I've often wondered why MMOs haven't at least attempted to capture a bit of what makes single player MMOs so intriguing, which is of course the immersive content. I totally get what Dana is saying. I want to immerse myself in a world with stories that I am taking part in, either as an integral part, or as just a sidenote character. What is important to me is that I do feel like my efforts are rewarded with a strengthening, but it doesn't have to follow a level/class model for me to feel that progress. One thing that bothered me about MMOs was how it seemed like in a mainline party-oriented quest, only the leader of the party got the plot points. Everyone else was left out and just needed to fight the monsters, but didn't get to participate in the quest with the same level of immersion as the leader. That's why there should be more scripted cinematics in quests, solo or otherwise, to draw people in and make them feel like they are part of something. I know this wouldn't appeal to the grindaholics out there, but I feel there are a great many of us who would like to feel that the world they enter month after month is truly alive and more than just a place where key areas are useful for farming or grinding experience/levels. I'm hoping that perhaps FFIV will provide this, if only because at the heart of all Final Fantasy games I have played has been an amazing story.

This sounds a lot like what the new Star Wars MMO is supposed to be like. Less levels, more storyline progression.

I think this reflects the growing domination (amongst mainstream) of themepark over sandbox. Back in the day, pre-nge swg players might have told you what they were doing rather than their level.

Originally posted by qombi

 Enjoyed your article. I like the idea of unlockable content myself. The funny thing is I have seen unlockable content so to speak in an old game called Everquest before. You had to get keyed for certain raids and you have to also do raids in sequence to get the necessary gear for the next. I loved this design myself. I think you are right on though on though. 

I would like to see a game with no levels and progression was just unlocking content all the way through. You do this to unlock this, so on and so on. This can be accomplished with gear as well as in my example. WoW had "keyed" content as well at first. Thanks for the article.

I agrre also. EQ2 had most zones done so you had to unlock them too, but they took it away because people complained.

But there is more fun things than gaining loot and level up, at least some MMOs should focus more on that.

I do agree with a few things mentioned but, there is some points that where made that i believe are down right stupid.

Even as much as some gamers feel about grinding the fact is in the end they enjoy doing it.

Say you are grinding to get faction reputation for something you really want. The key part here is you are grinding for a reason. For gear that gives you good stats but also has a cool look and feel to it. Either it being a weapon that glows or a cool animation on the weapon you are grinding because of those reasons and the stats to better improve the class you are playing.

In a game like i don't know ... say Zelda, a gamer does not care about levels like they would in a mmorpg. The reason for this is very simple. In Zelda you are grinding to get to the point where you get the sword, bow and arrow, the suit that allows you to swim underwater.  What is great about Zelda is that you are thrown into a epic storyline right off the bat and it keeps continuing till the very last sword swing.

Another reason why a gamer won't care about his level in a Rpg like Zelda is because it's a self progression game. Though at times i wish that Zelda was a mmorpg i feel it would take away from my personal enjoyment because there would probably be requirements and rules i would have to follow to progress the class i am playing by being forced to group. Personally i hate playing a mmorpg that makes me feel forced to group to progress the class i am playing and probably why after 4 years i no longer play World of Warcraft.  I am a strong believer that mmorpg stands for just that. A place where mass amounts of people are playing the same game i am and i like that idea. I do not believe it's a place where i should be forced to do any grouping to progress to enjoy the same lore or gear upgrades as the guy beside me that enjoys grouping. Mind you i do enjoy grouping from time to time. Just on my terms, not the games.

As of right now i am playing Requiem and the reason why i enjoy it is because i am focusing on how to make the class i am playing better and stronger. I am finding myself checking out website to find out where and how i can get the best gear for my class and what i am finding is a amazing options and I'm not really caring about my xp that much. I can either go pvp (which i enjoy quite a bit from time to time) or i can grind on some mobs till an item drops or i can run instances. I have a choice and that's what i think i hated most about World of Warcraft. I didn't have much of any and the choices i had forced me to group to get the best stuff. No amount of Rep grinding or gold farming i did would compare to someone that just did 1 night of Raiding and got all the epics he could want would put me on par with the items he got. To me it wasn't hard it was annoying. Honesty any mmorpg that forces me a gamer to group to progress and justifies it as hard content just turns me off.

