MMORPG.com Correspondent Matt Plourde uses this article to take a look at a simpler form of MMO gaming and asks readers to decide if TomeNEt, a simpler ASCII-based MMO is really so much worse than the multi-million dollar AAA MMOs.

Sometimes... when you have nothing left - it's all about the gameplay.

What am I talking about? MMORPG gameplay, of course. I've been playing "online" games since the days of BBS Door games. After that, it was Neverwinter Nights on AOL for me. Ultima Online (UO) replaced Neverwinter. Then came Everquest (EQ) and its fancy 3D graphics. The beta-tests and subscriptions roll through my memories like thick nostalgic bytes - Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, Asheron's Call, Earth & Beyond, Guild Wars, Shadowbane, World of Warcraft, Starwars Galaxies, Hellgate London, Tabula Rasa, Warhammer Online... and many more. Why do these games come and go for me? Why do I continue to play "the next greatest MMORPG," only to dump it a few months later? Is there any constant in my vagabond list of retired games?

Read It's All About Gameplay

I like MUDs, but I play them for a different reason than MMOs. To me, they aren't better... they're different. I enjoy the 'interactive book' feel of a MUD. I also enjoy the nostalgic look of them as well. With MMOs, I'm usually looking for faster gameplay, more 'hero'-style combat, and all sorts of neat eye/ear candy. To clarify on that last one, for me that sensory reward doesn't necessarily mean cutting edge tech. I find the graphics of Lineage 2, Vanguard, EVE Online,  LOTRO, and AoC all pretty equally appealing... although few things beat the satisfying crunch of a crit ona golem or skeleton in Asheron's Call. :) 

For me, looking for a deeper MMO in a MUD is like looking for a deeper Doom 3 in ZORK.

There is a  simple reason why the author's experience different that much from a 'standard' MMORPG:  the random dungeon.

It's exactly the same feeling a MMORPG player experiences the first time he/she enters a new dungeon.  You do not know the layout, where the mobs are and what special abilities the bosses have.  You do not know the patrol routes or any of the traps.

You do a dungeon a few times and it gets predictable.  Thing is that the ASCII games started the same way.  Doing the logic for a good rundom dungeon system is not easy and it took time for it to evolve.  Doing the same thing for a 3D MMORPG is even harder and creates its own problems like the maphacks from Diablo 2.  Hellgate London tried to do this and fell flat since they could not commit the resources to really make it varied.

BEST article EVER. It helped my to change my view for looking for mmorpg.

WOW.  And I had just posted in another thread how today's MMO's are basically:

Icon indicator that initiates another icon indicator on where to go to complete shopping list to collect / return / deliver.  Rinse - Rpeat until End Game.

Originally posted by LynxJSA

I like MUDs, but I play them for a different reason than MMOs. To me, they aren't better... they're different. I enjoy the 'interactive book' feel of a MUD. I also enjoy the nostalgic look of them as well. With MMOs, I'm usually looking for faster gameplay, more 'hero'-style combat, and all sorts of neat eye/ear candy. To clarify on that last one, for me that sensory reward doesn't necessarily mean cutting edge tech. I find the graphics of Lineage 2, Vanguard, EVE Online,  LOTRO, and AoC all pretty equally appealing... although few things beat the satisfying crunch of a crit ona golem or skeleton in Asheron's Call. :) 

 

For me, looking for a deeper MMO in a MUD is like looking for a deeper Doom 3 in ZORK.

 

I have to agree I enjoy a good MUD or even a nice RP driven forum, but I do play MMO's for something different.  Nicely written article!

A Rougelike MMO sounds like it would actually be pretty fun. I do wish they did have SOME kind of Graphics though, even bad ones. Hell, 8-bit sprites for all I care. This is due to the only issue I have with Roguelikes.... Lack of actual graphics makes it incredibly difficult for me to tell what in the name of god is going on.

Neverwinter Nights on AOL sorry I missed out on that.

I played an old Apple II+ back in the early 90's.  I had an early Ultima game.  pretty fun tell the program crashed.

Since I'm not a programmer I don't know the difficulties in making randomly generated 3D quest instances, although I know they do it very well in City of Heroes, so I don't see why a company like Blizzard can't bring something similar to the table to help freshen up their game.  It certainly can't be hard to randomly generate  groups of mobs in an instance based on party strength so you are never  facing the same thing twice, even if you don't want to take the time to do the random map generation.  I have to say I agree with this article, I have always felt the only way to keep a game new and fresh for people is to have a random element involved in the enemies and dungeons.  People might cry though if you randomly switched the bosses around and they spent time fighting only to come up on the boss they didn't want. 

