Spot on about the budget, and it is a bit unfair to compare the newly-minted DDO with the 1 year old WoW. And WoW is by no means without its own flaws... I find it somewhat shallow and repetitive, otherwise I wouldn't be seeking out
My point was only this: that what makes or breaks an MMO experience is the sense of being immersed in another world. And paradoxically, what makes that immersion possible is having a good UI, so you can spend less time playing at playing the game, and more time playing the game.
And Blizzard has done a very good job of this, and what's more opened up their UI to player mods (something Turbine is not doing.) I hope the UI improves, I really do, because I'm a long time D&D fan and so far I'm mostly enjoying the game, just not the constant wrangling with the interface.
... is that a good story is ultimately about the meeting between a character and a world that leaves both character and world changed. You cannot really do this in an MMO, at least at this point, because the world is ultimately static.
Yes, you can have the illusion of story, if you ignore the fact that the "story" isn't so much progressing as resetting for the next person to come along. But in the end, an MMO is more like one of those rides you see at Disneyland, where you sit in a little car and move through an endlessly-repeating animatronic "story time."
Maybe some day, let us hope, someone will be clever enough to figure out a way to create a virtual world that is dynamic. Until then...
Maybe so, maybe so. But there are a lot of things game designers (including Turbine) can still learn from WoW. Whether or not you like the game play, you have to admit the UI design is very nice, as is the relative lack of load screens.
I have been playing DDO for a week or so, with mixed feelings. I am constantly finding little things that WoW does that DDO doesn't. Not in the game itself, but in the interface. Assist? Nope. Dressing room? Nope. First-person view? Nope. The ability to trade with another PC by simply dragging an item from your inventory over their toon? Hardly. A minimap you can ping? No.
Like it or not, WoW has become the gold standard for MMOs. It does not have the most innovative game design, or the most cutting edge graphics... but it has a level of immersiveness that DDO -- which is still a fun game, no doubt -- lacks. IMHO it's going to take a much more polished product than DDO to knock it off of that pedestal.
This was the first thing I asked on the DDO forum after I got the game and installed it. The answer, sadly, is no. And the UI is definitely not state of the art, not even close.
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My point was only this: that what makes or breaks an MMO experience is the sense of being immersed in another world. And paradoxically, what makes that immersion possible is having a good UI, so you can spend less time playing at playing the game, and more time playing the game.
And Blizzard has done a very good job of this, and what's more opened up their UI to player mods (something Turbine is not doing.) I hope the UI improves, I really do, because I'm a long time D&D fan and so far I'm mostly enjoying the game, just not the constant wrangling with the interface.
Yes, you can have the illusion of story, if you ignore the fact that the "story" isn't so much progressing as resetting for the next person to come along. But in the end, an MMO is more like one of those rides you see at Disneyland, where you sit in a little car and move through an endlessly-repeating animatronic "story time."
Maybe some day, let us hope, someone will be clever enough to figure out a way to create a virtual world that is dynamic. Until then ...
Like it or not, WoW has become the gold standard for MMOs. It does not have the most innovative game design, or the most cutting edge graphics... but it has a level of immersiveness that DDO -- which is still a fun game, no doubt -- lacks. IMHO it's going to take a much more polished product than DDO to knock it off of that pedestal.
This was the first thing I asked on the DDO forum after I got the game and installed it. The answer, sadly, is no. And the UI is definitely not state of the art, not even close.