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Where's the Massive in MMOGs?
Grimwell writes "Like MMOG's? Concerned about their future? You should read Darniaq's article questioning the general approach to these games. From the article: 'I expect invention from Blizzard as I much as I would from the local Top 40 radio station. I'd hate to think that the entire breadth of MMOs is measured by the playing of a few of the hot selling titles. It's great what WoW has done for the genre, but man I hope people don't give up on the genre just because they hit 60 and realized they didn't want to spend 3 hours a night in Molten Core.'"
MMOG's failure is anything that caps what the player can do. WOW is a great game but capping it at level 60 will stunt its growth since players will reach there then stop.
I didn't read TFA, but "3 hours a night in Molten Core" is not the only end-game in World of Warcraft. PVP Battlegrounds, Blackwing Lair, Zul'Gurub, Ahn-Qiraj, soon, Naxxrammis and the upcoming Burning Crusade expansion pack -- the list goes on. I would assume the aricle is short-sighted throughout.
So basically the author of TFA has never played Guild Wars where PVP only players can start at a level equal to other PVP players, or opt for the RPG adventure _with_ PVP mixed in.
Not a fanboi of RPG's but ArenaNet does seem to attempt innovation, albeit slowly.
The problem is development. You think creating a console game is anything like creating a world for millions of interactive users?
Besides, most of what you see in MMORPG's these days are rehashes of rules and attributes that go all the way back from tabletop D&D, to Rogue, to Diablo, and so on to the present day. You have to have a well-established base before you can branch out.
It seems to me that the author of this article is less knowledgeable of the subject at hand than one should be before climbing to the top of the mountain and shouting your opinion to the unwashed masses below.
Game evolution comes incrimentally. Not only that, it is shaped by the interest of the public.
What the author seems to want is a many thousand player MOO or MUSH. I'm sorry to be the one to break it to him, but most people just have no interest in such an open-ended environment. MOOs and MUSHes were always more niche and less popular than their MUD brethren (though there were big ones out there, don't get me wrong.) But whereas anyone is capable of typing in a few lines of text and thus creating an object in a MOO, a modern game requires the ability to create 3D Models. And not only that to animate them. And not only that to do so well enough that it warrants repetitious viewing.
The bottom line being, what we got is what we got, and it's going to evolve from there. If he is really dedicated to his "revolutionary" idea (which is as much a rehash of the past as anything on the market today), then he should put his time and effort into creating it.
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
Perhaps the biggest thing stifling the genre is the players themselves. Too many pundits blame the games and in particular WOW. Yet WOW is where the bulk of the players and it is there for a reason. A very good number of players don't want a full time job followed by a game that is yet another full time job. I do not mean to equate WOW with being dumbed down or such. WOW isn't dumbed down, what Blizzard has done is added features to make playing the game the focus, not having the learn the inadequacies of the developers and how to compensate. Many games lack the niceities that WOW has because either the developers don't have the time and money to implement them or they are lazy. There of course is a small subgroup of developers who believe that players should not be helped but those games tend to die quickly as a hostile developer group never endears itself for long to any group.
The main problem I have with his writing is that he has the same illusion many others who write like he does, that CRPGs have depth the online ones do not. The only true difference is that in a CRPG you are the only hero around. How can it be expected to have a thousand heroes in one world? I guess you could instance the world but then who would care what you did? I have played MMORPGs where there was a single event that once done could be done by no others. Guess what, its annoying. Why? Because as soon as that event can be played out it will be. The one luxury an online game does not have is ability to time itself to all the players. A CRPG doesn't care, the player controls the time in the game. Someone is going to do the event first and everyone else will be left with either congratulating them or jeering the developers over how unfair it was because it happened when they were not online.
Still the games have to be mostly predictable because it is far easier to code for that. A lot of work has to go into making sure the players cannot do things "unpredictable". Unpredictable means exploitive and abusive. Developers have to make sure what they put in the game is used as intended and if not then the abuse must not adversely affect others. This limits their options. CRPGs don't care because players abusing a system only affect themselves.
Sorry, but very few CRPGs are more advanced that MMORPGs. It might feel as if they are but you are ignoring the fact that its only you there and you can control the flow of the game, how the events occur. That is the freedom you feel that is missing from MMORPGs.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Great ideas for the future of MMORPG are plentiful. I played WoW through to the end, got Level 60, beat the game. I know the ins and outs. I can do better. Why, I just thought up half a dozen great ideas in the minute before I posted this comment. So it's just an implementation problem. Well, I have that solved to. Or I will. It'll just take some time to write. I'm going into stealth mode and living in my mom's basement to keep my burn rate down, but when I come out in a year or two I'll have the most awesome technically advanced MMORPG ever! Give away the demo, bittorrent out the client, sell subscriptions, profit! I wonder why more indie game developers aren't doing this already? I mean, it's so obvious!
Start Running Better Polls
Endgame in WoW is ALL about doing the same thing, again and again, every single night until you can't bear to log in again. EVERY weekend, while I played, was spent in MC and ZG. Then they added the resets so every single night of the week was scheduled by Blizzard.
No thanks, I don't want to do Scholo for the three hundredth time. Seen enough of Strat, live and dead. UBRS is a Uber Bore. I play a holy spec priestess because my guild demanded I switch from shadow - faction grinding or farming gold for repairs is therefore incredibly slow and anything but fun.
I made alts, but the realization I'd have to subject myself to nights and nights more of Scholo, Strat and UBRS just to get geared enough to torture myself with more MC and ZG made me hang up my WoW account.
Guild after guild on my server imploded when they got to the endgame; and after awhile, so did the one I was in. Too many people left or restarted on other servers or returned to previous servers.