I think randomness = work, and a lot of people don't want to work in games any more.  It's one of the reasons I quit playing WoW.  People just want epics handed to them for nothing compared to work it took in pre-expansion pack WoW to get them.  I understand some people want to play their games for fun, but some people like a challenge.  I think that's another big hurdle for MMORPG makers.  If a company manages to make a successful game that was initially challenging , they face the choice of dumbing it down to keep the more casual subscribers, or hold true to the game's nature.  Sadly the almighty dollar usually wins out and kills off the challenging play. 

Originally posted by Supersark

  It certainly can't be hard to randomly generate  groups of mobs in an instance based on party strength so you are never  facing the same thing twice, even if you don't want to take the time to do the random map generation.  I have to say I agree with this article, I have always felt the only way to keep a game new and fresh for people is to have a random element involved in the enemies and dungeons.  People might cry though if you randomly switched the bosses around and they spent time fighting only to come up on the boss they didn't want.

There's a few problems with that. Currently, random means significantly less context and story than handcrafted. If you have both in a game, you will be able to easily tell which is which and that starts to kill the fun for a lot of people. Also, players like to 'get comfortable' with a dungeon. Part of dungeon running for many peoplel is mastering the dungeon. Another thing is the scaling of the content. Scaling content often reduced the feeling of progression since everything remains pretty much at your level. Another satisfying aspect of gameplay for many is to go back to that dungeon where you got trounced when they're a higher level and toss a beatdown on those mobs.

Oneof the best attempts at procedural dungeons and the content around them is Dungeon Runners. It's got a free to play mode to it, so download it and check it out. It has some really cool benefits to it, but that "new dungeon feel" starts to wear thin as you become more aware that there's really no rhyme or reason to each new iterationof the dungeon.

Thanx for the article, TomeNEt is a game i'll play. 

For any who are fans of Rogue-alikes i HIGHLY recommend Dwarf Fortress - a free indy sandbox sim/game in development by Bay 12 Games www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

Your mmo history is nearly identicle to mine, except i went from BBS doors to Realm, UnderLight and Meridian 59 before finding UO.

A lot of the exciting qualities you describe come from Pencil and Paper D&D. In my opinion that's really what modern mmogs are missing - Dungeon Master (DM) creativity and interaction. 

The closest that mmogs have come to that level of interaction are the early months of UO when employees ran weekend Events (the Shrine Wars campaign was ASTOUNDING!) and also good old Asheron's Call, where again the storyline and world was advanced by DM Events.

For Depth of Immersion and Suspension of Disbelief, I still await the mmog that can even come =close= to a good DM-run "Village of Hommlet"  D&D intro scenario. 

Originally posted by Kurai3

A Rougelike MMO sounds like it would actually be pretty fun. I do wish they did have SOME kind of Graphics though, even bad ones. Hell, 8-bit sprites for all I care. This is due to the only issue I have with Roguelikes.... Lack of actual graphics makes it incredibly difficult for me to tell what in the name of god is going on.

That pretty much sums it up for me as well. :D

This is a great article and describes exactly how I feel about modern MMO's. I've been playing them since Ultima Online and to this day Asheron's Call 1 remains my favorite MMO because of how challenging it is and how it is a sandbox.

I keep trying out all the new MMO's and none of them can hold my attention for longer than a month. I continue to fall back on a MUD i've been playing for the past 9 years off and on, and even today keeps me entertained a lot longer than any MMO has in the past 5 or 6 years. I'm a big fan of old school games because they were actually challenging unlike all of the newer MMO's.

I will definitely give TomeNET a try, as I was a fan of the rogue games back in the day. I never knew an ASCII MMO existed until now. Sounds like great fun, and much more appealing to me than World of Warcraft any day.

Dude... thks for the amasing artice u have explained in detal(tho its a bit 3 para lengthy :P).

i am stating to play the game.. hope its as good as u have mentioned.. cos i too am not into MINDLESS grinding in MMORPGs 

I liked your take on the "massive" part of the acronymn.

People are too stubborn these days and insist the first "M" is for massively only applying the number of players.

When in fact, everything about MMORPGs is "massive" derived from its permanence element.

