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Throwing Out the Rulebook For MMOs
MMORPG.com's Dana Massey asks about the possibility of throwing out the rulebook for MMOs, suggesting that the next blockbuster title in the genre will be one that ignores many of the features and conventions that have come to be standards over the years. Quoting:
"Who said that MMOs require hot bars? Who proclaimed that it's not a proper MMO unless you have quests? Blizzard took a formula that almost all MMOs had been using for years and distilled it down to addictive perfection. Love or hate WoW, it's a polished, polished title. It's no coincidence that on hardcore MMO sites, like this one, WoW is not the most hyped or trafficked game around. It's not that it's bad, but veteran MMO players don't have the same love for it, simply because we've all seen some variation of it before. The WoW community has always been a bit apart from the larger MMO community. Based purely on the number of subscribers, WoW articles should statistically annihilate every other game on this site, but they don't. A huge percentage of people who truly love WoW, I've always believed, do not know or particularly care about this whole world of MMOs out there. They're WoW players and that's it."
"They're WoW players and that's it"?
That's a laugh. I don't know anyone of the 20 or 30 people that play or have played WoW for thousands of hours that haven't tried out other MMORPGs - Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, EVE, a slew of free or freemium ones, etc. Some of them drifted away from WoW when it became clear blizzard really had no idea what it was doing with some of the classes (Spellcasting pushback wasn't balanced properly until about *three years* after WoW came out, for example), others drifted back when it became clear the problems with AoC and WAR were even worse than WoW's problems.
Essentially, it's the "mostly harmless" MMORPG. No love for WoW, but it's there, it's a relatively okay method for wasting some time online, and it's relatively well polished.
The WoW community has always been a bit apart from the larger MMO community
I don't think that word means what you think it means...
Hotbars came about for a reason.
Have any of you played Ultima Online that didn't specifically stress using a hotbar? It was difficult. There was a lot of macroing, a lot of memorization of keys, etc. Really took away from the immersion.
With hotbars, you know where your favorite skills are. You can pretty much set the keyboard up as you like, in terms of your skills.
Can we do better? Yes, but not with conventional keyboard/mouse/monitor devices.
What about some of the other typical things found in most MMORPGs?
Levels? Ultima Online did just fine without them. All it had was stats and skills, and you just needed to practice what you wanted to get better at. This was a good system, I think. Not for everyone though.
Health/Mana/Etc? Warhammer Online did an excellent job with these. They all regenerated very quickly. In essence, you could technically fight forever as long as your health held out. Your mana with which to cast spells came back quickly enough to cast over and over, but not quickly enough to cast the best things over and over.
Quests? Not everyone likes to grind enemies for a long time. However, not everyone likes to quest. Rappelz had a good idea. Lots and lots of traditional quests, and lots and lots of kill quests. This satisfied both types of player.
One-player control? Sword of the New World, I believe, let you control multiple characters that you had created.
Real-time play? Actually, a turn-based combat MMORPG would be nice. Think something along the lines of Final Fantasy Tactics during battle.
Point is, there's lots of things you COULD change. But most of the things are there for reasons. World of Warcraft is the best at the moment because it learned from everyone elses' mistakes. It also learned from their successes. World of Warcraft is the MMORPG analogue to the Borg from Star Trek.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
The problem is that everytime a game is made with the first three letters above, the last three always seem to be RPG and this is always the problem. I am a gamer who spends a lot of time and money on gaming. I have a young family so going out socialising isnt a real possibility like it was 10 or even 5 years ago. I've tried WoW and i've tried Eve, whilst both seem initially interesting they fall foul (to me) in one key area - gameplay. In short there isnt really that much.
All of these MMO(rpg's) seem to make their money and selling point around what's round the corner. You might have a Thorax or a +5 shield now, but in one more month you could have a Deimos and a +9 shield AND a new hammer! Its also this point that raises my next.
Skill
Alot of these MMO's have painted themselves into a corner with regard to creating a level playing field between established players and new players. You could have two players of equal skill squaring off but because one has been feeding his habit for a few months or even years longer they win in the random number generator fight that occurs.
I am hoping that the new jumpgate game chages this a bit with its reliance on player piloting skill for combat if the read-ups are to be believed but in the meantime I rely on games like Left4Dead to provide my social gaming fix. The number of hours I have got in on it are absurd. Its a class based game, with a social setting - especially if you play vs mode and best of all you dont get your ass handed to you by someone Jonesing bad for a fix from a 3 year habit, getting the kill simply because the developer is giving them an I win button for their money.
