To the best of my knowledge, City of Heroes/Villains was one of the first mainstream MMO's to implement "User Created Content", such as in the form of missions. Now in a recent article by Garrett Fuller on Star Wars Galaxies, they plan on doing something similar with "User Created Content".

Is this the next new thing for our future with MMO's? What is everyone's opinion on the current MMO's using this idea?

Personally I think it's an awesome idea (minus the possibility of exploitation). In the days of original RPG'ing with pencil and paper, original content was a mainstay of what we had at our disposal on Saturday nights save some source books on NPC's or a few modules. For quite a while now I can say I've missed the old days, and though MMORPG's have been great... after a short while I got tired of leveling in the same places or doing the same dungeons/instances over and over again.

So let me know what you people think!

It's a pretty pointless addition.

In order for it to work, it has to be inside instanced content. The issue with that is that playing in instant content is much like playing a singleplayer game or playing with a few other people. That would be the same like normal rpgs, and they have had user created content for a long time now.

I played little big planet for a while. As for user created content,  that game is about as user friendly as it's going to get. While there was a lot of content, only a few levels were really worth playing through.

Originally posted by Lansid

 To the best of my knowledge, City of Heroes/Villains was one of the first mainstream MMO's to implement "User Created Content", 

It was normal in the MUD world.  The "EndGame" of some muds was the passwords to enter "edit mode" to create new areas, spawn monsters, and generally play "Godlike" powers. 

When you look at games that have editors or sdk's, it's amazing what players can create. I think CoH has the right idea of incorporating them as instances, though I don't think CoH is real player created content- as it's very limited with that regard- it's more of a npc placement and mission generator thing.

Originally posted by Lansid

 To the best of my knowledge, City of Heroes/Villains was one of the first mainstream MMO's to implement "User Created Content", such as in the form of missions. Now in a recent article by Garrett Fuller on Star Wars Galaxies, they plan on doing something similar with "User Created Content".

Is this the next new thing for our future with MMO's? What is everyone's opinion on the current MMO's using this idea?

Personally I think it's an awesome idea (minus the possibility of exploitation). In the days of original RPG'ing with pencil and paper, original content was a mainstay of what we had at our disposal on Saturday nights save some source books on NPC's or a few modules. For quite a while now I can say I've missed the old days, and though MMORPG's have been great... after a short while I got tired of leveling in the same places or doing the same dungeons/instances over and over again.

So let me know what you people think!

I LOLed at that. 95% of user created content is CRAP. There is a reason why professional level designers have jobs and why content in game with a $60 price tag not done by some high school kid in their basement.

Sure there is that 5%. I use to play Neverwinter Night and out of all the "user" modules i try, like ONE is ever approaching anything that can be called good.

Thanks but no thanks.

seems like a dumb idea to me.  in mmorpgs, they don't/can't give the "5%" of creative players tools or freedom to make anything worthwhile, and they don't integrate it with the gameworld well enough to feel like there's much point to it.  the only "player created content' i want to see is the ability to build and decorate houses, and maybe a castle with a dungeon if you're a big guild, hire npcs as guards or merchants, etc, etc - but don't expect people to write quests.  they'll just be even worse than the lame formula quests the devs bury us in.

 To be honest "Player Created Content" is a good thing however the way its designed means alot I dont think an exspansion pack that adds on the feature is going to be very good simply because it seems like a way to draw in more revenue. I think if an MMO during its production had a focus of user generated content it could turn out well simply because it could touch on all the things fans want in the player created content without breaking the game in some form.

A good example of Online Player Created Content is WC3, while not an MMO there are many games on their which have quite a fan base and very many copys of the game are sold just for the "Custom Games" I have met many players online who dont even know any of the story of Warcraft nor posses the skills to play through campaign. Much less do it effeciently online

I must say that i agree with some posters in that the examples provided hardly seem like user created content at all. Handling an apropiate reward system for users editing content (and more importantly, playing it) seems like the biggest obstacle to widespread implementation. Abuse of exploits and using this features for griefing could also be added to the list. Thankfully i dont see us putting up with much of this in the near future, and i expect elements fron SIM or RTS games to be avenues more likely to be explored by developers in giving players a greater control of the enviroment.

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Originally posted by nariusseldon
I LOLed at that. 95% of user created content is CRAP. There is a reason why professional level designers have jobs and why content in game with a $60 price tag not done by some high school kid in their basement.
Sure there is that 5%. I use to play Neverwinter Night and out of all the "user" modules i try, like ONE is ever approaching anything that can be called good.
Thanks but no thanks.

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I am very much in favour of user-content. I have seen some quality work done in NWN (including some of my own).

As long as exploiting is prevented, it could add much fun and value to MMOs.

New fad? User created content used to be all we had in MMOs. I'm actually appalled by the amount of people opposed to user created content. The creativity that I've seen from MMO RP communities is astounding.

Quests that are worse than dev created ones? I don't think so. In UO, user created content was something exciting that we looked forward to. The "quests" that I experienced there are infinitely more memorable than any quest I ran in any MMO since.

The next MMO that will actually hook me and keep me interested will definitely need user created content tools. Recent MMOs simply have not given the necessary tools to RPers to let us do our thing.

Unfortunately, "role-playing" is a dirty word to the majority of current MMO players.

Well, Ryzom had player created content before CoX.

Otherwise I think it's a great idea. Finally the head of a guild can create missions and story arcs for his members. This is what DDO should have had.

There is a reason why Mozilla is the best browser...Why NWN1 was one of the all time greats for multiplayer...

I wonder why FAllout3 and Oblivion are both bad but... then you mod them and they become 10/10.

My only concern with this in an MMO is the community will be too "limited" in what they can do.

Originally posted by Shazzel

There is a reason why Mozilla is the best browser...Why NWN1 was one of the all time greats for multiplayer...

I wonder why FAllout3 and Oblivion are both bad but... then you mod them and they become 10/10.

My only concern with this in an MMO is the community will be too "limited" in what they can do.

Yes, it would take a very flexible design and good playtesting to make such content work well.

NWN was an amazing game. Having an MMO able to allow player-created modules would be a great step forward.