A recent thread on "gaminess" made me realize something.  I realized that MMORPGs (or really any computer game) can be split into two basic components.

There is the "game" component that defines the hard rules of how the game plays.  Things like classes, stats, conditions, combat...these are all parts of the "game" component.

Then there is the "immersion" component that defines the general feel of the game.  Things like art, culture, in-game history, architecture, music, and really how these all interact together defines the immersion component.

Tetris would be a good example of a game that is almost all "game" component, and something like Second Life may be a good example of a game that is almost all "immersion" component.

Now I really feel like an excellent MMORPG needs to be very strong in both of these components to succeed.  But I can't help but think that the immersion component has been extremely neglected by more recent games.

For evidence of this, consider major cities in MMORPGs.  I feel that major cities really help immerse the player in the game because they give the game designers a great opportunity to show off the culture and art of their world through architecture and NPC behavior.  But it seems like major cities have been getting fewer and fewer in recent time...check out the list below:

Vanilla UO - 15ish major cities, each was as well developed and unique as the tech would allow I think

Vanilla EQ - 13 major cities, each very well developed and displaying a unique culture.

Vanilla WoW - 7 major cities (I'm counting Booty Bay), each very well developed and displaying a unique culture.

AoC - 3 major cities, each displays a unique culture, but some (Tarantia) are better developed than others.

Rift - 2 major cities, each is fairly well developed.

WAR - 2 major cities, was supposed to be much more but was cut, the major cities were decent.

SWToR - 2 "cities" if you can call them that, but they were really just space stations that were very dull.

Soooo yeah...you can see that we basically went from each game having tons of major cities that were all really interesting to having a standard of just 2 cities...and sometimes not even that.

But this issue of course isn't just limited to cities.  I really think that more recent MMORPGs just feel...stripped down when you compare them to the older ones.  The "fluff" just isn't there, they seem to have just enough to take the players from 1 to max level and hardly anything else.

So to conclude, I feel like immersion is a critical component for MMORPGs, but it seems like many recent MMORPGs don't feel that way, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if that's a large part of why they failed. 

In fact, I think that ones reason so many people are excited about GW2 is the fact that it really does seem to have a large immersion factor in the game.  It has 6 major cities, a unique art style, and lots of "fluff" that helps define the game world better.  I think this is something that we are desperately missing but maybe don't even realize it.

Thoughts?

A huge contributor to immersion is object interaction. Items used to be fully rendered objects that had permanence in the world. You made a pair of gloves, it was there, in your inventory. You could drop it on the ground and it was placed there, in the world, by you. Most mmos today (at least the new crop of "AAA" mmos) have items that are represented by an icon in your inventory. You cannot place it anywhere except to transfer this icon representing an item from a bank, to your backpack, or on your characters which may or may not change your character's appearance.

There is no organic feel to objects around you or items you have made. They are shown in a little window when you click on them. But they dont exist in the world outside of your UI windows.

Immersion is a matter personal "taste". To you OP, GW2 is very immersive. To me, it feels as gamey as all other mmos. Less fake, but still gamey.

I think what's laking in one area is the lack of "small scale, personall locations". Everything nowadays is epic, gigantic, colossal and huge. To mmorpg today feels like there's somewhere to call "home". A small vilage in the midle of nowhere, where maybe you can own a house.

Also, mmorpgs today are 95% focused on the "content" which includes quests, dungeons, pvp, etc, etc. No place to just chill, relax, hangout. More importantly, no need to return "home" to do so. What's the point of having main hub cities, if there's only a handfull of minigames and nothing more there. They're justa bunch of view points like all areas.

EDIT: Oh, and having NPC's just doing their normal thing to immersion you, specially WALKING,  while a million other player sare running all over the place and bunny hopping, isn't very helpfull.

This really depends on what you find 'immersive' in games.  For me the cities don't really give much to immersion and I prefer straightforward layouts and architecture.  However, I dislike mazes so this has a major effect on my view on that aspect of the game.   I also rarely have the music on when playing MMORPGs so that has little immersion effect on me. 

What really matters to me are that the character animations correspond to my actions and match my 'vision' of how the character would behave.  I can get really immersed when playing a character who acts and moves in a way that reflects the attitudes I have imagined the character to have. 