I read the article. He's spot on about the lack of imagination in current MMOs. One thing about EQ1 - leveling was so slow that many stopped worrying about getting a level a day (or week) and started doing the social things - the buff days, races, arena battles, role playing in Plane of Hate - the kinds of things you end up doing when levels and loot are fairly hard to come by.
Nobody would stand for that now. WoW, EQ2 and the others (including EQ1 since Luclin) have conditioned people to thinking that if they aren't making levels and not getting uber loot, that there is no fun to be had in the game.
The author of the article says sandbox PvP is the answer. I'm not sure about that - griefers live to ruin those kinds of things - but heck, it's about time for a game that can see beyond the grind.
Actually the article is fairly well-rounded and, even though it does make the same old suggestions, doesn't really falter all that that, and is hardly short sighted. What is short sighted, though, is to take issue with an article for making a generalisation by making a generalisation about it.
But I guess a side-effect of your 'Fanboy Goggles of Blizzard Can Do No Wrong' is that it hampers your 'Make An Informed Opinion' stat. Or maybe you just work in their advertising department.
(Script confirmation requires me to enter 'Immature'. Never seen it more fitting.)
There is a wonderful one out there, Eve online. There aren't levels perse, just new ships and skills you can add to your charecter to make things different. There are so many things you can do in that game it's staggering. PvP- be a bounty hunter or a pirate, be a trader, be a miner, scientist, you can make EVERY item in the game. It's truely a fun experence. As you get more skills, alot of time goes into skill development, but it happens when you are offline. you set a skill to train, and it'll take two weeks, but that's two weeks if you are playing or not. If anyone is interested, pm me and we'll go do some rat hunting :)
I am full of goo... black evil goo
Mud-dev con 2003 was attended by developers from all over the industry, including Shadowbane's lead, and some DAOC staff. IIRC, Raph Koster had RSVP'd, but ended up having to visit Lucas Film at the last minute, as SWG was in development at the time.
At any rate, the main sentiment of the conference was "Hey, let's do new things", with talk of abandoning things like:
The "server" construct. Why do you have to pick a server and stick with it in every MMO to date? Shouldn't this be abstracted away? In fact, there have been multi-user environments that have done just that for over a decade now.
The repeatable "fedex quest". Why is it Professor Smith needs us to run the Miracle Serum across town every 5 minutes? Don't they have enough already? Why don't quests have real side-effects on the game world? Why, when I deliver the serum, isn't someone actually cured?
Of course, doing new things in a way that actually attracts enough players to fund a large project is tough. That's really the game (and media) industry's problem at large: the same old same old is lucrative. Innovation is risky.
But if it's any consolation, game developers agree: the old shit's getting boring.
I have played AO, SWG, COH, and WoW. None of these games had end game content or even lifetime content (SWG) and no MMOs ever will. The MMO design has been flawed since the evolution of it and that leads to the flaw of CRPGs vs PnP.
As with CRPGS and MMOs they are limited by code and time. People want open ended end game content. How? How do developers develop everything and nothing for an ending. How many people would it take to constantly add an countinous ending to a story? How many GMs would it take to run events for people to participate in with consideration to timezones. What? What is considered good end game content vs bad.
Now I bet a lot of you have answers to all of those quests. Now take every person who answered that question and try to compile and code all those request. Thats the life of an MMO hear how to do end game content from hundreds of thousands of people and trying to pick the good from the bad. Then making a desicion to actually put into use the good. Then getting approval to do the development. Then going back and getting some of the bugs cleared. Then finishing it with QA. Then pushing the changes to Live. Then getting feedback that this isn't what some of the customer wanted.
There are limits to how much a team can create vs a DM doing a campaign on the fly. MMOs are a waste of time cause you never get the game you wanted to play, you are getting a game that some stranger want to play.
WOW is where the bulk of the players and it is there for a reason. A very good number of players don't want a full time job followed by a game that is yet another full time job.
It's true, Blizzard has boiled down the MMORPG genre to the elements that, ideally, are most fun (quests, exploration, small group runs). Of course, that runs out and people want more, so they concentrate on what's addictive enough to keep people playing (rep grinding, raiding end-game instances for uber loot, PvP battlegrounds, etc.). It works until people get burned out and realize how pointless it is in the end.
The main problem I have with his writing is that he has the same illusion many others who write like he does, that CRPGs have depth the online ones do not. The only true difference is that in a CRPG you are the only hero around.
I disagree with your interpretation of the article. I think his point is that you can make a game where the objective isn't to become a hero at all, but rather to have a small (but relatively equal) hand in changing the direction of large-scale events in a game world.
Still the games have to be mostly predictable because it is far easier to code for that.
That's it exactly: it would be an order of magnitude more difficult to make a dynamic game world in which the actions of players permanently change the game content in a meaningful way.
For example, imagine if the WoW developers unleashed the AQ invasion on the players, and depending on whether or not the players were able to stop it, the world would be different afterwards. The developers wouldn't know ahead of time how it would turn out because they'd let the players determine the outcome and then go from there with the direction of new content.
Or, imagine that the Horde players overrun Darnassus and kill the Arch Druid. Instead of him respawning 2 minutes later, what if he stayed dead? What if all the NPCs on the continent gathered for a funeral, followed by a power struggle for a replacement figurehead? What if this rippled out and shifted the balance and power and course of events in various ways across the whole game world? You get the idea.
And there's the problem: The developers couldn't just create a static amusement park world the way they do now. Instead, they'd have to be continually adding, changing, and removing content to create a dynamically changing universe in reaction to the players. This would take an enormous amount of time and effort, and would likely be a lot less profitable (at least at first).
