The squandered potential of MMOs
Wolfshead has started a really great discussion on his blog: Waiting for the Next MMO Revolution
The reason why I’m in a perpetual state of angst is that I feel that the MMO industry has squandered all of the great potential that was evident a scant 10 years ago during the first MMO revolution heralded by Ultima Online and EverQuest. Sadly, things seem to be paradoxically devolving instead of evolving. MMO after MMO has failed to inspire me. There’s a creeping sense of complacency and predictability infecting this genre right now that worries me.
I have a basic theory on how we got to where we are in the MMO industry. It basically goes like this:
In the beginning there was MUD1. The fact that it even got people together in one game world was amazing. It told stories, but it didn’t really care about having a perfectly crafted world where everything fit together just so. Telling stories at all to multiple people at the same time was amazing.
MUD1 had imitators. Eventually, these imitators split into two major camps:
DIKU was hard coded. You could add content without recompiling the game, but you couldn’t modify the code. As a result, “developers” (wizards) created tons of monsters, loot, and areas since that was easier to do. Code, systems, and intricate ways to interact with the world were much harder. So they were done rarely.
LP was more soft-coded. You had a gamedriver that interpreted “soft-code” at runtime. Creating systems and new ways to interact with the world was basically just as easy (or hard) as adding new content. Adding new content was actually a bit slower than adding new content in DIKU, because everything had to be hand coded. As a result, LPs were less about “the next raid dungeon”, or the next piece of loot, and more about the game world.
The first generation of mass market MMOs was basically EQ and UO. EQ was DIKU style. UO was LP style. Both were successful (EQ slightly more so, but UO came earlier). At that point, the two schools were still basically equal.
The second generation of mass market MMOs was WoW and SWG. WoW was DIKU style. SWG was LP style. We know how that turned out.
SWG’s epic failure basically chopped down the LP tree and nothing has yet revitalized it. As a result, we get more and more DIKU clone MMOs and nothing from the LP side. Perhaps SW:TOR will change this, but with EA overseeing things who knows. Go Bioware! Fight the power!
There is no griefing in EVE. If you’ve been griefed, you’ve done something horrible wrong and then persisted on doing it.
That said, many people find EVE boring – or they’d have a much larger player base. I won’t bother telling you you should play it, or that clearly you never played long enough to have any idea what EVE offers – or you’d know my first statement to be true and wouldn’t call it a ‘griefer game’, whatever that means.
Of course, EVE’s greatest failing is that it really fails at presenting new players with what the game actually offers. It’s a bit like an MMO which sucks but has awesome raid content, though you could potentially start raiding on your first day if you knew what you were doing. In any case, I hardly blame you for not ‘getting it’ since the days of having to climb through barbed wire fences to get at the fun in an MMO should have died with Everquest. Unfortunately, at this point the only way to change that for EVE would be to remake the whole game – which would, of course, be missing the point.
While I find the playstyle interesting, I see why people call it a griefer game. You’ve got stuff like betrayal, out of game spying, players ripping eachother off on a large scale, etc. I can see the appeal in a game like that(I was REALLY cut throat in online games in my youth), but griefing is a good label for alot of what goes on there.
Outsider as per usual a very good point. I do enjoy playing high stakes full loot games with very competitive interguild politics…competitive to the point of breaking the will of the opposing guild to continue the fight if at all possible and/or infiltrating and destroying them. So yes some could call that griefing but it’s done with a competitive goal in mind….and yes said playing style can make players quit games if they aren’t prepared for it.
Muckbeast, I was only using EVE as an example…there’s several games in the development pipeline with more usual MMO combat, some outright twitch. I do beleive that type of gameplay offers a unique intensity and depth of experience if you give yourself a chance to get past the initial…shock.
While those types of MMOs with twitchy combat are interesting, I don’t see that as an improvement for MMOs. That type of gameplay is done better in non-MMO genres as that style of play works better for non-persistent results.
What shocks me is the continued lack of WORLDY games. By that I mean games where being a member of the game world is a significant draw. Quest heavy gaming has basically destroyed exploration, and a total lack of features to interact with the world in a meaningful way is the nail in the coffin.
Some of the modern MMO philosophies seem kind of backward to me. I used to love exploring in MUDs, but aside from borderline addiction in my school days I was not usually a high level player. In my eyes, the main benefit of leveling up was having more quests/areas accessible. Now it seems that quests are only there to speedramp you to higher levels. Odd.
Then again, I remember putting in a lot of time on quests and exploration as a MUD player and creator. From both sides it was pretty frustrating to know that people could always look up solutions online. That phenomenon is -much- more prevalent now I think. Do the majority of players just want the cookie at the end, rendering depth/theme/complexity a perceived waste of developer effort?
@Talsek
RE: Looking up quests and solutions in MMOs
Coming from a MUD background myself, I have to say – how much I look up varies with the game for me.
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World of Warcraft
In WoW I basically looked up everything because I didn’t give a fig about the storyline and basically only did the quests for a) xp and b) if they had a cool item. I was actually (ironically) pretty proud of NEVER reading WoW quest text.