I have to give it to Blizzard on 1 aspect though. When it came to leveling in Zul'drak and questing in Ice Crown i don't remember looking at my xp bar once and i think the reason was because of the epic quest lore i was involved in. I played a Arthus and as the Lich King. I was a ghoul and for a short time part of the scourge. I was totally involved in a sea of lore. I didn't care about how much gold the quest would give me or how much xp i would of got. Even if the items where epic i didn't care because i got that epic feeling i got while doing the quests. Blizzard slightly touched on this leaving me as a gamer wanting more but, there wasn't any when i finished in Ice crown and it left me empty. I found myself ending up having to group for 5 mans heroics at start. Then it turned into 10 man Naxx runs and finally 25 man Naxx runs with really no epic lore until i was fighting KT and even then i couldn't catch it all because people on Vent where talking and screaming and the text just spammed my chat box like the lore didn't even matter.

I have to agree something needs to change in mmorpg but i am afraid that won't happen for a very long time because how player A) feels about player B's)  progression and what is refering to as hard, fun and down right enjoyable to that 1 player.

Epic lore inside quests and chain quests.

Personal solo progression

Choices on how a player progesses

Reward Reward Reward and not with useless greens or semi ok items.

Those 4 things need to change or mmorpg will just end up sucking it up 2 months after release.

I dont know Dana, I think you dont get Warhammer Online. You seem to be taking some potshots at it.

You say its all about renown, well yeah of course it is. Its like faulting WoW for its instances. Theres nothing wrong with renown.

And they've done some great things.

Gone are the endless runs thru a dungeon waiting for that class drop item and hoping that you win that roll . Yes there is still endless runs hitting keep after keep, jumping from zone to zone waiting for a flip. But at the end of it all you WILL get that item you've been wanting so bad. Influence rewards is one of the most ingenious things (along with PQ's) that WAR has contributed to the MMO genre.

And leveling thru rvr (pvp), you say it ruined the game. I think its obvious that a pvp game isnt for you.

Hell, I get pissed I cant level my toon thru rvr only, I have to actually take quests to advance.

Just recently Ive been lucky enough that Ive found a server that I can advance thru rvr only, and my god its the most fun Ive had in gaming in a really long time. I'd rather pit my wits against a human player over a scripted NPC any day.

And ruining the game by "making the journey fun". WTF is up with that statement. The most fun I had in WoW was leveling my hunter from 1-60, my mage from 1-60. I hated the repetitiveness of the instances (the whole scripted thing).

"Okay were on the second boss, mage you stand there, warrior you stand there and remember to taunt, blah, blah, blah."

The journey was so much better than reaching the destination.

Umm calling MMO's niche genre...LOL

Dude, the average MMO player repurchases the game every tthree months (if you put it into the perspective of single player game pricing).

Lets do WoW as an example. I know people that have been playing for 2+ years. In that time they have repurchases the box value of an average PC/console game 7 times. How many people do you know that will purchase the same single player game again every 3 months?

As a matter of fact I'd even go so far as to say MMO's are killing the single player PC gaming industry. I wouldnt call that niche.

And waiting for a game that doesnt use levels as a progress bar, a golden age.

Do you have any experience of MMO gaming outside of the Big-3 of Sony/Mythic/Blizzard? (sorry for the jab)

I said it a long time ago on EVE's forums. "CCP are trailblazers". And in my opinion they dont get the recognition for the ground breaking they did. You are a good example of that. There is a five year old game that fits your Golden Age criteria, and not once was it mentioned.

The truth is not having levels to measure your progress scares alot of people.

I seen this post as very negative, written by a person who hasnt weaned themselves off of the WoW teat, who has a hard time accepting something that isnt viewed as the norm by 10m people.

Innovation isnt bad, and stumbling along the way isnt reason enough to point a finger and cry "FAIL!".

On a side note. The way you described SW:ToR has me worried.

