TLDR; Content cost developers time and money, when the number of players that can use or experience the content is limited the cost of the content increases. By making the content repeatable and experienceable by all the return on investment is maximized. Content that is used once or not often is seen as a waste of investment. Every Branch in story is looked at as a loss in investment.

Time and time again I read threads that say, "What I am looking for in an MMORPG is a Single Player Game." There are people who want mmo's to utilize single use quest and events. If a server has over it's lifetime of say 5 years 3,000 players only 1 player will get to accomplish that quest.

Imagine that a Fantasy game, where a Evil Overlord (EOL) resides in a massive keep guarded by hundreds of minions both beast and humanoid. The quest has multiple starting NPCs because several NPCs in the world know of this threat and all want it eliminated. There is the veteran in the Tavern who was part of a previous attempt on the keep, he tells a Warrior Player Character about the EOL. The Warrior quickly shares the quest with 5 Guild mates and off they go. An Old Rogue in the Theives Guild offers to sell what he knows about EOL to a Young Shadow Walker Player Character. And so begins the quest of the Stealth class.

Lets say when the quest goes live at 11 A.M. EST, 65 of the 88 players logged in out of the 1,237 players who have characters on the server on this date get and decide to do the quest. In small groups they make their way to the Keep of the EOL. This is an Open World game, with no instances. As all 65 players approach the Keep, the game realizing they are all on the same quest in the quest / Keep area auto invites them to a single massive raid group. The group is not forced because you have to accept to join it. Let's assume that a 54 player raid forms and 11 players go it solo.

As the peloton progress into the Keep, doors are closed, and bridges are burned. This cuts off anyone who revives back at the start of the Keep. No one is watching the backs of the solo players and 5 revive and are cut off from the quest. The raid losses 3 players this way before it learns to wait on Rez's after the fight dies down. Now a document is found it explains that the way is split into three paths, A, B, & C. Each path ends in a lock that will open the door for the next path but close the door for the current path. So A opens B but closes off A and Trapping those sent into A.

This game has a class with an ability to summon other players at the cost of a token. But the raid only has 2 players of this class and only 7 tokens. It is decided that the raid will divide into three groups, the C group will have the two summoners and they will summon the 7 agreed upon members from the other two groups at the final door. The 6 solo players stick to group C want to move forward on their own. Group A opens path B and closes path A. Group B opens path C and closes path B. Group C closed path C and opens the final path. Surprisedly this door opens to Group A. The summoners and solo players are cut off from continuing and the remaining must fast travel to their last bind point.

The 17 player characters in group A move forward into the keep. The group now has 5 Healers down from the 17 that started. The rest of the raid is made up of 3 Tank spec's and 9 DPS spec'ed. Long story short, the remaining players defeated the EOL boss who drops a Tank chest piece, All 17 players get the achievement for defeating the EOL. But now the EOL is gone from the world, and the three paths are closed for ever. The first 10 levels of the keep are still open and repeatable. The remains of the original elite minion forces still remain, but now have lower stats and drop lesser quality gear.

The result is a permanent effect on the game world but only a fraction of the games total and eventual population ever gets to experience the content. The return on investment for the development of the content is very low. Maybe 5 players are ever repeatedly there for the new content to experience or achieve the content. Everyone else gets nothing or gets to experience the lesser repeatable content. The game gets the reputation of being a niche game, if you don't take time off from work or school to get the content when it goes live you will lose out on it.

Maybe these problems could be fixed by making it a yearly one week event with the return of the EOL or his next incarnation.
 

Originally posted by Irus

I generally feel MMO's and stories do not merge well together. Stories are fundamentaly incompatible with worlds. Worlds thrive more on lore.

Then the solution is simple. Get rid of the world. Most players like solo-ing or small group anyway. You can easily do instanced stories.

Many MMOs are like that already.

Originally posted by AticusWelles
An MMORPG without a persistant virtual world is reduced to a online co-op RPG/dungeon crawler.

That genre already exists, no reason to bastardize the MMORPG to do something that's already being done.

And MMO is going in that direction anyway with solo-friendly gameplay, phasing, instances, LFD/LFR tools.

There is actually a good reason to go that direction. People like it. They want this kind of co-op RPG gameplay with AH type trading.