To me games are about skill with a little bit of luck and that is what alot of these MMO's with their endless levelling seem to forget, I have money and am willing to give it to a developer who can figure that out.
Naaw.
They are just like me. If i'm going to stare at my avatars behind running around for hours on end I want it to be as pretty as possible.
That's what I wondered about too. Every time there was some [NEXT GAME] coming out soon, be it LOTRO, WAR, AOC, or even duds like D&D Online or Tabula Rasa or Vanguard, the guild chat was _full_ of disgruntled WoW players talking non-stop about how they're gonna move to it as soon as it launches and never look back. Then somehow they come back anyway.
Even the idea that WoW should annihilate the other games otherwise, is stupid. WoW may well be what keeps those other duds alive in the first place.
Last I've heard a statistic, the average player stayed on an MMO for 6 months. Sure, some stay for ever, but they're few. Some leave when the "free" month is over. But on the average, it was 6 months. Then they get bored and bugger off.
I'm betting that a lot of the customers of those other games are recycled ex-WoW players. People spend their months on WoW, get bored of doing the same raid again, get ideas like "meh, I wonder if WAR/LOTRO/EQ2/Whatever is any better."
Plus, look at the MMOG charts. Before WoW the western MMOs recycled the same pool of IIRC about a million players total. Each newcomer getting another 100,000 was visible in the others losing a total of 100,000. WoW increased that 10 times over night. And again, their players fall off and try other games too. (But actually keeping them, that's another problem.) In effect it increased the pool for a lot of "me too" MMOS from "whoever of those 500,000 EQ1 players gets bored and wanst to try something else" to "whoever of WoW's 10,000,000+ players gets bored and wants to try something else."
For a lot of the incompetent designers and incompetent publishers (I'm looking at you, Sony), WoW has been a windfall, not their doom.
At any rate, what I see there is the usual fanboy rationalization, except this time it's called an article.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
At least if you want to "beat" WoW.
Let's be sensible: You cannot create an MMO at the same "polished" level as WoW. No MMO, ever, will have the polished feel of an MMO that has been in existance for about 5 years. You can't afford that. To do that, basically what you'd have to do is create a MMO (insane dev costs), then have people play it for free for five years (even more insane dev costs), support those people at release level, and so on, all without a dime of revenue.
Remember the release of WoW? Yes, it was a lot more finished than many MMOs at release (Blizzard actually does finish their games, most of the time), it still was the usual disaster. Servers not available for days. Quests broken and requiring GM intervention to complete. Balance off. The same you will encounter in any MMO, and usually they're even worse than at WoW release.
Now you try to compete with WoW. If you use the same eazy-bake cookie mix that WoW used, why the heck should people go to your game? They already get that with WoW. Just better. More finished, more balanced, more polished and more reliably.
If you want to compete, if you want to make a "WoW killer", you have to offer something different. You will have a very hard time to convince a die-hard WoW player to come to your game, to do that basically you have to offer them something WoW lacks. You can't just offer the same and think people will switch. Why should they? They'd have to start over at zero again while they already went through the treadmill of leveling in WoW and are now at the "juicy" part of endgame.
You have to offer something different. Just making the next WoW isn't going to convince anyone.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Grouping experience? That's what I'm looking for in an MMO. I don't want to play essentially a solo game up to levelmax so I can finally start grouping because it's required for endgame content (only to find out that neither me nor anyone else can sensibly play in a group because we never did).
With older MMOs groups were basically a requirement to get anywhere. Anyone remember DAoC? No class (save the "new" ones that were introduced because people whined 'cause they couldn't get to level 50 without actually interacting with other players) could solo well past level 20, you also got a LOT more experience with a group.
But those games are not what "the masses" want. They don't want to have to travel for 15 minutes. They don't want to look for a group for another 15 minutes. They don't want to group to "farm". Appearantly, what people want today in MMOs is a solo game with the option to brag about what they could do alone.
Why the heck I should pay 15 bucks a month to play a solo game with bragging rights is beyond me, but appearantly that's how it is today.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
LOL I meant boars...if I spent two years killing boards in the forest I would have been one hell of a carpenter....or have a shitload of splinters.
