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The Divorce of MMO and RPG
Jeff wrote to mention a new article up on Gamergod.com discussing the divorce of MMO and RPG. From the article: "At close inspection, their marriage reveals what is sadly becoming the new American love tragedy. Two people with little in common, more in lust than anything resembling love, decide to tie the knot. The rest is a classic example of what happens when two people leave the idea stage of marriage and enter the reality of marriage, and find out they don't like, let alone love, each other."
It basically says the RPG element in Most MMORPGS has been taken and beaten to a pulp, cut up into homogenized chunks, all the while being force fed to itself for that extra processed goodness.
It happens to any online game with competition. Companies don't really care about story so much as branding, they'll throw enough out there to fill a review, and maybe some more for the average survivor watching mouthbreather, but for all intents and purposes, its the game they're making, not the story.
Face it, single player is the only way to truly enjoy an RPG, and Massive Multiplayer Online just doesn't do it justice.
I think the fact that most people are idiots, even those who think they aren't (myself included), and they want to prove themselves constantly. Its how they have fun.
Well, the author does forget one of the major classic elements of classic paper and pencil role playing games. You know... role playing. Acting out a character isn't really fun for most folks unless there are other people around doing the same. Without other people playing, it's not a role playing game; it's playing a video game based on the rules and type of settings that made RPGs succesful.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
And even with thousands of people playing, it still isn't role playing. It's a bunch of people sitting in front of their PCs, trying to level like mad and get all the ph4t l3wt they can. In my time playing MMOs, I've seen maybe a dozen role players in total, across many games.
I know there are more out there, a lot of them form guilds that are roleplaying only and play on roleplaying servers. But 90%+ of the rest of the population isn't interested. Which is sad, in my opinion. Roleplayers add to the game's atmosphere.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
single player is the only way to truly enjoy an RPG
I wouldn't say that. I would say that the stereotypical MMORPG has got it completely wrong, though. They emphasize power-leveling and teaming up just to scour a dungeon instead of fostering more interesting interaction between the players. And it would be possible to make an MMORPG with an interesting story, but most developers don't want to put forth the effort.
Rob
Well, those people are playing the game as warriors, wizards, rogues, etc. They may not speak or act like they should, but to them, they are playing the part of the character they created. The problem with MMOs is that everyone wants something different from the game, and those wants are usually not very compatible.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
In a fantasy RPG, you generally want your character to be important to the world, doing things noone else can, etc. etc.
when 2000+ people are like that in the same world, you lose your virtual uniquiness.
...needs to remember that tabletop AD&D was never mainstream to begin with. So with an MMORPG, you're basically trying to sell an extremely non-mainstream concept (RPG) to a mainstream (MMO) audience. Unless the definition of an RPG is changed somewhat for the mainstream audience, it isn't going to happen.
MUDs (AFAIK, anyway) were never truly popular outside the intellectual crowd either, just like tabletop AD&D. Part of this group represented the original people playing Ultima Online, from what I saw, and when you have this group *alone* playing an MMORPG, you'll generally get a positive, relatively peaceful (albeit eclectic) experience. The crowd that are known as PvP players, "griefers" or "power gamers" in MMORPGs are the same 14 year old adrenaline/testosterone crazed idiots who you find either playing Quake 2 or CounterStrike (or collaborating with other such types to write the next big Windows virus on IRC) the rest of the time, AKA a particularly undesirable segment of the broader FPS crowd. (This is also the exact stereotypical group which the media tried to blame for the Columbine massacre.)
These people are nothing remotely close to genuine roleplayers, and on close inspection, don't really intend to be. They log into a game like UO for four main reasons:-
a) To kill people/things in a new environment.
b) To deliberately upset and antagonise (true to their adolescent sociopath roots) genuine roleplayers. (who they view with contempt) 80%-90% of the PvP crowd fall into this category, despite their protests to the contrary.
c) To attempt to gratify their ego by climbing to the top of the char level heap, and thus prove how "leet" they supposedly are.
d) (Even more) to attempt to find some bug/exploit within the game mechanics in order to illegitimately climb to the top of the char level heap more quickly than would otherwise be possible, again for the same reason as c).
In an ideal world, the primary solution to this problem would be to keep the archetypical FPS gamer from ever migrating to an MMORPG, but tragically, such is not possible. I am not at all surprised to hear that MUDs are currently enjoying a rennaisance; the reason for this would be so that genuine roleplayers can do what they've desired to do all along, i.e., roleplay, without the interruption of the aforementioned morons. My guess is that for a while at least, MMORPG operators are eventually going to find that their playerbase consists primarily of very casual players who also engage in RMT, (real money trading of in-game items) and the aforementioned FPS immigrants. As such, I'm also guessing that most fantasy-oriented MMORPGs are also going to become extremely mundane, chaotic places centred primarily around killing mobs, gold farming, and RMT. Storytelling or people playing for more conventional reasons are probably both going to largely move back into the MUD environment.