Slashdot Mirror
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."
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