Slashdot Mirror
Why Don't MMOs Allow Easier Transportation?
Rock, Paper, Shotgun is running an opinion piece which asks why the majority of MMOs force users to spend a fair portion of their time traveling around a virtual world. At what point does moving from one location to another become a chore? From the article:
"I love big, explorable worlds. They're by far one of my most favourite things about games. Running off in a direction without any idea what I might encounter is a rare pleasure, and one far more likely to result in an exciting discovery in a game's world than the real one. ... Not knowing what's coming up is huge and exciting, and I'd not want to take it away from gaming, not ever. But you know what? Once I've been there, that moment's gone. I've discovered it already. I did the exploring. I don't need to spend half an hour of my time that I've allocated for playing games trudging at whatever stupidly slow speed a game's decided to impose upon me. There is no good reason, whatsoever, to not just let me be there."
Of course it's slow and sort-of sucks. That's it's purpose.
The only real point of online "games" is suck up as much of your money as possible for as many months as possible. Actual content is expensive and as long as your credit card payment doesn't bounce, there's absolutely no reason in the world why any company would make any game any better than the minimum to keep you from canceling.
On a less obvious note, the perceived value of a task is related to how much time and work you have invested it it, making the value of time spent in the game a self-fulfilling wish (I spent hundreds of hours doing this, therefor it must be a valuable task). Want something really interesting to do with your time? Find or make a job that doesn't suck. Learn to SCUBA dive. Meet new people. Find a girlfriend (or a wife). Go explore the real world.
You might want to keep in mind that no one plays the PC game Majesty. I've never even *heard* of it, and I read gaming magazines and websites all the time.
You might also want to note that, at least in WOW, you're never waiting 20 mins to get somewhere except *maybe* if its your first time going there and you've never explored any of the places in between. Travel time is 5 mins at most. Waiting time is more often waiting for other players to do things (either in-game or real-life) so that the group can start. THAT is the wait-time that needs to be fixed, and already has (in WOW) for battlegrounds.
If they can do the same thing for PUG instances, you'll have a 3-part game in which leveling is the only one with any wait-time at all. The other 2 parts (PVP and dungeons) teleporting you in when a full group is ready and able to go.
There was a time when WOW has ridiculous travel times, but thankfully as of WotLK most of the time-wastes have been removed or substantially lessened. And they keep getting lessened even more, eg. flying speed getting faster and cheaper in the next 3.2 patch.