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Great idea for a column, but my favorite part is the name. :)
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The fundamental flaw in both the MMORPG industry and the community in general is that most people believe that graphical superiority and intelligent game design are mutually exclusive goals. Let me assure everyone: They are most certainly not. If you haven't played it yet, take a look at Eve Online. It's the most "sandbox" choose-your-own-adventure type of MMO on the market right now, and it's constantly winning "best graphics" from numerous gaming instituations. It's the best of both worlds, and that's why it's commonly rated #1.
You don't have to choose between EverQuest 2's awesome visuals but crappy gameplay or World of Warcraft's "stylized" (a fancy word for "intentionally sub-par to access a broader demographic") graphics and addictive gameplay. You can have your cake and eat it too! It draws a straight parallel with the film industy (at least here in the United States); over the years, storyline and acting talent have slowly been replaced by big budget special effects. Look no further than Star Wars (4, 5, and 6 vs. 1, 2, and 3) for what this has achieved (or ruined). Instead of Bruce Lee and Steve McQueen showing off their moves, you end up with a horribly artificial-looking Neo battling dozens of Agent Smiths or a ridiculously obvious CG Hellboy punching a moving SUV. This leads to the common concusion that films are either well-written and acted OR they have great special effects. Although rarely achieved, I would argue that it's very possible to have the best of both worlds, but it takes a lot of time and effort to do so (Lord of the Rings, for example). |
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Something I stated when this column first began a few months ago was that, while the ideas I come up with are original, the topics themselves are as old as the MMORPG industry itself. Indeed, the main reason for even writing this series was that the population of people that think like you and me, that want more out of their recreation and investment than just grinding and ganking, is rapidly growing. Also, next week's Outside the Box is about alternate social structures, but I do make reference to raids... It's not surprising that two people disappointed with the same industry would have the same comments on how to fix it, either. I eagerly welcome you to our ongoing discussion of how to bear the MMORPG market from this painful adolescence into a matured state of game play options, lasting content, and more player input. |
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Hey, welcome to MMORPG.com, DariusWolfe. We're always glad to have new members, and I'm excited to gather more readers with a genreal interest in game design. I wish you the best of luck with your MMO, but one thing in particular stood out for me (quoted above). A few years ago, I presented a simliar idea on the forums for Pirates of the Burning Sea, and your comment there has prompted me to designate player family structures as the subject of next week's article. Be sure to check back again to get involved in that discussion. But for now, what ways do you think players should be able to contribute to the game world and, more importantly, how? How do we balance player-created content so it doesn't turn out to be as lopsided as a class system, where one type becomes notably more powerful than another? For example, how do you balance it so that people who invest in architecture are just as viable, fun, and effective as those who focus on weapon-designing skills? |
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Now, I've played the bulk of the MMORPGs on the market today, doing extensive research into the rest of them, but who has the time to honestly play every single one? What I've noticed so far in the several dozen titles that I have played is that they tend to cater to only one or two of those archtypes you mentioned. So, given that we now have the rough categorical definitions of the various degrees of solo vs. group on the social level, what sorts of game systems would a good MMORPG require to satiate all 4 types of players? |
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So you didn't quite make it to the part of the article that goes over how to make instances more solo-friendly? In fact, I spent a lot of time putting together ideas on how to better accomodate the solo player in all areas of online gaming, not just instances. Too bad, because it seems like someone with an "axe to grind" is the kind of person who would read half of something, then formulate a dismissive response to not only the rest of the article, but all past and future work by the author as well. As with all of my previous articles, the underlying theme of Outside the Box is to find ways to make systems work so that there is a place for everyone. You might be surprised to find that I solo in MMORPGs just as often as I work with groups. |
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General: Outside the Box: Widespread Marketing
News Discussion « General Discussion 4/06/06 3:25:12 PM
Some people say that WoW tries to "cater to everyone," but in reality, they're really only trying to appeal to what they correctly identified as the bulk of the gaming community: The casual grinder. Interestingly enough, they're quickly finding out that casual grinders don't want to pay subscription fees for games they've already mastered, which is why we see so many people leaving WoW for other games, or just plain quitting MMORPGs until the next big thing hits the market. It seems like every five minutes there's another thread on this (and many other online game themed websites) where someone is saying that they got bored with WoW and asking if there are any games out there similar to it. Perhaps that's the only marketing failure of the WoW team: They forgot that sometimes what a community asks for and what they really want aren't the same thing. You'll hear mobs of people screaming about how much they want a new fantasy, class/level game with uber loot and no death penalties. They'll buy the game by truckload, subscribe for a month or two, then quit. In my opinion, it would have been a better idea (both artistically and financially) to put some more long-term meat into WoW (player controlled territories, housing, governments, economics, etc) to keep subscribers instead of just pumping out more linear content (new dungeons, new static items, new armor sets, etc). All of that stuff is just going to keep the most dedicated and/or gullable 1% subscribing, whereas some real interactive content would have kept just about everyone playing WoW. |