I dont want to be a player in a predetermined story. I want to BE the story.

I would like to comment on the two questions at the front of the article themselves.

The reason people answer those two questions in that way is a single player RPG has a finite finish point. There are  a couple true sandbox type games although they are usuall space based...but I never had fun playing those anyways. So if you ask someone where they are on a journey which has a specific begining point and a specific ending point the chances are you are going to get a metric that defines a point in that journey IE city x or dungeon y.

In an MMO there is no endpoint unless the game simply runs out of subscribers and money. Thus the game itself is "infinite"(I use infinite as a term loosely here). In such a game you the journey is instead measured from a begining point to an end point this being levels in many cases. In other cases its unlockable content aka EQ1 with planes of power progression, GoD progression etc. In all other ways how can you descirbe a way point in something which has no final destination?

So while the rest of your article does have some good points and I aggree with the idea of the journey being more important than reaching the end as an ideal...to make the assumption that the way we answer those two questions actually means anything of significance I think a bad assumption. We are time based creatures that think in terms of linear paths. We all have a destination in mind when we set out...we might never reach that destination or it may change frequently...but the destination is there in our minds and the metric we use to measure our journey is completely dependant on the type of journey we are on and what the destination is.

For instance I might respond to question #2 I am a lvl 30 human mage. Depending on the game that could mean a lot of things about where I am on my journey. It could denote the type and location of the content I have visited and not yet able to visit. It should denote the type of gameplay I experience which would perhaps be different than that of a lvl 30 darkelf healer or whatever.

In the end its not the metric that is the problem or the speed of attaining a particular metric...whether its levels, skills, unlocks, equipment, reputation etc. The problem still boils down to these questions: Is the content fun? Is there enough content for the money I am paying? Everyone will answer these questions differently for every game out there. The only important answers are the ones you give to determine if you spend your money wisely.

Edit: After rereading the article i wanted to add one more thing. I believe i stated this discussion from the last column but I want to reemphasize it here. What each individual views as fun is unique to them. To hollar for all games to be what you think is fun is just as bad and just as wrong as for all games to take the WoW route and try to copy them. If i wanted to play WoW I would play wow....give me something different please. So while you do have an idea of what makes a game fun...please dont expect all games to fit your model as that would be boring to about 80% of the gaming population. We need a wide diversity of games and game types so everyone can have fun in thier own way.

My biggest pet peeve is when I jump into the forums of a game I am looking forward to because of the way the devs have described it and watch as people come and go complaining how the game will suck because its not an exact copy of thier favorite MMO from the past. How every fundamental system in the game just has to be changed or the game will suck. The biggest example of this are pvp types come into pve game forums and yell for advanced pvp systems and pve types come into a game designed around pvp and whine about lack of pve content. The same goes for the casual vrs hardcore and the solo vrs group players.

Without having read many of the posts in this thread, here is what I think:

Any MMO has content that is built around formulas and equations. This can not be avoided. However, what happens is that companies design concepts that in theory sound good, but as soon as people start figuring out the underlying things of how they work and why, they just go about finding tricks and efficient ways to accomplish goals or tasks instead of following along with any parts of it designed to pull the player in to some virtual world of play. What I think needs to happen is more intricate designing of games so that it is much more difficult to understand exactly what in the game always causes different things; without making the game unplayable. An analogy for this would be with encryption. It is very easy to multiply two numbers together, but it can be very diffucult to then factor the result of their multiplication. Creators needs to find a way to create different parts and "multiply" them together so that they are still fun and useable but the way in which things are exactly working is not as well known or decipherable by the players. In this way, they are more immeresed in the world. I don't claim to have any idea for how to actually do this. It is merly a train of thought that I think deserves consideration within the MMO development community. LIke the original story said, the MMO's need to level up.

I agree that developers need to do something to get mmos more interesting.   But in the end I think it is all up to the players and how they think about the game.  Im playing Warhammer Online right now and I love it.  I do the pvp because I think that it is fun, im not doing it just to get my maximum renown.  I just think that everyone has gotten used to going about the fastest way to get to the level cap of whatever they are playing.  You have to play the game to enjoy it, not just to be the best, and I think alot of people play mmos just to be the best at them. 

