fear and sense of danger! Fear of losing a corpse (even though it almost never happened beyond the newbie levels) is another MUST. Even if it there is just 0.001% chance of losing a corpse, it is on the back of your mind as a motivation to play well and avoid death!

Runs through desolation -- While everyone likes areas with remarkable, and awesome features and attractions, we also enjoy wilderness such as the Karanas or Burning Wood in EQ. Running for 15-20 min through a forest or a plain that seemingly never ends *IS* part of the adventure and fun on its own. What I don't want to see is one point-of-interest after the other, like a George Lucas movie. You need great untouched outdoor areas to contrast with the occasional castle or dungeon entrance!

Looting an item in PvP -- This added a tremendous amount of fear and intensity to the PvP servers/Priest of Discord players. When it was reduced to coin, or less than that, it pretty much killed the desire to entertain the idea of PvP at all. I never played on the PvP servers, but I did go PvP via a Priest of Discord during EQ Beta, and I can tell you that the immersion-factor jumped through the roof when I could suddenly risk LOSING an item to another player. Give PvP meaning again, not just some pansy points system or ladder the MMORPG-of-the-week implemented.

Don't test every single possible scenario with new areas/spells/items. Test enough to know there is nothing totally unbalanced on the surface. This allows you to pump out content without getting hung up. Little unintended sideffects/randomity added a *lot* to my enjoyment of EQ, because it made me feel like *I* was thinking of a particular use. If I could name just one bad trend that started after EQ, it was the insane pre-testing of content that began with DAOC -- a tradition that has passed on to WoW. INCREDIBLY boring.

Instancing does not belong in a MMORPG trying to maintain consistency within its own context. Don't even go anywhere near it. It's the king of all immersion-killers. If you want to lock VERY rare mobs with encounter-routes, that is at least almost *tolerable*, but in no way shape or form will I play another game with instancing or a weak death penalty. And no, context doesn't start at the login, it starts at the server level. Even so, UO painstakingly referred to servers in-game as magical "shards" just to cover their bases. We have devol

Re:Dear Sigil

[Redbeard_Chimera]

One can look at initial sales as an indicator of success (and it is one), and one can look at longevity(certainly another). The point is, there are two distinct elements that need to be considered in evaluating the success of an MMOG: acquisition of subscribers and retention of subscribers. Players may be drawn in droves into worlds that are easily conquered, but there's an open question of how long this will sustain them and their recurring revenues.

If you look at the history of what Sigil's principals accomplished with EverQuest, it's pretty clear that what they built endured the test of time and distinguished itself both on an acquisition and retention basis. Some would argue that they did this *despite* a reputation for brutally challenging content, but I'd argue that it was in large part *because* of the challenge presented. EverQuests subs actually peaked during the period generally regarded as the high point of the challenge curve (toughest xp loss, difficult corpse retrievals, hell levels, etc). It wasn't until SOE took the reigns and started the "dumbification" that led to PoP that subs actually started falling. The point is still actively debated everywhere and it's no surprise because there will never be a shortage of people who want easy, but value hard.

This isn't anything new. The world is full of examples that illustrate the basic point that the things most valued are the things hardest to acquire, otherwise everyone would have them and they'd cease to have value.

I watch all of these new MMOGs with a skeptical eye, and this one is no exception. But before all of you write this off as "more of the same", and having only a "niche" market, I'd counsel you to keep an open mind and remember that Sigil's pedigree includes a group that actually accomplished success on both the acquisition and retention fronts in the past, and now they come armed with new technology, a wealth of new experience, and the market resources of Microsoft.

But more to the point, what I'm reading about this game resonates LOUDLY to me of something that's been missing from my experiences with any of the other MMOGs of late, the imbalance of challenge and value. I've tried all the others and, frankly, I'm tired of getting to the end-game easily, instancing that insulates me from the social experience that brought me to the genre in the first place, teleporting that demolishes any sense of wonderment or world size, and the utter lack of skilled play that results when there is no meaningful penalty for death. Grouping with players who realize that they can play as carelessly as they want, knowing full well that no consequences await them, and that they'll still hit the final goal, is a miserable, unsatisfying experience. Give me an epic adventure with the real world tension of knowing that a bad play will cost me something dear, and my victories will mean that much more to me and my peers. Take away my challenge, and you take away the value of the experience.

Keep an eye on this game. You might be surprised.

Re:That's not how EQ works for KS

[Gamelore]

This was appended to the EULA about 6 months down the road, but you bring up another interesting point: It is unfortunate when a rule must be explained in a rulebook in a video game. Most of us grew up playing our single-player NES games, doing whatever it took to win, even if the game were glitchy. Many times, "Do Nots" are listed in a EULA as a way to save programming, putting the burdern on the players to know their limitations based on an external rule. Fortunately, many companies who are serious about kill-stealing have gone on to code the rule into the game itself. Unfortunately, the rule exists primarily to minimize the tremendous burden kill-stealing complaints generate for the GM's, not to enhance the game experience. It is not the best way to handle competing parties attacking the same mob. When people complain to GM's about other people, they're not complaining about the game itself. If players had mechanisms (more freedom is a good thing) to handle kill-stealers, there would be nobody to blame but themselves. And realistically, everyone has at least some ability to handle kill-stealers, namely by doing more damage, training it away, calling on friends, etc. In addition, people who kill-steal lose reputation. In a longterm game, this is the most important item a player can earn.