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General: Outside the Box: Widespread Marketing
News Discussion « General Discussion 4/04/06 9:21:31 AM
You could just go one way or the other, but why not put in the extra effort to have your game go both ways, lay down some options for people who want involving complexity and show them some easily understandable tasks for those who want to keep things simple (or who don't have a lot of time to play at that particular moment). I don't see why everyone has it stuck in ther minds that your game has to be either Guild Wars (simplified to death) or Eve Online (so complex that new players are often overwhelmed). It seems like every game that lands somewhere between those two is applauded by some for being close to one end of the spectrum and damned by everyone else for being too far from the other end. How about a game that lets you choose your level of involvement, one that caters to casual and hardcore players? After all, some people want to be generals, but others just want to be soldiers. Although I'm a great fan of balance in RPGs, there's something to be said against trying to over-balance character types. We end up with games where unique gameplay options and clever new ideas are bulldozed aside because they threaten the fragile balance. If I want to play a machinegun grunt in a massive war, I couldn't care less if the general of my army technically has more power than I do. I'm there to run around on the battlefield and shoot bad guys. The point is that the option to play both should always exist, else you're only appealing to a fraction of the potential player base. |
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General: Outside the Box: Widespread Marketing
News Discussion « General Discussion 4/03/06 6:26:46 PM
For the sake of debate, I'd like you to answer two quick questions for me: 1. You state that my opinion of making MMORPGs more involving and having a greater difficulty for the long-term player is "backwards," hinting that you believe EQ1 was a more difficult game than WoW. Exactly how long did you play EQ1? I believe you mentioned five years, but let's get a more accurate figure. This will be X. 2. You also state that you "hate" WoW (even though you misquote me as lamenting the game because of it's simplistic user interface; actually, one of the only parts of WoW I did enjoy was the streamlined UI. It's the fact that the rest of the game's content is also streamlined into nearly optionless redundancy that bothered me). So, how long did you play WoW? We'll make this Y. Now let's put your two answers together. EQ1 was difficult, and you played it for X. WoW is over simplified, and you played it for Y. Since WoW has only been out for a year and a half, I believe it's safe to make the assumption based on your statements above that X is greater than Y, that you played EQ1 longer than WoW, and the ratio will remain so because you most likely don't play either of them any longer. Let's also consider that WoW had a budget (in both development and advertising) that was a few multiples of the original EQ's funding. WoW has a huge, seamless world with highly stylized, modern graphis. WoW's network layer supports many more players per sever, and there is by far less down time. WoW is even based on a worldwide best-selling franchise. So, being that WoW is statistically a better game than EQ1 due to all of the above reasons, why is X still greater than Y for you? Why did you play EQ1 for so long, but WoW for only a fraction of that before quitting? |
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Due to a large volume of MMORPG related news, my weekly column "Outside the Box" here at MMORPG.com will be delayed until next week. Be sure to check back then to join the discussion about MMORPG marketing. I hope to see everyone in the discussion, and thanks for reading so far! Nathan Knaack |
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What if, just line in real-life (at least in America), crime spread like a virus? In other words, if you steal a car radio, you're a criminal. If you sell that radio to someone who knows they're buying stolen goods, they're a criminal. If someone hides you in their closet from the authorities, they're a criminal too. This would help with the good player/bad player routine where your ganker is a criminal and your mule goes to all the places he can't go to buy or sell things for him, because the second your characters traded stolen goods, or as soon as one character bartered with a known criminal, at least some of that negative renown would spread like a virus to him or her. To keep the virus from being knowingly spread to innocent people, the renown system would have to be such that all players inherently know who is a wanted criminal and who isn't. There might be kinks to work out, but I think this sort of system would really help enforce a legal system, while still rewarding players for being "good guys" and putting some stress on people who only want to gank, cheat, steal, and otherwise intentionally try to ruin the game for other players (not just characters). |
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Semi-Death: To Die Or not to Die, Where do you stand?