You can call this whatever you want, but that is where i see the genre is going. Not unlike the old "graphical adventure games" become today's "action adventure" games.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Then the solution is simple. Get rid of the world. Most players like solo-ing or small group anyway. You can easily do instanced stories.

The world is the entire point though.  Story is just a placeholder for not having a working simulation.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Then the solution is simple. Get rid of the world. Most players like solo-ing or small group anyway. You can easily do instanced stories.

Many MMOs are like that already.

Well, yes, you can do one or the other.

You can concentrate on the world, and remove all the instancing.

Or you can concentrate on the lobby, and remove the world.

Most MMO's basically mix the two together, usually with the world as an afterthought. Although I prefer the world.

"players like soloing or small group anyway" - these players prefer the world. I'm not sure what your point is. I personally didn't like GW1 at all.

Instances are, in fact, designed for the guilders, mass-groupers where you need 40 people to get anything done. The soloers are who play in the world.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

And MMO is going in that direction anyway with solo-friendly gameplay, phasing, instances, LFD/LFR tools.

You're not making any sense.

Soloers don't care for instances... lol

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Then the solution is simple. Get rid of the world. Most players like solo-ing or small group anyway. You can easily do instanced stories.

The world is the entire point though.  Story is just a placeholder for not having a working simulation.

*was* the entire point. In many MMOs today, people wait in cities for their dungeon or pvp queues. If that is what they prefer to do, what is the point of a world?

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by AticusWelles
An MMORPG without a persistant virtual world is reduced to a online co-op RPG/dungeon crawler.

That genre already exists, no reason to bastardize the MMORPG to do something that's already being done.

And MMO is going in that direction anyway with solo-friendly gameplay, phasing, instances, LFD/LFR tools.

There is actually a good reason to go that direction. People like it. They want this kind of co-op RPG gameplay with AH type trading.

You can call this whatever you want, but that is where i see the genre is going. Not unlike the old "graphical adventure games" become today's "action adventure" games.

I don't see why there isn't room for both. Like he said, these sort of games already exist. Look at Diablo 3. It's not an MMO, but it's soloable, has group play, PvP (eventually) and has an auction house. Who knows, you may be right. Perhaps the MMORPG as we know it will collapse into this style of game.

Originally posted by Irus

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Then the solution is simple. Get rid of the world. Most players like solo-ing or small group anyway. You can easily do instanced stories.

Many MMOs are like that already.

Well, yes, you can do one or the other.

You can concentrate on the world, and remove all the instancing.

Or you can concentrate on the lobby, and remove the world.

Most MMO's basically mix the two together, usually with the world as an afterthought. Although I prefer the world.

"players like soloing or small group anyway" - these players prefer the world. I'm not sure what your point is. I personally didn't like GW1 at all.

Instances are, in fact, designed for the guilders, mass-groupers where you need 40 people to get anything done. The soloers are who play in the world.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

And MMO is going in that direction anyway with solo-friendly gameplay, phasing, instances, LFD/LFR tools.

You're not making any sense.

Soloers don't care for instances... lol

I think he's referring to instancing not in terms of WoW-style 5-mans or raids, but in in terms of offering the player the ability to play a story-driven portion of the game without experiencing any effects from the actions or decisions of outside players or parties.  TOR does this with quest instances and WoW with phasing. 

These methods provide ways of telling a SPRPG type of story that gives the appearance of changing the game world for any given player while still allowing him to inhabit a world with thousands of other players.

For example: Player A kills Big Bad Guy in his instance or phase.  BBG is still alive for Player B in his instance or phase.  Player B now kills BBG, which is now dead for him.  But even though BBG is dead for Player A and Player B in their respective instances or phases, he's still alive for Player C when he comes along.

Story is important for the MMO genre to continue growing in a way that will keep people interested and invested in the games. It's a long overdue portion of MMO's, that being said there needs to be more than story for an MMO, and when developers learn to put their effort into each portion of the game and knock them all out of the ballpark, you'll have your next massive success.

@Rockhide

I know what he's referring to, I just don't see why he thinks that's what soloers are looking for.

From what I've seen, standard themepark WoW and WoW clones have this layout:

- there is a world, and you play in it until cap. The world is typically not instanced;

- there is the end game, which is played at cap. The world is heavily instanced there.

People who group the most are raiders. Raiders play exclusively in instances. Raiders are playing the lobby game.