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
It's not about re-integrating PvP. It's about removing the requirements of XP and equipment. This shifts the focus away from first growing ones power and then going to use it, allowing people to get into the action faster. That sounds like Planetside,
No, what that sounds like is Halo. Create a character, equal in power to anyone else, and just go fight against them? What's the point of it being an RPG if there's no reward for exploration and creation?
The issue is that repeating the same content ad nauseum has very limited appeal in general, an issue when added to just how limiting these games are.
Not to people who play Halo, who I'm sure play the same maps over and over. Surprisingly, the people at large aren't that objective to rerunning content. The idea that you have to constantly be doing something new seems largely new to the RPG community alone.
Allow me to sum up the article - "WoW sucks. I want to play something else."
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
It seems to me that for a "do once" model to work there need to be a frequent-enough emergence of new things to do, and that there should be things that need done that rely on more than one small group acting, and require action over an extended time. This probably relies on getting away from tightly scripted events, though, and finding away to make adaptive, emergent challenges entertaining.
I don't think the industry is far from being able to make that kind of game.
That's certainly a valid concern, and certainly controlling abuse is a concern, though whether or not tight controls on what can happen is the best way to acheive that is...well, I don't think its entirely clear. I think new "light-handed" ways of controlling abuse and subtly promoting activity that enhances enjoyment of the gamer community is one area that MMOs can be expected to advance in.
Or, imagine that the Horde players overrun Darnassus and kill the Arch Druid. Instead of him respawning 2 minutes later, what if he stayed dead? What if all the NPCs on the continent gathered for a funeral, followed by a power struggle for a replacement figurehead? What if this rippled out and shifted the balance and power and course of events in various ways across the whole game world? You get the idea.
Then I'm going to be a level 30 casual-playing character on that server and suddenly realize that the leader of my city has been killed by a bunch of uber-twinked 60's who ran the city over and over again until they could go through and cause the effect. Yes, serious life-changing events like that are great for the guild that manages to accomplishes them... and bullshit for everyone else. Of course, maybe they would just install a new leader, which would basically be the same as respawning the old one, and you'd see it happen three times a week.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
http://www.eve-online.com/>
Over 26000 in the same universe (single server, well, cluster of servers) last weekend. Player interaction makes up the end game. That is, pvp actually has a point beyond "points" and revolves around territory/resource conflict. Politics are far beyond anything else available too.
In Halo, etc.; the maps mean little, really. Just like the WoW battlegrounds. You are playing against other people, you don't hardly even think of the maps. In Arathi Basin, for instance, you know the weak points and strong points based on who from the other team is guarding them. It's all about player content - in this case, the players themselves - instead of static scripted content - in WoW's case, the boss fights which are so tightly scripted my guild (and most other guilds) had a UI mod which told us everything to do and when to do it.
(Those idiotic, required UI mods really burn me up. Turned my job, healing, into a two button affair - one for healing, one for curing. Just read the screen to see where to stand. Watch the raid wipe because someone was trying to do something unscripted.)
The point of the original article was that when players are allowed to be innovative and creative, you no longer have to worry what to do when the content runs out - the players are inventing their own goals and rewards. The ONLY way in WoW (et al) to do that is by playing the metagame of the endgame guild itself - on message boards, the blizzard forums, what have you - playing out social interactions out of game because the game itself does not value anything beyond the grind.
I never played Shadowbane (was in DAoC at time), but it sounds pretty much like the kind of game he would have wanted. That game failed, but maybe someone needs to give it another shot.
That's one part of development, the other part is finding new elements. You could look at it as a necessary Revolution/Evolution duality -- there should be a constant process of recombining existing gameplay elements to find the best combination -- and perhaps Blizzard has done that well with what is out there, currently, that works in the MMO realm.
But there also needs to be development of new gameplay elements to add to the mix (and perhaps resurrecting old ones that have fallen out because they didn't work well without some of the new ones, but might work better with them). Otherwise, the market stagnates.
Or they'd have to design systems in the game that added or removed elements of content and adapted behavior dynamically in reaction to the players.
This presumes the game would be driven by a "level up" drive; while that's an easy to code concrete reward system, its not the only possible model for a game, even an MMO. A game with a more dynamic environment wouldn't, ideally, have to feature levelling up to give players an evolving set of challenges.
"It seems to me that the author of this article is less knowledgeable of the subject at hand than one should be before climbing to the top of the mountain and shouting your opinion to the unwashed masses below."
He would feel right at home here.
TFA winds up saying "let players really impact the world." You know what happens when you allow that? You end up with a torn-up, useless crust of a world that no-one wants to visit because those that made the changes were idiots and ruined the wonderful world that was. Case in point: Ultima Online.
UO had high ideals and lofty goals: real economy, a real ecosystem, PvP and combat where skill mattered, not levels. What happened to it?
1. Raph Koster applied his ideals of how a society should act, but because it was so foreign to all the players, it was either ignored or abused. There was no "society" in UO; there were "clicks" as in real life and in any MMO.
2. UO's system of PvP drove players away by the thousands (my wife was one). Those that remained sent up such an uproar that we finally received consensual PvP... by mirroring the world, effectively dividing the population (75/25 by most counts). This, too, worked to drive players away. The PvPers had no prey and the non-PvPers had no way to retaliate against griefers.
3. Player-requested content and non-requested content. Players asked for all manner of content that had no place in the Ultima history: they got it. EA allowed Todd McFarlane to design content for an expansion. He single-handedly drove several thousand more players away. What exists today is Samurai Empire; something so foreign to the Medieval Europe theme of Britannia they might as well use machine guns, steam trains and spaceships (yes, I remember that Ultima I and II had spaceships.)