That's basically what made WoW the huge success it is: It is trivially easy to level up. It takes time. Nothing else. I've heard of 3 year olds playing it and being quite successful, and I do not doubt that a single moment. Which is cool, before you mod me flamebait, if that's what you're looking for. Many people do have a challenging life and want to relax and unwind in a game, not to face more challenging obstacles and tough decisions. Others again don't get anything done and want at least a sense of accomplishment in a game, and an easy game gives you that more, well, easily.
It is a bit more of a challenge (well, was before it was dumbed down so anyone could do it again) when you got to the point where you needed a group for raids. Compared to the rest of the MMO world, they tend to be fairly easy too (just watch where you step so you don't run into the wanderers and look up a cycle for your styles/spells to max out DPS isn't quite what I'd consider a challenge).
But this is what is wanted. The majority of people don't want challenging games. They want rewards.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hardcore players is nice speak for "assholes who complain if things don't go their way". Really, I have played about every "mmorpg" since bbs days, to include early graphical ones like Yserbius (if you could call that a mmorpg). Every game gets its "hardcore" people who are nothing more than those self righteous bastards in politics and the like who tell us how what we should enjoy and what we should do which of course none of which applies to them.
They are hardcore players because they can never be satisfied. Change something in game, even if it does not affect them directly it becomes a major issue. If it makes the game easier for someone suddenly the whole game becomes carebear. If it reduces the ability of their current class to gank/be overpowered they scream nerf. That is the key, real hardcore players would not care about nerfs - it makes the game more challenging. Hence everytime I see them complain its because someone else might get a shiny that they think they only deserve.
Why does WOW have so many hardcore naysayers? Simple, because these people can't all be number one when there is a sizable pool of great gaming talent to compete against. Hence the "hardcore" people crop up with every excuse and exception to explain why other people aren't as good as them and how its the games fault for not letting "the hardcore" people demonstrate their superiority.
As for the article, I read "We cannot compete with WOW so here is our list of chosen excuses : read feature changes"
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Who said that MMOs require hot bars?
Because salad bars are wimpy?
You can play WoW and get to maxlevel without ever interacting with a single other person directly (you might want to buy stuff in an auction from time to time). And if you're sociophobic enough to never group for a raid, you can eventually get that gear other ways too. Why one would pay 15 bucks a month to play a single player game is beyond me, but it's certainly possible.
And it's not designers. Earlier games were designed around early level grouping, and the quests were likewise geared for that too. It's not what the devs want, it's appearantly what the players want. Today's gamers don't want to "LFG!" for 15 minutes before they can start playing, they want to log in and play right away.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You want to make something totally novel? Throw out the rulebook? Sounds like a bold, compelling plan. Everyone loves innovation, right? The problem is, when you defy conventions, you also throw out standards, and people get lost trying to understand your game. The Wii succeeded, not because it *defied* convention, but because it *embraced* convention. Nintendo turned household objects -- a TV remote, a bathroom scale, a skateboard -- into game controllers. Immature artists and engineers love to imagine that their fresh ideas will change the world, but the truth is that there are many brilliant ideas already out there. Go find those. Integrate them in a fresh way. Then polish it to perfection. Just like WoW did.
The Ultima Online skill system and skill systems in general are another form of the class/level system. This idea did not spring Minerva-like from my mind, but I have forgotten where I first read the idea (perhaps Lum the Mad had something to say about it.)
Look at UO as an example. Distinct classes with small variations emerged from the skill and mechanics balancing at a particular time. There were three major classes that I recall: the "Dex Monkey," the "Tank Mage," and the Thief/Archer. A player effectively leveled by advancing their skills and stats towards their perfect build for their objective class.
However, the skill and stat system provided extreme flexibility. A player could take their "maxed out" character and completely change their stat and skill distributions. While initially it was huge chore to accomplish, the difficulty of this process was greatly reduced as the game matured.
In some ways, class and level systems can have a similar flexibility: talent resets, skill resets, etc. The key distinction between the two is that in any class/level system that I have played, you could not fundamentally change the class of a character, just the level of variation provided within that class.
Even in a game such as EVE Online, classes tend to emerge. They are perhaps the most nebulous classes out of any MMORPG that I have seen, yet characters tend to have skill concentrations associated with a particular purpose: hauler, carrier pilot, covert ops pilot, etc. The main distinction with EVE is that it lacks a zero-sum skill or leveling system. The only constraints on leveling are time and resources. However, the sheer complexity of the game lends itself to extremely blurred class distinctions (Would all the Marxists in the audience please sit down.)