The reason single player rpgs are soo much more immersive is because they generally look better and have more things in them to explore. 

AoC, I think, is  a step in the right direciton in making things more fun in mmos.  I think that once AoC gets all its problems sorted out that it will be a big mmo, maybe even challenge WoW.  It has THE best graphics of any mmo, it does have a storyline, and it has the most involving combat of any mmo.  I say just give it time and it will shine.

But right now, I'd say that Warhammer Online is the most fun mmo i've ever played.

I have a lot of problems with the question to be honest. In the game I am currently playing, I have no less than 7 characters, 4 of them are played actively and 3 are at max level. Asking me, where I am at is pretty meaningless, I'd probably answer with my "mains" level and such just because it was the simplist answer to a nonsensical question, not out of some deep and meaningful motivational difference.

Secondly, all the harping on WAR was a poor choice. We could spend weeks debating what Mythic did wrong (or right) but it's not really relevent to your main point.

>edit< Because I have to, AoC fans, please get a grip. The game is stagnant and over, it will never again rise to the level of subs it had at launch, let alone challenge WoW. I'm not going to slam the game in detail, but please, show a little contact with reality.

Excellent article. I fully agree. The main problem with WoW is the advancement. When you stop advancing in levels, it stops being fun, because that's all there really is to do is advance in levels.

SWG I think had an awesome formula and had great potential to break away from this. There were different things to do, the community came together to create awesome things. "Leveling" was hardly on people's radar back closer to the beginning.

MMO developers are too compelled to follow the formula.

As some people already said ... ppl who attend E3 are not a good representative of gamers, at all. I also disagree that mmos are niche genre. I think in the recent years, especially with WoW that has changed. You do have a point about the whole fun thing though. DAoC was my first mmo, and since that game I've played most of the major mmo titles. SWG was something that I had high hopes for, but somehow they managed to release the game with all the bugs a game can have. Like the bug that let you get the stormtrooper armor, like 3rd best faction armor of the whole game, 4 days after the release. I also had fun playing WoW when it first came out, as well as EQ2.

The thing is I never had as much fun as I did playing DAoC (just thinking about grinding willows at gna faste makes me happy) and that game was HARD. Like leveling up to 50 was a HUGE HUGE deal. There were no maps, you had to find the dungeons either from other players or remembering either the /loc or the enviroment. There were not as many quests and they were def not straight forward. I remember all those quests that you had to go at specific times or kill a whole lot of something for the guy to spawn. The game was not cartoonish and had a very authentic feel to it. When you died, it really sucked because you lost xp and going back to your grave was always scary because of the aggro. There were no mounts except for those horse rides from major areas/cities to the next. There were 3 realms, something that no other game ever replicated that way and I don't get why. Each realm had so many truely unique areas and named monsters. Crafting was SO difficult and slow. Also there was a great community feel, maybe it had something to do with the age group. For example on the mid side, from pretty much lvl 45 to 50 everyone would go near the dragon and kill all those werewolves. There were no warbands or whatever, so the two groups had to manually work together. Also there was a que, you would pm the person in charge and based on your class you'd have to go and camp at the edge waiting until it was your turn. I can go on and on but that was just the PVE part. Once you got to 50 and got your epic gear, it was like a whole new game was unlocked. Each realm had relics and keeps and anyone who ever played RVR in that game knows how much fun it was. it was even fun(sometimes more so) when there were a few people fighting. Not to mention how the keep system played into darkness falls which was also an amazing idea, a great place for mix pve and pvp, and to get gear.

I played WAR in beta and also after release, and I can safely say, it was the biggest dissapointment of my mmo gaming experience. And thats where I agree with you about the fun thing. They added all this crap assuming if you can find where youre quest is without ever having to even read the quest stuff, it will cut down on wasting time and instead you will have FUN. All those scenarios, IMO, were just terrible and killed any potential for pvp fun. NOt to mention the tiny number of classes they have as well as the whole class/race thing. Also it really bothered me that they kept trying to use terms like RVR...which made no sense where there were only two sides. I also think mmos not being a niche genre really opened it up to a whole lot of crazy young kids, the problem I had with WoW once it really took off. Almost every DAoC player will agree that as soon as the expansions came out with the idea of "less grind" the game went to hell.