4. Skills vs. levels. I have yet to see a system of PvP that is balanced (part of the reason I despise it and avoid it). In UO the skills system simply required players to come up with certain skill combinations that worked best for PvP or PvE. At least with a level system you know that if the levels are equal, you can look to other factors to provide advantage. Regardless, if there's a way to get an unfair advantage, someone will find it and exploit it.
In summary if you give the players the reigns, they will no doubt ruin the world and drive off the other players.
I for one am very pleased with how Blizzard crafted WoW. I see room for lots of minor improvements, but the overall implementation is outstanding.
EVE Online is the best Massively Multiplayer Online Game in existence. When I say "massively" what I mean is that there aren't "shards" or "realms" or other divisions between groups of players. Everyone plays on the same "realm" which had 26,000 players online concurrently last weekend, out of a playerbase of about 110,000. How is that for massive?
There's also the in-game universe, which consists of a network of more than 4,000 solar systems. How many zones are there in other MMOGs like WoW, Everquest, Everquest2, and so on? 200? 300? Again, massive.
Oh, and you wanna talk massive? Check out the ships you can fly. You do of course start the game in a tiny (by comparison) ship, but through the training of skills you will be able to fly bigger and badder ships over time.
Skills are another area where EVE takes the term massive to the limit. Any player can learn any skill, of which there are literally hundreds. You aren't limited by your "class" because there are no classes. The skills you have determine the activities you can perform, period. There are certain types of spacecraft which are designed to be used by members of a particular race (there are four: Caldari, Amarr, Gallente and Minmatar) but there is nothing preventing say, a Gallente pilot from learning the Amarr skills so that they can fly Amarr Battleships. One thing about skills that differs from other games is that you select a skill (one at a time) to train, and then it will train over a period of time, regardless of whether or not you're online. So if it will take you a few days to get the Caldari Cruiser skill from level 3 to 4, you can put the game down for a long weekend and come back to your new skill and the benefits it entails.
Everything (item-wise and ship-wise) in the game is produced in one of two ways: you take it as loot after killing an NPC pirate ("rat" in game terminology) or players make them. Most of the equipment and ships are player-produced. It is possible (although difficult) for a single player to mine her own ore, start her own production queue, and start producing her own ships, guns, ammunition, microwarp drives, armor plating, and so on. It's much easier to be part of a group.
That brings us to Corporations. Corporations of many types exist. Some corporations exist solely to mine the ores of the asteroid belts in the outer regions. Some corporations are pirates, who exist solely to kill other players and take their equipment. Some corporations are explorers, or escorts, or manufacturers. Corporations can be as small as 20 people or as large as 1,000 (or more). Multiple corporations can form Alliances, perhaps granting a Mining corporation the privelege of mining precious ore in an outer system controlled by a Pirate corporation in the alliance.
At the beginning I mentioned the 4,000 solar systems. These systems each have a sovereignity and a security level. The security level determines a player's safety in the system, ranging from 1.0 (secure) to 0.0 (insecure). At a security level less than 0.5, any player can attack any other player. At a security level less than 0.3, players can set up their own space stations (you read that right, you can deploy and operate your own space station) and claim sovereignity over that system, effectively making it "theirs." Alliances will claim sovereignity over vast networks of systems, as well. So of that massive 4,000 systems, perhaps half are at a security level of 0.5 or greater and are "protected" by The Federation. Outside of these systems though, anyone and anything is fair game, and the stakes can be quite high.
Outside of Federation Space, there is one thing that is more massive than any other game out there. If you have two alliances, each with 4,000 players or so, who both want to control a region of space because of, say, the extremely valuable minerals in the asteroid belts required to build a certain type of ship, th
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
This presumes the game would be driven by a "level up" drive; while that's an easy to code concrete reward system, its not the only possible model for a game, even an MMO. A game with a more dynamic environment wouldn't, ideally, have to feature levelling up to give players an evolving set of challenges.
Exactly. In fact, the best thing would then be for the developers to try to balance things so that the Alliance players and NPCs would push back the Horde players in a desperate battle, eventually restoring the balance. Or maybe not: maybe the Horde would take over the city, and the Alliance players would have to flee somewhere else. It would work solely because the developers would still be there changing the content around to keep the game alive. It most certainly wouldn't be static amusement park content where the same guy would spawn back the next day with a different name, and the developers would be using the game to balance the odds so that large-scale or large-impact ganking and griefing wouldn't take place.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
MMOs do not fail because of a level cap. MMOs fail because too many people forget they are supposed to have fun playing a video game. Every community I have gotten involved with eventually devolved into the same middle-school clique-ish bullshit I walked away from when I got my high-school diploma. I am not paying a monthly fee to see anonymous twats start and perpetuate drama in the forums and in the game itself. Not every PvPer is a griefer and a bully. Not every PvEert is a nerd that lives in thier parents' basement. I do not want to associate with 1337$p34ke|2$ that act like twelve-year-old Counterstrike players with a chip on thier shoulder because they got kicked out of a clan.
The ones that ate my last nerve were the ones that take any MMO so seriously that they act like they very trolls they claim to fight and expect everyone else to do the same. How much of a loser do you have to be to expect everyone else to make a video game the center of your world like you have?
Myspace is huge. Yes, it has chain-letter and porno spam, but it rocks my socks and people are signing up in droves. Why? It's much more grounded in reality than any MMO ever will be. The ones that are my friends in Myspace are friends in real-life, not some virtual world retard that choses to engage in flame wars over bullshit like elves, orcs, and hit points.
I have turned off the computer and went outside. Life is better now. Enjoy your gold farmers.
y = player level
x = time played
y = x^2
So, maybe it takes 20 hours to get to level 25, but it takes 2000 hours to get to level 80.
