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The Rise of Originality In MMOs
Karen Hertzberg writes "Over the last half decade, gamers have been forced to wander through familiar worlds and universes. Studios have been licensing IPs left and right, grabbing everything from the Wheel of Time to Star Trek. Originality seemed to be a lost art, and although these worlds were fun to adventure in, many didn't hold the same sort of magical spell that original titles like EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot once enjoyed. But change is coming. Blizzard Entertainment revealed that their next MMO would be an original IP, and this year's E3 lineup featured more brand new games than titles derived from existing worlds. So, why the sudden shift? To answer that question, Ten Ton Hammer's Cody 'Micajah' Bye sent a number of questions to original IP development teams across the world."
It's the newest social networking fad, a place of unparalleled delights and frightening possibilities. It's First Life, a new Massively Multiplayer Offline Reality Playing Game, produced by Jehovah Labs six thousand years ago and only accelerating in popularity.
While First Life is referred to as a game, it does not have points, scores, fixed levels or an end-strategy. The environment is known to players as "The Real World." As of June 2009, over six billion users are in the World at any one time. It is famous for its ultra-realistic play and its amazing high-resolution 3-D graphics, framerate and physics engine.
In First Life, you are assigned a body type. You cannot trade it up or easily change its basic characteristics, though you can outfit it in various ways.
"It's weird," said one player. "You can hardly buy cool replacement penises anywhere. But sex in First Life is amazing. It's really hard to level up to, though, and it cost me a fortune."
Many now suggest that First Life could be a passing fad, with the World being all but abandoned after a few decades. But nearly half of all Americans who belong to the First Life community claim that it is almost as important as the virtual world.
Some worry about the apparently addictive nature of First Life. The huge growth in reality gaming in the last century means a sharp increase in the numbers of people who take their passion for the hobby too far. "I know of people who are spending their week's holiday from EverQuest playing First Life. An addiction to a game like this is far more costly in time than any substance. Keep track of time, make sure your Eve Online characters don't go stale."
In the game, you can buy accessories for your character with an exchange mechanism called "money." People have started working in First Life to earn "money." Part of the addiction problem is "jobs" - in which players have to perform long-winded, mindless tasks, up to forty hours a week or even more, to bring up their levels and gain access to more adventure.
Stories of gamers spending ten to fifteen hours a day in First Life are becoming more frequent. And the impact that is having on their families is quite distressing for some. "He said that if he could spend 24 hours a day in the World, he would," sobbed the avatar of one player's mother. "His Kingdom of Loathing character's died of neglect. An Adventurer isn't Him any more."
The Archbishop of Alphaville condemned First Life's moral integrity. "Whoever designed First Life has watched too much EastEnders and read too much Tom Clancy. It's a psychosexual nightmare given virtual form, where giant flying penises are nowhere to be seen and disturbed people fail to wear even slightly less disgusting forms when having repulsive intercourse."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
but if you use an artificially short time span you wouldn't see it. I guess that makes the story easier.
In the realm of MMORPG you could claim EQ was original IP when it came out, so was Asheron's Call (very different from any MMORPG then and since - if anything it had many features that need to exist in newer MMORPGS).
Still I can summarize the need for original IP.
Expectations are set to high especially if the IP is well known. Witness LOTRO. They are literally handcuffed by the novels and every feature is measured by rabid fans against whatever they deem as cannon. For Blizzard to create a new IP means that we don't have to worry about Starcraft being crammed into a MMORPG and will see good RTS games on it. Diablo too will not be hammered into some form alien from what made it so fun to play.
The reason to not use original IP. Because it can provide consistency and take care a lot of the work needed to give a world life. Many things can be glossed over relying on the player to know the history from the original IP. Why does mob X do that? Well if you had read the novels, seen the movie, etc, you would inherently know. A few patches in and some NPC might be wise enough. Plus it justifies what otherwise might be considered stupid abilities or traits on npcs/mobs/pcs that exist.
As for other companies, oh well, lets hope someone can figure out the right combination to at least get their original IP seen. The problem with many is they promise the moon and deliver a steaming piile.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Announcing "The Rise of Originality" because Blizzard basically said they're going to do an MMO which is not based on an existing story is like announcing the rise of a new city because you saw a building shaped cloud in the sky.
For one thing, it's all talk at this stage - I do believe that Duke Nukem Forever stands as a shinning example of what exactly "just talk" is worth.
For another thing, just because it's not a downright copy of an existing story, doesn't mean it's not something similar to an existing MMO or a merging of existing models (like a WoW-clone but in space).
Is the OP trying to "create some buzz" as part of a viral marketing campaign, drive potential clicks to the adverts on a website's pages or just being a Blizzard fanboy?
J.R. Tolkien was an avid WoW player with 3 toons at level 80, so I really think Lord of the Rings was just an overblown roleplay post.
When did we start saying 'IP' when we meant 'ideas?' A game can have original IP just by having an original trademarked name. That's not the same as being based on an original concept.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Hell, breaking a camp was almost a fine art.
Not to mention navigating complex dungeons, exploring, bringing along the right class that allowed you to actually GO there (water breathing, crowd control, etc.)
Today's MMOs are like riding the subway. One path, the people riding along probably smell, are inconsiderate, and they all looks the same.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
> I think it would be nice to have some MMOs that have fixed time-lines or a clever way to regularly make everyone restart, etc.
Currently what many do is go bankrupt and hold a final event.
I've played Archmage (a web and turn based online game) before, and ending was part of the game. You had people trying to get the game to end early (cast "armageddon") and people trying to stop them... Armageddon was inevitable though even if nobody casted it - the server would go into it eventually. Then the top 10 players end up on some "top ranking list".
http://wiki.the-reincarnation.org/index.php/Armageddon
The big problem with "final events" (e.g. say a "final" huge war in WoW) is naturally very many players would want to play during them. Then the servers might fall over and everyone gets pissed off.
That's fine if you're intending to close down the game, but not fine if you're not :).
Today's MMOs are like riding the subway. One path, the people riding along probably smell, are inconsiderate, and they all looks the same.
That statement applies to most video games not just MMOs. However, unlike most games, subscription MMOs are heavily reliant on the number of players. A subscription-based MMO with too few players probably won't survive for long. So the developers have to find a balance between accessibility and challenge.
Make your game less challenging and you'll annoy the dedicated players. Make your game less accessible, however, and you risk driving off a majority of your subscription base. While I want a challenging MMO as much as the next guy, I want one that will survive.
With regards to your comments on "breaking camp", I remember well those days in the Northern Desert of Ro. I also remember the early days in Upper Blackrock Spire where crowd control was absolutely essential. While I do miss those days a bit, I also remember waiting an hour just to find a group to kill the same couple of camps over and over and over. I also remember ten-man UBRS runs taking more than two hours just to have the boss drop a chest piece for a class not even in the group. Those are not the days I want to relive. Heck, I don't even have time in my life to play games that work like that anymore.
literature snobbitry about how everything is just a rewrite of everything else is fairly irrelevant.
we don't CARE that it's the same old story being told in a different arrangement. we care about the arrangement.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!