I think my mmo days are over for good, but I'm always watching for something to come that is actually fun as a game, not just borrowing elements that were tradiotionally "fun" and throwing them into a vat.

A couple general responses here...

First, I am not taking any shots at Warhammer here. I have been playing it, so it becomes the most obvious example in my articles. That unto itself should be a compliment. No game is perfect, and I think everyone knows the core flaws, but it has its value too. I am not attempting to pick on it, it is just my best example in a few cases. At its core, it is a game that by all logic should have been a hit, but wasn't. So disecting why is an interesting exercise.

A couple people mentioned Wish. Let's just say, God invented the NDA for a reason. I've written some pretty high level stuff on the topic (google my name, Wish and The Escapist), but that's about as deep into it as I will ever get. That ship has long since sailed.

Let's face it.

People don't want great content in MMORPGs. Of course, I'm making an over-generalization, but it is still true.

I'm just wondering, what % of players who played for example, Wrath of the Lick King, and just skiped through the text of the quests and just looked at the objectives? I did, personally. But even if you make the game without any levels and content base, some people will enjoy it and some others, will just skip through the content, do quest ASAP to advance in the content. It's going to be content grinding because people will want to cap the content as fast as possible to access the high content available to the game.

It's going to be the same problem, just in a different setting.

So is there a "true" solution?

I don't think so, humans are driven to show their worth through any means necessary, and for some, MMORPGs are it. Alright, I give it to  you that it isn't much worth, but the online world is a total different entity and growing at a breath-taking pace.

So personally, I don't believe there is a solution.

Like you mentionned, it happened with WAR.

In Darkfall, people grind weapon / archery / magic on afk players, while the afk players grind them defensive skills.

In WoW, you grind gear and then a few weeks or months later you grind the upper new set of gear.

In [insert new game name here], you grind content super fast with your new "Get to Max Content in 6 hours of Gameplay" guide, sold for 9.99$ U.S.

Originally posted by Sylvene

It's about measurables.  In single person RPGs, you've got a static story line to follow - even if there are different paths through it.  The measurable is the point in that storyline.  In MMOs, you have a wide variety of choices and the measurable is your level and class.

For example:  In RPGs, arriving at a certain city measures how far you've gotten in a game.  In MMOs, you have several dozen cities to visit and that feat does not measure your advancement.

Agreed. The underlying question is "how far have you got in the game?". In AoC, if you answered "Out of Tortage" it was an answer to the same question. Or "what part of the story are you up to?" works in SRPGs because character abilities have often progressed to match what the story wants the character to do.

The hilarious issue of single-player vs MMO-player games is that people quit single player RPGs at probably the same rate as MMOs. Think of all the RPGs you've started but not finished - I try to complete all my titles, but there are always exceptions (e.g. corrupted saves, grown really bored of the game, went away from it and never quite came back, etc). But no-one worries if a player doesn't complete a single player game, regardless of how good the story was - it is all about box sales at launch. A MMO, on the other hand, typically relies on continued subs / income from players, so having players drop out before they reach the 'end' (whatever that might be) is a big issue. In fact, MMOs want players to play to the end plus - you are meant to 'finish' the game, then keep playing.

MMOs and SRPGs operate to very different standards, despite having some superficial similarites.

I had this same discussion with someone from Mythic in this thread from July '06. RJCox used to be Richard from Mythic.

www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/837531#837531

ROFL

People have been saying this for over a decade, people play the mechanics of an MMO.

Modern MMOs are designed to appeal to achievers and competitive people, they're not designed for people who enjoy a good story or simple fun.