What the author seems to want is a many thousand player MOO or MUSH. I'm sorry to be the one to break it to him, but most people just have no interest in such an open-ended environment. MOOs and MUSHes were always more niche and less popular than their MUD brethren (though there were big ones out there, don't get me wrong.) But whereas anyone is capable of typing in a few lines of text and thus creating an object in a MOO, a modern game requires the ability to create 3D Models. And not only that to animate them. And not only that to do so well enough that it warrants repetitious viewing.
What you are describing is Second Life, and I hate to break it to you but it's becoming immensely popular for exactly the reasons set forth by the author. Because it's so open-ended, people come -- and stay. They're over a couple hundred thousand in population now, and the rate of increase is growing all the time.
-JT
I for one expect the future of MMOG to be one where players choose:
1. the size of their world - do you really want to play with 500,000 people or wouldn't 5,000 work better?
2. the level they play at - why not have a test game where it figures out your actual play level, and then suggests you choose that World - for example, if you test out at play level 4, you could choose any level, but it would suggest you choose level 1-5. Then for each level (World), you only see people at that level. Once you have maxed out in your World, you would be allowed to either: start at the beginning in a level 2 or more higher, or start at half or less of your current level in a level beyond yours, minus all items.
3. the age mix they play at - you could choose age ranges like 10-14, 13-17, 16-24, 19-29, 25-40, 30-50, 40-60, 55-80, 10-18, 19-99, etc. Note I specifically made them overlap.
4. the backround rules they play with - for example, maybe no sockets, no team treachery (you can't attack team members without warning them 10 seconds before you attack), bosses stay dead, bosses don't regenerate, and so on.
5. latency level - do you want a more strategic slow game or a fast reflex game?
Just a few ideas from a former game designer.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What exactly is a MMORPG about anyway. A game like tetris is easy. Highscore. Chess is easy. Beat the opponent. Quake is easy, beat the other players.
Well that is what WoW does. The highscore is your level, the opponent is the AI and the other players are the horde or non-horde.
If you look at how most players talk about WoW you get the distinct impression that it is all about loot and levels.
Has anyone ever held a fishing competition in WoW? Or just organized a tour of nice looking spots? A beauty contest? Anything not related to getting loot or XP?
To some players it is this that makes an MMORPG. To have fun. This is to me what made SWG at a time such a nice game. To do stuff that was just fun to do without worrying about how many levels it would give you. IRC with pretty pictures.
An example, SWG, the tour of endor. For all its faults SWG could look pretty nice and it was clear at least some of the artists had spend some time looking at the source material and getting it. Endor was one of those. It was kinda fun to find the stuff from the ewok movies there (yes I liked them, bite me). So with a group of newer players we organized a tour. Just to drive around and see all the spots. It was sorta popular. Plenty of people wanted to join and had fun but we also got some almost violent reactions from players who just couldn't see the point of doing something that did not give XP. There were two ewok villages and visiting just one of them gave you a Point of Intrest badge. So when we set off to visit the other one member became enraged at the waste of time. Never mind that the villages were nicely done, he wanted XP and he wanted it now.
Same with Everquest 2. We were in a small group fighting red conning enemies and not doing to well. Death still carried an XP debt and it even carried over to your party members. Then again our motto was, if you ain't dying you ain't trying. It was simply more fun to defeat an enemy with a sliver off live remaining (and promply get killed by the next spawn) then fighting critters at optimum level wich were from a tactical viewpoint yawnville.
Yet again this led to almost violent confrotations with other players who just couldn't get that we were wasting our time on this. How dare we fight reds when they were having trouble finding people our level for the blue/green areas.
The point is that for us the battles were not a grind. They really required you to think about what you were doing rather then just hit the same special over and over. All those people who complain about repetitive fighting just ain't putting themselves to the challenge.
There is plenty of stuff to do and challenges to be had in EQ2 and SWG (well before both were WoWed anyway) but most people rushed by on the quest to get maximum XP. Just check how few players ever went into the deeper dungeons in EQ2 or how deserted the middle planets were in SWG.
I think I call it the Midnight Club vs Grand Prix Legends Syndrome.
In Midnight Club your enemy is always slighty better then you. If you got a D class car, they have C class, if you have level 1 upgrades, they got level 2. If you got 1 nitrious boost, they got 2. Improving don't matter, you will still be raising enemies slightly better then you. It is an endless grind to the top where your reward is a super car that is no fun to drive because now you still will get knocked out the race by being rear ended by the AI.
Grand Prix Legends on the other hand puts you in a car that is impossible to control but is the same car everyone else drives. If you tune it to just a little bit better performance the other drivers stay the same. So you do gain real benefits by becoming better and better. You don't so much "win" as slowly climb up higher in the rankings, first races you are lucky to finish but there is no price to pay. You can simply advance to the next race and finish a season on 10th place and still have improved. MC you don't improve unless you win.
A game like EQ2 is like Midnight
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I wouldn't even classify Second Life as a game, since it's so open-ended. It's a virtual world. I think what they're doing is very cool, but not my slice of pie. Nor is it what most gamers want, otherwise they'd be in that universe and not in WoW or EQ. It's still very much a niche audience. Maybe in the future, it'll be the greatest thing ever, but personally I don't think that'll happen for at least another generation or two. There are still too many technological Luddites this day and age. Let's wait until the "MySpace" generation grows up, though, and Second Life could very well see the boom that you're proposing.
-- jchenx
The poster you react to would point out that at level 1 it is sewer rats, at level 10 it is dire rats and level 100 it is were rats.
The difference is minor BUT nontheless it is a huge culture shock to try to understand the other person mindset.
To them another high level dungeon is a complete new challenge with an AI that uses different spells and rewards that give different benefits. To you it is just another dump AI wich you can learn with a few tries and dumps yet more loot that gives a few stat boosts so you can do it all over again.