I could go on and on about Ultima Online, EVE, and MMORPGs in general, but I will end my monologue with a few parting thoughts.
I think the two major things that drew me to EVE and Ultima Online were the consequence of death and something that I call the "grief economy." Basically in UO and EVE, death had very real consequences. In UO, anything you were carrying on your person was "lootable" after death. In EVE, you lost your ship and potentially some of your skill levels. Furthermore, in both games the victor of a player versus player confrontation stood to gain significant economic reward. A "grief economy" arises in both situations, and the balancing of that economy is paramount for the success of the game. Yet, it is precisely that economy and the incentives to do harm to others that prevents those games from gaining a large market share in todays MMORPG environment.
My comments are not meant to pigeon-hole either game. I am just discussing some relevant aspects of each.
WoW didn't copy other MMOs. WoW copied Dungeons and Dragons, the same as every other role playing game, ever. They followed a trend twenty years in the making and nailed it so thoroughly that everything that follows will be derivative of WoW instead of DnD.
What I hate about WoW is how no one stops to enjoy the scenery. Once you're in the Skinner box, all anyone cares about is pushing the button and getting the loot.
I hate that the story, what little there is, has become as arbitrary and convoluted as Lost.
I hate how player actions never actually effect the story. You only follow a script that forty, I mean, twenty-five other people have also followed in order to gain entry to the Skinner box.
I hate how the economy rewards wasting time on pointless diversions such as daily quests, and resource and loot farming before that.
I hate how the economy is based on inflation (daily quests) and sinks for inflation (tradeskill leveling, epic flying, trophy mounts), and not the production of actual value. The real economy is farming the Skinner box, now more than ever.
I hate how the constant whining by the PvP basement dwellers causes Blizzard to keep changing how character mechanics work for "balance".
I hate how Blizzard has removed nearly all forms of specialization, focusing on "the player not the class", thus commodifying players and putting an even greater focus on gear, macros, and meters.
Do you know what the next big MMO will have? None of the above. WoW has played it out. You don't trade crack for a harder drug, you either quit or you fry your brain, so you're done either way. There is nothing fun about a homogeneous treadmill, especially one with an extremely awkward and complex user interface that requires add-ons to render it effective.
The WoW-killer will have a simple user interface, with easy to learn but difficult to master player mechanics. The story and environment will change based on player actions, and player actions will not happen in an individual sandbox. Different "realms" will progress at different rates and in different directions, so there is incentive to progress the story and do so in the direction you want it to go. It will reward specialization, strategy, long term planning, and cooperation. It will punish ganking, out-of-band drama, and other behavior that attracts socially stunted basement dwellers, or, at least, give other players incentive to punish it. It will never have a quest to bring $npc $x $animal $organ.
Fair point, but as you probably remember they said the same about WoW. It was going to compete with the big elephant called EQ1, and EQ2 was announced soon too. Sony was _the_ name in MMOs, nobody had dethroned their game yet, and there was no reason to assume that the sequel will fare any worse. (Turns out that Sony fucked up anyway.) Blizzard was yet another company making a me-too MMO. They had yet to prove themselves in that arena. Surely they can't compete with Sony by just doing same old, right?
Turns out that there is some merit in polishing the same old turd after all.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"blizzard is warming up to the fact that the game is aging"
I'd like to see the characters age, ya know, peak and then decline. One of the reasons I won't play an MMORPG is that starting at the bottom and knowing you'll never catch the early/elite players is a drag. There are lots of WoWsers around the office and hearing them talk about leveling and which quests they've completed almost always makes me laugh a little. Where's the role playing if your character can never get old, never really die and has done the exact same things as every other character.
I think some of the early non-MMO RPGs had aging and real death as features. Sure, they weren't expecting people to shell out $$$ every month, but there are ways to make aging and death be kind of cool. Maybe have an heir system where you get to have your main character, who goes out questing and such, and if they die, you can create a new, lower level character that inherits what's left of their stuff.
If you had the right set of skills, you could have some of the skills peak at different times, so that agility plateaus before constitution and intellect plateaus last. This way, you wouldn't have young, level 80 mages. They would be old, like mages were back in the good old days before Harry Potter.
You've got procedurally generated content in my player made content!
No, you've got player made content in my procedurally generated content!
Woah, what we have here is a unique, complex world that exists as we found it, but we can change it, defeat its challenges, and create new ones!