For these reasons I am quite immersed when playing a Jedi Knight in SWTOR and my mage in WoW but had problems getting immersed when playing my warlock in WoW or my character in SWG.

I agree with you Creslin and that's why I've largely been playing games like Fallout3 and Second Life over the past year. I have to wonder which came first though, the chicken (players not wanting or caring about immersion as much) or the egg (developers not wanting to spend as many resources to develop immersion). Honestly, I don't believe there are enough players that care about immersion anymore and so developers decided they don't need to waste resources. Makes me sad.

Originally posted by FredomSekerZ

Immersion is a matter personal "taste". To you OP, GW2 is very immersive. To me, it feels as gamey as all other mmos. Less fake, but still gamey.

I think what's laking in one area is the lack of "small scale, personall locations". Everything nowadays is epic, gigantic, colossal and huge. To mmorpg today feels like there's somewhere to call "home". A small vilage in the midle of nowhere, where maybe you can own a house.

Also, mmorpgs today are 95% focused on the "content" which includes quests, dungeons, pvp, etc, etc. No place to just chill, relax, hangout. More importantly, no need to return "home" to do so. What's the point of having main hub cities, if there's only a handfull of minigames and nothing more there. They're justa bunch of view points like all areas.

EDIT: Oh, and having NPC's just doing their normal thing to immersion you, specially WALKING,  while a million other player sare running all over the place and bunny hopping, isn't very helpfull.

 Maybe immersion isn't the best choice of wording for what I'm trying to express...maybe environment, ambience, or setting would have been better?

By the "immersion component" I didn't mean something that you particularly would find immersive.  I meant anything that exists for the sole purpose of enhancing the immersiveness of the game.

For example, you may hate elves, but you could look at an in-game city featuring lots of highly detailed elven architecture and say:

"I don't like this personally, but I can respect the work that was put into it."

See what I mean?  It's more like just looking at the "immersion work" of the game and judging it objectively, even if you don't like the particular "brand" of immersion the game has implemented.

Originally posted by Palebane

I agree with you Creslin and that's why I've largely been playing games like Fallout3 and Second Life over the past year. I have to wonder which came first though, the chicken (players not wanting or caring about immersion as much) or the egg (developers not wanting to spend as many resources to develop immersion). Honestly, I don't believe there are enough players that care about immersion anymore and so developers decided they don't need to waste resources. Makes me sad.

 Tell you the truth, I think that this is what many developers think, and I think they are wrong.

Many WoW clones can match or very nearly match WoW in terms of how the game plays.  But NONE of them come anywhere close to WoW in terms of the immersion factor of the game.  And TBH, I think that's why they wind up falling flat.

The biggest complaint I saw about SWTOR was that it felt "lifeless."  And well...there's a reason for that :).

only 3 games that i've played would probably have that 'component' .. that i can think of at least, the first one i played that had that was Everquest itself, and it was more addictive than any game i played since, perhaps it was because it was my first real MMO, but mostly, i think it was the people. It was much the same with DAoC and SWG (pre everything).. which leads me to think that the most 'immersive' ? thing about any game is the community you find there.  Have to say, that its the one factor that more and more, i find missing in MMO's.. which seem to focus more on the 'me' and less on the 'us' kind of thing..

Part of immersion is the environment and lore, yes, but you're missing the entire definition of immersion.  To IMMERSE yourself within something.  I visited Tokyo in Japan and was surrounded by the culture and environment of Japan, but if I never interacted with it, thats not immersion.  You have to be able to interact with that environment and culture and become a part of it.  When I sat down in a true Japanese ramen restaurant, next to Japanese businessmen that just got off work, and talked with the single chef that ran the whole place, that was immersion.

GW2 only has half of it IMO.  It has the environment and the lore but the interaction is iffy.  It sacrificed a bit of this for gameplay, and thats fine.

TSW has the complete immersion package, environment, lore, and you're constantly interacting with the world and culture and becoming a part of it.  It sacrificed a bit of gameplay for this.

I agree with you that immersion is really want MMOs have been missing recently, and it makes me really happy both of these big titles this year are changing that, and bringing immersion back to the genre.  Both have seemed to be successful because of it, so I hope it doesn't go unnoticed by future developers.