Some people want more of the same, some people want a change now and then.
I fall in the latter group BUT not because I think it is better or something. It is just my taste.
Yes you can ask yourselve what the point is about adding a whole range of Y zombies who are exactly like X zombies except with higher points but the simple fact is that it works for a large group of players. It is also easier.
Adding a new type of play to any game is HARD. The Sims is about the only one to do it. Most other games expand by offering you yet more of the same.
SWG was game with lots of "extra" gameplay. But think of it like this. Wich satisfied more people. Adding another high level dungeon OR a whole new range of clothes and hairstyles? Wich is "easier" to implement?
WoW caters mostly to the more of the same crowd and it seems it is the way to market success. No it doesn't appeal to everyone but to other companies the message seems clear. SWG was WoWed and so was EQ2.
Vanguard is getting heat for not being WoW and so are lots of other games.
You say you need more gameplay elements to keep the game compelling. That might be true for you. Not to the parent. He likes extra dungeons with new enemies and new loot. It keeps the game intresting for him.
Oh and EVE may be the bees knees but they really should get their head out of their ass for their payment system. I can play SOE (GlobalCollect) and I can play WoW (prepaid cards) but EVE does not seem intrested in my money.
Lambast the bigger games all you want but at least they learned rule 1. Never refuse a paying customer.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I have since figured out that I would rather play a multiplayer (4-10 people) game than a MMORPG. The server tends to be more stable, the players more consistent, and the cost a LOT less. Even when I played Wow, I seldom got the feeling of the supposed millions of people who were playing, except when I walked into one of the major towns. Other than in town, I doubt I ever saw more than a dozen people at any one time, anyway, so what's the difference?
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
EQ2 has plenty of fun inside. Provided you allow yourselve to have fun. There is an option to switch of XP gaining. Since certain quests can't be completed when you reach beyond a certain level this allows you to remain stuck until you complete it.
And stuck you will be because it is very hard to find players willing to do quests that do not "pay out" enough.
Just ask yourselve. Have you ever done a quest that didn't pay out just for fun? Took on an enemy because it seemed right even if it was going to cost you by dying and lost xp/equipment?
No? Then your a grind monkey. Welcome to the rat race.
As for PvP being the answer. No it isn't. First off, cheating will be rife. just look at the halo story below.
Then there is the problem of balance. REAL PvP is about unbalance. You never want a fair war. Ask Captain Blackadder.
As for more orginized PvP well you would have to go to a system like the romans used for gladiators. But these people were very strictly regulated so that fights were as fair as possible.
The only real way is to just make two different games. WoW for the grinders and something else for people who want more. This is impossible. Just check how many people want to turn Linux into Windows. The idea that you would have WIndows for Windows people and Linux for Linux people is unaccetable to a lot of people. Everything must appeal to the largest possible group Elitism of the masses.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The article author's views on WoW are fairly spot on, in my mind. It fails because of its total staticity in all areas. Dieing does nothing. Killing someone respawns them 200m away. Clearing a town just gives you a clear town for 20 seconds. Battlegrounds and Raids only have the effect of giving you minute advantages in ... battlegrounds and raids.
His solution, however, is a tad too drastic. Removing leveling all together, and its associated goals is not necessary. The next step MMORPG wise is adding some dynamism. The internet isn't ready for a fully player driven world, not with current anonimity and maturity. Perhaps when the stigma to adults of playing these games is cleared there will be interesting opportunities for this.
The compromise, something that would provide a lot of self-sustaining play, would be to add structured social aspects. I know these have been done to a certain degree in MUD's and planned in some MMO's currently in development, but this needs to be done completely and well to succeed at all. Add a certain number of factions, not all known as playable to the player. Kingdom A, Kingdom B, OtherFormOfGovt C, MysteriousFactionFromFarAway D, WizardsGroup E, ReligiousOrg F, RebelliousGroup G, etc etc. Allow the player to start in the world, introduce them to it, then allow them to join one, get a 'job', a role in the world, and give it meaning. Governing a town, a city-guard, mercenary, thief, shopkeeper, the possibilities are endless and obvious. These roles would have to have world impact and a possibility for progression. Guards would defend their town from opposing factions, real players come to raid/invade, and possibly get promoted to captain etc.
Players would get known for more than being level 60, but for their choices socially, and their effect on the events. This would have to mean that existing towns, and all manner of similar places would have to be able to be taken over. Not easily, nothing should be easy in that way, but it needs to be possible. Of course these are really fine grained examples that hopefully illustrate the necessary dynamism.
I have played AO, SWG, COH, and WoW.
I'm not having a dig at the parent but I just wanted to use that quote to illustrate a point.
According to MMORPG.com there are over a hundred MMO's active at the moment with another 90+ in development and/or in testing but I've lost count of the times that I've seen articles and comments here and elsewhere that seem to use the subjective experiences of a handful of games - usually the most hyped ones - as some kind of general indicator of the entire marketplace.
Almost all of the complaints made about these major MMO's have been addressed in dozens of these others - some were even specifically developed in order to approach some of the issues differently.
Can we please be a little bit less blinkered when talking about this space?
After all it wouldn't make sense to only talk about MacOS and Windows when talking about operating systems, now would it?
Don't complain. Shop around.
Ever heard of the anti-hero. There was a time when that was new. Before everyone only made movies with the hero who overcame the baddie. Then someone somewhere dared to create a hero who wasn't all the different from the baddie, or even worse who was the baddie.
Could a RPG but made in wich you are not the main hero. In wich it ain't you who gets to become king but are instead one of the people in the background?
The GBA game Fire Emblem seems to do this. You are just the tactician. NOT the heroine seeking her grandfather or later the hero seeking his father.
