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Tabula Rasa Goes Live
After a lengthy wait and a substantial retooling, Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa has gone live. The New York Times is running a piece looking into the history of Garriott's interaction with MMOGs, while Wired had a chance to speak with the 'General' getting a better sense of what the game is about. "'It takes 30 minutes to an hour just to meet up with your friends to start playing' in most MMOs, says Richard Garriott, the new game's executive producer. In contrast, Tabula Rasa, a PC game that will be released Nov. 2, was designed to appeal to the average Joe who's probably not interested in learning what "gold farming" or "damage over time" means and just wants to amuse himself by saving the universe. It's a calculated shift designed to move beyond the hard-core gaming crowd and court the mainstream audience that has made Nintendo's Wii such a surprise success. And it isn't particularly remarkable, except that Garriott is the man largely responsible for inventing the MMO model in the first place. "
It doesn't work. You can kick a ball for 5 minutes and call it casual soccer. You can't run a 5 minute run and call it a marathon.
Somethings just take time and a adventure is one of them.
One part of an adventure is that you go into dangerous lands, far from your home and safety, battling against increasing odds until finally you reach your goal.
That takes time.
Doesn't mean ALL games have to long drawn out affairs, but a chess game without the full set of piece just ain't a chess game, playing patience with only 10 cards will go a lot quicker but is hardly to be called a game anymore.
Take for instance distance, how far should a target zone be from a player. A 1 minute hop? A five minute walk? A 30 minute hike? A days worth of travelling? Or a venture that takes even the most rabid player days to accomplish.
WHAT give the richer gameplay. Sadly most MMO's seem to think 30 minute hike that has maybe 1 minute worth of gameplay but feels like days is the best option.
Lord of the Rings Online suffers from this, the entire world seems far too small, to the point of being silly. Enemy camps are so close to city they are within arrow range of each others. With the front a few minutes walk away, live continues on peacefully in bree. etc etc.
At the same time quests have you going all over the place.
The worsed of what I listed above, long travel but no sense of adventure.
Back to an old maligned game, Star Wars Galaxies, pre-doc-buffs. Live was dangerous back then and equipment expensive. Once in a while, some brave idiots, eh adventures, set out to hunt rancors, gathering people at a space port for a dangerous mission. Travelling there was a short trip through space (instant travel) but the space ship only left once every 30 minutes. This gave a real sense of preparing for a journey. Miss that ride and you would not make it.
Once you arrived you were on a planet so dark and hostile it had only two small outposts. Some rich but clueless companions would attempt to mount their speederbikes, the more experienced would call them idiots and tell them to put it away or loose it. Speederbikes just serve as extra roughage on Dathomir. Forget about being dismounted, you could loose that expensive vehicle in an instant. Disabled and now probably miles from your mates. You hunt rancors on foot.
Now it depended, were you after money OR were you looting for resources, back then people still cared and that meant a trip to rancor valley. An well deserved name, for a large area to the NW. Better have picked the right spaceport to travel to, or now you had a long distance to traverse to catch up with your group.
If you were lucky, you could buy some last minute supplies from the local bazaar at outrageous prices (I know they were outragous, I put them on there, Ah, sweet money) but with a 30 minute wait there was no hopping back for supplies. You were either ready or left behind. Catch up? Sure kid. You do that.
Then you sat out on a long journey, trying to avoid most things, fightig when needed trying to not attract more. Resting from time to time to wait out poisons and re-orgnaize equipment. If the medic was running out you hoped the ranger was good enough to have the biggest camp available so he could craft new stims with the harvested materials. If not. Well, continue on with what available, to costly to return now.
And then rancor valley, every way you looked, rancors, with just a handfull of giant beasts who you could count on not to attack you, they provided safety of a sort, since they would attack any rancors that came close, as long as you made sure not to accidently attack them.
Then the long hunt would begin, trying to find the right ones, perhaps circling out a young one for a beast master to train. Avoiding the most lethal ones and always on the look out for some force users like nightwitches and more dangerous foes.
Once you were done with the hunt. Well know you have to make your way back, low on supplies
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm sorry but this game fails. If you want a fun hybrid MMO/Shooter, try Hellgate London. Now that game is a lot of fun and hella addictive. Sure, every RPG/MMO/whatever has stupid quests, but Hellgate London is so much fun that you won't really care. It's like Diablo (made by some of the same people) where the quests don't matter so much, it's more the hack-n-slash (or point-and-click) fun of killing hundreds of mobs.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Every MMORPG is always going to have grinding. It's like the labyrinths in old adventure games: there to make the game longer.
Take a typical JRPG game, one which takes around 100 hours to play through if you aren't in any particular hurry. Play two hours a day, and it takes 50 days, or two months with occasional day out, to exhaust the content. Now, how long did the game take to make ? I'd imagine it took more than two months.
So what does that have to do with MMORPG's ? Well, it means that content takes time to make. In order to have people stick around while you're making the next expansion, you need to give them something to play; and since the new content is not finished yet, the only thing available is the old content. Thus the players are made to play the same quests through again and again, in other words, grind; not because of either malice or stupidity of gaming companies, but simply because it is impossible to create new quests at the same rate as the average player can play through the old ones.
For this reason grinding will likely always be an important part of MMORPG genre. The other possibility is a simulation type environment where new situations are created by the gameworld mechanics and player interaction, but that also gives the game makers less control, and is therefore risky.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I mean, let's take super mario. There were also levels you must complete, skills you can pick and an increase in difficulty over time. The difference: you had to do ONE difficult thing again and again (attempt to clear that level) to advance as opposed to do one simple task (click 4 times and kill that dire rat) AGAIN and AGAIN. It both takes time, but the first thing is MUCH MORE FUN.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.