Once you suck out (dev reads: completely disregard and leave out) the immersion or I would say, game world feel, it becomes more gamey. Yes, it is missing and many probably don't know that it is what they want.

How did WoW have more immersion than recent themepark games? Does it still have that feel now?

I think the answer is that immersion is NOT as important as game mechanics when push comes to shove.

The resource argument is actually not true.

Think about some of the immersion breaking items that people here claims: fast travel, mounts, LFD/LFR ... all are ADDITIONAL features that cost resources. So obviously devs would not be doing them if saving costs is the only objective.

Persaonally, i think immersion is great until it impact gameplay experiences. A large city is great until you have to travel from part A to part B regularly. In that case, put in some teleports, or trams.

Originally posted by Creslin321

Originally posted by FredomSekerZ
 

 Maybe immersion isn't the best choice of wording for what I'm trying to express...maybe environment, ambience, or setting would have been better?

By the "immersion component" I didn't mean something that you particularly would find immersive.  I meant anything that exists for the sole purpose of enhancing the immersiveness of the game.

For example, you may hate elves, but you could look at an in-game city featuring lots of highly detailed elven architecture and say:

"I don't like this personally, but I can respect the work that was put into it."

See what I mean?  It's more like just looking at the "immersion work" of the game and judging it objectively, even if you don't like the particular "brand" of immersion the game has implemented.

Ok, i'm confused now. When you say immersion, do yuo mean the sense of a virtual world or simply athomsphere?

To use TSW as an example, i don't feel it's a world i can call home, but i think the "immersion" during gameplay to be amazing

Is this it, or something else i'm not getting?

I find I can become much more immersed in games with 1st person view (EQ, Thief, Skyrim, Deus Ex 1) than in games where you are in 3rd person (GW, Assassin's Creed). That's not to say I don't enjoy all those games, I just prefer to feel like *I* am the hero and not the character I am controlling.

My opinion.. Immersion is a dying untouchable..  In the beginning we were given "worlds" in wich to explore and conquer.. We all lived in that world and became a community..  In al honesty I think games today are mostly instance lobby games..  There are only a minimal number of cities needed to act as population HUBS for people to queue up..  Really?  However that seems to be what what the new genre want.. a lobby based esport shooting gallery game..   I fear things will only get worse, not better..  I'm to the point that I don't want to spend a DIME to play in a lobby game.. 

Immersion is huge and goes a long way towards a games longevity.  A game with good immersion will also be a game that creates memories that last.

I don't know why "gamey" prevents immersion.

I've lost sense of time playing civilization and I would hardly call it a convincing world.

Immersion seems to be one of those words that mean everything and nothing.

My best experiences are those when I look at the clock and it is 4 in the morning and I'm like "it was 7.30 just now!!!".

Originally posted by mmoguy43

Once you suck out (dev reads: completely disregard and leave out) the immersion or I would say, game world feel, it becomes more gamey. Yes, it is missing and many probably don't know that it is what they want.

 

How did WoW have more immersion than recent themepark games? Does it still have that feel now?

WOW (vanilla WOW through BC) did have racial starting areas and no central town or quest hub, making the world feel more like a "world".  That was very immsersive, to me.  Not as immsersive as EQ or earlier MMORPG's, but much more than today's "backdrops".

What hurt immsersion in WOW for me, and also In EQ, was when they had a central city with teleports, and the rest of the game world lost relevance.  I call this the "Plane of Knowledge" effect, named after that central portal-hub city in Everquest.  When the POK (Plane of Knowledge) came about in Everquest, the game world sort of died.  Dalaran did the same thing to WOW.

Amazing to me, devs are still doing this to their own games.

Originally posted by Gaia_Hunter

I don't know why "gamey" prevents immersion.

I've lost sense of time playing civilization and I would hardly call it a convincing world.

Immersion seems to be one of those words that mean everything and nothing.

My best experiences are those when I look at the clock and it is 4 in the morning and I'm like "it was 7.30 just now!!!".

It's true. That is certainly a big obstacle to having any kind of serious discussion about immersion. It means everything and nothing. You can argue that any feature of any game contributes to or detracts from your immersion depending on whether or not you like that feature.

Are they neglecting or are they simply unable to go toe-to-toe with incumbents with several years of a head start when trying to produce art so have to choose between quality and quantity?