I haven't finished it yet but you might not even get the girl!!!
Yet it works. Unlike so many other Japanese so called RPG's you are not being forced to much in a role. You are a silent bystander not one of the faggoty princes.
Could an MMO work by not having "real" heroes. Well not in its current form. for an MMO to be an MMORPG there needs to be an element of story and suspension of disbelief. It doesn't work if you have to stend in a line to give the NPC a broom in exchange for her blue stone.
Current quests are static. Very static. That mortally wounded soldier asking you to deliver a last letter will still be mortally wounded centuries later.
Can this be made different. Can game designers come up with "generic" quests that are generated for each player randomly? So that as I am exploring an area I come across a small battle and find a mortally wounded soldier who requests me to deliver this letter and then dies and disappears making this quest unique for me?
It would not be easy. How to balance how many quests to give. How to make quests groupable (do only I get the letter, all the members of the group or the group gets 1 letter to deliver together). Could you add the element of competition. Say while I get the order to deliver a warning by a spy of an assasination an other player gets the order to assasinate? (no pvp all that I need to do is warn the npc to be assasinated)
The problem with "random" quests is offcourse simple. No guides on where to find quests. What quest you would get (and therefore the loot) would depend on a random number generator. Current MMORPG players seem to prefer picking only those quests that give them phat loot.
Abusing the game is offcourse a valid concern but hardly stopped by making the game predictable. In fact it is knowing exactly what the game will do every turn that makes it easy to exploit weaknesses. Camping phat loot spawns only works because you know that the spawn is every 6 hours.
With random quests you could easily make the endboss spawn somewhere out of the way. Perhaps even put the final boss in an instance so he is safe and people don't have to stand inline to slaughter the dungeon boss.
Yes translating CRPG's to an MMORPG is not going to work. But that doesn't mean there aren't other ways.
One idea I like is to make areas develop and collapse overtime. Create say 10 areas/worlds. At the start some are developed with cities and other niceties while others are wild.
Because of player dynamics some of the areas will become more popular then others. SWG had for instance coronet on correlia develop into a hub. It was here that most of the player housing was build for stores, it was where most items were put on the bazaar, where most medics healed, most dancers danced and where the snarf was hunted to extinction. (this is bad, server overload, lag, the death of other areas and boredom/grind)
So the developer changes the game. Because of all the rebels the city comes under strict imperial control (existing game mechanic) with very strict control on illegal goods (existing game mechanic, to pay for it taxes (existing game mechanic) are increased (home ownership and bazaar transaction fees), the snarf being overhunted becomes diseased (existing game mechan
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Eve might be a cool game if you happen to live near where they base their servers. Otherwise, it's a laggy mess.
In my mind, all Eve has proven is that the technological barriers are still to high for MMOGs to be a single world based on one group of servers in one location.
People who live near Eve's servers have fun. The rest look at screens locked up by lag.
Eve is set up for veteran griefers to grief-and-run. Griefer jumps in with USS DreadMYuberness at the jumpgates. Unloads on newbie with massive broadside of whole arsenal of USS DreadMYuberness . Newbie usually dies in first onslaught (often while screen is locked up by lag due to the graphics for the new system just jumped into are loading). If newbie survive first onslaught, Griefer jumps out before newbie can call for help.
Jump system actually makes griefers more untouchable in Eve than other MMOGs. Ship speed is basically moot because everyone has to use the gate transit system. Griefers pounce at the gate itself. Unload on newbie before help can arrive. Loot whatever they can kill in one broadside. Jump out in the unlikely event the newbie survives first broadside.
Gaining skills is a matter of setting your skill you want to game, and then waiting a long time. There is no actual playing involved. Every single activity takes forever and is incredibly boring. Even PvP, the only possible enjoyment in the game is incredibly boring and tedious.
This guy has posted another comment literally identical to this one. Check it out.
Guild Wars is a single universe, as well. However, it's not really a "massive" game, as everything is instanced...
"To them another high level dungeon is a complete new challenge with an AI that uses different spells and rewards that give different benefits. To you it is just another dump AI wich you can learn with a few tries and dumps yet more loot that gives a few stat boosts so you can do it all over again."
This is why I can't stand MMORPG's. They all seeme so much the same. Different environments and such but the basics are the same. In Everquest you cast magic spells. In City of Heroes, you cast spells or invoke technology, or whatever. You kill rats, or thugs, or whatever, but it's all pretty much the same crap.
Then you get the tedious and predictable AI's. All you have to do is either overwhelm them with sheer power, or use some trick.
I like games where I actually work against people. People think. They can be predicatble too, but sometimes they aren't. There's a challenge to it like Chess. Trying to figure out how they think and trying to change your patterns to throw them off.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
"Something else" is already there in the form of numerous RP-centric (usually slow level progression) NWN persistent worlds. Granted, it's not "massive" by any measure, but for quality RP more than 10 characters gathered in a single place is a hindrance anyway.
The leveling, the questing, the instancing, the consensual pvp, the carebearization of players entering the genre. When people get banned for scamming other players via sending a mystery box in the mail for 10gold on delivery, and it turns out to have 1 copper in it, you know something is wrong with the game.
If you want a truly revolutionary and amazing game, wait for Darkfall.
I just finished playing Oblivion. It's a perfect example of the enemies always being a level above you. You can literally go anywhere in the game, even into "Oblivion", as a second level character with a wood club and beat the game. But *every* bandit in the game has $30k in armor later in the game, even when they ask for the same $100 bribe. If they fell upon one of their own, they'd be rich for life, but instead they extort the peasantry for pennies. Sucks. Ass.