People who solo play mostly in the world, which is not instanced. Soloers are playing the MMO.

Making the world instanced kills it for soloers, they'll just go play a single player RPG at that point. I did not enjoy SW:TOR at all nor did any other soloers I know. I especially hated the multiple-instances per area thing.

Whilst I don't think story is inherently bad in MMO's, it seems to me to be a waste of resources.

If you have a good backdrop, interesting factions, an interesting world, good character customization, then players will create their own story.

The logistics of keeping everyone happy with a unified story seem unworthy of bothering with in an MMO. Better to throw time and energy into random variables. 

Unless you want an ultra theme park, or LOVE soloing (but then seriously, why play mmos), you may as well just create some awesome races, faction them, make it malleable, provide lots of 'things to do' in the world and shout

GO!

Originally posted by GN-003

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by AticusWelles
An MMORPG without a persistant virtual world is reduced to a online co-op RPG/dungeon crawler.

That genre already exists, no reason to bastardize the MMORPG to do something that's already being done.

And MMO is going in that direction anyway with solo-friendly gameplay, phasing, instances, LFD/LFR tools.

There is actually a good reason to go that direction. People like it. They want this kind of co-op RPG gameplay with AH type trading.

You can call this whatever you want, but that is where i see the genre is going. Not unlike the old "graphical adventure games" become today's "action adventure" games.

I don't see why there isn't room for both. Like he said, these sort of games already exist. Look at Diablo 3. It's not an MMO, but it's soloable, has group play, PvP (eventually) and has an auction house. Who knows, you may be right. Perhaps the MMORPG as we know it will collapse into this style of game.

I didn't say there isn't room for both. Seldom things are 0 or 100% in the marketplace. However, the trend is clear. There will be MORE of "this style" of games, and less of other styles (percentage-wise).

And it is precisely that this style is available, and successful, that MMO designs are gravitating towards it.

Originally posted by quasi_dead

The logistics of keeping everyone happy with a unified story seem unworthy of bothering with in an MMO. Better to throw time and energy into random variables. 

This^^

Thus, most story telling in MMOs are done by phasing or instancing, essentially side-stepping the logistic of keeping everyone on the same page of a unified story.

There is also no need for a unify story in a MP (MMO or not) environment. I have not seen anyone care enough to complain about the discrepencies in stories in games like Diablo. No one worries that the other he just played with has already killed the butcher and we are killing him again.

Consistency in story telling is just not that important in multiplayer games.

Originally posted by Konfess

.........

The result is a permanent effect on the game world but only a fraction of the games total and eventual population ever gets to experience the content. The return on investment for the development of the content is very low. Maybe 5 players are ever repeatedly there for the new content to experience or achieve the content. Everyone else gets nothing or gets to experience the lesser repeatable content. The game gets the reputation of being a niche game, if you don't take time off from work or school to get the content when it goes live you will lose out on it.

Maybe these problems could be fixed by making it a yearly one week event with the return of the EOL or his next incarnation.
 

I cut down your post to avoid lengthy pyramid.

I totally understand your point, there is no way an developer will spent resources on an encounter that costs thousand's of man power and money that only a small fraction of players will experience once. Your example is exactly what I was thinking would work but you proved that it will not in an MMO world.

But what would? Is the current method of creating an personal story separate from everyone else the only way to experience your actions having an effect on the world.

How can anyone craft a Over ARching World story if everyone logs in at different times, with different time zones and different player levels.

Different levels can be fixed by GW2's Scaling , but if an Boss Mob can only be killed once, what happened to those that couldn't fight it till weeks after due to travels for work.

Could we have an Boss mob that appears only after their Sub-bosses that drops an certain relic that are in separate pieces and once there is enough collected then appears.

An boss mob that roams the world and gets defeated and flies away or teleports away till its encountered again, and will only be finally defeated after being beaten X numbers of times.

An Boss mob that when summoned will destroy certain villages and towns that once its destroyed gives more quests afterwards based on the amount of damages it caused.

Or an event of where this massive boss can not be destroyed until a few items are collected, or towns are protected?

I truly believe that there will be a way to have an Over Arching World story that can be enjoyed by everyone from different time zones and different regions that gives you the illusion of having an effect on the world that you are playing in.