I recently went back to WoW as a sort of ‘farewell to the old world’ on a trial account, since I will not be resubbing with Cataclysm. (Didn’t buy WotLK, not currently playing.) I must say, WoW quest text sucks. Most of it is boring as Hell (to me anyway), and while I did get some enjoyment from challenging myself with the trial account and ‘how far can you run and live at your trial gear and level’… I didn’t enjoy the quest text at all. And this time around, I read it all. Just to be ‘fair’.
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Guild Wars
My first time playing through all the campaigns of Guild Wars (which I dearly love), I would do the mission without looking things up. Expecting a WoW-like experience in terms of Accept/Reject quests, I started out not reading them.
Then I realised that every quest had custom (and usually sassy) Accept/Reject buttons… so I started reading them… and I was surprised, amazed, and amused. GW quests are *entertaining*. Well their quest text is. Which really, as MMOs stand right now, is most of the quest. ^_^
In GW, I would only look things up (such as missions/vanquishes/specific quests) after failing repeatedly, and needing to see what I was doing wrong/missing. This is something that, in MUDs at least – since cheat pages didn’t really factor in those – I accomplished by asking other players. Somehow in MMOs, that’s not really much of an option. You know people are going to send you to the Internetz to look it up anyway – may as well look it up by yourself right away.
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Jade Dynasty
Currently having a fling with this English-localised Chinese game by Chinese publisher Perfect World International. In JD, I read all the quest text, because I am a Wuxia nut – and because this is localised from a Chinese game based on a Wuxia novel… the storyline (which you can track the progression of through your quests) is extremely typical of the Wuxia general, and to me, that’s just wonderful. I love it.
As a side point, one of the things I’ve noticed about JD and GW is, as a whole ALL the quests serve to reinforce the overarching storyline. I never got that feeling with WoW. Oh yeah sure, Sylvanas is working towards something, the undeads want more plagues made but honestly… it’s disjointed and what do I care? Nothing.
In GW, I want to see the end of quests (especially towards the later part of the game), because they have interesting ‘easter eggs’ of information on different characters you see during the course of the storyline. In JD, so far it seems I’m basically on the ‘trail’ of the anti-hero, trying to follow along and patch up behind him, so I *want to know what happens next*. In WoW? I don’t care what happens, gimme my shinies.
Back on topic – in JD, I look things up CONSTANTLY. Not because I am too lazy to figure things out, because I don’t want to think, etc etc. But because JD is F2P, and their payment system has highly influenced their game design choices. For example, in JD, you can’t respec without paying USD$30. >.> And there are 150 levels. They provide a (good) in-game bot as a feature, but it still is incredibly grindy. So instead of boxing myself into the possibility of shelling out USD$30 for a freaking RESPEC… I look things up, I research.
A lot of JD’s quest items etc are pretty opaque – if you don’t look them up, you’ll have no idea if this thing you fished up is junk, or something a high level will pay a lot of gold for. Ah, gold. JD is the ‘poorest’ game I’ve ever played, in terms of mob gold drops. From what I’ve observed, if you don’t learn the game economy of your server in JD, you’ll end up paying real cash for gold. It seems to be one or the other. This is why I look up every strange item that lands in my inventory.
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To conclude the spam =) :
“Do the majority of players just want the cookie at the end, rendering depth/theme/complexity a perceived waste of developer effort?”
I’d say that’s not a question that you can ask in a general sense. You have to look at the game, and how the design decisions influence player desires. Once you know (or have an idea of) what those desires are, you can then more accurately ask why players in any given game are looking / not looking things up.
Peelosopical nugget:
Players all want the cookie. But – what is the cookie? HOoOOooOOoOM.
[...] has been a recent round of blog posts suggesting that current MMOs have lost something, that they aren’t living up to their potential, are in desperate need of a revolution, and that power-mad developers are trying to lock players on [...]
I have to disagree with the author on the LP path. I don’t believe UO nor SWG allowed people to create new ways of interacting with the game. I do think there is a difference between games like EQ/WoW and UO/SWG. But the distinction has more to do with open-ended character development and other issues, and not content-creation versus interaction-creation.
In fact I do not know of a popular MMOG that offers the ability to be “re-coded” – cloned and modified – in the same way as the early MUDs. I honestly think something like Second Life may be the eventual end for both the DUKI and LP roads. A place where it is possible to create new content (avatars, models, *and* new ways of interacting (programming, LSL).
@Muckbeat re: EVE — It is a virtual world, and it can be just as dangerous/exciting as the wild west, and just as boring as everyday work. It depends on the group you’re with and what’s going on politically. Like the real world, the drama (good or bad) happens with other people.
LP was not about players creating content (UGC, or user generated content). In fact, players couldn’t create content (for the most part). LP games were more world oriented, whereas DIKU games were all about the gear/stats. The nature of how you coded and built content on LP games vs. DIKU games is what made it easier for coders/developers/builders to make LP game worlds more “worldy.”
That’s the way in which UO/SWG following the LP path and EQ/WoW followed the DIKU path.