This week, Dan Fortier waxes poetic about bringing a truly scary MMORPG to the market and what that might entail from developers and players alike.

I'm a bit late for Halloween, but that won't stop me from donning my 'provocative journalist' costume for one more circuit around the block in search of more goodies. In the spirt of the season I wanted to explore the concepts behind making a true Horror MMO, if such a thing is even possible. Last week I briefly mentioned a few things that could be done to improve immersion and it got me thinking about ways to turn even a multiplayer environment into a playhouse of terror. Tuck in the kids, turn out the lights and ignore the occasional suspicious sounds coming from outside as you read along.

One of the most important elements in any horror game is atmosphere. It's hard to be scared by a movie if the lights are on and some guy is munching on popcorn in your ear. The reason this is hard to achieve in a MMO is simple: Information overload. A typical MMO has hotbars, HP, Mana gauges and floating maps which are generally essential for standard gameplay, but would be completely out of place and ruin the all-important feeling of 'being there' that is a requisite for a Horror game. Well made games in the genre like Silent Hill and Fatal Frame achieve a lot of atmosphere with a minimalist interface that allows you to focus on what your character is seeing.

Read more here.

Only way I can see it working in a MMO is having a Guild Wars type of set up.

Heavy, heavy instancing.

Imaging you are creeping through a very darkly lit castle... you hear the floorboards creeking and suddenly a rush of footsteps behind you!!

and some newb dressed in all pink screaming "ROFLCOPTER PWNBBQ" bunnie-hops past you shooting randomly at the ceiling...

Excellent article, I'd love to see something along these lines done. Immersion is everything, people want a world to play in they can get lost in. Isn't there some kind of World of darkness White Wolf MMO in some level of development?

Originally posted by saker

Excellent article, I'd love to see something along these lines done. Immersion is everything, people want a world to play in they can get lost in. Isn't there some kind of World of darkness White Wolf MMO in some level of development?

By CCP/White Wolf

I fully trust them to make something dark, gritty and hard. Will it have atmosphere? Ugh, no idea.

A very good article indeed.

I would LOVE to see this kind of MMO grow big but i guess there will always be a Player dressed in pink babbling some nonsense and thus ruining the game for all others in the area. It's the good old RP-question in fact... the pink player is having fun, it's just another kind of fun - and he has the same right to have fun as I (*who is punching IGNORE repeatedly at the sight of such immersion-killing behaviour) have.

So it's strict RP-enforcement  for the sake of immersion as it seems - or heavy instancing, but most people (including me) seem to hate it.  There may be other ways to solve it, such as a VERY large gameworld = you encounter less players, but they all have their own problems; in this case you do not only encounter less idiots - you encounter less players alltogether, and then.. why play an MMO ? Not to mention the work that would have to be put into such a large world. I guess a GW-type of game would be the best solution if done right, although... yes, i HATE massive instancing.

Well, that's my 2cents for today. Good article.

There is that kinda sorta thing supposedly in the works...

Cry Gaia: The Secret World

He called Call Of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth bad.... I think I'm going to slit my wrists now because I enjoyed that game. Sure, it was buggy but it had the atmosphere no other game has been able to reach.

Dude, it's never too late, also, are you sure you're not a movie-game writer, because all those suggestions are so freakin' awesome!!!

I would add something like a Sanity metter, much like in Eternal Darkness, it has soo much potential, in that game, when a monster sees you, your sanity metter begins to low, and the lower the metter is, the crazier  your character (and sometimes you) gets, the line between your character's imagination and "reality" begins to blur. All the people who played the game should understand what I'm talking about, but for those who hasn't played this masterpiece (you don't know what you're missing, for God's sake!!!!), here's a brief explanation:

Just like I said above, imagine that you (your character) are walking down a dark gritty hall, then all of the sudden a zombie appears, they are clumsy and slow, but when they see you at the eyes, your character begins to feel fear and your sanity metter lowers a bit, you may succesfully kill the zombie, but you wont recover your sanity that easily, you then approach a door and all of the sudden, you hear a loud door knoking, or you hear whispers, or (fans of the game will recognize this :D) books flying across a library, and most important and interesting, you won't know who is friend or foe, as you start seeing your "instance" party as a bunch of zombies, or monster that are trying to kill you .

I could go on forever, this is (in my opinion) an amazing concept that could be one of the game's best features!! :D

I really enjoyed the article, but I had just a few problems:

1) Nix the instancing. How realistic is a magic room that 10 people can be in, yet no one is in the same dimension as the other?

2) Make the world larger: This will allow the issue of non-instancing to no longer really be as large an issue.