So, how about everyone stops rehashing this point and actually goes out there and makes a friggin game out of an MMO... oh wait.. that is what BioWare is doing :)

Loved the article.....and hit the nail on the head  of why war is not really fun for me anymore....and why DAoC is still up and running with enough subs to keep RvR fun

I completely agree with most of what is said in the article but not with the conclusion

[Quote]

There is hope, though. As much as I’d like to take credit for all this, it’s clear many others have come to this conclusion sooner (and over the course of a lot less columns). The best looking games at E3 took this to heart. Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic looks a heck of a lot like a cooperative single-player RPG. The narrative seems, at a glance, to be a large part of the focus. While other exciting games like All Points Bulletin and Global Agenda are much more focused on character parity and unlockable content.

[/Quote]

It is paradox that one should seek the core mechanics single player RPGs as an improvement to the MMORPG, because these mechanics are specialized to some extend on beeing... single player. 

When people want to buy an MMO, the usually do not want a single player game with a little global chat box.  Story is important, and immersion ist, too - but if you take on the Guild Wars-type of instanced storytelling, then you are bound to fail. GW did not live of the story, but of PvP, and no matter how good the story may turn out to be... if you took the same story into an single player game, it would still work better - because the expectation towards an MMO are quite different from that of an single player game.

Basically we are speaking immersion ( = instancing content to create a good storyline) vs. interaction here, and if people buy an MMO they are seeking some form of interaction (may it be socializing or of competetive nature), as opposed to someone buying an offline game.

Finding an satisfying way to combine interaction and immersion ( = "storytelling as a 4th pillar") is the real problem MMO's face today... and i do not believe instancing cn be a valid tool to achieve it. The only i can think of is the use of GM's to run live events, but that is way too expensive to do in a bigger MMO

I am waiting for SW:TOR as much as the next guy and i will buy it and play it, but unless Bioware's got an ace up it's sleeve i think they will fail on the long run.

Erm. Just my 2ct for today.

Good article, think its spot on why WAR did not become a hit.

Also Developers often fail to understand that its in the human nature to make anything we do as effective as possiball. So if you have a levlel system some people will find the best and fastes way to get thru it, and others will follow. You have a pvp grind system people will learn how it works and do what is most effective, least amount of time for the best kinds of rewards.

I personaly dont think MMOS should be built as road movies, going from point A to point B. First you level from 0-MAX then you raid, pvp from worst gear to the best gear. Now this in my book is kinda boring.

I think more Devlopers should look at the Sandbox format for MMORPGs. Let the players build the world for you, dont make it for them. Give them the tools to build towns, construct trading rutes, fight over resources. Let them live a life in your virtual world dont do a Them park becuase one day you will run out of rides.

If a developer made a Huge world and let the players be the builders and makers of it ( scary I know as you dont know what will happen) we come mush closer to how real life works, and I think that is a mush more interesting concept then Raiding or PvPing for ranks and items.

EvE is the game that comes closest to this right now, and as shown it keeps getting bigger and bigger each year, Reason for this I think is that everything is up to the players. CCP do not waste time cunstructing conflicts and Raid dungeons, The players make the content in EvE. And what you do can actually effect others. I have never understood why people play in virtual worlds that are static like WoW and War. No mather how mush you raid or how mush you pvp for gear the world will at the end of the day look and feel exacly the same. This is not true in EvE as power strugles shift, stations gets built and destroyed. and new items get manafactured and destroyed, the landscape of the game changes.

Now why not plug the holes in what EvE is bad at, Repetetive gameplay, It has some boring aspects to it I have to admit,but it lets the world belong to the players and that is more then you can say for most MMORPGS.

We need more player control in MMOS. The best sugestion would be go and look how a strategic board game works, let us Build landmarks, citys, trade hubs and let us fight over  resources and claim the land we play in and call it our own. We can fight for hundreads of years before we get tired. All real wars show us this, the 100 year war betwen France and England was based on who owned what lands and who controled the trade and who had the Power. Human nature wants to own and control. If the developers make a game that focus on this they can run it for years to come. But you have to give over the power to the players, and I think this scares many of the developers today. Because they do not know what will happen if they no longer can predict ( okey now they will be raiding this for 3 months, then they will do this and we got enough time to give out our next expansion) what the players will do in thier game.