Luckily, as soon as it came out many modders changed the loot progression, the leveling world, the way skills and levels work, etc. Now, with the right collection of mods, the world is a scary place. Walk into the wrong areas and bandits will gut you for lunch money. Come back with better skills and kill three with a single spell.
Anyways, one way to make this work is to make defense easier. There are a lot of good ways to keep people away. Polearms, caltrops, a doorway. Another was is to make "hit points" not change much as you get more powerful. Like in real life. One bullet can stop Rambo. What keeps you alive is building defensive skills, armor, well-chosen weapons, tactical advantage, stealth, etc. This way combat becomes more guerilla in nature, instead of standing around trading sword blows like a Final Fantasy game.
And I posted a rebuttal. He's a troll... can't justify his comments. I actually disprove his comments by playing Eve Online from thousands of miles away from the servers. Go figure :)
There is always going to be some type of leveling. Your level is just a numeric representation of the accomplishments your character has achieved. It represents your skills, talents, and accumulated equipment. And players want to compare their characters. It's much easier to say I have a level xx Warrior than it is to say I have a Warrior with xxx sword skill, xxx blacksmithing, and all my armor is purple....
If you take away leveling, every character is brand new every time you log in. That would mean a less persistant world, and I think most players would like a more persistant one. Developers don't like that, it's harder to code for and harder to test. Right now you can take 100 different WoW servers, and the only difference between them is the players.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
Interesting thoughts, and you have a point with your conclusion.
In a less permanent way, however, it is doable and has been done. In DOAC and Neocron, players can conquer places that give their realm or clan an advantage. While that can be reversed by a counterattack and things are back to the status quo, it does not happen automatically.
So the first step beyond the static amusement park exists.
Another idea are player-built cities, which have reportedly been tried in SWG with mixed results. I think the concept is worth rethinking and improving (maybe limited to certain places, and offering a construction kit for putting your houses together?).
C - the footgun of programming languages
Most of the MMORPGs all suck, if not all of them, sadly. They suck the life out of hapless players who for whatever reasons waste vastly inordinate amounts of time often driven in the end by the greed for stuff that the original post talked about. The main players, the popular ones, all follow the model of gain powers and stuff, worthless virtual stuff that people will devote 40 hour weeks to obtaining and in the end for what? So they can do it all over again on the next harder rung of the grind ladder and get more power and stuff, rinse, repeat, eventually burn out, then finally quit - hopefully with some RL relationships still intact.
/played time on her main. She has other high level characters and as far as I know, lives in Norrath still.
At least after a couple hundred hours in a CRPG like Oblivion you return to life or if nothing else, move on to a completely new experience. Hopefully you've enjoyed some kind of story to go with the exploration, leveling up, getting stuff, questing, killing stuff, etc.
I've known and I suspect many of you have as well, people who literally live in lands like Norrath. They spend as much time there as many do on full time employment. One person I liked well but felt sorry for had actually been playing EverQuest for an average of 40+ hours per week for a full six years and that was only the
I know these are player issues, not game issues but these games are designed with grind in mind. Keep the player busy, doing SOMETHING, however mundane, stupid or mind numbing it may be. EverQuest Monks sitting for some 50+ hours hoping to kill the one mob they need for a piece of pipe that is just one step in their "first" epic weapon comes to mind. Clicking over and over and over to gain a skillup in what is supposed to pass for "crafting" items, etc. The timesinks in many of these, maybe all of the mainstream ones? are simply hellish wastes of time and life. Yet people enslave themselves in the quest for the holy grail of raid gear and top rankings on thier server, etc.
We've all seen those who prefer to purchase a ready made (already played) high level character on ebay, lots of plat or gold or whatever the currency is to get the best stuff, twink out thier toons, etc. This is the most obvious example of people who don't even get that the point is to actually play the game, not purchase it preplayed for you. That people do this at all says something about how these games work and reward players and what kind of players sometimes gravitate toward this kind of game system. There is a high greed factor at work in many of these games and it is frequently a source of bitterness among players as some steal kills, camps, etc. from others.
So they make it all instanced in many of them now. Great. Now you have games like D&D Online where basically you just plow through dungeons that feel like Diablo in 3D with a group of people too busy killing stuff, busting barrels and looting chests to actually interact with each other. Not exactly D&D in its purest essence if you ask me. Not even close, despite the license.
I have yet to play WoW but I am guessing they have evolved the genre substantially or they would not be enjoying the success they are, even though I have read enough to understand that it is evolution here, not revolution.
I think I am going to play WoW and see for myself why it enjoys the success it does. I hope to like it. I know I plan to play casually. I have a life and I enjoy lots of other things and other games. I will not be a slave to one game and I pity the poor souls who do fall into that. It's OK with me if I am done at 60. I can try playing another class for a new experience, perhaps on the other faction, in another city, etc. That works for me. I am not raiding every night in the hope I get a lucky roll for a single item that might give me a chance in pvp. I'll pass thanks.
Maybe I'll try a "instant" pvp toon in Guild Wars just to see how pvp can be. That may also be fun. Skip the grind and just roll a
Bah! My MMOG is Wikipedia.
No statement is true, not even this one.
Riiiight.
Despite that over-hyping Second Life has received on
As I stated, there is no market for that type of thing. The people who are interested in it are a very, very small minority.
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
Yes, if you redefine levelling to mean "any persistent change to a character's features" than there will always be lebelling, assuming you have a game based on persistent player avatars (which isn't the only peristent MMO possibility, though it defines the MMORPG genre).
OTOH, if you take levelling to mean a single, common unidimensional measure that applies to all characters, then, no, there doesn't have to be levelling. And, yeah, its easier to say I have a Level XX warrior, that doesn't mean it is more interesting than multidimensional variation that doesn't always increase.
Is that post supposed to be sarcastic?