3) Open PvP: This is a world of horror, what good is a horror game when you know that in 90% of the game, you cant die? Put the fear of God in your players, keep the whole world open PvP.

Of course in a game like this, you would need more than just humans, maybe a few vamps, who can turn other players into vamps, some zombies, werewolves, etc. It'd keep the game more interesting, especially if you had to worry about carrying more weapons (wooden stakes, holy water, sword, silver bullets, etc)

In all honesty though, I'd like to see a game like this, with no standard leveling system. You could base "status" on equipment gathered from difficult missions. It would make the world-wide pvp less of a blow, when player x doesn't have 100 levels of stats on player y.

I would love to see something like this. Set it in a single city would allow something similar to instancing, where you load the area whenever you enter a building, but anyone else who enters also enters the same instance (sort of persistent instancing). Maybe have an expansion that goes off and adds some countryside as well, so you can have adventures in creepy mansions in the wilderness and the like. As long as you can get the feel that something isn't right with the world, you've already gone a long way into making the game great.

A sanity index (hidden would be best) rating how much you have or lack and based on this you may see things that others do not. You may see writing on the wall that isn't there (or maybe everyone else just isn't as "in tune" with the reality of the world), people may look distorted or different, sometimes when people talk (even PCs) their speech seems garbled and possibly evil. If you want to go with a more Cthulhu feel (which does creepy better than any other), definitely make it a bad idea to walk around with weapons out and the ability to become an outlaw from the law if you start doing not so legal things in fighting the darkness.

A lot of good things could come from a game like this, but just getting the immersion wrong could ruin the game completely.

Just a thought: if you had the opportunity to ignore a player completely, then it could work out... i do not mean to block that player from the chat, but to make him invisible too... this combined with an quickignore-button should do it really.. if you encounter someone really breaking the immersion, then click his name in chat / target him in some way if you see him dancing around - and WHAM - he's off your screen for good... you could soften this harsh concept by introducing ignore timers such as 1/8/24 hrs or permanent ignore.

Wel... I like the thought

It could work, surprised someone has not tried it yet.  White Wolf is doing a Vampire MMO, not sure how close that is to your horror theme.

Hm, well, there IS a zombie MMO in the works.  Goodness knows if it will ever make it through though - but if it does, you bet I'm there.

http://www.exanimusthegame.com/

If you ask me there is NO WAY a horror MMORPG would work. It just wouldn't seem right. Horror only works in a single player game.

I'd LOVE to see some horror MMORPGS.

I always thought a "faction" based game like DAoC would work great, allowing the player to choose between playing a Werewolf, Vampire, Human or Zombie.

Originally posted by Oyjord

I'd LOVE to see some horror MMORPGS.

 

I always thought a "faction" based game like DAoC would work great, allowing the player to choose between playing a Werewolf, Vampire, Human or Zombie.

Somehow, when I think of "horror", I don't think of "The Musters Online."

Originally posted by Wharg0ul

 

Originally posted by Oyjord

I'd LOVE to see some horror MMORPGS.

 

I always thought a "faction" based game like DAoC would work great, allowing the player to choose between playing a Werewolf, Vampire, Human or Zombie.

 

Somehow, when I think of "horror", I don't think of "The Musters Online."

 

Here's hoping that a good Horror MMO can evolve.. The closest I have right now is Hellgate London. It is a great game, but I would certainly like to see an atmospheric horror game. It'd be interesting to make it to where players are ghost hunters and would have instanced missions into haunted locales.

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Originally posted by Gnomig
Just a thought: if you had the opportunity to ignore a player completely, then it could work out... i do not mean to block that player from the chat, but to make him invisible too... this combined with an quickignore-button should do it really.. if you encounter someone really breaking the immersion, then click his name in chat / target him in some way if you see him dancing around - and WHAM - he's off your screen for good... you could soften this harsh concept by introducing ignore timers such as 1/8/24 hrs or permanent ignore.
Wel... I like the thought

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I've often thought this would be a good feature in ANY MMO, horror or othere, it would really help the enjoyment level in games to "remove" annoying players completely

Originally posted by Gnomig

Just a thought: if you had the opportunity to ignore a player completely, then it could work out... i do not mean to block that player from the chat, but to make him invisible too... this combined with an quickignore-button should do it really.. if you encounter someone really breaking the immersion, then click his name in chat / target him in some way if you see him dancing around - and WHAM - he's off your screen for good... you could soften this harsh concept by introducing ignore timers such as 1/8/24 hrs or permanent ignore.

Wel... I like the thought

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