I agree on the purpose people are using quests and raids,nothing more than loot gathering.I think gaming has become even worse than that.People forget why  you actually play a game,they start to talk like there has to be a hardcore and casual formula.There is no such thing as hardcore or casual because the game has to move only as fast as you can handle it.

The fact that so many are talking casual/hardcore is proof enough that people are not joining to enjoy a game,they are joining to join the masses[WOW] or joining to see how fast they can hit max level and feed their ego[i guess].For others it is more like a hangout where they can meet some friends.

All of it adds up to anything but game play,however for myself it is ALL about game play.That is why i looked to FFXI,it has an aged engine,low end graphics,but the whole game showed me tons of effort was put into it.Many of the games ideas are unique not copies of other games.Look again at WOW,the entire game is pretty much a copy of EQ,so why would so many join a game they could have already had in EQ2 or EQ?not because of game play i assure you.

To further prove that most do not care about game play,look at how many posts where players the [fanbois] especially talk about how great a game looks when they first logged in.Then they start up guild recruits the first day before they have even learned anything about the game play.Look even further to games that garner a HUGE following before they even hit beta phase,so again nothing to do with game play.

It is funny to this day to still see so many post topics that always talk about their experience in games dated way back,yet so many have never tried FFXI.This shows how much marketing rules the gaming genre as there is still a ton who have never even tried FFXI.FFXI was a game truly built around team work and gaming.Most quests in FFXI are not about loot,but more so about fame and gaining abilities or spells.The whole game has a purpose that interlocks with everything else,it is amazing to see how well thought out the game design was.Sure it fails in many areas and also has the loot raids but at least it misses the usual stereotypes we see from all other games.

For me, yes, gameplay is the biggest concern I have with most of modern games.

I remember playing games 25 years back in time, when the C64 was state of the art, and you played them for hours and hours, again and again.

Since the introduction of the first FPS-games, when 3d-graphics got introduced (of whatever genre they maybe) nothing has ever changed really, when it comes to gameplay. Whatever graphical updates there are since then, doesn't make them any more enjoyable tbh. It's repetitive.

The only thing, as of today, that makes games more interesting over others is content, content, content. If there's not enough content, or better said, not enough different contents to play with, you play a game until you've played it through and that's it. in my case atleast.

So, the only game I've bothered playing for more then a few month during the last 5 years is EvE Online, as it provides the players with alot of different stuff to do, and where players create their own content in 0.0.

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The Wii steps out of this, as it features a new method of controlling the game, instead of playing with a mouse + keyboard or a game-pad. This is really fun :)

Excellent post.  I too loved and occasionally play Rogue.  I also am an old schooler and played BBS games.. Heck I was a cosysop of a BBS board.  And the most challenging games in terms of bosses was old Drakkar.. Drakkar and LoK were the forefathers of all MMO games :)    Drakkar required more strategy and discussion and plotting than ANY game I have every played.. you logged into the game in an INN with tables.. join a table and devise strategies to defeat bosses like the Vampires that you lost hit points when you died by them.. and it was not cheap repurchasing them back.  Or bosses that have cloaks of limited invulnerability.  Barbarians pumped up berserk and came running past you on screen and into the bosses lair because they would kill anyone in sight.  Than everyone would plunge in after them.. healers casting healing, mentalist casting spells of protection, and other sticks attacking.. many a times was I one shot killed by a berserk barbarian.. they tended to stay on the target they were fighting but sometimes they would attack one of the members since the boss would be attacking mostly the barb but he would occasionally attack others as well.  And it took all the classes helping each other.. paladins were weak until level 16 which took a long time to get too.. they needed their Red Armor best armor for them.. but the weakest boss Red Dragon was too strong for them until they got their armor.. so all the other classes had to help Paladins get their armor.. than off to the next boss for the next class.. each boss had something that another class needed but without help of other classes you would never achieve it.. so all the other classes had to support each other.. I still remember this game with many fond memories.  It is hear that the new mainstream graphic games are not able to reach this type of gameplay.. where all classes have to help each other.. and support each other.

absolutely a lovely article, being a roguelike lover myself since i was just a kid toying around with his father's appleII :)

as for tomeNET, i played it a lot the last year (usually as Turbovandal, or Vandal delle 3V) and sometimes i still play it. that's a good attempt to bring online play to roguelikes

ps: lynx, your avatar brings me lots of good memories XD