I believe everything is possible, if you want it enough, its only impossible when you given up.

Stories in MMO's are really... tough.

I know for sure that answer is not sticking a single player game (hello SWTOR, GW2 personal story) in the game. I just hate that approach personally, it breaks the whole MMO idea where I am in big world interacting with other people. I guess the answer would be somewhere between open unscripted enviroment like DayZ, dynamic world like Guild Wars 2 and not making the player hero. There just cannot be a convincing story when eveyone is a hero.

But yea, 'story' for MMO cannot be done by developer writing the most epic storyline; it has to happen more dynamically. Let players create their own stories (again, DayZ style).

Story in MMORPG's always ends up being bad or useless.  Everyone has the same story, and story can be done much better in single player games.  The MMORPG part of it becomes pointless and it usually just ends up inserting some kill 10 wolf quests into the game.  I have never cared one bit about anything story related in an mmorpg.  The things I remember about MMORPG's are what the players do in the game that effects me.  In EVE it might be some major war/invasion.  In less sandboxy games it might be the guild of pkers that constantly murder people in certain areas.  That kind of thing is memoriable, not the silly quests that MMORPG's send you on.  Even GW2's personal story is the worst part of the game.  For story a single player game will always be better unless an mmorpg tells a story where people have different roles in the same story.  Sandboxes make their own story based on player action and this is the best storytelling gets in mmorpgs.  Story in your standard themepark is just a really really bad single player/c-op game with a chatroom attached. 

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Then the solution is simple. Get rid of the world. Most players like solo-ing or small group anyway. You can easily do instanced stories.

The world is the entire point though.  Story is just a placeholder for not having a working simulation.

*was* the entire point. In many MMOs today, people wait in cities for their dungeon or pvp queues. If that is what they prefer to do, what is the point of a world?

Perhaps those MMOs are not actually providing the world people are looking for?

I'm not going to deny there's a niche out there for lobby-based item treadmills.  I've even been known to play a few myself and holding down a W key for 10-15 minutes for a daily quest isn't really my idea of a good time.  But in a couple of hours, minecraft will sell its 6th million copy.  I can't help but look at that and think that my own wishes for more-dynamic worlds is not unique, that there is a niche between WoW and Second Life that MMOs (or at least the ones that people like myself actually get around to trying) are failing to catch.

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Then the solution is simple. Get rid of the world. Most players like solo-ing or small group anyway. You can easily do instanced stories.

The world is the entire point though.  Story is just a placeholder for not having a working simulation.

*was* the entire point. In many MMOs today, people wait in cities for their dungeon or pvp queues. If that is what they prefer to do, what is the point of a world?

 

Perhaps those MMOs are not actually providing the world people are looking for?

I'm not going to deny there's a niche out there for lobby-based item treadmills.  I've even been known to play a few myself and holding down a W key for 10-15 minutes for a daily quest isn't really my idea of a good time.  But in a couple of hours, minecraft will sell its 6th million copy.  I can't help but look at that and think that my own wishes for more-dynamic worlds is not unique, that there is a niche between WoW and Second Life that MMOs (or at least the ones that people like myself actually get around to trying) are failing to catch.

 

I doubt lobby-based co-op game is a niche. It is, in fact, MUCH bigger than sandbox MMOs. How many are playing Diablo 3? How many are playing Eve Online?

There is also another factor. May be there is an audience for a dynamic world but it is expensive to make and needs lots of new R&D. OTOH, a lobby based progression co-op game is a known quality and dev can focus on implementation, polish, content and the good stuff instead of risking their necks on unknown technologies.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by AticusWelles
An MMORPG without a persistant virtual world is reduced to a online co-op RPG/dungeon crawler.

That genre already exists, no reason to bastardize the MMORPG to do something that's already being done.

And MMO is going in that direction anyway with solo-friendly gameplay, phasing, instances, LFD/LFR tools.

There is actually a good reason to go that direction. People like it. They want this kind of co-op RPG gameplay with AH type trading.

You can call this whatever you want, but that is where i see the genre is going. Not unlike the old "graphical adventure games" become today's "action adventure" games.

My point is there is already a genre providing that type of gameplay without a subscription, why on earth ruin the MMORPG genre, and pay subscription fees, or deal with the hassles of the F2P model instead of just playing the genre that already caters to that crowd?