The Pub at MMORPG.COM « General Discussion 3/02/06 1:00:45 PM
Start with a typical fantasy class/level grind game, such as World or Warcraft. What if, when you died, you appeared in the spirit world. The catch is that, in this spirit world, you have a spirit version of your class in life (poltergeist for warrior, ghost for rogue, specter for mage, etc) with similar but slightly different abilities. Also, your level in that spirit class only improves from what you kill and quests you perform in the spirit world. To return to the land of the living, you have to do enough things (gain enough experience) in the spirit world. There could be shaman/cleric/druid/warlock abilities that let your buddies temporarily enter the spirit world to help you out, too. Obviously, all items/mounts/etc are specific to either the living or spirit world, and only appear on your character when you're in one place or the other. So the situation might be that you're a 10th level human warrior when you die the first time. You appear as a 1st level poltergeist in the spirit world, where you have to complete a quest or two to be resurrected. By that time, you're a 2nd level poltergeist, so the next time you die, you have to do more quests or defeat more powerful spirit mobs. Following this trend, you can see that it would get progressively more difficult to be resurrected because as your spirit world level improves, so do the tasks you have to complete. Someone with a level 60 spirit character would have to take on an epic-level quest just to get back to their character, who might only be an unlucky 15th level guy. Then again, some people might enjoy the spirit world more than the living, thus opting to stay there indefinitely to help or hinder dead people triyng to get back into the living world. Maybe the spirit character you play is a guardian angel that fights to keep you alive. Maybe it's your actual spirit fighting to get back to the living world. Maybe it's a mirror personallity trying to advance its own goals. The possibilities are endless. |
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MMORPG.COM News: Outside the Box: Perma Death
News Discussion « General Discussion 2/27/06 10:21:11 PM
I feel the need to reinforce and clarify one of the core ideas of this week's installment: Nobody wants permadeath in a level-based, grind-centered game. This article was not an argument for changing existing games like WoW, EQ2, or Lineage so they include mandatory permadeath for all characers; it's a forum for discussion of how to rework or modify permadeath so that it would be generally acceptable as an option in future games. For this, and future installments of Outside the Box, please remember that we are looking to the future of how serious MMORPGs will be designed, distributed, and played. I often use games like WoW to illustrate how a game that seems like fun is really just satiating your sense of instant gratification, but I mean no disrespect or slander to its creators. In terms of graphical, network, and financial design, WoW is a masterpiece. However, there is a growing audience of people out there, as evident from current discussions on this and numerous other MMORPG websites, that yearns for a deeper experience. We don't just want to log in and "waste" a few hours at a "passtime," we want to "invest" a few hours in a "shared, social environment." Once again, nobody here wants games like Guild Wars or Dark Age of Camelot to suddenly wink out of existence because they don't have permadeath or player-created content. What we want are new games that incorporate the ideals of a serious MMORPG title that aims for long-term enjoyment of a dedicated audience, not the temporary amusement of the lowest common denomnator. And that's not an insult to any player base, either. Whenever I feel like a quick thrill, I'll log into Counterstrike or Tribes for an hour or two of shooty fun. No death penalty, no consequences, no crafting, no travel time, no delays, just action-packed FPS fun. However, something the MMORPG industry currently lacks is a total immersive package with player-generated content and player-driven progression of the world. Eve Online has most of it, but it's all space-based. SWG had most of it, but by the time they implemented space travel, they had already ruined the game with their so-called "upgrades." World of Warcraft has the graphics and seemless world, but there's no meaningful PvP territory conquering. Shadowbane came so close, but they just can't keep up with other titles in terms of coding quality, graphics, or population. What we're hoping to do is discuss the mechanics of a permadeath system that would actually work, not argue about whether or not permadeath should or shouldn't exist. |
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